“This is different,” Eleanor said.

For the first few days, Eleanor sat with Mathinna at the table in the schoolroom, mapping steps on a chalkboard, with Xs for each participant and arrows designating where they should go. Then the two of them began practicing together in the yard behind the henhouse. Eleanor was too self-absorbed, not to mention intellectually incurious, to be a particularly inspiring schoolteacher. She plodded from subject to subject as if checking items off a list. But these same traits, as it turned out, made her an excellent dance instructor. Color rose to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled as her every step was admired and emulated. She looked so pretty as she turned! And as soon as she tired of one dance, she could move to another. She was playful and persistent, happy to spend hours demonstrating the moves.

Out in the courtyard one sunny afternoon, Eleanor conscripted a stable boy, two convict maids, two idling buggy drivers, and the butcher to practice with them. Upon learning that the head butler, Mr. Grimm, had taken up the fiddle, she persuaded him to saw a jaunty tune. The air was mild and the atmosphere convivial, and it was thrilling to touch another person’s hand in public without fear of rebuke.

To Mathinna, the dances, with their choreographed footwork, were as logical as mathematics: the careful fitting together of a sequence; a series of movements that, done in the correct order, produced the intended result. Once she mastered them, it was as if her body moved on its own. Soon enough she was helping Eleanor corral the other dancers into their proper places. She loved the pace of the songs that drove them forward: one–two–three–four, one–two–three . . . stepstep-stepstep, stepstepstep . . .

“She will be ready in time, won’t she?” Lady Franklin asked Eleanor a week before the party.

“She will. She’s learning.”

“Her dancing must be a triumph, Eleanor. Otherwise, what’s the point of including her?”

The big event was four days away, then three, then two. Mathinna watched as a crew of workers erected a large sailcloth tent in the side garden and laid the wooden dance floor. As soon as the tent was up, half a dozen convict maids were enlisted to decorate it, overseen by Lady Franklin, who did not so much as lift a teacup but could spy a misplaced chair or wobbly table leg at five hundred paces.

The music played in Mathinna’s head on a continuous loop. In bed at night she moved her toes—one–two–three–four, one–two–three—and tapped her fingers to the rhythm. She danced instead of walked, held her head a little higher and fluttered her arms in the air as she went about her day. The household staff was friendlier to her than they’d ever been. They smiled when they saw her coming down the corridor, complimented her footwork, quizzed her about the differences between a waltz and quadrille.

Only Mrs. Crain, passing through the courtyard as Mathinna practiced her steps, offered a critique. “Remember that these are formal English dances, Mathinna,” she said with a frown. “You must control your native flourishes.”

The scarlet dress still fit Mathinna around the waist, but it was too short, and the sleeves were tight.

She stood on a stool in the center of the room while Hazel sat on the floor, pinning the skirt around her. “Bloody dark in here,” she muttered. “I can barely see what I’m doing.”

Mathinna looked down at the part of Hazel’s russet hair, the smattering of freckles on her forearms. A round metal pendant around her neck glinted in the weak amber light. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

“What?” Hazel touched her throat. “Oh. I forget I have it on. Turn around, I need to pin the back. It belonged to a friend.”

Looking over her shoulder at her, Mathinna said, “Why doesn’t your friend wear it?”

Hazel was silent for a moment. Then she said, “She’s dead. This is all I’ve left of her. Well, except . . .”

“Except what?”

“Oh . . . this and that. A handkerchief.” Pushing Mathinna gently off the stool, Hazel said, “We’re done. Let’s get it off ye and I’ll hem it before I leave.”

As Hazel stood behind her, undoing the buttons, Mathinna said, “I used to wear a necklace that my mother made out of green shells, but Lady Jane took it.”

“Ach. I’m sorry. Shall I steal it back for ye?”

Mathinna shook her head. “You’ll end up in solitary like Sarah Stoup, and I’ll never see you again either.”

Government House, Hobart Town, 1841

The day of the dance was unseasonably humid. By late morning the golden wattle on the tables under the tent were drooping in their vases. By noon a hazy scrim enveloped the trees. Sir John was the one who’d decided the party should be held outdoors, Lady Franklin complained to whoever would listen. Easy for him to insist, since he had nothing to do with the planning! In the late afternoon she sent two convict maids into town to find paper fans—“Three dozen. No, four”—and directed Hazel to prepare a lavender bath in her chambers.

At six o’clock, when the first guests arrived, the air was still thick with heat. Lady Franklin, consulting with the musicians and Mrs. Crain, decided to push back the time of the dancing until half eight, when surely it would be cooler.

Sir John, sleek as a wombat in a form-fitting tuxedo, met Mathinna and Eleanor—wearing a custard-colored, scoop-neck taffeta gown that matched her hair—on the stone apron of Government House. “Don’t we all look smart! Lady Franklin insists that I dance with you, Mathinna. Are you ready to be the center of attention?”

She was. All day she’d felt a flutter of anticipatory pleasure. Now her skin gleamed with rose balm and her hair was oiled and sleek, tied in velvet ribbons that matched the black ribbon around her waist. She wore new red stockings and spit-polished shoes. Her scarlet dress had been ironed with starch, and the full skirt swished around her legs.

“I can’t imagine she’ll embarrass you, Papa, as long as she remembers the steps,” Eleanor said.

“My only worry is that I may embarrass her,” Sir John replied with a gallant flourish. “Frankly, I’d thought my cotillion days were behind me.”

Offering his elbows, he escorted them to the tent, where Eleanor joined a gaggle of young ladies in sherbet dresses and Mathinna and Sir John were quickly surrounded by a throng. Some of the partygoers were familiar to Mathinna, but many were strangers. She greeted the people she recognized with a smile and tried to ignore the ones staring at her, mouths ajar.

A dowager with cake-icing hair tottered over. “I heard you acquired a savage, Sir John, but I hardly believed it. And here it is—in a ball gown!”

A dozen heads pivoted toward Mathinna like a school of fish toward a heel of bread. Feeling herself flush, she took a deep breath and looked at Sir John. He gave her a wink, as if to say that the woman’s rudeness was merely part of the game.

“It is a she, Mrs. Carlisle,” he corrected the dowager, “and she is called Mathinna.”

“Does it—she—understand us?”

“Indeed. In fact, I would say that she probably comprehends far more than she lets on. Isn’t that so, Mathinna?”

She knew what Sir John was asking her to do. He wanted her to astonish them. With a regal nod, she said, “Vous serez surpris de voir combien je sais.”

Gasps and a smattering of claps.

“Extraordinary!”

“What did she say?” Not everyone spoke French, of course.

“I believe it was, ‘You’d be surprised how much I know,’” said Sir John, looking around with a self-satisfied grin. “She’s cheeky, this one.”

“Charming,” the dowager said. “Where did you find her, exactly?”

“Well, it’s quite a story,” Sir John said. “On a trip to Flinders Island we spotted her cavorting around a campfire, with no shoes and barely any clothes. A pure primitive.”

“Fascinating. And here she is, in a satin dress!”

“I can’t help showing her off. Say a few more words in French, Mathinna,” Sir John said.

Say a few more words in French, Mathinna. All right, then, she would. “Bient?t je te danserai sous la table.”

Sir John wagged his finger. “No doubt you will dance me under the table, my dear. She has been practicing, and I have not!”

“She appears quite comfortable with you,” a woman mused.

He inclined his head in agreement. “Natives are surprisingly capable of forming attachments.”

“I must say, I am impressed,” the dowager said. “To have rescued this savage from a life of primeval ignorance—and to have given her an appreciation of art and culture—is a tremendous accomplishment. Almost as great, perhaps, as conquering the Arctic.”

“And nowhere near as dangerous,” Sir John said.