‘I’m very honoured to meet you, Mrs Cullen.’ Sarah bent her knee slightly.
‘And I you, Mrs Blay. Your husband has worked hard the months he has been with us. My husband, James is very pleased with his efforts.’
‘When I said goodbye to him, it was with the fear that he would live and die brutally, in an open-air prison at the ends of the earth.’
‘Oh, some do, Mrs Blay. Some do. The incorrigible, the belligerent, the downright lazy, they’re the ones who don’t do so well. But your husband was fortunate to be assigned to James Bryan Cullen, as I was, many years ago.’
Sarah’s eyes widened in disbelief ‘You were also a convict, Mrs Cullen?’
‘Yes. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. No way, if I’d stayed in Dublin, that I’d be respectfully married to a landowner, with a nic
