In the Land of the Long White Cloud

have these repugnant people under control?”
    Gerald thought with amusement that Jeffrey Riddleworth’s shooting in a building had likely caused more damage than even a tiger could have wrought. Besides, he didn’t actually believe that the small, well-fed colonel could hit a snake’s head on the first shot. Regardless, the man had chosen the wrong country to make a name for himself.
    “Our servants take…ahem, a little getting used to,” Gerald said. “We mostly employ natives to whom the English lifestyle is rather foreign. But we don’t have to worry about snakes and tigers. There aren’t any snakes in all of New Zealand. Originally there were hardly any mammals either. It was the missionaries who first brought work animals, dogs and horses and the like, to the island.”
    “No wild animals?” Jeffrey asked, wrinkling his brow. “Come now, Warden, you don’t mean to tell us that before the settlers came it looked like it did on the fourth day of creation.”
    “There were birds,” Gerald Warden reported. “Big, small, fat, thin, flying, walking…oh yes, and a few bats. Besides that, insects of course, but they’re not very dangerous either. You’d have to work hard if you wanted to be killed on New Zealand, sir. Unless you resort to dealing with bipedal robbers with firearms.”
    “Presumably those with machetes, daggers, and krises too, eh?” Riddleworth asked with a chuckle. “Well, it’s a puzzle to me how one could volunteer to live in such a wilderness. I was happy to leave the colonies.”
    “Our Maori are mostly peaceful,” Warden said calmly. “A strange people…at once fatalistic and easy to please. They sing, dance, carve wood, and don’t know how to make any weapons worthy of mention. No, sir, I’m sure you would have been rather more bored than afraid.”
    Jeffrey Riddleworth wanted to correct him that he hadn’t lost a single drop of sweat to fear during his entire time in India. But the gentlemen were interrupted by Gwyneira’s arrival. The girl entered the salon—and looked around, clearly confused, when she saw that her mother and sister were not among those present.
    “Am I early?” Gwyneira asked, instead of first properly greeting her brother-in-law.
    Jeffrey looked suitably offended, but Gerald Warden could not take his eyes off her. The girl had struck him as pretty earlier, but now, in formal attire, he recognized her as a true beauty. Her blue velvet dress highlighted her pale skin and her vibrant red hair. Her more chaste hairstyle emphasized the noble cut of her face. Completing the effect were her bold lips and luminous blue eyes, which sparkled with a lively, almost provocative expression. Gerald was enraptured.
    It was clear that this girl didn’t fit here. He couldn’t possibly picture her at the side of a man like Jeffrey Riddleworth. Gwyneira was more likely to wear a snake around her neck and tame tigers.
    “No, no, dear, you are punctual,” her father said, glancing at the clock. “Your mother and sister are late. Likely they were once more too long in the garden.”
    “Were you not in the garden, then?” Gerald Warden asked, turning to Gwyneira. Really he would have expected her to be out in the fresh air more than her mother, whom he had met earlier and considered rather dull and prim.
    Gwyneira shrugged. “I don’t know much about roses,” she admitted, though in doing so she incurred Jeffrey’s displeasure once moreand surely that of her father as well. “Now, if there were vegetables or something else that didn’t prick…”
    Gerald Warden laughed, ignoring the other men’s acerbic countenances. The sheep baron found the girl enchanting. Of course, she wasn’t the first girl he’d eyed surreptitiously on his trip through the old homeland, but so far none of the other young English ladies had opened themselves up so naturally and willingly.
    “Now, now, my lady,” he teased her. “Do you really mean to confront me with the dark side of the English rose? Does the milk-white skin and copper hair hide only thorns?”
    The term “English rose” for the light-skinned, red-haired girls common to the British Isles was also known in New Zealand.
    Normally Gwyneira would have blushed, but she only smiled. “It’s safer to wear gloves,” she remarked, seeing her mother gasping for air out of the corner of her eye.
    Lady Silkham and her oldest daughter, Lady Riddleworth, had just entered and overheard Gerald and Gwyneira’s