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on the problem for quite some time now, and it seems to me that the necessary identifying and classifying characteristics ought to be—”
    “Young woman,” Sir Richard cut in, his face ashen with repressed outrage. “I will not debate Linnaean classification with you!”
    “Good.” Miss Burke was all tiny, unbending resolve. “Then I trust we shall need no further examination of my knowledge before I am allowed to take my place with the expedition.”
    “It is impossible.” Here Sir Richard looked to Dance for confirmation. “See here, Lieutenant. Surely the Royal Navy will not allow this…”
    Dance declined to partake of the man’s outrage—he had troubles enough of his own. “Don’t look to the Royal Navy, sir. As I told Miss Burke, Tenacious is responsible to the Royal Society for your party’s transportation to the South Seas, not for the makeup of your party.”
    “But it is impossible.” Sir Richard was as tightly pursed and disapproving as a high church bishop.
    “Nothing is impossible to the Royal Navy, sir.” The fact that he was going to take this coffin of a ship, and all the souls within it, out to sea as soon as may be was proof enough of both his and the navy’s obstinacy. And its idiocy.
    Miss Burke nodded as if in complete agreement with the idiot obstinancy, but under the wide brim of her practical felt hat, her fair face had gone white with the strain, though now Dance was sure she would not do anything so missish as succumb to a swoon. Despite her small stature, she clearly wasn’t the type. She was clumsy and unworldly, yes, but far too intelligent and determined to ruin her slim chances with a maidenly display of womanly weakness.
    Instead, she raised that undaunted chin. “I am not only possible, Sir Richard, I am actual. I am here.” She swept her shaky arm out toward the entry post. “That is my boat, with all of my collecting gear carefully stowed. I am the conchologist you invited to join this expedition. And I accepted that invitation. As you well know.” She all but shook the packet of letters in proof.
    And despite her obvious trepidation, Miss Burke—tiny, adamant, intelligent Miss Burke—was now well and properly angry, though she only gave vent to it in the cuttingly precise tone of her voice. And the agitated tremor in her tightly clenched fist.
    She had backbone, Dance would give her that.
    And when Sir Richard made her no answer, she tipped that seemingly delicate chin up another notch, and included the cluster of men behind Sir Richard in the rising disdain of her gaze. “Your correspondence indicated you needed a conchologist to fulfill His Grace the Duke of Fenmore’s requirements for a full complement of naturalists on this voyage. And your correspondence furthermore gave me to understand that I was both your first choice, and the only conchologist you had invited to join this expedition.”
    Sir Richard admitted the truth of her statement with ill grace, at the same time as he finally admitted the obvious. “Yes, but while that may be true, I must point out that your correspondence made no mention of the fact that you are female. ”
    Despite her tremulous anger, Miss Burke kept a cool head. “I did not consider the fact of my gender germane to our correspondence. I am a naturalist and a conchologist first, and a grown-up woman second. I take no more note of my own gender than I would of a mollusk’s.”
    “Yet you should!” Sir Richard clung to his argument like one of the barnacles Miss Burke had described fouling the bottom of Tenacious ’s hull. “Think of your family. Think of the scandal.”
    But Miss Burke was as stubborn as Sir Richard, and hung on just as tenaciously as any barnacle. She raised that honey-dark, disdainful eyebrow. “Scandal? How can there be any scandal in collecting seashells for scientific cataloguing, sir?”
    Sir Richard gaped at her, as if the reasons ought to be obvious to anyone with half a brain. “This is a