Brilliant Devices (24 page)

Andrew blinked at her. “As in Meriwether-Astor Manufacturing Works? But Claire, they do not make bullets or arms. They make parts for steam engines,
and rivets for ship hulls and connectors for train carriages. I’ve ordered one or two parts from them myself, in the course of my experiments.”

“What if there’s a smaller group?” Alice asked, her mouth as full as Lizzie’s had been. “Meriwether Astor Munitions Works, say?”

“Who buys bullets, then?” Claire mused aloud. “There cannot be enough hunters and sportsmen in all the Territories to make such a division profitable.”

“Armies,” Andrew said. “Countries at war.”

“Or about to be,” Alice added, and swallowed.

And suddenly Claire
understood why Count von Zeppelin had nearly been assassinated.

*

Gloria Meriwether-Astor’s hat defied the laws of gravity. P ofie’serched upon her forehead, its rear tilted up nearly to the vertical by virtue of its resting on her piled-up blond curls, it seemed on the verge of sliding down her face and coming to rest upon her petulant lower lip.

Claire smiled and extended her hand. “Gloria. How lovely to see you again. You have not changed one whit since last we met.”

Gloria took her hand, her gaze puzzled. “And when was that? Have we been introduced?”

Lizzie snorted like a horse who has unexpectedly met with a groundhog in its path. “O’ course you have. At the Crystal Palace, wi’ Lord James Selwyn
, when me and Maggie was skating.”

Gloria stared at Lizzie, her brows raised in affront. “Really. Forgive me. I do not recall.”

Claire could not hold back her laughter. “Oh, Gloria, do give over. Your town manners will not win you any points here. But to refresh your memory, we also saw one another at Julia Wellesley’s costume party last month.” She smoothed the folds of her raiding skirt with affection. “I believe I wore this very rig.”

“I’m sure Miss Meriwether-Astor will have no trouble remembering
both occasions if she puts her mind to it, won’t you, dear?” Lady Dunsmuir slipped an arm around Gloria’s waist and the air exploded in a flash of light and the smell of phosphorus as a phalanx of journalists recorded the moment for posterity. She steered Gloria and her father toward the dining hall and the welcoming party followed. “Lady Claire is our honored guest. She has been touring the Americas with us and sharing our adventures.”

“Lady Claire, is it?” Mr. Meriwether-Astor puffed along behind the women like a steam train. “Better mind your manners, Gloria. She might have a brother.”

“I do, in fact,” Claire told him, trying not to show her amusement at the poisonous glare Gloria threw him. “But as Lord Nicholas is not even two, he is more interested in his stuffed giraffe than he is in young ladies.”

“Ah well, it never hurts to know these things.” The poor man’s short legs could barely keep up with Lady Dunsmuir’s effortless glide. “Don’t want to cut ourselves off from possibilities, do we, girl?”

“Father, please,” Gloria said softly, her head up and slightly turned away, as if she could not bear the sight of him and was admiring the view instead.

For the first time, Claire felt a pang of sympathy for the girl. T
hough the days immediately following her graduation from St. Cecilia’s Academy for Young Ladies now seemed as if they had been lived by another person altogether, she distinctly remembered how uncomfortable she had felt, being on display at the few parties she had attended, and dreading her presentation at court.

It was one thing to travel across the ocean as
a Buccaneer and set one’s cap at a title in exchange for a Fifteen Colonies fortune. It was quite another to be bullied and bossed into it by one’s father, whom one might expect to take one’s tender feelings more into consideration.

Though, if what she suspected was in fact true,
Julius Meriwether-Astor, who appeared to be merely a blustering, insensitive buffoon, was nothing of the kind. Could this man now talking with such ang w/span>

It hardly seemed possible. And yet …

She had sworn her friends to secrecy on the matter. Secrecy, and vigilance. Though how they were to watch out for the count’s wellbeing without actually telling him what they suspected was a puzzle she had yet to work out. Because of course they had no proof of anything, only mad speculation hanging by the thinnest of threads. If she accused Gloria’s father of such a heinous crime, and was proven wrong, they would all be disgraced, and Claire could not bear the thought of any taint upon the Dunsmuirs—not after they had shown her and the children such kindness and support.

Nor could she
risk Tigg’s future as a midshipman on the
Lady Lucy
for the sake of mere speculation. So for now, they must keep an eye peeled, as Maggie would say, and be alert for the slightest hint that this visit was not as it seemed.

“Lady Dunsmuir, a photograph opportunity, if you please?” called one of the journalists. “If we get a group shot, we can send the plates by pigeon and
get the pictures in the Sunday papers.”

“Very well.” She turned to Claire and Alice. “While we are doing that, you girls might like to change for dinner. Count von Zeppelin’s invitation, you know, aboard the
Margrethe
.”

Alice looked as though she was going to be sick. “I
thought that was tomorrow. And anyhow—”

“Tomorrow we shall host a dinner for the entire camp
, and a ball. But tonight is a smaller, more intimate party.”

“No, I can’t,” Alice said, a little desperately.

“Please, dear.” Davina put a hand on her arm. “You and Jake. As a personal favor to me.”

Alice let out a long breath in defeat. “Very well. But I’m pulling up ropes in the morning.”

“You must do as you think best, of course. But may I say that we women will be far outnumbered by partners tomorrow evening at the ball. The loss of one of us will be a tragedy for a great many men.”

“Dancing with me would
be a greater one,” Alice mumbled.

The journalists began to clamor for Davina’s attention. “I must go. Eight o’clock, ladies, with sherry at seven.”

Claire took the Mopsies’ hands so they would not get lost in the pushing and shoving as the journalists set up their equipment and vied for the best spots in the central courtyard. Alice accompanied them back to the
Lady Lucy
, where she said, “Jake’s waiting on me. He won’t be too happy about being shanghaied tonight, either.”

“If there’s a spread, he’ll be fine,” Maggie told her. “Can’t we come?”

“I’m afraid not, darling,” Claire said. “You are not yet out in society, and won’t be for some time, so I hope you will keep Willie and Tigg company here on the s hedarhip.”

“Wot’s ‘out in society’?”

“It means you go on display in your mama’s shop window when you’re sixteen, waiting for the highest bidder,” Alice told her without much grace.

“We ent got a mama,” Lizzie said. Then she turned
a horrified gaze to Claire. “Lady, you ent goin’ t’put us in a window, then, like a pair of plucked geese wiv frilly paper round our feet?”

“Certainly not.” She must not laugh, for if her limited experience was anything to go by, the image held more truth than the little girl knew. “
Alice is being a poultice, and you must not listen to her. Being out simply means that you may go to balls and parties, and receive calls from gentlemen. When the time comes, you and Maggie will go with me and—” She stopped.

Dear me. She had come within a breath of saying—

“You an’ ’oo?” Lizzie prompted her.

“My husband, whomever that gentleman
may turn out to be, if I am indeed married five years from now.”

“Mr. Malvern,” Maggie said with an air of one who knows.

“Captain Hollys,” Lizzie shot back with equal certainty.

“The man in the moon
, if it were any of your business!”

Honestly, she was going to pack them both back to London for further lessons
from Snouts McTavish in keeping their mouths shut, and that was a fact.

Alice took a deep breath and felt the determined grip of her corset as it restricted her air intake to ladylike levels. No wonder ladies in novels fainted every time they got scared. They couldn’t ruddy well breathe.

Beside her, Jake indicated she should precede him up to the gangway, and she looked at him, surprised.
“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Wot?”

“Allow a female to go first.”

He flushed, and let out a croak that turned into a squeak. He coughed and tried again. “I watched
’is lordship and Mr. Malvern. Go on, then. D’you want to freeze standing out ’ere?”

“Thank you, Jake,” she said as politely as any lady, and picked up her
turquoise skirts to manage the gangway. At the top an officer was posted, and he assisted her from the last step.

“Welcome again to the
Landgrafin Margrethe
, Captain Chalmers,” he said. “I am the assistant steward. Will you follow me?”

“Good evening,” she replied. “This is Jake, my navigator.”

Awkwardly, Jake bowed, clearly uncomfortable in the one good suit that Claire had prevailed upon him to get in Edmonton hedafont>

“
Never mind, Jake,” she whispered as she rustled down the passage after the assistant steward. “It’s only a couple of hours and some good grub, and then we can go.”

Their guide motioned them through a set of carved double doors and they entered the flagship’s huge salon. Alice’s breath caught and Jake whistled, a low sound like a half-empty teakettle
taken off the burner.

The room could hold a hundred people, though at present there were only half that number. What appeared to be gambit tables
for the planning of battles had been seconded to duty as buffet tables, which were laden with food and phalanxes of crystal glasses and goblets. At the far end, uniformed men formed a small orchestra, at present engaged in a graceful waltz.

“Oh, blast, can they really be planning to dance after dinner?
I thought all that palaver wasn’t until tomorrow.”

“They’ve room to,” Jake observed tersely. “You could
’ide behind them velvet curtains, or pretend to be one of them trees in pots.”

“Best shut up, or you’ll be the first one I ask to be my partner.”

Jake clamped his lips together as if he never meant to speak again. Still, he stuck by her side like a burr as she wended her way across the room to where Claire and Captain Hollys stood, looking picturesque and annoyingly comfortable in all this posh crowd, next to the punchbowl.

“Captain Chalmers. Jake
.” Hollys knew better than to kiss the back of her gloved hand, so he shook it instead. “You’re looking uncommonly well this evening, Alice, considering your brush with near death this afternoon.”

“I’d rather face a herd of caribou than this lot,” she told him.

“Buck up, old thing,” Andrew Malvern joined them just in time to hear her, and she immediately wished she could drop through a hatch in the floor. “Did you stash a pistol in that rig to ward off potential partners?”

“That dress is the latest design from Paris,” Claire informed him down her nose. “It is not a weapons holster.”

“If it were, it would be the prettiest one ever made,” said Captain Hollys gallantly, coming to Alice’s rescue. “You wore this to the governor’s ball, did you not?”

“She did,” Andrew said before she could open her mouth.

He remembered. And Alice had not forgotten her feelings then, either, when it seemed he finally saw her as a woman, not a companion at arms. What was up, then, with his cavalier treatment of her now? Didn’t she deserve to be treated like a lady, the way he treated Claire, instead of one of his chums from the honkytonk?