Brilliant Devices (5 page)
“You’re right, there. How long did it take you to get here from Santa Fe?”
“It would have been three days, but Lord and Lady Dunsmuir took a fancy to a bit of shooting in the Montana Territory. Her ladyship bagged a—”
“Really, Ian, I’m sure our company does not want to hear such things, especially the children,” Davina interrupted hastily, covering Willie’s ears.
“I do,” Lizzie said.
“Me, too,” said Maggie and Tigg together.
“Mama, I saw you shoot that big deer,” Willie said earnestly. “Mr. Skully and
me were looking out the window.”
“You were supposed to have been having a nap,” his mother said severely. “I shall have a word with Mr. Skully.”
. I confess my appetite is only being whetted the more, the longer we remain out here.”
When Alice would have melted out the door, both Andrew and Claire took her by
either arm and marched her down the corridor to Claire’s former cabin, which was possessed of a sink and mirror.
With
some water and a comb, Claire decided, she would work a minor miracle on her friend. A little attention from Captain Hollys instead of Andrew would, she was quite sure, go a long way.
Alice figured the meal that evening in the dining saloon could have rivaled anything the railroad barons might put on in their fancy New York mansions. The rolling plains of the Canadas produced an enormous shaggy creature that tasted much like beef, much to the delight of the Mopsies, and she was introduced to the finer points of Yorkshire pudding, which in their minds was the epitome of heaven.
The puffy puddings
were pretty darned good, she had to admit, though it was hard to beat one of her own biscuits. But what felt even better was a full stomach, for the first time in days. Flight rations consisting of dried fruit and jerky were easy to carry and did very well in a pinch, but they got old fast.
The little boy had been bundled off to bed after insisting on kissing Claire good-night, and the
Mopsies had settled without protest in their old cabin, when her ladyship ran into a snag in her assumptions.
“But Claire, I insist that you and the girls stay here with us
.” She leaned over from her seat on the sofa and clasped Claire’s hands. “Our original plan was for you to sail with us to the Canadas and back, and to share our adventures together. I admit that since we made the acquaintance of Ned Mose and his crew, we have not achieved that goal, but we must make a fresh start.”
Alice was staying out of this one. Why should she care whether Claire and the girls stayed here or went back to the Spartan comfort of their temporary berths on the
Lass
? In fact, she’d prefer it if they did stay on this luxurious boat. Then if Alice decided to pull up ropes and head off to see where the sun went every day, she could, and it would be nobody’s nevermind but her own.
A quiet nevermind, it was true, but there was nothing wrong with the sound of the wind in the
guy wires. It would make a nice change. Maybe she’d even start on Ten, and figure out how to get an automaton to talk.
“But then Alice would be alone,” Claire replied, pulling one hand from Davina’s gentle grip and giving Alice’s shoulder a shake. “I wouldn’t want her to get itchy feet and leave us just when we’re all getting to know each other.”
What was she, a clairvoyant? “I wouldn’t do that,” Alice lied through her teeth, doing her best to look innocent. “What do you take me for?”
“What d Meare your plans, Alice?” the countess asked, her fine
dark eyes sparkling with interest, and a flush on her tanned cheek.
Until this moment, Alice hadn’t given it a single thought. Just
flying here had been enough to knock the stuffing out of anybody, without worrying about what came after. “I—I’m not sure. I hadn’t really thought much past getting Claire and Mr. Malvern here in one piece.”
Davina actually clapped. On anyone else it would have seemed silly and childish, but Alice had heard the pride in her husband’s voice when he’d told them that she’d dropped that elk with a single shot. This woman was the furthest thing from silly.
“Why, then, you must stay and enjoy the delights of the Northern Light with us. The lieutenant-governor’s dinner was bound to be stodgy—oh, he’s a gentleman, to be sure, but my goodness, one can only talk about mineral rights for so long—but there is a ball the day after tomorrow at Government House, and two shooting parties for grouse, and I can’t tell you how many card parties and visits to the theatre. We have missed Madame Tetrazzini, apparently, but Mr. Caruso is expected on the next airship from San Francisco. Our time here will rival anything you’ve experienced in London, I can assure you.”
“Sounds lovely,” Alice said faintly. It sounded like purgatory. Like torture. Like an
unrelenting exercise in embarrassment and humiliation for one Alice Benton Chalmers.
If this was to be her fate, s
he was pulling up ropes tonight, no matter how exhausted and full of good food and wine she was.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Davina said knowingly. “Both of you.”
“That we have nothing to wear but what’s on our backs?” Claire asked.
Ha! That was the least of it.
“Exactly. But we will remedy that tomorrow. There are Canton tailors here that can construct everything from a riding habit to a ball gown overnight—and with the latest designs from Paris, too. None of this nonsense that the New York ladies adhere to about leaving a dress in its box for a year or two before wearing it, so one doesn’t look
nouveau
. Oh, no. If one cannot have Mr. Worth create a gown in Paris, one simply chooses fabric and a fashion plate from Fourth Street,
et voila.”
She looked so pleased that Alice almost didn’t have the heart to disappoint her.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, your ladyship—”
“Davina.”
“Davina, but I ain’t got the ready money for this kind of exercise—clothes and balls and whatnot. I have to figure out how to power the
Lass
without Claire’s energy cell, and that’ll probably mean hiring on as ground crew for a while, till I get an engine in her. And you’re not going to want to take a grease monkey along on all these fancy excursions. Especially one who can’t dance and wouldn’t know a dessert fork from a carving knife.”
“I’ll bet you’re quite proficient with knives.”
n>
“But you see what I’m saying.”
“I see what you’re
not
saying. Do you think that Claire and I have not been in your position—untried and ignorant of society?”
“When you were little Willie’s age, maybe. I bet you learned all that stuff in school. Or from your governess or whatever.”
Davina leaned forward, a fierce, predatory look on her delicate features. “Where do you think I am from, Alice?”
Well, that was a poser. How should she know? “Um. England?”
One eyebrow rose. “Try again.”
“New York?”
“Farther west.”
“Here?”
“Farther still.”
What was out there, fa
rther still, on the edge of the world? “Victoria?”
“Close.
Picture an island off the coast, peopled by a tribe of what you might think of as wild Injuns. I am a Nan’uk princess. My father is chief of a tribe that populates most of the islands and inlets around Victoria and north along the entire coast to the borders of the Russian Orthodox Empire. Our nation has intimate ties with the Esquimaux and the Athabasca, making ours the largest united peoples in the Canadas.
“
I met his lordship when I was a guide on a hunting trip. I taught him how to handle the new Sharps lever-action repeating rifle.” Her eyes took on a focus and intensity that were rather like those of an eagle stooping upon its prey, and Alice found herself pushing up against the back of the chair. “I did not grow up in the ballrooms of London, Alice Chalmers. I learned to take my place there, and if you are afraid to do what I have done, then I am ashamed of you.”
Alice glanced at Claire, whose jaw hung
open as far as her own.
“But—but your speech,” Claire stammered. “Your accent—it’s Belgravia to the last vowel.”
“I have a good ear and am an excellent mimic. You ought to hear my northern loon.”
“I knew there was more to you
than met the eye!” Claire was beginning to recover from her astonishment. “A woman could not be so good at weaponry and be so comfortable in the wilderness who had grown up in the drawing rooms of London.”
Davina smiled and turned back to Alice. “There are those
in said drawing rooms who made an attempt to turn a cold shoulder to me because of my birth. They soon learned it is not safe to offend my husband—or Her Majesty, who recognizes a princess whether she is arrayed in diamonds or deerskin. I can assure you, Alice, my dear, that if you accept my guidance and his protection, there will be no opportunity for the embarrassment you fear.”
Alice felt a little winded.
“Another blasted clairvoyant. Between the two of you, I ain’t got a chance.”
Claire smiled, a hint of wickedness in the corners. s in thners. “Among the three of us, neither does Edmonton.”
*
Claire
and Andrew walked back to the
Lass
with Alice, since Claire could not be permitted to cross the airfield alone on the return walk. Such silliness, really, but the fact remained that, if she was to submit herself to the chaperonage of the Dunsmuirs, she would have to reaccustom herself to old-fashioned ways of thinking. The Mopsies, dead to the world in one bunk in their shifts, would stay, so Davina felt her battle half won. If she had it her way, Andrew would stay on the
Lass
and the two young ladies on the larger ship, as was proper, but Claire doubted very much that Alice would be talked into leaving her vessel. In any case, Claire needed to return for her much-abused valise.
Alice ducked past a set of mooring ropes and emerged into the lamplight again, shaking her head. The French braid that Claire had
fashioned in her hair was beginning to come apart at the end where she had lost the ribbon. It seemed that Alice’s hair would be more of a challenge than she had first supposed.
“How about that Davina?”
Alice said, apropos of nothing. “A Na’nuk princess. Who would have thought?”
“Even more astonishing is how little it is talked of in London. Her Majesty and the earl between them must have been quite … firm.”
“I doubt Her Majesty’ll be giving me the same backup.”
“The earl will,” Andrew said. “
And that counts for quite a lot.”
Alice stopped walking. “Claire,
Mr. Malvern, it’s no use. I got something I have to do here tonight, and once that’s done, I’m going to lift and head north, to the mines. And maybe after that I’ll head out west and get a gander at this ocean you and Davina were talking about.”
Two thoughts combusted simultaneously in Claire’s mind. The first was that Alice
intended to search for her father, all alone. And the second was that no woman who would set off into the sky all by herself to undertake a journey of at least a thousand miles nurtured any hopes whatsoever of catching the eye of a certain engineer.
Claire did not want her to catch his eye.
She liked his eyes trained in the direction they were presently, thank you. But neither did she want her friend, to whom she owed so much, to head out into the unknown, unprotected and alone.