Brilliant Devices

chapter 4



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, she 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, farther 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.

“Please don’t go.” She put a hand on Alice’s arm, and to her relief, was not shaken off. “I am as much a stranger to Edmonton society as you. We must stay together.”

“Why?” Now Alice did pull away. They had reached the Lass, and as Claire and Andrew followed her through the hatch, she said, “I can see why you’d like it. Balls and theatre and such, they’re what you’re used to. Heck, you probably know half the people here, not to mention that Churchill girl you were talking about. But I donwant ant I dont.” They emerged into the gondola, which was silent and dim and smelled faintly of axle grease and canvas paste. “I don’t know a soul but those on the Lady Lucy. I don’t know how to go about in society. I don’t know nothing because it’s nothing to do with me. And I’m going to keep it that way.”

As if this were the last word on the subject, she shook up a moonglobe or two and placed them in a net dangling from the ceiling, where they cast a soft white glow.

“But Alice, in the salon with Davina, you seemed perfectly willing to go shopping with us tomorrow, and join us for all the rest of it.”

“Where I come from, that’s called being polite.”

“Then let me tell you what I did not say back there. I have been to exactly one ball in my life.”

“Two,” Andrew corrected her, “if you count dancing with the Prince Consort at the Crystal Palace a ball.”

“Now, see?” Alice lifted her hands in a gesture of despair, and they fell to the idle tiller as if by habit … or an unconscious reach for something that was safe and known. “You danced with a prince and it’s an afterthought. This is exactly what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t know a prince from a pirate if he popped me on the nose.”

“You’d know Prince Albert,” Andrew told her. “His likeness is on the coinage here.”

“My point is, my dad could be up in this territory somewhere, and I aim to find him, not go gallivanting about doing frivolous things in clothes I’ll never wear again in this lifetime.”

“Then let us help you,” Claire said at once. “Is that what you were going to do tonight? Begin your inquiries in the—the honkytonks the airmen frequent?”

“Yes,” Alice said reluctantly. “But I won’t get much out of them with you along.”

“Why not?” Andrew asked. “With three, it will go thrice as fast.”

“With Claire in her nice white blouse and you in your brocade waistcoat, everyone will just think you’re slumming. Airmen are a chummy bunch. They’ll close ranks on you.”

“Give me a moment to change,” Claire said, “and we’ll see about that.”

In her raiding rig, with the lightning rifle in its holster on her back, it would be a rare man indeed who would mistake her for a fine lady.

Something else she must make sure never got back to Mama.