Brilliant Devices: A steampunk adventure novel Read online

  “That all might be so, but it don’t mean I can go shake hands with an earl looking like this.”

  “He will not hold it against you. Looks are irrelevant, Alice, and I should know. The earl is a man of perspicacity. He will see a lady of resources and bravery when he looks at you.”

  “Is that what Mr. Malvern sees when he looks at you?” Alice lifted her gaze to meet Claire’s. “Now, don’t go all huffy on me. I’ve seen him.”

  “I hope he does,” Claire said a little stiffly. Really, Andrew’s looks or lack of them were none of her business. “And I am not huffy.”

  Another snort. Really, it was a most unattractive sound.

  “Do you—” Alice swallowed. “Do you think he sees those things when he looks at me?”

  “Who, Andrew? Of course. He owes you as much as I do.”

  “Not because he owes me. He don’t. But because—because—”

  “Claire! Alice!” came a distant shout from the object of their discussion. “Are you coming?”

  Claire grabbed Alice’s hand and dragged her along the hard-packed ground, the fuselage of a neis aage of ghboring airship forming a darker shadow above their heads against the starry sky.

  Perhaps it was just as well that Alice had not finished that sentence.

  *

  The only reason the Mopsies did not get a stern lecture on the subject of what happened to little girls who abandoned ship was because the countess fainted dead away at the sight of all of them.

  In the ensuing ruckus, Maggie and Lizzie made themselves helpful, snatching the towels from around the wine cooling in silver buckets and applying them to her ladyship’s pale cheeks while Claire cleared the nearest sofa of its embroidered pillows and instructed her frantic husband to lay her upon it.

  By the time Davina had come to herself, sat up, and tossed back a tiny glass of brandy supplied by Andrew, the opportunity for lectures had passed in the general joy of being reunited again.

  “And you are all alive, and well, and oh Claire, I am so sorry we fell for the stories those rascals in Santa Fe told us,” Davina said breathlessly. “Mr. Malvern, I am very glad to see you—we feared you would be in gaol for months.”

  Claire made a movement as if to stop him from telling her the truth, then thought better of it. Davina may look as though a gust of wind might blow her away, but under the tightly laced corset was a spine of steel. “He was not in gaol, my dear friend,” she explained gently. “They imprisoned him on top of one of those stone pinnacles and left him to die. If not for Alice here coming to the rescue with the Mo—with the girls, his remains would be up there still.”

  “No!” Davina laid a hand on her pristine Flanders cutwork blouse. “Shocking—distressing—how could they? And … Alice? Which of your party is she?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw Jake give Alice a shove in the small of her back. She stumbled out of her hiding place behind Andrew.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Sir. Lordships. I’m Alice Chalmers.”

  Davina rose and shook her hand, followed by the earl. “You must call us Davina and John. We’re among family here. We are so grateful. How did you accomplish such a daring rescue?”

  Alice hunched her shoulders, as though Davina’s wide eyes and guileless smile were a plague she might somehow catch. “I just flew the Lass overhead and we winched him up.”

  “It weren’t quite so easy as that,” Lizzie interrupted, ever factual. “They was firing cannon at us and those poor Cantons got blown up and that mucky great engine were flingin’ railway coaches at the pinnacle to try and break it in pieces and—”

  “Great Caesar’s ghost!” the earl exclaimed. “Can this be true?”

  “It’s quite true, sir,” Andrew replied, backing Lizzie up before she did something foolish, lw.

  “But wait, did you say the Lass?” Davina asked. “The Stalwart Lass, Ned Mose’s ship?”

  Alice nodded. “Ned Mose is—well, the truth is, he—”

  “He was her stepfather,” Claire put in smoothly. “They became estranged when Alice took possession of the ship in order to pursue the girls and me to Santa Fe and save our lives.”

  “Ah,” said the earl thoughtfully. “I am astonished that this is the first time we have met.”

  “Circumstances conspired to keep us apart, but I am glad they have brought us all together again,” Davina said. She reached up and hugged Alice. “I for one am delighted.”

  Alice blushed again, and after a moment, gave her ladyship a squeeze before she stepped back. “I’ll get your blouse all dirty, ma’am.”

  “Nonsense. Rather a dirty waist than no hug, as any mother of a boy will tell you.”

  There was a pounding in the corridor outside the salon and Willie burst into the room. “Lady!” He dashed over to Claire and flung himself against her skirts. “I knew you’d come back!”

  “Yes, I do seem rather like the proverbial penny. I’m very glad to see you, darling.”

  “Mama and Papa are going into town for dinner. Are you going?”

  “I’m afraid I have nothing to eat dinner in, and their company would be scandalized if I turned up in this poor old navy skirt.”

  “Mama and Papa will send their regrets to the lieutenant-governor,” Lord Dunsmuir told his son with a smile. “I can’t imagine any society dinner would be more interesting than hearing about your travels, though I must say any dinner with Isobel Churchill at the table will not be dull.”

  “Isobel Churchill?” Claire let Willie go and he ran to his mother. “She and Peony are still here? Oh, I hope I can send a message to let them know I’m all right—we were to have met some days ago, you know, and they are likely wondering why I did not arrive as planned. There have been some rather, er, alarming reports in the papers lately.”

  “I should say so,” said a voice from the gangway. Captain Hollys stepped into the room and offered Claire his hand, his face alight in a way that would have been most disturbing had Andrew not been standing right behind her. “May I say I am very glad that the reports have been exaggerated?”

  “Thank you, Captain. And may I say that the lessons you gave Jake in navigation and aeronautics have more than repaid the time you took to give them. Hsengive the has been Captain Chalmers’ first officer on the Stalwart Lass in everything but name.”

  “Captain Chalmers? The Stalwart Lass?” The captain of the Lady Lucy looked over the little party, his gaze darkening. “I’d like a word with him, and then perhaps he’d like a quick trip to the local gaol.”

  “She, sir.” Jake gripped Alice’s arm and pulled her over much the same way as a tug drags a boat anchor. “An’ she ent no pirate. She saved all our lives, one after t’other.”

  Bravely, Alice held out her right hand while attempting to smooth her hair with her left. “Alice Chalmers, sir. I deeply regret my stepfather’s treatment of you and your crew.”

  “You were in Resolution?”

  “I was, sir.”

  “Keeping me and the girls alive,” Claire put in.

  “And you are not a pirate?”

  “No, sir. I operated the locomotive tower, though.”

  “But that were only cos ’er dad would’ve shot ’er if she ’adn’t.” Maggie came to the captain’s side and took his other hand. Alice tugged hers free and tried to hush her, but Maggie pushed on. “An’ ’e took ’er prisoner and would’ve shot ’er ’cept Jake set ’er free and they come after us.” She gazed up, earnestly. “Don’t throw our Alice in gaol, Cap’n. She’s in our flock.”

  Captain Hollys looked bemused. “I would say that no higher character recommendation is necessary, then.” Alice straightened. “So young Jake’s service has been satisfactory?”

  “Quite satisfactory.” It appeared that being addressed as an equal by another airman was affecting her spirits positively. “He has a knack for navigation and can read a chart at a glance, even if he has to spell out the names.”

  Now it was Jake’s turn to
blush and attempt to hide behind Andrew, who nudged him forward.

  “It’s the land forms that count.”

  “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.”

  em">“It was a single shot, too,” the earl said with proud affection. “Let us have dinner together en famille. 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.

  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 Lond
on, 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.