Brilliant Devices (14 page)

The eleven-year-old snorted. “’E’s a long ways from ’ome, that’s all.”

“Like we are,” Maggie put in. “Oh! Alice!”

Claire turned. “Alice?” But there she was, walking next to them, perfectly safe. “Goodness. Do not frighten me so, Maggie. I have had quite enough excitement for tonight, thank you.”

“Sorry, Lady. I only meant that a messenger come for Alice earlier, after supper. Tigg talked to ’im, and ’e said to give you this.”

She dug in the pocket of her fashionable short coat with its rounded collar and bows on each pocket. The note was crumpled, but Alice was able to read it in the lamp light from
Lady Lucy
’s mooring mast.

She folded it up. “I have to go, just as soon as I get out of this
confounded rig.”

And without another word or a good-night or any such
civility, she hurried across the field to the
Stalwart Lass,
hauled up her skirts, and leaped aboard without benefit of gangplank.

“Who does she know here who would be sending her notes?” Andrew wondered aloud.

“Perhaps it is someone she met at the ball.” Captain Hollys assisted Claire up the gangway into the warm familiarity of the ship. “May I do anything else for you, Lady Claire?”

“You have already done too much.” Claire gave him a
n equally warm smile. “Thank you for coming to our aid.”

He flushed, and would have said more, had not Maggie tugged on Claire’s cloak. “Best come and see ’er ladyship before she ’as us all skinned alive.”

Laughing, Claire allowed herself to be led into the salon, and in explaining the night’s misadventures to the Dunsmuirs, and speculating on the possible reasons for them, her questions about the author of Alice’s note completely slipped her mind.

*

Alice let out a sigh of relief as she struggled out of the corset, and resisted the temptation to kick it across the cabin. It had cost too much and was far too beautiful for such treatment. But like many such thin canyt size=gs, it was hard to live with and belonged in a closet. Besides, where she was going, it would be more of a hindrance to useful movement than anything else.

The note had been brief.

Heard a word or two on the subject you’re interested in. Come by anytime.

M.E.

She buttoned her denim pants with a sense of relief at their comfortable familiarity. After she heard what Mike Embry had to say, then maybe she could shake a leg out of this place and find somewhere she didn’t have to look at certain people queening it in high society and being handed about by handsome men, in places where certain other people didn’t belong and never would.

She shrugged on a flight jacket and rammed her
Remington 44-40 into the long inside pocket. She didn’t usually go armed, but after tonight, lugging around the extra weight might prove to be worth it. When she jumped down onto the field, she nearly screamed and whipped the blessed thing out when a shadow moved under the
Lass
’s fuselage.

“Who’s there?”

Andrew Malvern stepped into the cone of light cast by the lamp on the mooring mast. “I beg your pardon if I startled you.”

Alice released her grip on the Remington with a sigh.

Her heart rate, however, didn’t change one bit.

“I thought you were explaining tonight’s goings-on to the countess.”

“Claire is quite capable of doing so, and in any case, it’s not likely she’ll be allowed to set foot on the ground again tonight, if her ladyship has anything to say about it.” He matched her long-legged stride even though he couldn’t know where she was going. “In fact, if
Lady Lucy
doesn’t lift in the morning, I’ll be very surprised. Lady Dunsmuir will not allow any danger to young Will, even if it’s five miles off.”

“
And she thinks the diamond mine will be safer?”

“
It is theirs. I imagine so.”

He paused to turn his head her way, but she kept her gaze resolutely forward. She could hear the plinking of a piano
forte now, so it seemed Mike hadn’t closed the Tiller yet.

“May I ask
why you’re headed to the Tiller, Alice?”

She didn’t know what he was up to, traipsing around the airfield with her, and she had no business being glad about it.
Maybe it was a thing men did after nearly being shot.

“I have business to take care of.”

“Would you allow me to accompany you? It does not seem safe for a young lady to be going about by herself at nearly two in the morning.”

For answer, she slid the Remington partway out of her jacket.

< c"2eze="+font size="+0">“Oh.” It took him a moment to recover. “You know how to use that thing?” Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. That was stupid. Of course you do. You and Claire both know how to take care of yourselves and make yourselves useful, whereas I must be satisfied with getting in the way and being rescued repeatedly.”

She slowed under the lamps Mike had burning outside the door of the
half-round pipe shape of the honkytonk.

“Of course you’re useful.” She could hardly credit what she
’d heard. “You’re one of the most brilliant scientific minds in England—you heard Count von Zeppelin. Even he reads your monographs. Why on earth would you think that? It wasn’t your fault some crazypate shot at you.”

“Perhaps not.” He seemed to find the posts that held up the awning over the door highly interesting.
“But the fact remains that my usefulness on this voyage has been limited to partnering ladies in the ballroom and not much else.”

“There’s men who make an entire career of that,” she said dryly. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself
, man. If you’re coming in, then fine—do me a favor and keep your ears open. There are who knows how many gunmen and only two honkytonks on this quadrant of the field, if you get my meaning.”

One eyebrow rose. It was such an appealing sight that she turned away and grasped the door handle.

“You mean that there’s a fifty percent chance that whoever shot at us might have come here for a drink to celebrate?”

“See?” She grinned over her shoulder as she pushed the door open. “You’re not so useless after all.”

He straightened his shoulders and waited outside for a count of ten while she let the door swing shut behind her. When she looked again, he had come in and was making jokes with a group of mechanics.

Her idol thought he was useless. Honestly, it was no wonder she stuck to
automatons. People were too hard to understand.

She bellied up to the bar and held up a finger when Mike glanced over. “Mescal?” he asked, setting a glass down in front of her.

“Not a chance. Do you have elderberry cordial?”

He snorted. “Use it for flavoring.”

“One, please.”

Shaking his head, he unearthed a bottle of cordial from beneath the bar. The smell of it reminded her of the days when she’d been a little girl, curled up in her mother’s boudoir while they waited for her
pa to get home from the mine. They’d share a glass of cordial and tell silly stories and forever after, she would miss the woman her mother had been. Once her pa had gone for good, Nellie had changed her name back to Benton, found her way to Resolution, grown a carapace over her heart, and taken up the only profession open to her.

Mike filled the glass with purple liquid. “Been talking to some of the fellows hereabouts. It seems a mechanic with one blind eye was working the
cargo ships a couple years ago.”

“
Cargo ships c">Cre ? For the mines?”

Mike nodded. “Not much grows up that way, nor eats what grows neither, except for three months in summer. The
cargo ships keep foodstuff and parts coming in, except for when the weather closes everything down from November to April. Seems this man was working the routes keeping the boats in the air.”

“Is he still?”

With a shrug, Mike topped up her glass, though she’d only taken a sip or two. “No telling. Other than that, I couldn’t dig up a word. Either your pa didn’t associate much, or he just ain’t been around for folks to notice.”

With a nod, she swallowed half the drink. “I appreciate your taking the time.”

“You remember what I said.”

With a smile, she repeated, “
‘Tell Nellie Benton Mike Embry sends his regards.’ You ought to take a trip to Resolution, Mike, and tell her yourself. She runs the Resolute Rose—you can’t miss it. It’s the only garden of desert flowers in town.”

“I might just do that if I get tired of this place. Cold gets to me in the winter, and it’s coming on. Ships’ll be clearing out soon.”

“Clearing out?”

He stopped wiping glasses and frowned at her. “You mean the port authority didn’t tell you? Foreign ships got to lift and be ou
t of here before the snow flies; otherwise, they’re grounded until spring.”

And the countess wanted to fly even farther north? How come nobody in their party seemed to know this? “Because of the snow?”

“Nope. The ice. Behaves peculiar-like up here. Ships get coated with it and the gas bags contract. If the foreign ships didn’t leave, we’d have a field full of ice balloons, until the weight collapsed the fuselages and crushed the gondolas under ’em. And don’t get me started on the icicle problem.”

Alice did not want to know about the icicle problem. Foreign
capital or not, San Francisco was beginning to look mighty good.

“Believe me, a couple of days at the mines and I’ll be
heading south for warmer winds.” She knocked back the last of the cordial, laid down a coin, and pushed away from the bar. “Thanks, Mike. I’ll write to my ma before I leave, I promise.”

“We’re square, then,” he said, nodding. “Good hunting.”

She worked her way slowly to the back, as though she were looking for someone, keeping her ears wide open to the conversations going on all about her. Most of them were about the cards—the weather—Sherwood Leduc—the latest accident in the mines.

She slowed and bent to adjust a loose bootlace.

“—couldn’t save him,” a grizzled engineer said into his beer, pushing his goggles further up on his battered hat. “He was a good friend, as miners go. Not a waste of oxygen like some.”

“Something’s gotta be done,” said the man next to him. “Dunsmuir mine’s had a good record a long time. Somebody’s behind this, you mark my words.”

“All we’ll be marking is a target on your back, you don’t keep your voice down,” another man muttered. “I say it’s Sherwood Leduc.”

The engineer snorted. “He’s small fry. A thug. You think he’s got the muscle to blow up them big engines? We’re talking serious money—and serious engineering skill.” He noticed Alice kneeling on the floor between the tables. “You lost something, missy?”

She tugged her bootlaces and stood. “Nope. Just trying to keep from falling on my face. You fellows from the Dunsmuir mine?” No answer, just a lot of black suspicion. “I’m looking for a man with one blind eye, said to work the cargo ships up that direction. Ever seen him?”

“What, did he leave you with a pup?” the man next to him said, laughing.

“Naw, I
am
his pup.” She grinned, as if he’d told a good joke. “Got his talent for mechanics and figured I’d try and partner up, make a living maybe.”

The engineer snorted. “You’d do better here. Mine’s no safe place for a woman.”

“A man neither,” somebody muttered. “Not lately, anyhow.”

“
Oh?”

But the conversational stream, such as it was, dried
up to nothing, and Alice was forced to take herself off.