Brilliant Devices (6 page)

“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.

Andrew kept glancing at her sideways as they made their way to the Crown and Compass, the honkytonk
that the ground crew around the
Lass
insisted was the place to begin inquiries about anyone. Finally, as if his curiosity could not be contained, he said, “You brought fancy d goress all this way?”

Claire
thought back to what must be the only occasion he had ever seen her in her rig—the costume ball she had attended with James at the Wellesleys, when James had upbraided her for showing her legs in their striped stockings in public. “It isn’t fancy dress,” she said briskly. “It is a very practical rig, and the corselet provides a foundation for the rifle’s holster.”

“Which you do not intend to fire, I hope.”

“Certainly not. Unless we find ourselves in some danger.”

“If we do, I will handle it and you ladies will seek safety.”

Claire and Alice exchanged a glance of amusement. “That is very gallant of you, Andrew, but you must know by now that Alice and I are quite capable of protecting ourselves.”

Andrew cleared his throat and held the Crown’s door open,
nearly shouting over the roar of the crowd and the notes of the pianoforte playing something fast and loose. “When it comes to fisticuffs—if it does—I insist you leave the protecting to me.”

Alice leaned close to shout in Claire’s ear. “I ain’t never had a gentleman offer to protect me before. Maybe I’ll start a fight just to see it.”

“You shall not, you rascal. We are here to gather information, not start fights.”

Smiling, Alice bellied up to the bar and ordered
tawny-colored drinks that came in tiny glasses. Claire would have preferred lemonade, but to order such a thing in here would have negated the effect of her raiding rig and drawn unwelcome attention.

As it was, the rambunctious crowd ignored them. A table full of airmen sang along with the songstress next to the piano
forte. Men at several tables played cards—cowboy poker, if she wasn’t mistaken. Ooh, what an excellent opportunity to strike up a conversation—and gain some ready money in the absence of a bank!

“I’m going to join a card table,” she told Andrew, and swiped the third drink.

“You’re what?”

But she didn’t wait to explain—or
ask his permission. While Alice dragged him, protesting, toward a crowd of airmen on the far side, she pulled up an empty stool and smiled beguilingly at the dealer. “Deal me in?”

“What’s your stake? Here at the Crown w
e take gold and diamonds, and paper if that’s all you got.”

“I have
none, unless—” She pulled the raja’s emerald off the fourth finger of her right hand. “This is gold. Will it do?”

“Close enough.” The dealer tossed her legacy from her grandmother into the center of the table and dealt her in.

Within a few minutes, Claire realized that she might be just the tiniest bit out of her league. Of all the variations of cowboy poker that she and the boys in the cottage had fabricated, she had not yet seen this one. She must remember, when things calmed down a little, to diagram it out and send it to Vauxhall Gardens on a pigeon. Snouts and his merry band of gamblers would make a forctid make tune and confound the denizens of Percy Street in one fell swoop.

But she must not think about London. She must concentrate.

Too late, her ring met its doom in the person of a fat man in a tweed suit of a particularly obnoxious pattern. He raked in a pot of at least two hundred dollars—two thousand if you counted the ring and the sprinkle of tiny cut diamonds that glittered on the green felt table covering.

“Ante up,” the dealer said. Cash and gold clinked into the pot, the fat man smiled with anticipation, and the dealer looked at her.

“My rifle,” she said.

A flick of his gaze took in
the lightning rifle from stock to sights. Then he shrugged and dealt her in.

“And the ring. It goes back in the pot.”

“You think you can win it back, little lady?” the fat man said, still smiling. He slipped her grandmother’s emerald onto his thumb as if to test the size.

“I know I can.”

“I don’t know … I kinda like it.” His fist closed around the emerald and Claire’s temper ignited.

“Are you afraid of my skill?”
she asked, her tone so cool and silky it might almost have been rude.

His eyes widened. “What skill? You lost the hand.”

“Ah, but I have the measure of my opponents now. If you do not throw the ring back in, I shall know your true measure, too.”

His companions snickered, and his cheeks reddened. “You calling me a
yellowbelly, missy? You know what happens to people who backtalk Sherwood Leduc?”

“I know what happens to people who walk away from a display of cowardice.” She smiled sweetly, as if he were a drawing-room dowager who must be placated and plied with cakes. “I’m sure they return to their ships and talk about it, don’t they? Tsk. It’s so difficult to stop
people talking, particularly on an airfield the size of this one.”

He flung the ring so hard it bounced off the table. A cowboy in a brand-new hat caught it one-handed and tossed it
back in the pot. “Deal,” snarled Sherwood Leduc.

With a sunny smile, Claire accepted her cards
and fell to her task. She did not see Andrew and Alice talking with the airmen, or hear Alice’s offhand questions. She did not see the cowboy in the new hat swipe her drink and down it himself. Instead, the shape of the table formed in her mind’s eye, and mathematical probabilities, and patterns, all shifting and changing as the minutes crept by.

And when the cowboy and two others folded, only she, Leduc, and one of his cronies laid their cards on the table.

Royal flush.

She had won!

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said with real gratitude, raking the pile of gold, the half-dozen diamonds, and the bills toward herself. The ring went back on her finger in the twinkling of an eye, and the rest went into the square leather pouch chained to "+0 chaineher leather corselet. The rifle had not left its holster—nor would it now, to her great relief.

“Another game,” Sherwood Leduc demanded. “I’ll have that rifle and the ring both.”

“I think not,” Claire told him. “I have other business that calls me away. I’m out.”

“
Who’s the yellowbelly now? You haven’t heard the last of me, missy,” he called as she pushed in the stool with one foot and turned away.

“
Neither has the rest of the company here, I’m sure,” she said sweetly, and headed for a door with a silhouette of a dancer burned into it.

Once
locked in the ladies’ retiring room, which consisted of a hole in the floor with a noxious smell emanating from it, and a broken mirror on the wall, she opened the leather pouch. She redistributed her winnings about her person, since only a fool would walk about the field now with a full purse and Sherwood Leduc’s threats ringing in her ears. Her skirt had two hidden pockets in the bustle that fastened closed with snaps, so in those she secreted the gold and small stones. The paper she stuffed down the inside of her blouse, to be held in place by the corselet. Last, she removed the ever-present ivory pick in her chignon, threaded the ring on it, and worked the jewel deep into her hair. Even if Leduc made good on his threats and cut the purse from her, all he would find in it was a few silver coins.

Then she sallied forth to rejoin Andrew and Alice.

Who were no longer at the airmen’s table.

Well, goodness, this was no time to be left on
one’s own. She sidled up to the table and propped her hands easily on the chairs of two airmen.

“Excuse me, but do you know where the
two mechanics who were just here might have gone?”

The nearest crewman pushed his goggles higher on his cap and looked her over with appreciation. “No, but if you’re looking for
one, will I do the job?”

His friends laughed, and she smiled into his eyes. “I have no doubt you would, but it’s rather urgent I fi
nd them. You see—” She leaned a little closer, and hoped he didn’t hear the crackle of paper under her blouse. “—I confess I was rather insulting to Sherwood Leduc over the matter of the pot, and I’m very much afraid he intends to take it back … by force.”

“You don’t say.” The smile went out of the airman’s eyes. “What’s a little rose like you doing insulting a
coyote like him?”

“I did not know he was a
coyote,” she said. “And he refused to give me the chance to win back my property, as a gentleman might. I rather lost my temper, I’m afraid, and he took offense.”

“We
ain’t all like that, missy,” someone else piped up from across the table. “There’s plenty here who would hand over a pot for the chance to insult Leduc. George, walk her over to the Tiller to find her friends. And don’t try no funny business, neither. It’s obvious to a blind man she’s a lady, not one of yer prairie partridges.”