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