“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 an 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 pianoforte 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