stands for Meriwether-Astor?”
Andrew blinked at her. “As in Meriwether-Astor Manufacturing Works? But Claire, they do not make bullets or arms. They make parts for steam engines, and rivets for ship hulls and connectors for train carriages. I’ve ordered one or two parts from them myself, in the course of my experiments.”
“What if there’s a smaller group?” Alice asked, her mouth as full as Lizzie’s had been. “Meriwether Astor Munitions Works, say?”
“Who buys bullets, then?” Claire mused aloud. “There cannot be enough hunters and sportsmen in all the Territories to make such a division profitable.”
“Armies,” Andrew said. “Countries at war.”
“Or about to be,” Alice added, and swallowed.
And suddenly Claire understood why Count von Zeppelin had nearly been assassinated.
*
Gloria Meriwether-Astor’s hat defied the laws of gravity. P ofie’serched upon her forehead, its rear tilted up nearly to the vertical by virtue of its resting on her piled-up blond curls, it seemed on the verge of sliding down her face and coming to rest upon her petulant lower lip.
Claire smiled and extended her hand. “Gloria. How lovely to see you again. You have not changed one whit since last we met.”
Gloria took her hand, her gaze puzzled. “And when was that? Have we been introduced?”
Lizzie snorted like a horse who has unexpectedly met with a groundhog in its path. “O’ course you have. At the Crystal Palace, wi’ Lord James Selwyn, when me and Maggie was skating.”
Gloria stared at Lizzie, her brows raised in affront. “Really. Forgive me. I do not recall.”
Claire could not hold back her laughter. “Oh, Gloria, do give over. Your town manners will not win you any points here. But to refresh your memory, we also saw one another at Julia Wellesley’s costume party last month.” She smoothed the folds of her raiding skirt with affection. “I believe I wore this very rig.”
“I’m sure Miss Meriwether-Astor will have no trouble remembering both occasions if she puts her mind to it, won’t you, dear?” Lady Dunsmuir slipped an arm around Gloria’s waist and the air exploded in a flash of light and the smell of phosphorus as a phalanx of journalists recorded the moment for posterity. She steered Gloria and her father toward the dining hall and the welcoming party followed. “Lady Claire is our honored guest. She has been touring the Americas with us and sharing our adventures.”
“Lady Claire, is it?” Mr. Meriwether-Astor puffed along behind the women like a steam train. “Better mind your manners, Gloria. She might have a brother.”
“I do, in fact,” Claire told him, trying not to show her amusement at the poisonous glare Gloria threw him. “But as Lord Nicholas is not even two, he is more interested in his stuffed giraffe than he is in young ladies.”
“Ah well, it never hurts to know these things.” The poor man’s short legs could barely keep up with Lady Dunsmuir’s effortless glide. “Don’t want to cut ourselves off from possibilities, do we, girl?”
“Father, please,” Gloria said softly, her head up and slightly turned away, as if she could not bear the sight of him and was admiring the view instead.
For the first time, Claire felt a pang of sympathy for the girl. Though the days immediately following her graduation from St. Cecilia’s Academy for Young Ladies now seemed as if they had been lived by another person altogether, she distinctly remembered how uncomfortable she had felt, being on display at the few parties she had attended, and dreading her presentation at court.
It was one thing to travel across the ocean as a Buccaneer and set one’s cap at a title in exchange for a Fifteen Colonies fortune. It was quite another to be bullied and bossed into it by one’s father, whom one might expect to take one’s tender feelings more into consideration.
Though, if what she suspected was in fact true, Julius Meriwether-Astor, who appeared to be merely a blustering, insensitive buffoon, was nothing of the kind. Could this man now talking with such ang w/span>
It hardly seemed possible. And yet …
She had sworn her friends to secrecy on the matter. Secrecy, and vigilance. Though how they were to watch out for the count’s wellbeing without actually telling him what they suspected was a puzzle she had yet to work out. Because of course they had no proof of anything, only mad speculation hanging by the thinnest of threads. If she accused Gloria’s father of such a heinous crime, and was proven wrong, they would all be disgraced, and Claire could not bear the thought of