clearly uncomfortable in the one good suit that Claire had prevailed upon him to get in Edmonton hedafont>
“Never mind, Jake,” she whispered as she rustled down the passage after the assistant steward. “It’s only a couple of hours and some good grub, and then we can go.”
Their guide motioned them through a set of carved double doors and they entered the flagship’s huge salon. Alice’s breath caught and Jake whistled, a low sound like a half-empty teakettle taken off the burner.
The room could hold a hundred people, though at present there were only half that number. What appeared to be gambit tables for the planning of battles had been seconded to duty as buffet tables, which were laden with food and phalanxes of crystal glasses and goblets. At the far end, uniformed men formed a small orchestra, at present engaged in a graceful waltz.
“Oh, blast, can they really be planning to dance after dinner? I thought all that palaver wasn’t until tomorrow.”
“They’ve room to,” Jake observed tersely. “You could ’ide behind them velvet curtains, or pretend to be one of them trees in pots.”
“Best shut up, or you’ll be the first one I ask to be my partner.”
Jake clamped his lips together as if he never meant to speak again. Still, he stuck by her side like a burr as she wended her way across the room to where Claire and Captain Hollys stood, looking picturesque and annoyingly comfortable in all this posh crowd, next to the punchbowl.
“Captain Chalmers. Jake.” Hollys knew better than to kiss the back of her gloved hand, so he shook it instead. “You’re looking uncommonly well this evening, Alice, considering your brush with near death this afternoon.”
“I’d rather face a herd of caribou than this lot,” she told him.
“Buck up, old thing,” Andrew Malvern joined them just in time to hear her, and she immediately wished she could drop through a hatch in the floor. “Did you stash a pistol in that rig to ward off potential partners?”
“That dress is the latest design from Paris,” Claire informed him down her nose. “It is not a weapons holster.”
“If it were, it would be the prettiest one ever made,” said Captain Hollys gallantly, coming to Alice’s rescue. “You wore this to the governor’s ball, did you not?”
“She did,” Andrew said before she could open her mouth.
He remembered. And Alice had not forgotten her feelings then, either, when it seemed he finally saw her as a woman, not a companion at arms. What was up, then, with his cavalier treatment of her now? Didn’t she deserve to be treated like a lady, the way he treated Claire, instead of one of his chums from the honkytonk?
She turned her back on him and laid a hand on Captain Hollys’s arm. “I wonder if we might walk over to the windows, sir? I thought I might lift in the morning and would like your opinion of the sky.”
Since it was pitch black, apitont>too much of a gentleman to say so. He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her away, leaving Andrew standing there gaping like a barn owl.
Alice’s spine straightened with satisfaction, which had the added effect of making her corset sit more comfortably. Her skirts whispered across the Turkish carpet and Captain Hollys cut a tall, debonair figure next to her in his dress uniform.
Very satisfying indeed.
“Are you really planning to lift tomorrow?” he asked. “We’ve had reports of weather on the way, but not for a few days yet.”
“Who do you get weather reports from? Are there other mines further north than this?”
“No. I mean, there are other mines, but they are scattered to the south and east. We obtain our reports from the Esquimaux.”
“But I thought—the miners—”
“You’ve seen the tension between them.”
“I understand some think the Esquimaux are responsible for the sabotage,” she said as delicately as she could, considering Isobel Churchill, resplendent in green-and-gold brocade and a train you could make a set of drapes out of, was talking in low tones with one of the journalists not ten feet away.
“That is a mystery her ladyship is determined to solve,” he said softly. “The Dunsmuirs have excellent relationships with the Esquimaux in these territories. Did you know the latter have thirty-five different words for snow?”
“I did not. But what that tells me is that they know it intimately.”
“Quite so. They know weather just as intimately, and many of the young men have shown an aptitude for mechanics, to the point that