Brilliant Devices Read Online Free PDF Page B

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, fa rther 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 coast to the borders of the Russian Orthodox Empire. Our nation has intimate ties with the Esquimaux and the Athabasca, making ours the largest united peoples in the Canadas.
    “ I met his lordship when I was a guide on a hunting trip. I taught him how to handle the new Sharps lever-action repeating rifle.” Her eyes took on a focus and intensity that were rather like those of an eagle stooping upon its prey, and Alice found herself pushing up against the back of the chair. “I did not grow up in the ballrooms of London, Alice Chalmers. I learned to take my place there, and if you are afraid to do what I have done, then I am ashamed of you.”
    Alice glanced at Claire, whose jaw hung open as far as her own.
    “But—but your speech,” Claire stammered. “Your accent—it’s Belgravia to the last vowel.”
    “I have a good ear and am an excellent mimic. You ought to hear my northern loon.”
    “I knew there was more to you than met the eye!” Claire was beginning to recover from her astonishment. “A woman could not be so good at weaponry and be so comfortable in the wilderness who had grown up in the drawing rooms of London.”
    Davina smiled and turned back to Alice. “There are those in said drawing rooms who made an attempt to turn a cold shoulder to me because of my birth. They soon learned it is not safe to offend my husband—or Her Majesty, who recognizes a princess whether she is arrayed in diamonds or deerskin. I can assure you, Alice, my dear, that if you accept my guidance and his protection, there will be no opportunity for the embarrassment you fear.”
    Alice felt a little winded. “Another blasted clairvoyant. Between the two of you, I ain’t got a chance.”
    Claire smiled, a hint of wickedness in the corners. s in thners. “Among the three of us, neither does Edmonton.”
     
    *
     
    Claire and Andrew walked back to the Lass with Alice, since Claire could not be permitted to cross the airfield alone on the return walk. Such silliness, really, but the fact remained that, if she was to submit herself to the chaperonage of the Dunsmuirs, she would have to reaccustom herself to old-fashioned ways of thinking. The Mopsies, dead to the world in one bunk in their shifts, would stay, so Davina felt her battle half won. If she had it her way, Andrew would stay on the Lass and the two young ladies