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on the larger ship, as was proper, but Claire doubted very much that Alice would be talked into leaving her vessel. In any case, Claire needed to return for her much-abused valise.
    Alice ducked past a set of mooring ropes and emerged into the lamplight again, shaking her head. The French braid that Claire had fashioned in her hair was beginning to come apart at the end where she had lost the ribbon. It seemed that Alice’s hair would be more of a challenge than she had first supposed.
    “How about that Davina?” Alice said, apropos of nothing. “A Na’nuk princess. Who would have thought?”
    “Even more astonishing is how little it is talked of in London. Her Majesty and the earl between them must have been quite … firm.”
    “I doubt Her Majesty’ll be giving me the same backup.”
    “The earl will,” Andrew said. “ And that counts for quite a lot.”
    Alice stopped walking. “Claire, Mr. Malvern, it’s no use. I got something I have to do here tonight, and once that’s done, I’m going to lift and head north, to the mines. And maybe after that I’ll head out west and get a gander at this ocean you and Davina were talking about.”
    Two thoughts combusted simultaneously in Claire’s mind. The first was that Alice intended to search for her father, all alone. And the second was that no woman who would set off into the sky all by herself to undertake a journey of at least a thousand miles nurtured any hopes whatsoever of catching the eye of a certain engineer.
    Claire did not want her to catch his eye. She liked his eyes trained in the direction they were presently, thank you. But neither did she want her friend, to whom she owed so much, to head out into the unknown, unprotected and alone.
    “Please don’t go.” She put a hand on Alice’s arm, and to her relief, was not shaken off. “I am as much a stranger to Edmonton society as you. We must stay together.”
    “Why?” Now Alice did pull away. They had reached the Lass , and as Claire and Andrew followed her through the hatch, she said, “I can see why you’d like it. Balls and theatre and such, they’re what you’re used to. Heck, you probably know half the people here, not to mention that Churchill girl you were talking about. But I donwant ant I dont.” They emerged into the gondola, which was silent and dim and smelled faintly of axle grease and canvas paste. “I don’t know a soul but those on the Lady Lucy . I don’t know how to go about in society. I don’t know nothing because it’s nothing to do with me. And I’m going to keep it that way.”
    As if this were the last word on the subject, she shook up a moonglobe or two and placed them in a net dangling from the ceiling , where they cast a soft white glow.
    “But Alice, in the salon with Davina, you seemed perfectly willing to go shopping with us tomorrow, and join us for all the rest of it.”
    “ Where I come from, that’s called being polite.”
    “Then let me tell you what I did not say back there. I have been to exactly one ball in my life.”
    “Two,” Andrew corrected her, “if you count dancing with the Prince Consort at the Crystal Palace a ball.”
    “Now, see?” Alice lifted her hands in a gesture of despair, and they fell to the idle tiller as if by habit … or an unconscious reach for something that was safe and known. “You danced with a prince and it’s an afterthought. This is exactly what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t know a prince from a pirate if he popped me on the nose.”
    “You’d know Prince Albert,” Andrew told her. “ His likeness is on the coinage here.”
    “My point is, my dad could be up in this territory somewhere, and I aim to find him, not go gallivanting about doing frivolous things in clothes I’ll never wear again in this lifetime.”
    “Then let us help you,” Claire said at once. “Is that what you were going to do tonight? Begin your inquiries in the—the honkytonks the airmen frequent?”
    “Yes,” Alice said