The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Nine

I can see the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled.

—Jane Welsh Carlyle (1845)

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Isadora asked the next day, cracking open the door to Lily’s chamber. She stepped back as the odor of sickness hit her. Lily and Fayette lay limp upon their bunks, their eyes staring dully at nothing.

Without waiting for an answer, Isadora helped herself to the cotton bib apron hanging on a wall hook and got to work. During the last years of Aunt Button’s life, she had taken charge of nursing her, and the experience of caring for another human being gratified her. Willingly, she embraced the task.

She emptied the chamber pot and aired the bedclothes. She dispensed sponge baths, helped the women put on clean nightgowns and removed the others to launder them. She worked with fierce purpose, grateful for the activity. If she let herself be idle for even a few moments, she would burst with fury at Ryan Calhoun. At least the labor gave her some outlet for the angry energy coursing through her.

Holding the basket of clothes and linens in front of her, she tapped her foot on the galley floor. The Doctor glanced up. “Aye, miss, what can I do for you?”

“I should like a vat of hot water and some lye soap for washing. Please.”

He considered this a moment. Then he nodded. “I’ll put a kettle on—but it’s sea water, you understand. We don’t use the fresh for laundry.”

“I understand.” Within moments she was kneeling on deck, her sleeves rolled up and her elbows sticking out as she vigorously scrubbed the garments up and down a ridged washboard. She had never once in her life done laundry, and the task proved harder than it looked. The water kept sloshing all over her lap. She splashed herself in the face, and her eyes stung from the soap. As usual, her hair wouldn’t stay in its knot, and long strands fell forward to dip into the vat. By the time she finished, she was nearly as wet as the clothes.

Yet oddly, she wasn’t concerned with her appearance. Back in Boston, someone was always correcting her posture, tidying her hair, evening out the drape of her dress. The men of the Swan did not seem to care in the least what she wore or what her hair looked like. It was quite liberating and, she supposed, quite wicked, to enjoy such an unconventional attitude.

With an exaggerated swagger, Ryan Calhoun strolled near, exquisitely dressed in popinjay attire, for earlier in the day they had hailed a British frigate. He insisted that a skipper must look prosperous to be perceived as a worthy merchant. Isadora suspected he merely liked to dress in fancy attire because he was vain.

Still, he had done some trading—Ipswich cotton for Glasgow wool—and made a nice profit. To the disgusting hilarity of the men, Ryan had offered to throw in Isadora for free.

She studied him furtively now, this man who seemed determined to make her regret this voyage. A froth of Irish lace adorned his neck, spilling out over a peacock blue waistcoat of figured silk. His expertly creased trousers were tucked into boots that gleamed with fresh polish.

Criminal, she thought resentfully. It was criminal that a man should look so comely in the middle of the ocean. Only Ryan Calhoun could wear such loud colors and make them seem brighter and richer. What a vain and self-centered man he was, to look so fine when she looked so...damp.

He lingered on the deck and watched her until she said, “Haven’t you anything better to do? Perhaps someone has a pocket watch or some books or other valuables that need to be pitched overboard.”

He chuckled. It infuriated her that he had such a charming laugh. She wished his laughter could sound as obnoxious as he truly was.

“I’m intrigued, Miss Peabody. Isn’t that Fayette’s calico dress?”

“It is. She and your mother are unwell. I have decided to look after them.”

“Why?”

“To keep myself from killing you,” she said between her teeth, increasing her vigor with the washboard.

“Ah. Still vexed about the spectacles?” He lifted one eyebrow, just so. “Good. Think about that next time you decide to record my misdeeds aboard the ship.”

“You should not have jettisoned my eyeglasses.” Isadora would not admit, on pain of death, that she did not miss the eyeglasses at all. Wearing them had been a great bother. They had never worked properly. She was always having to find a way to peer over or under the lenses. Without them, she could see much better.

A fact she refused to divulge to Ryan Calhoun.

“That is one thing you must learn about me, Miss Peabody,” he said. “I am a creature of impulse. I almost never think before I act.”

“An impressive quality, I’m sure.” She could not begin to explain how offensive his action had been. Regardless of whether they worked or not, the spectacles belonged to her. They were personal, perhaps as much a part as her brown hair and hazel eyes. She felt naked without them. They were a symbol of her identity, and he had taken that away.

An unwanted inner voice told her she used to hide behind them. She hushed the inner voice. It was not up to Ryan Calhoun to drag her out of hiding.

She lifted the heavy lump of sodden fabric out of the tub and slapped it on the deck. Picking up the tub, she staggered toward the rail to empty it. The weight of it unbalanced her, and she lurched forward. The tub sloshed over, a fount of gray wash water exploding upward and drenching Ryan Calhoun from head to toe.

His stylishly cut red hair. His exquisite lace neck cloth. His silken turquoise waistcoat. His creased trousers and gleaming boots.

Isadora stood back, blinking and aghast. Then a satisfying sense of justice settled over her. “Oops,” she said.

She expected fury from him, but he surprised her. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.

What a singular way to cope with a humiliating mishap, she thought, puzzled by his mirth. She studied his tanned, wet throat and curling long hair and strong white teeth and dancing eyes. He was so quick to laugh at his own expense.

“Touché, Miss Peabody. Touché.”

“The pleasure was mine, I’m sure,” she said. She had the most inexplicable urge to smile at him. Determinedly she kept her face blank, her mouth grim.

He whistled as he strolled down the deck, water squishing from his boots. Isadora stared after him, intrigued. The seamen on duty stared, too, elbowing each other and whispering.

Papa had warned her that travel by sailing ship meant days of tedium.

Papa, for the first time in his life, was wrong.

One morning at sunrise, after the changing of the watch, Ryan was walking the starboard rail when he came across the sail maker crouched on deck with Isadora.

Despite living in tiny quarters with a minimum of amenities, she clung to her lubberly fashion of wearing a tightly bound gray or black dress, a bonnet and that idiotic knotted coiffure. Yet the wind, far more persistent even than Isadora’s stubbornness, plucked long strands of hair from her bonnet and swirled them in the sun until the exposure made her hair glisten with gold highlights.

Between Luigi and Isadora lay a pile of ropes and pulleys. “This,” the sail maker said, holding it out to her, “is a heaving line. You throw it with a monkey’s fist, like so.” He demonstrated. Then Isadora took a turn with it, beaming when she succeeded.

“And this one?” She held up a decorated knot.

“A cat’s-paw. And this one, see, it’s got a knot to hold a line on a gangway, this is a Turk’s head.”

She took up the next one. “What do you call this back splice?”

“A dog’s cock,” Luigi said matter-of-factly.

Miss Isadora dropped it as if it had burned her. “Ye powers.”

Laughing to himself, Ryan approached them. “A lesson in your sea-going jargon?” he inquired.

Luigi winked, twitching his mustache. “The lady, she is a fast learner.”

“Then perhaps one day you’ll tell her how we refer to heaving in a line a bit.”

She stood up. “And what would the answer to that one be?”

“If the back splice makes you blush, I don’t think you’re ready to hear.” Goaded by one of his famous impulses, Ryan cocked out his arm. “I was about to take the morning longitude sights and thought you might like to join me.”

He told himself he’d invited her as a small reward. She had been performing the exhausting task of nursing his mother and Fayette. She’d earned a little civil conversation.

She eyed him suspiciously. Over the past several days they had circled one another with cautious interest. Ryan could never be certain what she would do next, this “idler” he’d taken on to do the translating and clerical work. As the crew settled into the predictable rhythms of life under sail, there was a subtle, indefinable difference in the air about them.

Ignorant of social graces, these rough sailors, these sons of Neptune simply accepted her. Ryan had expected them to defer to her, to behave differently in her presence, but instead, they took it upon themselves to initiate her into their way of life.

One day she might be seated on a crate with Luigi, mending sail with a big hooked needle. The next might find her laughing as Gerald Craven, the jibboom man, taught her to play a tune on the Portuguese accordion. In the galley, she showed the Doctor how to make fudge. Once, Ryan came out of the chart room to find her holding Chips’s hand in her lap. The sight gave Ryan a sudden hot sting of annoyance until he realized she was picking a splinter out of the carpenter’s hand.

She made friends of them. This willful young woman from Beacon Hill, who came from people who wouldn’t deign to let a boy like Timothy Datty black their boots, had suddenly taken on a different role aboard the Silver Swan. She wanted to know about Luigi’s impressive array of tattoos and what each one meant. She asked after Gerald Craven’s children, knowing they had come down with the measles shortly before the Swan set sail. She conversed readily and easily with Chips, ordinarily a quiet man who contented himself with his hand-carving. The Doctor let her dry her stockings in his galley, a privilege he wouldn’t afford Ryan. And even William Click, the unpopular second mate, was wont to sit with her of an evening, smoking his pipe and listening as she read from one of the many books she had brought.

“How are my mother and Fayette today?” Ryan asked as they made their way toward the chart room.

“Little better, I fear. I managed to get them to sip some broth, but they are both still reluctant to leave their beds.”

“Some folks never get their sea legs,” he said, then eyed Isadora, noting the way long trails of hair had been plucked from their pins. “You don’t suffer the mal de mer. What is your secret, Miss Peabody?”

“I’ve learned to be very cautious about what I eat.”

He narrowed his eyes, studying her. Were her cheeks less round? Did he detect dark circles under her eyes? “You’ll fall ill of weakness,” he warned her. “You’ll waste away.”

She laughed softly; she seemed to laugh far more readily at sea than on land. “I daresay I’ve a long way to go before facing that calamity, Captain.” She took a deep breath of the morning air. “Indeed, my health is much improved aboard this ship. I’ve not sneezed or sniffled since we left Boston.”

It was true, he realized with a start. The watery eyes, the reddened nose, the explosive sneezes—he’d seen none of them lately.

Ralph Izard stood on the foredeck, turning to greet them as they approached. “I think we can bring up the sea anchor, Skipper,” he said to Ryan. “Seas’ve calmed a good bit since last night.”

“We’ve dropped anchor?” Isadora asked with a frown.

“A sea anchor,” Izard explained. “We used a drogue thrown overboard to keep the bow to the direction of the sea.” He indicated the windlass. “I was about to bring it up.”

“May I?” she asked, her face lighting up.

Izard glanced at Ryan, who shrugged. “Mind your fingers—we don’t want them pinched by the rope.”

Mr. Izard gave her a handspike and showed her how to insert it into the body of the windlass cylinder. Positioning herself behind the foremast, she began to work the apparatus. Slowly the thick rope, wet and hung with seaweed, began to emerge from the water.

“Steady now,” Izard said. “Keep her steady, and the rope will coil around it all of itself. Shall I give you a hand?”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice strained. “I can do this.” Grinding away at the windlass, she made a very strange sailor—though her full skirts and landlubber shoes impeded her progress. A long, rolling wave lifted the bow at a sharp slant.

“Careful,” Ryan said. “Chips lifted out some of the planks to get at the dry rot, and—”

“Oh!” The heel of her shoe caught in a crevice between some of the missing boards. The next happened so quickly Ryan was powerless to stop it. Her feet came out from under her, and she let go of the handspikes. The rope spun wildly on the spool, winding her hair around it along with the twisted line. A second later, she lay against the foremast, bound there by her own hair. Her face had paled to a pasty white.

“Miss Peabody!” Ryan dropped to his knees. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but...it pulls at my scalp. Can you free me?”

“It does too hurt,” he snapped, making a few tentative attempts at untangling her. “You were dragged by the hair and your head slammed against the mast. So quit trying to be valiant and admit it hurts like hell.”

She bit her lip. “It hurts like...the dickens.”

“That’s harsh,” Izard muttered.

Each time Ryan moved the windlass, it pulled at her hair. Frustrated, he called for Journey, who came running, his broad bare feet slapping on the deck.

“Good job, honey,” he said, clearly impressed. “We haven’t ever had someone get tangled up in the windlass before.”

“I should like to get up now,” Isadora said.

The sailors who were off watch came to see what was the matter. So did Luigi and Chips. William arrived shortly as well, and everyone gathered around the capstan to witness the woman with a yard of hair tangled in the gears and rope.

Isadora Peabody’s cheeks turned red. “If you don’t mind, I should like to get up,” she said again.

“Any ideas?” Ryan asked the men.

“We could cut the line.”

“It’s as thick as a man’s wrist. That would take all day, and we’d be billed for destroying the line.”

“Dismantle the knight-heads of the windlass and slide the hair and the rope off the side?”

“I just repaired that,” Chips objected. “Took me half a day. The man who touches it dies.”

“Unwind it the opposite way.”

“I tried that. It pulls. She’ll lose her whole scalp.”

Ryan and Journey looked at one another. Journey’s gaze flicked to the sheathed midshipman’s dirk Ryan wore in his belt. They had the same thought at the same time.

“Miss Peabody.” Ryan went down on one knee. “Close your eyes.”

“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” Her voice rose, quavering with distrust.

“Getting you out of this fix. Now, close your eyes.”

Isadora knew she was disobeying a direct order, but she didn’t care. The men began to murmur among themselves, and so she opened her eyes.

Just in time to see Ryan unsheath a thin-bladed knife. She screamed, scrambling back as far as the entanglement would permit, her hair pulling viciously at her scalp. The blade flashed in the sunlight, then came down with a thunk. She waited to feel a rush of blood, but instead she sprang free of the coil.

She sprawled on the deck, her face inches from the skipper’s booted foot. “You’ve gone mad, haven’t you?” she said in a shaky voice. “I’ve heard of this—men gone too long at sea lose their grasp on sanity, and—eek!” She put her hand to her head, where her hair should have been. Then she looked at the windlass. Her hair. Still caught in the coils of rope. But it was no longer attached to her head.

“My hair!” she cried. “You’ve cut off my hair.”

The crewmen slunk away, clearly loath to interfere.

Ryan Calhoun squatted down. Without looking at her, he lifted the hem of her skirt. “Christ, no wonder you bumble about the decks. You’ve got on at least five petticoats.”

“How dare you?”

“I’m the skipper, that’s how.” He grasped her by the ankle and began to unlace her high-heeled boot. “This,” he said through his teeth as he tugged it off, “is the cause of your troubles.” He cast her shoe overboard and grabbed the other foot.

“Stop that,” Isadora cried, trying to wrench away from him. “Stop that, I say!”

He held her ankle in a ruthless grip as he removed the other shoe. She flinched, for he pressed his thumb hard where she’d injured herself the first day at sea.

“I’ve watched you stumble around the ship until I was sure you’d topple overboard. No more.” He pitched the shoe over the rail.

She put both hands to her head, feeling the barren place where he’d hacked off her hair. “Dear heaven,” she whispered, “what have you done?”

He met her shocked gaze with a steely stare. “It’s only hair,” he said. “It’ll grow back.”

She sat immobile, too stunned to do anything but gape like a codfish. It was some dreadful Samson-and-Delilah scenario in reverse. What sin had she committed, what god had she angered, that Ryan Calhoun would visit this calamity upon her? To think she had left behind her home, her family and all she held dear for this terrible misadventure.

She dropped her hands into her lap. A fresh wind blew tendrils of her newly cropped locks against her cheeks and neck. She shivered from the light, cool breath of the breeze on her neck. Her feet, covered by only thin black stockings, felt shockingly bare.

“What—” She stopped and swallowed, feeling the awful press of tears in her eyes. No. She would not cry. She took a deep breath and tried again. “What have I ever done to make you hate me so?”

He shook his head. “Miss Peabody, I don’t hate you. Whatever gave you that impression?”

“To begin with, you threw my spectacles overboard.”

“Do you miss them?”

She hesitated. In truth, she barely noticed the lack. “That is beside the point,” she said. “They belonged to me, as did my shoes. As did my hair. You had no right.”

“On the contrary, Miss Peabody. I have every right.”

“Ah, yes. How could I forget? You are master of this ship. Your word is law. I wouldn’t be surprised if you appointed yourself lord high executioner.”

He caught her in his angry stare. “Don’t tempt me.”

“You have robbed me of my spectacles, my shoes and my hair.”

“You’re better off barefoot. Those heeled things you wore made you as useless as tits on a fish.”

The image made her shudder. “Why does cruelty come so easily to you?” she asked softly. “Doesn’t that scare you sometimes? It would scare me.”

“Everything scares you, Miss Peabody.” With that, he straightened up and walked away, casually slipping his knife back into its hip sheath.

She drew her knees up to her chest and dropped her head onto them. She would not cry. She would not cry.

“B-begging your p-pardon, miss,” someone said.

She lifted her head. “Timothy.”

“I have some sk-skill at barbering,” he said in an explosive rush. He showed her a slender pair of scissors. “If you like, I’ll make a straighter job of the skipper’s handiwork.”

“Very well.” She surprised herself by agreeing and following him into the deserted galley. The deck felt hard and alien beneath her stockinged feet. “Do what you can.”

He moved behind her and gently lifted the hacked off strands away from the nape of her neck. She heard a deft snip-snipping sound as he set to work.

“Timothy.”

“Y-yes, miss?”

“May I ask you something?”

“C-course.”

“Did all the men on deck witness this incident?”

“They did, miss.”

“And did it not occur to any of you to intervene? To stop the captain from abusing me?”

“I didn’t see no ab-abusing, miss.” He smoothed his hand over her hair. Her head and scalp felt light as if a great tugging weight had been removed. “See, miss, on the last sail, Rivera lost a finger on the capstan. I expect the sk-skipper, he—he acted right quick so’s nothing like that would happen to you.”

She fell silent and sat still as Timothy finished her hair. He stood in front of her, scrutinizing his work, evening things out here and there, then nodding with satisfaction.

“See, miss, the skipper, he ain’t a bad man. He’s—”

“Walking in on you before you say something foolish,” Ryan interrupted, stepping into the galley.

“Y-yes, sir!” Closing the scissors, Timothy straightened up and hurried out.

Isadora regarded him stonily. He was going to apologize. She was not going to accept.

“Mr. Datty did a yeoman’s job on that hair.” He blinked, then narrowed his eyes keenly as if something startled him. His mouth curved subtly up at the corners. “He did indeed.” He held up a very small shaving mirror.

She had a vague impression of a cloud of unkempt curls, an unhappy face flushed with anger. She pushed the mirror away.

She felt naked without the long tangle of hair that had cloaked her for as long as she could remember. The hair was her shield, her covering. What would stand between her and the world now?

“You seem determined to see me shorn of dignity,” she said.

“Quite the opposite,” he said in his maddening drawl. “I would say there is more dignity in a woman who walks with ease and confidence rather than tottering around on tall-heeled shoes.”

“And when did your opinion matter?” she demanded.

He took a step toward her and went down on one knee so that their faces were level. She felt an odd jolt of...something. Fear? No, for there was no urgency to get away from him. On the contrary, his stance before her, his expression and the way his hands came to rest on her shoulders made her want to stay exactly where she was.

She had no idea why this reaction came over her, particularly in the midst of her rage. But there was something compelling in the way he waited, not answering her question but simply watching her.

Determined not to let him stare her down, she studied him, trying to discern some clue as to why he insisted on tormenting her. He had the sort of face one would describe as boyishly handsome, a face that would probably still be handsome even when he reached fourscore years of age. A finely drawn mouth that smiled too readily. Dimples that softened the chiseled effect of his nose and cheekbones. Eyes that crinkled at the corners and that had in their depths the strangest combination of mischief and pathos.

There was, in her heart, a heat she had never felt before. A knowing. Here was a person who had the power to stir her blood. And this was not, she knew instinctively, a good thing.

“Well?” she prompted, telling herself such thoughts were fanciful, ridiculous. He was someone whose actions she must report to his employer.

He kept his hands on her shoulders even though she wished he’d move them. “Miss Peabody, I know you’ll be disappointed to hear this, but my opinion matters. Everything I think, say, do, or wish matters. That is the nature of being the captain.”

She sniffed. “So you will use your power to make me miserable.”

He smiled, his face softly lit with infuriating sympathy. “Miss Peabody.”

She glared at him.

“Isadora. May I call you Isadora?”

“Why ask permission? You’re the captain, the despot, the most high admiral of the ocean sea.”

“Not the ocean. This ship.” Very slowly, deliberately, almost insolently he let his hands skim across her shoulders and trail down her arms. “Isadora, you surely don’t need me to make you miserable. You’re doing a fine job of that on your own.”

She caught her breath in fury and surprise. “How dare you?”

He laughed, his hands cradling her elbows. “Because I have nothing to lose, Isadora. Not a damned thing to lose.”

Despite his laughter, she heard pain in his voice, saw it in his eyes. She had never met such a maddening, interesting, complex individual.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You despise me already, sugar. So it doesn’t seem to matter what I do.”

“Your mother is a woman of such admirable manners. I find it surprising that she raised a man who would say such a thing. Particularly after hacking off a lady’s hair with a sabre.”

“It was a midshipman’s dirk.”

“It was the height of rudeness.”

“We’re talking in circles here, Isadora. We’ve been over this. I’m not going to apologize. And you’re not going to be miserable any longer. You were supposed to leave that unhappy mode of life behind when we left Boston.”

“Unhappy? How dare you suggest I am unhappy?”

He let out a sigh of exasperation. “My dear, you are unhappy to the last inch of your shadow. I fear this state is so familiar to you that you no longer recognize it as unhappiness.” Finally he did the unthinkable. He moved his hands to cover hers, making an insistent circular motion with his thumbs in her palms. “What I want you to know is that you don’t have to live like that, Isadora. At least, not while you sail under my ensign.”

She had a strange urge to shut her eyes and simply feel the sensation of his thumbs rubbing her. His fingertips were sinfully warm and leathery from work, so different from the clammy clutches of men forced to partner her at Boston dance parties.

She made herself sit very still, eyes wide open as she fought the inexplicable slow warmth that filled her, beginning with the tips of her fingers and flowing through her body, settling in its more unmentionable places. “I really don’t think,” she began, then had to pause and moisten her lips before going on, “I don’t think you need concern yourself with my happiness or lack thereof.”

“I’m the skipper. Every aspect of every crewman’s life concerns me.” He let go of one hand and cradled her cheek in his palm.

She was too startled to pull back.

“Even if it were not for that,” he continued, “I would care, Isadora. I don’t have many good qualities, but I do care.”

“I...I...” She swallowed, then gave up trying to speak.

“Be safe,” he said. “That’s what today was about. Wear your clothes and fix your hair for comfort, not confinement. No one would look askance at you if you entered the galley for supper without all this frippery.” To punctuate his statement, he ran his hand across the ornate worked trim around her throat. “We’re simple men of the sea, not ballroom snobs on Beacon Hill.”

He stood, leaving her feeling curiously bereft, and went toward the door. “I shall see you on deck.”

“Wait!”

He turned back with an eagerness that startled her. “Yes?”

“You forgot your mirror.” She picked it up and held the palm-sized glass out to him.

“So I did.” He took it from her with a wink. “You’d not like to see me after shaving without a mirror. Not a pretty sight.”

She sat very still after he left, listening to the creak of the timber and the rush of the water past the hull.

Whiskers or no, she thought, Ryan Calhoun would always be a pretty sight.