The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Thirteen

Be good and you will be lonesome.

—Mark Twain, Following the Equator

Hot, sweet and languid—those were the dominant impressions Ryan had of Rio. After concluding his preliminary business with Ferraro’s agent, he arranged for the cargo to be discharged. Luigi, who spoke his native tongue with the team of Italian stevedores, had matters well in hand.

Before hiring a rig to convey him to his aunt’s in Tijuca, Ryan stood at the loud, busy waterfront and felt himself slowly fill up with a splendid feeling so rare that at first he couldn’t identify it. But it had a name—pride.

Pride that he had done something of consequence, and done it so well that even strangers on the wharves had learned who he was. Captain Calhoun, who carried a tiny crew and too much sail. Captain Calhoun, who had won a bonus for coming in days before his due date.

The wharf rats learned his identity as quickly as the shipping agents and local merchants. “I have the finest diamonds for sale,” hissed a smiling young man with oily hair and restless hands. “Come and see my selection.”

Ryan cheerfully declined the suspicious offer, only to find the oily merchant replaced by a soft-hipped whore. “You have been long time at sea,” she purred, running her tongue around her lips in a gesture that should be outlawed. “I make you happy, happy today.”

“Card game?” another man asked. “Faro or dice?”

Ryan grinned from ear to ear. He hadn’t even gotten paid yet.

And then, because a sudden hollowness opened up inside him, he held out his arm to the whore and asked, “What’s your name, sugar-pie?”

In the end, he realized he’d never even heard it. All he remembered was the ripeness of her, the intoxicating musk, the way her soft body opened to him, the way he sank into her. Yet the act had a disturbingly mechanical nature. He pleasured her, yes, but in a curiously detached fashion. And, in a curiously detached fashion, he found his own pleasure as well, and paid her handsomely for the encounter.

Late that afternoon, he emerged from the brothel with a head muzzy from drink, a body sated by sex and a jumble of confusing thoughts and misgivings. He had been offered contraband riches, sex, gambling, strong drink. At one time such things had been all he desired in life and he would have happily accepted. Yet now such pleasures held only faint allure for him. Instead, he went out to look at the teeming market and terraced hills and pastel palaces of Rio, and one thought tugged at him: none of this meant anything unless he had someone to share it with.

Someone who looked at the world with wide-eyed wonder. Someone who drank in new sights and sounds with a passion belied by her sober mien. Someone who took a new experience and clasped it to her breast like a precious treasure.

“The coach is ready,” Journey said, coming toward Ryan. “What the matter?” He peered at him. “You look sick.”

“Maybe. In my mind,” Ryan said, and he walked toward the carriage.

His Aunt Rose made an embarrassing fuss over him, exclaiming at his height, his handsomeness, the clarity of his cerulean eyes, the glossiness of his auburn hair.

Lily looked on, indulging her for a few moments before saying, “He’s my son, Rose dear. Not a show horse.”

“You should see me when I’m sober,” he said, swaying a little.

“Of course.” Rose hugged him. She smelled pleasantly of coffee and flowers. He hoped it masked his own less pleasant scent of liquor and cheap perfume. “Forgive me, Ryan. I wasn’t blessed with children of my own, so I must do all my mothering when I can.”

“And you do it with a natural grace,” he assured her, smiling despite a pounding headache. “Where is Isadora?”

Lily and Rose exchanged a knowing glance. Ryan cursed himself for letting his eagerness show.

Isadora came down the carved cypress stairwell, uncertainty evident in her stiff posture. “I—I apologize for keeping everyone waiting—”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Rose interrupted. “We keep no schedules at Villa do Céu.”

“House of the sky,” Isadora softly translated. “What an enchanting image.”

“Now that we’re all together,” said Rose, “let us go in to supper.” She led the way across the arched foyer. Lily linked arms with her, and Ryan was confronted with the prospect of partnering Isadora.

He found the notion absurdly appealing.

He cocked out his elbow. “Shall we go?”

She sent him that startled, I-can’t-believe-you’re-being-nice-to-me look that gratified him even as it broke his heart. Had no one ever shown this poor woman a bit of courtesy?

She wrinkled her nose and pruned her lips in disapproval. “Captain Calhoun, what sort of business were you conducting?”

He didn’t feel ashamed, exactly. Sheepish, perhaps. “I took care of a...personal affair as well.”

“So I gather.”

“It was a long voyage, Isadora. It’s not natural for a man to...do without.”

“I’m certain I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“I’m trying to explain myself so you can include it in your report to Easterbrook.”

“Why, how dare—” She stopped as his mother and Aunt Rose came into view.

He pressed his arm against her until she took it. “Thank you, Captain,” she murmured.

“Now that we’re ashore, you should call me Ryan.”

“I couldn’t possibly.”

He gestured at his mother and aunt who crossed the patio ahead of them. “The other ladies do.”

“Your ladies of the night, I presume,” she said tartly.

“That would be ‘ladies of the afternoon,’” he explained. “And for the record, there was only one. You are keeping score, are you not?”

She made a strange wheezing sound, but couldn’t seem to get a word out.

“I meant my mother and aunt,” he said, taking pity on her. “They call me by my given name.”

“They’re related to you.”

He winked at Isadora. “That can be arranged.”

Her gaze darted away. “You shouldn’t tease.”

Maybe I wasn’t.The idea was too absurd and too startling to voice aloud, yet the instant it occurred to him, it sent down roots that reached deep inside to a tender place in his heart. It was the oddest notion that had ever occurred to him. Isadora Peabody? The prim, bashful Yankee who dreamed of Chad Easterbrook?

Ryan had clearly been too long at sea.

Isadora had no appetite for supper, though the meal was both delicious and exotic. There was avocado seasoned with vinegar, yams and beefsteak and two kinds of wine, melon and guava and lemony ice shaved from the large block Ryan had brought his aunt as a gift.

Yet for all the bounty, Isadora could only pick at her food. She felt jumpy and out of sorts, and she wasn’t sure why. Eagerness, she decided, studying the ochre walls of the dining room, the arched doorway and windows with their carved wooden screens. That, and a decided enchantment with this strange new place, with the fragrance of orchids and tamarind trees and the strains of soft guitar music that came from the servants’ wing.

And disillusionment with Ryan. The moment he’d reached shore, he’d gone looking for a woman, which he had made a point of explaining to her without apology.

“There’s so much to see,” Lily declared. “And in such a short time.”

“It doesn’t have to be short,” Rose said. “You could stay with me.”

“Here?”

“Of course. What is there at Albion for you?”

Lily took a sip of her wine. “Albion is my home. It’s where I raised my son and buried my husband. My stepson has two children I barely know. I spent too long on the Continent. I can’t stay away forever.”

Ryan eyed her keenly. “Father’s dead and I’ll never live at Albion again, Mama. I think Aunt Rose has a fine idea. Let Hunter have Albion. He never needed us anyway.”

Hunter.Isadora tried to picture the stepbrother—older, of course. Dissolute, with a big red nose from drinking all those mint juleps on the porch while his slaves worked themselves to death in the fields.

“What are his children like?” Rose asked.

“I hardly know—they were both in leading strings when I left. The boy’s name is Theodore and his sister is Belinda. Hunter’s wife—her name is Lacey—didn’t welcome my attention.” A wistful expression softened Lily’s face. “I would have liked to be a grandmama.” The expression vanished as she drilled Ryan with a stare. “Perhaps one day someone of my own flesh and blood will oblige me.”

Ryan laughed. “I know I performed a small miracle in getting us here so fast, but even I would have trouble having a baby.”

Rose burst out laughing. Her sister merely shook her head. “Whatever shall I do with the boy?”

Isadora took a very small bite of melon, chewed it carefully and swallowed. She prayed they would not see the hot blush that stained her cheeks.

“We’ve embarrassed our guest with all this bawdy talk,” Rose said. “Shame on us.”

“No, really—”

“Nonsense, my dear. Let us move on to politer topics.” She folded her unfashionably sunbrowned arms on the table. “You are a most intelligent young lady. Lily was telling me you’ve a gift for languages.”

Isadora shook her head. “If the conversation I heard at the wharves today was any indication, I am no expert.”

“She’s being modest,” Ryan said. “She’s the best interpreter I’ve ever heard.”

She blinked. After her performance with the harbor pilot, she hadn’t expected praise.

“Is that so?” Rose asked, lifting a dark eyebrow.

“It is,” he said, upending his wine goblet.

Isadora felt a soft shock of pleasure. Praise from Ryan Calhoun should not feel so good, but Lord help her, it did. She knew pride was a vanity, yet his compliment warmed her like the wine she was drinking.

“You have,” Rose observed, “a most remarkable smile.”

Isadora immediately pressed her mouth into a flat line. Ryan had probably given her a compliment because he felt guilty about his behavior.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything,” Rose commented. “But that smile—it quite transforms you. And the cut of your hair is quite...revolutionary. I simply adore it. Perhaps I shall get mine cut short, too.”

Isadora had no idea what to say. Lily rescued her by turning the subject back to Albion and people they knew years before. Isadora sampled her lemon ice and listened, enjoying the stories of these lovely strangers while barefooted servants waited on them.

A low churring sound came through the arched windows, startling her. Noting her widened eyes, Rose said, “That noise you’re hearing is a tamarin—a nocturnal monkey. He’s a pet of sorts. Shy, but he’ll come around for a taste of fruit or honey from the kitchen.”

“I’d love to see him.”

“Ryan, show Isadora out to the patio,” Rose said.

“No, really,” Isadora began, quickly changing her mind. Rose’s suggestion bore a nightmarish resemblance to the well-meaning matchmakers of Boston, forever trying to pair her up with mortified young men. “It’s not nec—”

“I don’t mind.” Ryan pushed his chair from the table. She searched his face to see if he wore the look of those doomed suitors.

“You can stop in the kitchen for a pail of food,” Rose suggested. “The monkey is sure to be prowling about the garden.”

Torches illuminated the stone-paved area which formed the heart of the villa. Low arches flanked the patio, and one side had no wall but a wrought iron fence and a huge, unusual tree with a twisted trunk that resembled straining sinew and branches that grew almost horizontally out from it.

The scent of flowers weighted the night air, the odor so thick and exotic that Isadora felt woozy simply breathing it. She stopped in front of the burbling fountain in the center of the patio and stood very still, inhaling deeply, feeling the essence of the night pour through her, bringing parts of her to life that had been sleeping since before she could remember, sleeping so soundly that until this moment she didn’t know they existed.

“Are you ill?” Ryan asked, breaking in on her ecstatic reveries.

She opened her eyes. “No. Why do you ask?”

“You looked a little...peaked,” he said. “A little dizzy.”

“If I’m dizzy it’s not due to illness,” she said, flushing. “It’s because this place is so wonderful—the smells and sounds and the very feel of the air—it makes me...tingle,” she explained, then flushed again. “For want of a better word.”

“Tingle,” he repeated, an amused quirk lifting the side of his mouth.

“What I mean is that this environment gives me a sense of vitality I’ve not felt before. Does it have that effect on you, Captain Calhoun?”

He studied her with a frank and probing scrutiny that made her uncomfortable. And without moving his gaze from her, he said, “I do believe I feel that tingling effect, Isadora.”

“Now you’re teasing me,” she said, but the night was too perfect to feel angry about it.

He held out his hand to her. “Oddly, I’m not. Shall we go in search of this elusive creature?”

When she touched his hand, the tingling sensation heightened. She hadn’t expected that. Perhaps it was something she’d eaten—all the fruit had tasted so exotic. She felt light on her feet and graceful, probably a trick of equilibrium, since she had been so long at sea.

They walked to the end of the path, finding a sundial sitting in the gloom.

“How do you call a monkey?” Ryan asked.

“I have no idea. I’ve never even seen a monkey.”

He rattled the pail of fruit and made a smooching sound with his mouth. Isadora laughed. “That’s your monkey call?”

He winked at her. “Can you do any better?”

She pursed her lips and tried to emulate the churring sound they’d heard in the dining room.

“I don’t know how the monkey feels,” Ryan said with a chuckle, “but you’ve certainly got my attention.”

She laughed again, wondering if it was the perfumed garden air, the wine she’d drunk, or sheer madness that made everything seem so delightfully funny.

“Ah, Isadora. If your laughter doesn’t tempt the little rodent, I don’t know what will.” He propped one foot on a garden bench made of tiled masonry. The negligently elegant pose looked wonderful on him. “You have the prettiest laugh I’ve ever heard.”

“And you, sir, have the glibbest tongue.”

He grinned. “Talked my way onto the Swan.”

“I have often wondered. How did you manage that?”

“I won’t say. You already find me despicable enough.”

“I don’t find you despicable,” she protested. “Just...exasperating.”

“Ah, exasperating. Does this mean I’m rising in your esteem?”

“At least it’s a feeling you can understand,” she said, “because you find me equally exasperating.”

He fixed her with an unreadable stare. “I was with a woman this afternoon.”

“I know that. I’m not stupid.”

“Were you shocked?” he asked.

“Was it worth it?” she countered.

“Are you going to report me?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On why you did it.” She bit her lip. “Besides...the explanation you gave me earlier.”

“To shock you? And perhaps...hell, I don’t know. It’s not...what you think. I came away feeling empty. It’s hard to explain.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because I’m a bad man.”

She shook her head. “I think you’re actually a good man with some very bad habits.”

He propped an elbow on his knee and gave her a dazzling smile. “Isadora—” He broke off and grabbed her hand, holding on tight. “He’s coming,” he muttered in a low voice.

“The monkey?” she whispered.

He nodded. They waited, straining to hear. A distant night bird called and another, even more distant, answered. Closer in, the bushes rustled with a furtive sound.

Isadora kept her grip on Ryan’s hand. She liked holding his hand. His bore calluses of hard work and a comfortable dry warmth. She couldn’t help but note the size—she had large hands for a woman but his were much bigger, swallowing hers so her fingers nestled safely inside. Safe. That was the way she felt with Ryan Calhoun. Safe, as if nothing in the world could harm her so long as she kept hold of his hand.

It was a fanciful notion. An un-Isadoralike notion. Yet it rang through her with a strange resonance.

Safe with him. When had she ever been unsafe? Physically—never. She had lived the sheltered life of the daughter of one of Boston’s first families. But in other ways her peril was constant. She could not even walk into her parents’ drawing room without feeling as if she were in danger of drowning.

It occurred to her that she hadn’t experienced the drowning sensation since she had left Boston. Not even in the deadliest moments of the great storm.

“There, see?” Ryan whispered, his lips so close to her ear. She shivered with the warm vibration.

Ye powers. Here she sat in a perfumed garden, holding hands with a man while he whispered in her ear. Her fevered imagination had, of course, conjured this moment many times. But the man in her daydream had always been Chad Easterbrook. And in her daydream, the moment had never, ever felt this delicious.

“I don’t see it,” she whispered back. She told herself no romance heated this moment. They shared only a mutual curiosity in what the exotic night would bring, a mutual anticipation of learning the secrets of the forest.

“A tiny shadow. It’s there.”

He did the most extraordinary thing. With a restrained gentleness so poignant it made her chest ache, he touched her cheek in order to turn her head toward the low shrubbery border. His touch nearly shattered her, for not since Aunt Button had someone caressed her with such tenderness. Yet this surpassed even Aunt Button’s affection, for this sent shivers radiating outward along her limbs and stirring up a strange pool of heat somewhere deep inside her.

“Do you see it now?” he whispered.

She forced herself to concentrate. “Heavens be. I think I do,” she said, mouthing the words, barely speaking them.

A tiny creature, furtive as a thief, darted out of the bushes and snatched up a chunk of papaya.

“He is so little,” she whispered. “Like a wizened old man.”

The monkey crouched over its find, stuffing its mouth greedily until it could hold no more. Then, grasping a piece of plantain in its tiny paw, it made off into the shadowy night forest.

Isadora felt a welling of wonder and joy in her chest. She could not have erased the smile on her face if she’d tried, but she didn’t try. She turned to Ryan, realizing that even though the creature was gone, he still kept his lips close to hers, still cradled her cheek in his large, warm hand.

“How wonderful,” she said. “I can’t believe we saw such an amazing creature.”

“You,” he said with laughter in his voice, “are a very hard woman to impress.”

“What do you mean?” She was amazed she could even get the words out, for his other hand let go of hers and slipped, as furtive as the night creature they had come to see, around her waist, holding her lightly but firmly.

Men had touched her there to dance with her, but they had been different. They’d all had the aspect of wooden soldiers forced in front of a firing squad. But Ryan...dear Lord, she could only think of him as Ryan now...he gave her the impression he actually wanted to be here, wanted to touch her.

He smiled gently, the faint torchlight softening his features. “What I mean is I’ve crossed oceans and battled storms to bring you here, and you’ve taken it all in stride. I haven’t seen you so perfectly enraptured, not once, until you saw the little fellow come stealing out of the forest.”

That’s not what has me so perfectly enraptured.The thought—and the utter truth of it—startled her. She nearly blurted the words aloud.

But at the last moment, she stopped herself. Because she didn’t trust herself, didn’t trust her heart. Didn’t trust Ryan not to break it.

“I suppose,” she said softly, with a touch of irony, “I seem terribly worldly and sophisticated.”

“Far too worldly and sophisticated for the likes of a Virginia farm boy turned sailor,” he said.

Still touching her. Holding her. His gaze a lodestone she could not look away from.

She managed a wobbly smile at his statement. “Farm boy? Judging by what your mother has told me of Albion, you grew up in a world of unimaginable wealth.”

“I never found what I wanted in that world,” he said.

She moistened her lips, tasting the fruit she had eaten earlier and finding herself strangely hungry again, empty and yearning for... “What is it you’re looking for?” she heard herself ask. “What do you want?”

He chuckled low in his throat, and the sound sent a thrill through her. “Those are two different questions, Isadora.” Though she didn’t think it possible, he leaned even closer, so that the warmth of his breath and the fruity scent of the rum drink he’d imbibed mingled with her own shallow inhalations.

He was close. So close. She’d never been this close to a man before.

“Do...you have...two different answers?” she managed to force out.

“Only one at the moment. Only one.”

The hand at her waist tightened. She had the most inexplicable urge to touch him as well, for her hands lay clenched in her lap and she wanted to put them somewhere else. Wanted to put them on him.

Her fingers reached up, lightly coming to rest against the wall of his chest.

His swift intake of breath was a sound of surprise—but not one of outrage.

“Which one?” she asked, still unable to believe that she, Isadora Dudley Peabody, was in the middle of this splendid garden, in the middle of this splendid moment, in the arms of this splendid man.

“What I want,” he said, and the words sounded tense and strained. “Ask me what I want, Isadora.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ll only answer if you promise you’ll believe me.”

“If I—”

“Promise, Isadora. Say you’ll trust my answer.”

“I’ll trust your answer.”

He smiled, and once again she heard that silken chuckle that did such odd and unsettling things to her. “What I want,” he said, “is to kiss you.”

“Liar,” she said automatically.

“You promised you’d believe me.”

“Because I thought for once you’d tell me the truth.”

“You know what your problem is?”

“You?”

“No. It’s that you talk too damned much. I suppose I could swear on King James’s Bible that I want to kiss you, but there’s a better way to convince you.”

The smoldering look in his eyes astonished her, held her mesmerized. “How is that?”

“Like this, love. Like this.”

And then it happened. Slowly. Each passing second an endless heartbeat of time, and she experienced it all, reveled and immersed herself in it. The way he bent his head ever so slightly, for unlike most men, he was taller than she. The way his thumb skimmed lightly, searchingly, across the crest of her cheekbone then rode downward, brushing at a spot on the side of her throat that pulsed with a heat she had never felt before. The way his other hand at her waist drew her closer, tighter.

And then his lips. The lips she had watched, day after day, with increasing fascination and bafflement. The lips that had sneered at her, sworn at her, laughed and shouted and smiled at her. He didn’t plaster her with his kiss; he merely tasted her, at first barely touching her mouth with his own.

Back and forth, slowly, subtly, he moved his head, sharing the merest hint of himself, the briefest brush of pressure. Overwhelmed by the sensations, she let her eyes drift shut and heard a strange, whimpering sound escape her. As of their own accord, her fists clenched into the fabric of his shirt.

Closer. She wanted to be closer. She wanted to taste more of him, to feel the pressure of his mouth on hers. But he simply kept brushing her lips, holding her gently as if she were fragile, breakable. The hand at her waist moved, a minor shift, barely noticeable, except that she felt his thumb graze the underside of her breast, could feel his touch even through the stiff buckram of her corset. She felt a surging and singing inside, things she had read about in the romantic novels she was not supposed to see until she was married, but read in secret anyway. And, oh, this was so much better. She wanted so much more than this moment, yet she was terrified that it might end.

She had an overwhelming urge to lean toward him, to press into his embrace, to crush her mouth against his. But she didn’t dare. Didn’t know how. Didn’t trust him to accept her.

It was an act of supreme self-control, then, to hold herself rigid, unmoving, disbelieving.

And finally it was over. From the time he had begun to kiss her until the moment it ended, an eternity had passed. The world had changed color, tilted on its axis. Yet when Ryan Calhoun drew back from her and regarded her solemnly for several long moments, he looked exactly the same: handsome, relaxed, assured.

And she was a perfect mess inside.

“I won’t apologize,” he said easily, “although a gentleman would. I’m not sorry that happened.” He stood, his lithe grace never more apparent, and helped her to her feet. She went like a marionette on a string, wooden and stiff, jerky in her movements.

“We’d best get inside. They’ll want to hear all about the monkey.”

“What monkey?” she asked stupidly.