The Charm School by Susan Wiggs
Sixteen
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
—Amos Bronson Alcott, “Table Talk”
As Ryan stepped onto the patio, he heard a chorus of female screams. Perhaps Journey had been right, he reflected. Perhaps the color combinations of his costume were a bit too...vivid.
The music stopped and the crowd fell back. Instantly Ryan understood that the commotion was not for him. A masked horseman rode into their midst upon a skittish Andalusian mount. Laughing dangerously, he bore down on a woman dressed in silver-and-gold skirts. She screeched and ran from him—but not too quickly.
Lily rushed over to Ryan and clutched at his arm. “That’s Fayette.”
“I know, Mama.”
“I think you should do something.”
“Why? That’s Edison Carneros.”
“Who? Oh, that lecherous character from the waterfront.”
“He’s a good man, Mama.” Ryan smiled down at her. She wore the tall comb-and-lace mantilla of a Spanish noblewoman and, as always, looked quite beautiful.
“Then why is he riding down my maid as if she’s a fox to be hunted?”
“It must be love.” Ryan couldn’t suppress a grin. More than once he had observed Fayette and Edison meeting at the waterfront, disappearing into Carneros’s office and then emerging much later with stars in their eyes and their clothing suspiciously mussed.
Fayette looked at Lily over her shoulder and hesitated. Carneros reached down and grasped her by the arm. She screeched again, though musical laughter underlay her alarm. Someone from the crowd gave her bare foot a boost, and she was heaved across the saddle of Edison’s horse.
“Dear God, he’s riding off with her!” Lily exclaimed.
“Looks that way.”
As the romantic pair galloped out of the courtyard into the starry night, Ryan watched after them. Some of the ladies in the crowd waved lace-edged handkerchiefs, and the band started playing again.
“It’s a...a carnival prank, isn’t it?” Lily asked. “I mean, Rose tells me these things happen, all in the spirit of fun.”
“I imagine they’ll have fun, Mama.”
She fell silent for several moments. The tinny melody of the band took over. Then she turned to him, her eyes unnaturally bright with an understanding he knew she wasn’t ready to voice. “You’re the one who should be having fun. Have I ever told you, son, that you are the most handsome man on earth?”
He laughed. “I think I’d rather be the wisest. Maybe the richest.”
“Wisdom and riches. Your father had both. Yet he died miserable.”
Ryan blinked. This was the first time she had ever spoken so candidly of her marriage. “Why do you say that?”
“Because even at the end, he didn’t give in to the one thing that could have saved him.” She sighed, staring off into the night, no doubt seeing a past that was invisible to Ryan. “He should have taken the love I offered, but he never did, Ryan. Not ever.” She waved a hand impatiently. “How I do go on. It’s the eve of a new year!”
The smile she gave him echoed the softness of the nights of his youth, when she used to sit by his bed and sing to him and Journey until they drifted, on the wings of her sweet voice, off to sleep. It never occurred to her that there was anything wrong with both boys sharing a bed, but only one having the right to grow up free. He hadn’t known the truth then, but he realized it now. She considered the slaves her family. She simply hadn’t known that they might want the freedom to choose.
He took her arm and escorted her onto the dance floor.
“Oh, don’t dance with your old mother.” She shooed him away, regal as she regained command of herself. “There are too many wonderful girls waiting for you.”
Isadora couldn’t quite understand how she had come to be here, in this airy patio, amid silky trumpet music and exotic food smells, dressed in something that felt as insubstantial as a nightgown.
Indeed, the moment seemed to belong to another person. It was as if the spirit of Rio had invaded her blood and bones, possessed her, transformed Isadora Dudley Peabody into someone completely different. A fanciful notion, but strangely accurate.
Though in truth it had been two lovely, relentless sisters who had possessed her.
Help me,she prayed silently, looking down at her scandalous gypsy costume. This is surely a sin.
Yet a part of her stood aside and observed that other ladies—perfectly proper wives of foreign ship’s captains and coffee planters and politicians and Portuguese ministers—were garbed even more festively. And not only were they dancing and clapping to the music—they seemed to be enjoying it.
It struck Isadora that, despite the gypsy dress she wore, she occupied much the same position tonight as she did at the dancing parties and soirées her parents held in Boston. She stood on the side of the assembly, invisible, watching other people have a good time.
Across the open-air patio, she saw a broad-shouldered man slip from the shadows, stepping into a dazzle of colored light cast by an orange paper lantern.
Her breath caught. Ryan.
But Ryan as she had never seen him before. From the very first she had been startled by his flawless male beauty, though a certain careless flamboyance had kept him to a human level. As she grew to know him, she no longer dwelled upon his physical attributes, but came to enjoy the person he was.
Now the carelessness had given way to perfection. He had dressed for the masquerade in tight black leather breeches with silver-studded outer seams, tucked into tall boots. A wide-sleeved red shirt gathered at the wrists, a half mask of black silk, an outrageous plumed hat and a slim, lethal-looking dress sword swinging at his side completed the costume.
He was the storybook cavalier who had performed feats of derring-do in the novels that used to keep her loneliness at bay. He was the bold hero whose swordfights, described in fireside tales, had given her chills. He was every perfect fantasy she tried so hard not to dream about—but dreamed, anyway.
Heavens be, this was Ryan, she told herself, trying to quell the uncomfortable fluttering in her stomach. Ryan, who teased and gave commands and laughed in order to cover the strange darkness in his soul. Ryan, who strode across the patio, magnificently oblivious to the raft of beautiful girls who followed in his wake.
He went directly to the neighboring patrao’s daughter and bent gracefully over her lacy-gloved hand.
Isadora released an audible sigh as she watched him lead the giggling young woman out onto the tiled dancefloor, leaving behind a logjam of swooning ladies. She felt a peculiar agony in her heart. This was different from the ache of being ignored by Chad. That throbbed with the pain of futility, but the hurt of wanting Ryan was the hurt of a possibility being taken away.
Fanning herself with the painted fan that hung from a cord around her waist, she pressed herself against the wall to watch. Like a skilled physician, she attempted to discover the true nature of her ailment. Seeing Ryan like this—so handsome, so romantic—hurt her. Why?
Because she missed Chad, perhaps. Ryan revived all her longing for the man she had wanted for years. He placed her squarely in the path of heartbreak again. Had she learned nothing from being trampled by a handsome man?
She resolved to stand aloof and try to enjoy the evening. The ache in her heart melted into a dull throb that was almost bearable when combined with the rhythmic thump of the music and the sinuous melody of the horns. Isadora did what she did best—she became invisible, retreated into her realm of the mind, with a wall of glass between herself and the real world, a safe place where she could watch unobserved.
Ryan danced with girl after girl, each one prettier than the last, prettier than Isadora’s sisters, prettier than Lydia Haven. Isadora leaned against a vine-draped column, wondering what Chad was doing right now, wondering what Chad would look like in studded trousers of oiled leather that gleamed in the multicolored light.
And then the unthinkable happened. The dance ended and Ryan headed in her direction.
“Oh, no,” she said, the words coming too easily. “I shan’t fall into that trap again.” She recalled the awful moment with Chad in Boston when she had been so certain he wanted to dance with her but all he really wanted was to send her on a fool’s errand.
Ryan bowed before her, sweeping off the plumed hat. “May I have this dance, menina?”
“No,” she said—too quickly.
He covered his heart with the hat. “You wound me to the quick. Why will you not dance with me?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because,” he said with measured patience, “it’s what people do at dancing parties.”
“It’s not what I do.” Isadora drew herself up with exaggerated dignity. She’d rather be a wallflower than a spectacle. But she wanted to accept. She really did.
He stood silent for a moment. His gaze drifted from her face to her feet strapped into sandals. “Isadora Peabody, as I live and breathe.”
“This is supposed to be a masquerade. I’m supposed to be a mystery lady.”
“Oh, sugar-pie, you are that,” he said gallantly. “The Isadora Peabody I know would never show her ankles like a sailor on shore leave.”
“I’m not—that is, Isadora is not showing her ankles like a sailor on shore leave.”
“But the mystery lady is.”
She couldn’t help herself. She giggled. Giggled. Isadora was quite certain she had never giggled before. “Perhaps,” she admitted.
“And perhaps, being so mysterious, she would take a stroll with me in the garden.”
Remembering what had happened during their last garden stroll, Isadora hesitated.
Ryan held out his hand. “Come with me, my mystery lady.”
She got over her hesitation. Being in costume shielded her from the rigors of everyday propriety. She could be anyone she wanted tonight. A gypsy. A flamenco dancer. A pirate’s lady.
A forbidden thrill shot up her spine as she took his hand.
“So I wonder,” he said, leading her out between the colonnades, “why Isadora has avoided tonight’s festivities.”
“She’s never been good at them,” Isadora said. “She’s never been fond of standing at the edge of a dance floor and wishing she were up in her chamber reading a good book.”
“Why does she always stand at the edge?”
“Because no one has ever brought her into the circle.”
“The circle?”
“The charmed circle. It’s an imaginary place, but it’s very real, I assure you.”
His hand, quite naturally, touched the nape of her neck beneath the heavy waves of her hair, rubbing her, making her feel strangely languorous. “Describe this place to me.”
“Well, it is full of light and beauty and laughter.” She leaned her head back a little, enjoying the tender massage of his hand on her neck.
“And Isadora has never been invited to this mythical place.”
“Of course not.” They came to a stone rampart overlooking Guanabara. The distant winking lights draped the bay like a necklace of luminous diamonds.
“Why not?” her cavalier asked, lowering his hand to the small of her back.
“Because she doesn’t belong there.”
“In whose opinion?”
“Not in anyone’s opinion.” She stared out at the stars mirrored in the water. “It’s a fact, the way the world is, and it cannot be changed.” Being behind the half mask gave her the courage of anonymity, false though it was. “She is awkward and socially gauche. Why would anyone in the charmed circle find me—er, find Isadora—pretty or amusing?”
She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath and dared to look up into his eyes. Framed by the mask and gleaming with reflected light from the harbor, his regard appeared fierce. His fist gripped her upper arm, startling her.
“Because you are.”
The conviction in his voice caught her, but she made herself laugh a gypsy’s laugh. “You are too gallant for your own good, my cavalier. Isadora knows exactly who and what she is. After her adventures at sea, all her respectability will be gone. She has chapped skin and chopped-off hair. Her clothes don’t fit properly anymore. She seems to be slowly sinking into a shocking state of nature.”
He laughed, too, though the anger still churned in his eyes. Very deliberately, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. His touch felt different—invasive, intimate, slightly dangerous. “Isadora is in big trouble, then.”
In defiance of the balmy tropical night, a shiver touched the base of her spine. “Why do you say that?”
“Because she has a lot to learn.” He took a step toward her, gripping her tighter.
She brought her hands up between them and fluttered her fan, beginning to feel amazingly natural in the role of coquette. “And who is going to teach her?”
“A famous cavalier.” Before Isadora knew what was happening, he caught her in his embrace. “First, the dancing!”
“I don’t dance,” she blurted.
“But I do.” With a whoop of sheer delight, he swept her around the open rampart in time with the sensual, percussive samba music that drifted from the patio. He wrapped his arm around her waist, hugging her so that she could feel his hips against hers. He led her in a circle, holding her so snugly that she had no choice but to follow the sweeping motion. These were dance steps that would horrify Beacon Hill society. Steps that should have made Isadora stumble clumsily, yet they didn’t. She danced with abandon, a cavalier’s lady who was fascinating and graceful and at ease—everything Isadora Dudley Peabody was not.
The melody ended and her brash cavalier brought her to sit upon the stone rampart overlooking Guanabara Bay.
“It’s like a dream,” she said, gazing out across the silver-studded black velvet view.
“Yes, it is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not at the view.
For some reason that struck her as amusing and she laughed lightly, merrily, as if laughter were something she often did.
And in fact she did, when she was with Ryan.
No, not Ryan. She must not let herself think of him by name.
“Isadora,” he began, clearly unaware of her game.
She shushed him immediately, still laughing, boldly pressing her fingers to his lips. She nearly stopped laughing when she touched his lips, for they felt firm and slightly moist and feeling them created a strange flood of disturbing warmth inside her.
“Isadora is not here.”
He captured her hand, took it away from his mouth. “She’s not?”
“No. And you must not use her name.”
“Why not?”
“Because...” How could she explain it? “Because that would make the night real.”
“And you don’t want it to be real?”
She thought of the things in her life that were real—her family, the people she associated with in Boston, people who barely acknowledged her existence. “No,” she said earnestly. “Not tonight. At the end of this voyage, I shall soon enough face what is real.”
“You mean Isadora will face it,” he corrected her.
“Yes.”
“And what is real to Isadora?”
She paused, thinking. “The idea that she will serve her parents in their old age. And the rather pleasant prospect of helping to raise her nieces and nephews because her sisters are such good breeders. She will read great books and she’ll be a faithful letter writer, though she will write many more letters than she will ever receive. But that’s all right, for the reading and writing will fill her days. She has accepted the idea that she will never know passion, for no one feels passionate about Isadora—”
“What?”
“Passion. She’ll never know it.” She smiled, pleased that he had caught on. She had expected cynical teasing from him, but he kept surprising her. “So that is why you must keep reality at bay. You must let the night be magical.”
He chuckled and squeezed his hand. “Sugar, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Every night is magical.”
She laughed softly, loving the easy feel of it, loving the breeze through her hair and the way his loose shirt blew against his chest, outlining its shape. The sweetness of the moment washed through her, loosening her, warming her.
“You are never serious,” she said.
“It’s not permitted for a cavalier to be serious.”
“What about Captain Calhoun?” she ventured. “Is he ever serious?”
“Only when it comes to serious matters.”
“What sort of serious matters?”
“Matters of the heart,” he said, lifting her hand and pressing it to his chest. “Matters of passion.” With an earnestness she’d never seen in him before, he said, “Suppose I told you I want a certain young lady of Boston.”
She took her hand away from his heart. He meant her? No, impossible. She forced her mind to consider the more reasonable possibilities. Lydia Haven, the beauty of Beacon Hill. Her sister Arabella, who was still desired even though she was engaged. A society belle, perhaps, or one of the women from the docks.
“Then why have you not courted her?” she inquired, trying to keep her humor up.
“She seemed too chilly and self-contained and far too intelligent to take a fellow like me seriously. And of course, she yearns for someone else altogether.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps your Boston lady’s coldness is a shield against getting hurt.”
“Then I wish like hell she’d lower her defenses, for I would never hurt her.”
“You wouldn’t?” Her question came out as a whisper because suddenly she knew. It was insane, but his Boston lady was...
“Never.”
“Then I wonder...what she is afraid of.”
He moved closer to her on the stone rampart. “Take off the mask,” he said.
“I’d rather not.”
“I’d rather you did.” He removed it and set it aside.
The scented night breeze touched her face where the mask had been. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I want to know exactly who you are when I kiss you.”
Stunned, she could do nothing but sit and watch him remove his own half mask of black silk. And then he began.
It was not the sort of kiss he had given her before, the sweetly spontaneous one in the garden. Nor was it the kind of kiss she had always envisioned, aflame with heated passion. Instead he was careful, deliberate, almost clinical. He lifted a tendril of her hair that had drifted across her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Then he took her face between both hands, skimming the pad of his thumb along her lower lip as if to prepare it for the touch of his mouth. One of his hands dropped, fingers playing over her throat and collarbone, so indecently exposed by the daring blouse. With an assurance Isadora could not possibly imagine ever feeling, he lowered the hand and let it curve around behind her so that he was embracing her, holding her close, their bodies touching, their lips getting closer and closer.
She made a feeble attempt to stop him, to stop the intimacy and the terrible overwhelming emotions welling up from a place inside her she had never explored until this moment. But she didn’t want to stop him, not really. He was the most beautiful man in the world; she was plain Isadora Peabody, and she might never again get the chance to kiss someone like him.
Aching with the bleakness of that thought, which mingled painfully with her yearning, she closed her eyes.
And he kissed them. Her eyelids.
She was amazed.
And then he kissed her cheek and her temple and the side of her nose. And behind her left ear and—heavens be—her neck where a pulse leaped so frantically she feared she might swoon.
“You look...” he whispered, still kissing her there, up and down, oh so gently.
“Yes?” she prompted in a hoarse, alien voice. Dear God, maybe a miracle had occurred. Maybe he was going to say she looked pretty.
“You look...as if you’re about to face a firing squad.”
“Oh...” she said weakly, opening her eyes a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t apologize. Just—if you possibly can—try to seem as if you’re enjoying this.”
“But I am,” she said with great urgency. “Truly. I simply...this is a new activity for me and I don’t quite know how to behave.”
“What I’d like,” he said wickedly, “is for you to misbehave.”
“I’m certain I’ve been doing that ever since I set foot on your ship,” she said, not even half joking.
“Then it’s a start,” he whispered, leaning close again. “It’s a start.”
And he began kissing her again, his leisurely exploration so maddening and frustrating she nearly screamed, for he seemed to be touching and kissing all of her except the parts that needed him the most. She bit her tongue to keep from telling him that. It would be too forward, too humiliating.
Too pathetic.
But then, his gently questing mouth strayed upward along her throat, and—almost by accident—she dropped her chin a little, and their lips met.
And the night changed color before her ecstatically closed eyes.
Ye powers, but his kiss felt good. He tasted of rum and sweet juice and some other ineffable flavor. His mouth—the beautiful mouth she had been caught staring at so many times—brushed hers and then increased its pressure and she was astonished at the soft texture of it, the lyrical shape and the way it fit perfectly against hers. She was so startled by the sensations flooding her that she let her jaw go slack, and then something even more astonishing occurred. His tongue slipped into her mouth.
She was certain it had to be an accident; surely it was an unnatural sin to do this...but...she liked it.
She would suffer eternal damnation for this; of that she had no doubt. But she liked it. She loved it. The sinuous slide of his tongue, in and then out, then back in when she surged involuntarily against him, needing and wanting more than she had ever dared to need or want before. Certain places on her body flared to life as if a torch had been touched to them—the tips of her breasts, unbound for the first time in her life. Between her legs in a spot whose existence she had trained herself to deny utterly. The pit of her stomach in which was born a fire that raged beyond quenching.
And then, far too quickly, it was over. He moved his hands to cup her shoulders, and drew back to look at her. “There,” he said. “No worse than a firing squad, was it?”
She felt dazed, disoriented, as if she had awakened in a strange place. She blinked. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never faced a firing squad before.”
“Then you’ll have to trust me,” he said with gentle laughter in his voice. “Poor you.”
“Yes,” she whispered, filled with the torpor and wistfulness of an awakening dreamer. “Poor me.”