The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Seventeen

Oh this is the place to live—a thought of winter would never enter one’s head.

—Diary of Susan Hathorn, a sea captain’s wife (1855)

Isadora awoke with a smile on her face and the knowledge that she had slept indecently late. Judging by the intense dazzle of sunlight on the plaster wall, it was pressing high noon.

The smile lingered. She knew she should feel guilty, for no one on Beacon Hill, or probably in Boston, or the entire United States for that matter, ever slept this late unless they were ill. Yet Isadora had no more viable excuse than the fact that she had been dancing with a man on a rampart at midnight, and soon after that she had kissed him.

A delicious shiver passed through her body, tingling unbearably until she grew restive and flushed with her thoughts. She got up and went to the washstand to bathe in the cool spring water, but the thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone.

Heavens be. She—Isadora Dudley Peabody—had kissed a man last night.

It was not just any man. It was not just any kiss.

Ryan Calhoun. The most interesting, compelling person she had ever met. The only person who had ever tried to be her friend. But was he trying to be more than that?

She denied it instantly, her practical nature restoring itself. He had pursued her last night, had taken her to a private place and danced with her because they had been at a masquerade. A party where nothing was as it seemed.

In a way, the moments with Ryan were even less real than a dream. Last night stood apart from the rest of her life, glistening with the elusive light of promise and teasing her with the possibility of what might have been.

Trying to remember the kiss was like trying to repossess a wonderful dream after blazing wakefulness had intruded. She could recall what happened, but she could not recapture the magic. Each time she came close to reliving the sensation of his soft lips opening over hers, his nimble fingers skimming down her back, she became lost in a fog of embarrassment and desire that left her flushed and confused.

“I mustn’t think of it,” she told herself stoutly, scraping her hair into a pathetic topknot. The short locks wouldn’t stay put, so she stabbed in more pins. She dressed herself in her familiar corset and berry-brown day dress, frowning at the way the usually crisp fabric hung in limp, pathetic folds.

No matter, she told herself. She had never been vain. She’d never had anything to be vain about. Particularly not now, with her inexpertly shorn hair and her face bleary and wan from staying up too late and dreaming too much the night before.

By the time she stepped out of her chamber into the colonnaded walkway, she felt as gauche and uncertain as she ever had at a Boston dancing party.

Ye powers. What on earth would she say to him?

She was spared from the immediate decision by Ryan himself. She had no sooner taken her place at the breakfast table than he came staggering into the sala, his hair badly combed and the contours of his face blurred by a growth of beard.

“Oh,” he mumbled, his voice gravelly. “You’re up.”

She said nothing. He probably thought she was stunned speechless by the brilliance of his observation.

“Charming,” his mother said, coming into the room with Rose at her side. Two servants arrived to pour the coffee and lay out platters of sweet bread and sliced fruit.

Ryan grunted rudely.

Isadora could scarcely believe this was the same man as the dashing gaucho who had romanced her last night. He added several spoonfuls of sugar to his café com leite. She preferred hers bitter. He dug into the chunks of fresh fruit and brioches; she picked at hers. The heat and humidity of the tropics had reduced her appetite dramatically. The one happy effect of the climate was that she hadn’t been bothered by her persistent grippe and sneezing in many weeks.

As they ate, Lily kept glancing anxiously at the door. Each time a servant walked in, she froze, then relaxed.

“She’s not coming back, Mother,” Ryan said with quiet assurance.

“Did Fayette go somewhere?” Isadora asked.

Lily pressed her lips together as if keeping in a sob. Rose nodded gravely. “Last night she ran off with Edison Carneros.”

Lily’s chin quivered, but she looked directly at Isadora as she said, “I thought it was a prank, but I fear Fayette claimed her freedom last night.”

“They probably went to settle at one of the quilombos, where fugitives go,” Rose explained. “They’re rough settlements, but that’s generally where runaways hide.”

“It’s not the end of the world as you know it, Mama.” Ryan sipped his coffee, then with more compassion, added, “He’ll be good to her.”

“She’s my maid. She’s always been my maid. Whatever shall I do?”

“You’ll manage, Mama. You always do.”

“I’m worried about Fayette. She has no idea what life is like.”

“She was a slave, Mama. And you were a slave owner. That was what life was like for her. By running off with Edison, she freed you both. Don’t you understand that?”

Lily’s face paled to chalk white. “How dare you?”

“Somebody in this family had better dare. You’ve managed to wander through life without even saying the word slave. Without even thinking it. Servants, you call them. Maids. Field hands. Laundresses. But they were slaves. Property. Chattel. You owned them, body and soul.”

“Ryan, what’s happened to you? When did you become so harsh?”

“What’s harsh, Mother, is the lash of a slave owner’s whip.”

Tears filled her eyes. “My maid has never felt the touch of a whip. I love Fayette.”

“Then let her go, Mama. That’s the only way to love her.”

The tears overflowed then, coursing down her cheeks as her shoulders shook. “I’m so frightened. Everything’s changing so fast.”

“Some changes are long past due.” Ryan found a handkerchief and Lily dried her cheeks with meticulous care.

Isadora blinked, astonished and elated. “I know you shall miss her, Lily. We all will. But it’s for the best.”

Lily took a nervous sip of her coffee. “A noble thought, but naive. Fayette was better off with me. She claimed to love Edison, but love can’t fill an empty belly, nor keep the world at bay. The quilombos are horrid places. One of the housemaids told me that a runaway is in danger from the police, as well as from other fugitives.”

“Can the slave patrols arrest her?” Isadora asked anxiously. The Fugitive Slave Law, that legislative abomination, had been in force in Boston for several months now. The law had created terror among the city’s African people, free or not. Tension tore apart families, made neighbors distrust neighbors. She wondered if Brazil had a similar law.

“There is no extradition to the United States,” Ryan said, leaning back laconically in his chair.

“But she could be forced into service here.” Lily’s voice rang hollow with baffled hurt. “She is in more peril as a free woman than she ever was as my servant.” She pushed back from the table, clearly too agitated to sit still. “There’s an epidemic of yellow fever in the city. What if she falls ill? Or starves? Or is harmed by criminals? What if—”

“You can help by setting her free. Legally. I’ll see that the papers are drawn up for you,” Ryan said. “That way, she won’t be considered a fugitive. Fayette is not a child. And she’s not yours. She was never yours. Her will is hers and hers alone. So if she chooses to go off with Carneros, your only choice is to allow it.” He rose from the table and gently kissed her on the cheek. “She knew the risks, and she chose freedom.”

He went to the door. “I have to go to the city to see about her manumission papers.” He bowed, the gallant gesture at odds with his unkempt appearance. “Ladies.”

Isadora stared after him. He was the strangest man, rude as a longshoreman even as he helped free a slave woman. Capricious, that’s what he was. He had probably already forgotten last night’s embrace. How many times did the lesson have to be hammered into her? It was only a kiss, she told herself. She was far too old to romanticize a mere kiss, and far too proud to admit that it might mean more to her than it had to Ryan Calhoun.

She knew her heart shone in her eyes, knew Lily was watching her curiously, but she couldn’t help herself. Last night had meant nothing to Ryan. He probably didn’t remember it at all. Didn’t remember dancing with her, holding her, kissing her until she saw stars.

She couldn’t blame him, not really. What man alive would admit to kissing the spinster of Beacon Hill?

Ryan hoped his display of nonchalance had been convincing. He’d awakened the morning after the masquerade with a throbbing headache and a profound feeling of thwarted desire.

Thoughts of Isadora Peabody plagued him during the trek to the harbor and nagged at him when he was supposed to be concentrating on bribing an official for a carta de alforria for Fayette. He delivered the letter of liberty to Edison Carneros, who thanked him with tears in his eyes.

But once he returned to business, Ryan’s thoughts wandered to Isadora again, when he should have been formulating the correct tonnage for ballast. He snapped at the men, made errors in his figuring and broke a half dozen pen nibs.

Journey shooed him off to his quarters, where he took the ship’s cat in his lap, scowled out the stern windows at the jangadas plying to and fro and thought about Isadora some more.

He had no doubt he could rouse her ardor; she’d certainly responded eagerly enough. But it was a false emotion, one based on physical need. Ryan had no right to steal her heart.

He supposed he could make her forget all about Chad Easterbrook, given the time and temperament for seducing an inhibited woman. But Ryan occupied a precarious position, balanced uncertainly between unimaginable success and devastating failure. He had picked the worst possible time to pursue the daughter of Boston’s most prominent family.

He should go on pretending the kiss had never happened.

But God. She kissed like an angel.

It was true, painfully true, and he had the experience to know the difference. Isadora’s kiss brought back all the wonder and yearning and innocence and hope of youth. Her kiss reminded him of why the kiss was invented.

Yet he had learned to do without love in the past. His father had taught him that. Ryan decided to do what he had always done when his heart threatened to steer him toward a course of disaster. He’d throw himself into his work, spend the next week in feverish labor alongside the crew and avoid her until they set sail.

The voyage home was a different story; he didn’t even want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about seeing her relaxing on deck with a book or hauling in sheets alongside the men or fishing off the stern with the Doctor. Didn’t want to think about her lying alone in her solitary berth, a single candle burning down to midnight while she dreamed of...what? Chad? Good God, not him. Ryan shouldn’t know or care about Isadora’s dreams.

For the next few days, he worked long and hard, sleeping on shipboard and taking his meals with other skippers on their vessels in the harbor. But shortly before they were to set sail, he knew he could no longer put off the trek to Tijuca. He went back up the mountainside to his aunt’s villa.

“Hello, Mama,” he said, finding her on the patio, looking serene and relaxed as she and her sister shelled beans into a carved wooden bowl. As he bent to kiss her cool cheek, he couldn’t help admiring how adaptable Lily was. She switched roles from plantation mistress to world traveler to genteel houseguest with amazing ease. “I thought I’d find you packing your things.”

Lily and Rose exchanged a glance, then his mother said, “Son, I’ve decided to stay with Rose.”

“For how long?”

“Permanently,” she said.

Ryan gave a low whistle. “But what about Albion?”

“That place hasn’t been my home since Hunter inherited it. Now, don’t scowl like that—Hunter has been a perfect angel, letting me know I have a home there for the rest of my life if I so choose.” She set aside the bowl of beans. “Albion isn’t my home anymore, nor my life. My travels on the Continent left me a changed woman. Seeing Rose again and losing Fayette only made the future that much clearer to me.” She beamed at her sister. “My home is with my family, and these days, my family is Rose.”

“I think that’s fine, Mama,” Ryan said, and he meant it. There was something both comforting and appropriate in the image of the two sisters gracefully growing old together in the middle of paradise.

“And you’ll visit often, of course,” she said, leaning forward anxiously in her chair.

“I will,” he said, and he meant that, too.

“We’ll be sending a crate down to the harbor,” Rose said. “Lily and I picked out some fripperies for Isadora. She doesn’t seem the sort to buy things for herself, so we took the liberty of choosing some mementos of her time with us.”

“Where is she?” Ryan hoped his voice sounded nonchalant. “Packing?”

“Oh, I’m quite certain she’s already done that. I believe she’s gone exploring again,” Lily said.

He narrowed his eyes. “Exploring?”

“She’s been going off by herself constantly,” Rose said. “She insists on taking in as much sightseeing as she possibly can. I believe today’s expedition was to sketch some of the local flora and fauna.”

He felt a twinge of irritation. “She shouldn’t go off by herself.”

“There hasn’t been anyone for her to go off with these past several days,” Lily said pointedly.

“So where did she go today?” Ryan demanded.

“Into the rain forest. She wished to visit the Springs of Our Lady of Gloria do Outeiro.”

“And she went alone.”

Rose nodded. “The walk is not a demanding one. But I fear she didn’t take anything to eat or drink with her.” She patted a basket covered with a red embroidered napkin. “Angelica had this all fixed for her, and she forgot it.”

Rose and Lily exchanged a glance that made Ryan think immediately of conspiracy. “Mama,” he warned.

“Perhaps you could take her the basket,” Lily suggested, all innocence.

Ryan swore under his breath. He should let her starve in the jungle.

But he knew damned well he wouldn’t.

Isadora stopped to sketch an orchid she saw hanging from a huge, smooth-barked tree. Curling her feet under her, she sank to the spongy floor of the rain forest and studied the spray of deep pink blooms. According to her field guide, it was a moth orchid. The orchids and bromeliads intrigued her, for they seemed to be born of air and mist rather than earth and water, hanging from tree branches or liana vines as if they were butterflies that might take flight any moment.

She wished her quick pencil strokes could capture the lushness of the thick creamy petals. She longed for a palette that might do justice to the mysterious quality of the diffuse light that shone through the emerald forest.

If only she could uncork herself like a bottle and let the atmosphere pour in, become part of her. In Boston, nature had been kept at bay by concrete edifices and pruned hedgerows and fences. In Brazil the forest was an aggressive presence, spilling exuberantly through ravines and over walls, filling the cracks between rocks, sneaking across man-made pathways that, only the day before, had probably been clear.

The sheer abundance bombarded her senses. Flowers exploded like flames from shadowy places or rocky heights. Tumbling rapids knifed through rock and vegetation, an ice-blue blade slicing a path to the sea. Birds flew in hyacinth or yellow flocks beneath the high canopy formed by the trees.

Yet as overwhelmed as Isadora was with the splendor of the forest, she was gripped by a wistful ache to share her sense of discovery. Aunt Button would have loved this. But Aunt Button was gone. Isadora didn’t know anyone else who would feel this awe and wonder. And that lack diminished it somehow, made it seem less important, less wondrous.

Ryan,she thought.

She shook off the impossible notion before it could depress her. Taking up her pencil again, she completed her drawing of the orchid. Perhaps she would write a chronicle of her days here and publish it. That way, kindred spirits—people totally unknown to her—could read her words and share her wonder.

But how could mere words possibly capture the almost painful thud of ecstasy she felt when she looked up at the dazzling sunlit green of the forest canopy? Words were such inadequate tools to convey her delirious rapture over something so beautiful that her eyes smarted with tears.

She finished sketching and walked on, trying to find a turn of phrase to describe that particular quality of light as it slanted down from impossibly blue skies through a faceted filter of leaves, ferns, mosses, epiphytes. As she hiked uphill, it occurred to her that she should feel winded with exertion, her legs weak from all the activity. But, oddly, that was not the case. She felt more fit and spry than ever before in her life.

Angelica, the maid who had befriended her the first day at Villa do Céu, had told Isadora that if she climbed high enough she would find a great cataract where the spring was born from the earth. According to local wisdom, the water here was the sweetest and coldest in the mountains. The spring was so prized that the maker of Brazil’s best aguardente hired water carriers to bring down great casks on their shoulders. Today the path was deserted.

Before long the climb grew steeper and strewn with rocks. The liquid song of the rushing water beckoned her. She rounded a bend in the path, pushed aside the nodding fronds of a banana tree and knew she had almost reached the source.

Wet mossy rocks held a slick clear glow, brighter than diamonds. The trees and flowers growing along the verges swayed with the force of the torrent. The sounds of wind and water created a complex, elusive melody, filling her with a wild pleasure that she felt in every cell of her body.

The sense of imminent discovery held her in its thrall as she climbed on. Yet gradually she became aware of another sound, one nearly masked by the murmur of tumbling water and the rustle of leaves.

She stopped and looked behind her, suddenly apprehensive.

Her mind whirled with images of the dangerous creatures that lived in the rain forest. Vampire bats. Jaguars. Arrow poison frogs. Giant, ill-tempered sloths. Five-hundred-pound gorillas. Snakes that could squeeze the life out of a person.

She stepped off the path, setting her sketchbook down and grabbing a thick length of wood from the ground. Slimy creatures and frantic beetles scattered from the hollow it left in the fecund ground.

As she crouched in the shelter of a bush, her heart pounded painfully in her chest. Sweat trickled down her throat into the neckline of her dress. She wished she had listened to Angelica and gone native for today’s outing. But native garb always reminded her too poignantly of her excursion to the market with Ryan, whom she was trying her best to forget.

The footsteps came closer. She thought of the warnings Angelica had given her when she’d started her forays into the wild. Native tribes lived in the forest; some of them were warlike or merely aggressively inquisitive. Rose had also warned her about the quilombos, bands of fugitive slaves that attacked first and asked questions later.

A shadow slipped over her—huge, forbidding, sinister. She acted without thinking. Using all her strength, she brought the club crashing down.