The Charm School by Susan Wiggs
Eighteen
And there is even a happiness
That makes the heart afraid.
—Thomas Hood (1827)
Shaking from fear and exertion, Isadora looked at the stick in her hand, then down at the body on the ground. “Ye powers,” she said, dropping to her knees. “Ryan.”
He moaned, rubbing the back of his head. “I came here thinking you might be in danger,” he said. “But it appears you’re quite capable of defending yourself.”
She dropped the stick, frowning. “Did I hurt you?”
“Am I bleeding?”
Gingerly she moved his hair aside. “I don’t see any blood.”
Bracing his hands behind him, he sat up, adjusting a canvas knapsack on his shoulders. “You got me at the thickest part of my skull,” he said. “I suppose there’s no harm done.”
“I’m ever so sorry.” But as she watched him lever himself to his feet and shake his head as if to clear it, her regret was tinged with wonder. Clubbing a man she believed to be an assailant was such an un-Isadoralike thing to do.
“I like knowing you can defend yourself. But next time, do me a favor and practice on a tree or something.”
She suppressed a smile, feeling equal parts silly and sheepish. “Why would you think I’m in danger?”
A shadow passed over his eyes. They lost their usual sparkle and clarity, and as she often did, she sensed a depth in him he was reluctant to show. “You could get lost in here.”
“I’ve kept to the path.”
He took her hand. “So you have. As long as I’ve come this far, I might as well find this fabled spring or lagoon or whatever it is.”
She felt a subtle thrill at the prospect of taking him on the trek with her. “Perhaps it’s the fountain of youth.”
“Just what I need. To be a boy again.”
“You still are,” she murmured, feeling an unexpected tenderness for him. They started up the path. She glanced at him sideways, liking the feel of her hand in his. “What was it like? Your boyhood?”
“Like any Virginia boyhood, I imagine. A big house, a distant father and an army of tutors.”
“And a staff of slaves,” she interjected. “Did it always strike you as unjust?” she couldn’t resist asking. “When you were younger?”
“No. My father was a cold man, but not a harsh master. He never hired an overseer who was harsh, either. So I didn’t see the ugliest face of slavery when I was coming up. I never saw the flogging and torture. The starvation. The rape.”
She winced.
“The very young don’t often grasp subtle cruelties, and I suppose I was no different.” He took a deep breath, studied a liana hanging over the path, then held it aside for her to pass under. “I guess the first time I understood what slavery really meant was when Journey married Delilah. After the ceremony, they were given an hour of privacy. Then they took Delilah away—she belongs to a neighbor—and I watched them say goodbye. I watched Journey, who was well over six feet tall even then, break down and cry. There’s no way I could watch that and not feel the evil in my heart. So that was when I made up my mind.”
She felt a thickness in her throat. “To set Journey free.”
“Yes.” He walked on, still holding her hand. “How much farther is it, anyway?”
“I’m not certain.” Her nerves buzzed with apprehension. Since the morning after the masque, they had not seen each other. Perhaps he’d forgotten the kiss. She prayed that he had, for it was embarrassing to think of it now, in the harsh light of day. He probably kissed women all the time. She had seen him do so, the very first night she’d met him.
The trees towered like sentinels, their leathery leaves and buttressed trunks giving them the strange look of watchful giants. Slender vines, strong as rope, draped like cables from the abundant foliage. Tiger butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom. Long mosses festooned the branches like the beards of old men. Here and there, secreted in the crook of a tree, dangled another orchid or bromeliad, their aerial roots bristling from blossoms of amazing beauty.
As they neared the top of the climb, a flight of macaws passed over. The colorful birds swooped so close that Isadora could feel the whir of their wings. Toucans and parrots squabbled in the high branches.
But far more splendid than anything she’d seen so far was the waterfall. From a towering bluff of dark wet rock, the cataract hurled itself down into a deep, clear pool. Issuing forth a sound like thunder, the stream crashed with a violence that made her shiver. Yet where the falls plunged into the lagoon, the spray threw up rainbow arcs of light. The pervasive mist formed a layer of glitter, light as air, through the surrounding rocks and trees.
Isadora caught her breath, feeling delirious with pleasure as she inhaled the tingle of the mist in her nostrils.
“Well?” Ryan asked. “What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful beyond words,” she said. “I wish I could capture it in a letter or sketch to show people, but it’s too big, too powerful for that.”
“No letters then?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“No letters, nor even a journal entry. I’ve been quite the delinquent lately.” She held her breath, waiting for him to say something cutting about her reports to Abel.
“Let’s go down near the water.” He took her hand again. “Careful, it’s slippery.”
He found a spot on an outcropping of rock where the sun had penetrated the leafy canopy. Shrugging off his knapsack, he motioned for her to sit.
Isadora felt awkward as she spread her skirts and sank down. What a lot of trouble skirts and petticoats were for a woman who dared to do more than sit in a parlor or garden arbor.
“I brought lunch,” he said.
She stared. “You planned this.”
“Not exactly. In fact, I have a hundred other things I should be doing. But my dear aunt and mother had other plans for me.”
Thank you, Rose and Lily.
They dined on sausage rolls and melon and they scooped water from the lagoon into their cupped hands. “It is sweet,” Isadora exclaimed as droplets cascaded down the front of her. She didn’t care about getting wet, not when the water was more pure than the air itself.
When they finished eating, Ryan took out a small greenish tube of tobacco that reminded her of a cheroot, or perhaps one of her father’s cigars. “Now this,” he said, “was not sent by my mother.”
Striking a match on a rock, he lit it and smoked for a while, then held it out to her. “You smoke it like a cigar.”
“I don’t smoke cigars.”
“It’s not tobacco, but an herbal plant.”
She sniffed the little swirl of gray-green smoke that came from it. “Ye powers, that’s strong. What sort of herb?”
“Hemp. A common weed, really. Here. Inhale the smoke and hold it a moment. Like this.” He drew on the thin cigar until its tip glowed an angry red. He closed his eyes, holding himself still for a moment, then he exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke.
Isadora draped her arms around her drawn-up knees. “And I should do this because...?”
“Because it’s something new. Different. You will feel the most interesting effects.” He grinned. “Temporary, I assure you. I would never do anything permanent to you, Isadora.” He offered the cigar again.
She hesitated. Soon she would be back in Boston, that world of stifling convention and proscribed rules. She’d never get this chance again. She took the proffered cheroot, touched the slightly moist end to her mouth, pursed her lips and sucked on it.
“Now that,” Ryan said, still grinning, “is ladylike.”
She spat out the smoke, wrinkling her nose at the sweetish herbal taste. “It’s awful,” she said. “When will I feel the effects?”
“You have to inhale the smoke along with a breath of air. Try again. Remember to hold it.”
She put the cheroot in her mouth, going crosseyed as she peered down at the glowing tip.
Roaring with laughter, Ryan fell back on the rock.
She ignored him and inhaled deeper. Her lungs fought to expel the offensive substance, winning the battle as she blew it all out with a terrific cough. Her vision hopelessly blurred by tears, she made yet another attempt. Finally she succeeded in trapping the smoke inside her long enough to feel a distinct tingling sensation. Little shocks of torchlike warmth eddied up and down her arms, her legs, making her feel weightless and euphoric.
She tried several more inhalations, enjoying the perception that each moment seemed to spin out with honeyed slowness, watching the colors of the rain forest meld and blur upon the water and hearing the buzz and whir of the birds and insects grow loud in her ears.
Ryan watched her with increasing fascination. “You took to that quickly, Isadora.”
She giggled. He was the only person in the world who could make her giggle. “I am a quick study.” She took a deep puff to demonstrate. “No wonder so many men smoke cigars.”
He laughed again. “This is a bit different.”
Suddenly the water in the lagoon looked too clear and cool to resist. She unbuttoned her shoes and rolled her stockings down, never stopping to wonder if she should.
“Oh, my,” she murmured, swirling her bare toes in the water.
“Do you like it?”
“I believe I do.”
As so many other moments with Ryan, this one stood apart from the rest of her life. This was a magical place, she concluded, filled with mystery and excitement. Though a part of her wished to stay here forever, she knew she would have to return to her previous existence very soon. Then she looked at Ryan and wondered if it was even possible to go back, unchanged, and fit into her former life.
He folded his arms behind his head, leaned back against a tree trunk and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Have you had a good time in Rio, Isadora?”
She felt silly and pleasant from the smoking. “Do you ask that of all your interpreters?”
“Of course,” he said, deadly serious.
She inhaled more smoke, then handed it back to him. “I had better stop now.”
“Why stop now?” he asked, inhaling to keep the red tip burning. “Are you afraid I might kiss you again?”
She blushed furiously, but the herb made her tongue loose. “Maybe I’m afraid you won’t.”
Each movement very deliberate, he set down the cheroot. With his gaze intent upon her, he got up and went to her side, quite unapologetically taking her face between his two hands and kissing her firmly on the mouth.
“If I’d known you were worried, I would have done something about it long ago.” He removed his own shoes and socks and sat beside her on the rock, slowly kicking his feet back and forth. “How quickly do you suppose I can convince you to take a swim with me?”
“Here?” she asked, gesturing at the lagoon. Her hand floated very far away, not even a part of her. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“I shall have to think about it. There. I’ve thought about it. Yes indeed, I should like to bathe here. There are only two problems.”
“And what are they?”
“First, I have no bathing costume.” She picked up the cheroot and took a worried puff. A nice floating calm wafted over her.
He stood and extended his hand, helping her up. “Isadora. Toreador-a. I adore-a you. You don’t need a bathing costume. We’re completely alone here.”
She suspected some flaw in his logic, but she couldn’t quite decide what it was. While she pondered this, he matter-of-factly unbuttoned her bodice and parted it, carefully pulling it off her shoulders.
“What was the other reason?” he asked. “You said there were two.”
“Two what?”
“Reasons you can’t bathe here. And the first reason was not valid.”
“I’ve forgotten the second,” she said with a loud burst of woozy laughter.
He reached around behind her with both hands. She felt him unhooking the fastenings of her skirt. He smelled not unpleasantly of sweat, melon and smoke.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking your clothes off.”
“Oh. Should you be doing that?”
“Sugar, I should have done this a long time ago.”
“Oh,” she said again, stepping out of her skirt as it pooled around her ankles. He grumbled and swore at the corset—“steel stays, for Christ’s sake”—and cast it away with a flourish. Then off came her shift, camisole and bloomers.
“Ye powers,” she said, puffing on the green cigar again. “I’m naked.”
“Be patient, love.” Ryan tore at his shirt and trousers. “In a moment, I will be, too.”