The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Twenty-One

“Home” is any four walls

that enclose the right person.

—Helen Rowland

Mockjack Bay, Virginia, March 1852

“Land ho!” came the shout from the main-topmast.

Isadora, who had yelled the observation with all her might, grinned across at Gerald Craven, who clung to the jibboom. “I’ve always wanted to say that,” she confessed.

“You sounded like an old salt,” Gerald assured her.

“I am an old salt.” She looked in rueful bemusement at her plain kersey skirt—no petticoats—hiked up between her legs to form pantaloons. Sunshine had bronzed her skin to a rich hue that would have her mother bustling her into a bath of milk and rosewater. Her hair had disintegrated into a mass of hopeless golden brown curls held out of the way with a leather tie. The crew of the Swan accepted her this way, perhaps even preferred it, so she rarely thought about her mode of dress.

The voyage from Rio had been uneventful but far from tedious. In the early weeks she’d stayed busy working through masses of paperwork generated by all the transactions Ryan had made on behalf of Abel Easterbrook. It soon became apparent to Isadora and the rest of the crew that the voyage had been enormously successful. No one would desert when they called at Virginia; all would complete the trip home in order to earn a full share.

Anticipation of a lucrative payout raised everyone’s spirits. Yet the prospect of landfall disconcerted Isadora. On the high seas, she enjoyed a peculiar sense of liberation. The men of the Silver Swan didn’t judge her by the way she looked or dressed. Day by day she had slipped deeper and deeper into her role—friend, teacher, helpmeet, listener, learner. One day she forgot to don a certain set of petticoats; the next she left them off deliberately. By the time she spied the misty green hills of Virginia, she had taken to wearing her simplest skirt and blouse; more often than not she remained barefoot and bareheaded as she went about her duties.

For reasons she could not fathom, Ryan went out of his way to entertain her, to amuse her and to fulfill even her most capricious wishes. When she became enchanted by a school of dolphins, he ordered the crew to change tack to give her a better look, even though it took them off course. When she wanted to help with tarring down the mast, he rigged her a canvas seat on pulleys and called encouragement as she painted in the sun with one of the men lowering her away.

Yet for all the fun of his antics, the quiet times haunted her. There were moments when she would stumble upon him unexpectedly in the galley or the chart room and she’d freeze, overcome by memories of the rain forest. She had been certain, afterward, that nothing would ever be the same.

And she had been right.

When he turned and looked at her, she remembered the way he’d eyed her when he’d led her out of the lagoon and told her she resembled a goddess. If her gaze should happen to drop to his hands, she would recall the sensation of those hands caressing her. When he spoke, she heard the low timbre of his voice as he said, “Hold on to me, and I’ll show you.”

She remembered that day as one remembers a particularly vivid dream. Wrapped in rainbow mist, the memory dwelt apart from the rest of her life. It was an elusive jewel she could see shimmering in the distance but could never quite touch. On that one day of her life, she had been someone entirely different from Isadora Peabody of Beacon Hill. She had been nameless, a forest nymph who was beautiful for the first time in her life, naked and unashamed like Eve before the fall. She had felt passion and inspired it in a remarkable man. For one glorious day she’d been a stranger to herself.

All these thoughts would tumble through her heart and mind each time she encountered Ryan. But since their last conversation about that day, when all her uncertainties and bitterness and confusion had bubbled to the surface, they hadn’t spoken of it again.

During those discomfiting encounters, she could not guess at his thoughts. His face was an impenetrable mask.

And so by mutual, tacit agreement they had declared the rain forest interlude an aberration. For all practical purposes, the afternoon had never happened. And perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps it had happened to two entirely different people, people who didn’t exist anymore.

Now as she climbed down to the quarterdeck, she nearly ran into Ryan.

“Excuse me,” he said, stiffly formal. “I heard a cry of landfall.”

“That would be me,” she said.

“Oh.”

Stubbornly she refused to give way even though he clearly wanted to get past her. She was sick of being ignored, sick of denying what had happened. “Being invisible was always an advantage in Boston, but I assure you, it is not on a ship.”

“Invisible? I don’t know what you mean.”

“You look through me, not at me.”

“I apologize. I meant no insult.”

His flat, polite manner infuriated her. She knew it was reckless, but she wanted to push him. “I think you’ve set about deliberately to confuse me.”

He scowled. “Trust me, I’ve more important things to do.”

“Then why are you being so polite and cordial?”

“So you can learn what it’s like.”

“All you’re teaching me is that kindness is a false veneer.”

“Oh? Would you rather I treat you as Chad Easterbrook treated you?”

“That,” she said, “is none of your affair.” She couldn’t believe how much her feelings for Chad had changed on this voyage. She had set sail cherishing a dream of him. In a few short months, he had become a distant and faintly absurd memory.

The men scrambled about their duties, making ready for landfall. Ryan handed her the spyglass and pointed.

“That’s Mockjack Bay.”

She peered through the glass, focusing the lens on the distant green shores. A half dozen masts clustered at the port, anchored offshore. Misshapen islands and long fingers of land reached into the water, then rose to blue-tinged hills corrugated by endless, rippling fields. Like spun-sugar palaces, houses and outbuildings crowned each rolling rise of land.

“It looks lovely there,” she said.

“I reckon it is. But I spent my youth looking out to sea.” He pointed to a more distant location. “See that house with the columns? That’s Bonterre, the home of our closest neighbors. Family called the Beaumonts.”

She could tell even from a distance that Bonterre was a huge estate. “It’s hard to conceive of the scale. New England farms are so small in comparison.”

He nodded. “The Beaumonts are the biggest landowners in the county. My half brother Hunter married Lacey Beaumont a few years back.”

She sighed, her imagination caught by the thought of the nuptials taking place at the fairy-tale palace in the distance. She wondered about Ryan’s past, his family, what it had been like growing up here. It was pleasant, also, to have a civil conversation with him. Perhaps friendship was not out of the question. Perhaps.

“Was the wedding terribly lavish?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know. I was too busy earning demerits at Harvard. Last time I saw Lacey, she was in pigtails and pinafores. She always did have an eye for Hunter, though. Ever since we were kids.”

Isadora tried to guess how he felt about his half brother. But his expression was neutral, his tone casual. She could determine nothing.

“Journey’s wife and little ones live at Bonterre,” he said.

“Will Journey be able to see them?”

His mouth thinned, and his gaze flickered away. “I don’t know.”

“But you’re practically family. You’re related to the Beaumonts by marriage.”

“It gets more complicated by the moment.” He heaved a sigh. The sea rushed away as the bark angled into the bay. “The wedding between Hunter and Lacey was more like a territorial alliance than a marriage.” He shaded his eyes and gazed toward shore. The bark had crossed the bar into Chesapeake and her leeward side offered a closer view of the shorefront estates. A dangerous hissing sound came from between Ryan’s teeth.

“What is it?” Isadora asked.

“Albion.” He grabbed the spyglass from her and peered through it. “Something’s wrong.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The fields are fallow. They haven’t been planted.”

“That’s customary, isn’t it? Leaving sections unplanted to restore richness to the soil?”

“Not for all the fields. Not for more than a season.”

“What do you suppose the trouble is?”

“I don’t know, but I reckon I’ll find out.”