The Charm School

by Susan Wiggs

  She bobbed an awkward curtsy. “Captain, a moment of your time—”

  “Allow me to introduce Mr. Dickie Warbass of the Customs Office,” he said, not even looking at her.

  “How do you do.” Another hasty curtsy. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I must—”

  “This is the one, right here.” He thrust a document into her hands. “Mr. Warbass and I have been searching for half an hour for some form in Portuguese.”

  She frowned down at the paper. “But Captain, I—”

  “What does it say?” he asked. “I apologize for our haste, but Mr. Warbass has other duties to attend to this morning and we mustn’t keep him.”

  “You have a launch?” she asked the official.

  “Of course.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Warbass could take her off the ship. Back to her mother and father and their baffled but familiar affection. Back to her brothers and sisters, so perfect and humorous that the world worshiped at their feet. Back to pining for Chad Easterbrook, praying he’d notice her. Back to the whirl of a society that did not welcome her.

  Troublesome thoughts, for certain, but not nearly so troublesome as the idea of making a rough sea voyage in the company of strangers to a foreign land. She couldn’t believe she’d actually come this far.

  She felt as if she were tumbling out of control through unknown waters, like a barnacle pried forcibly from the dock.

  She inched her spectacles down her nose and peered over the rims to read the document. “It’s a copy of the consignment agreement with a firm called Ferraro and Son. Is that what you had in mind, Captain?”

  He pointed to a space at the bottom. “My signature goes here, I presume?”

  “Yes, and you’re welcome,” she said pointedly.

  “Welcome to what?”

  She shut her eyes until patience returned. “Never mind. The date as well. And a mark…a seal of note.”

  “I’ve got that right here.” Warbass produced a brass seal.

  While they worked on the documents, Isadora’s attention wandered to the activity on the ship. Responding like clockwork soldiers to the shouted orders of the chief mate, the crew sent up the topgallant sails and courses, the royals and flying jib. They moved with athletic litheness and a surety of their place in the world.

  Favoring her injured ankle, she leaned her head back, growing dizzy from the view of the masts swaying high overhead. Then something—the heel of her shoe, perhaps—hooked into a coil of line. She wheeled her arms, grabbing at anything, finding a web of rope nearby. The moment she clutched it, a series of knots along the rail came loose, unraveling like a row of knitting being pulled apart.

  Luigi, the sail maker, roared an Italian obscenity and dove for the reeling line. Mortified, Isadora pressed her palms to her burning cheeks.

  “Miss Peabody?” Captain Calhoun’s voice was a low, deadly murmur near her ear.

  A chill rippled down her spine. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Do you suppose you could create another disaster? It’s half past seven and you’ve only created one so far.”

  The stinging heat of tears blinded her. She willed them away. “I don’t find that amusing, Captain.”

  “Nor does Mr. Conti.” He gestured at the still-screaming Italian. “Would you mind feeding the kitten?” His voice was falsely soft, falsely calm.

  She wrinkled her forehead in bafflement. “Feed the…?”

  “Kitten. She’s in my quarters. Hasn’t been well since I took her aboard. There’s milk in one of the decanters. Perhaps a little of that and some sardines.”

  “You have a kitten aboard, and you want me to feed her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe that’s part of my duties.”

  “If you don’t go feed the damned cat now,” he said, that silky Southern voice rising with each word, “you’ll be picking oakum for the next six months.” He seemed to grow in stature as the threat exploded from him. He really was a tall man, startlingly so. Rarely had she met a man taller than she, but here was one. A very angry one.

  “Very well,” she said, refusing to flinch before his temper. Ankle smarting, she headed aft, determined to dispense with the task and return in time to escape in Mr. Warbass’s launch.

  Muttering under her breath, she stepped into the dim chamber. Being alone in Captain Calhoun’s private quarters made her feel inappropriately intrusive. Recalling the first time she’d come here, she glanced at the shrouded bunk and shuddered. He was a profligate, a womanizer. She should be glad she was leaving.

  “Here, kitty,” she called softly. As her gaze darted here and there, she realized she wasn’t looking for a cat. She was looking at the things that made up Ryan Calhoun’s world. A stack of books—novels and monographs and sailing manuals. A logbook and ledger on the desk. A small oval of porcelain bearing the likeness of his mother. A sampler stitched with the saying Fine Words Butter No Parsnips.

  From the kneehole of the desk came a faint mewing sound. Isadora got down on her hands and knees, huffing a little as her corset squeezed her, and made a coaxing motion with her hand. “There you are.”

  A small, sleek body shot past her to a dark corner under the stern windows. Staying low, Isadora followed. “Come out, you little scamp. Come and eat. I can’t believe he could forget to feed you this morning.”

  She had nearly reached the cat when it tried to squeeze itself into a gap in the paneling. With a frown, she slid the panel aside. She saw, with some surprise, a large, steel money safe. The sight sent a nervous chill down her back, and she glanced guiltily over her shoulder. She should not be here. But now the cat was stuck inside.

  “Here, kitty,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “Oh, do come out.”

  The tiny cat poked forth a wary pink nose, then its small gray head, then its skinny body. Isadora took it gently beneath the middle and draped it over her arm. Trustingly, the cat relaxed like a fur stole. Nearly shaking with relief, Isadora slid the panel shut. She found the milk and sardines and, wrinkling her nose in distaste, created a horribly unappetizing mass in a small tray on the stern bench.

  The cat settled down to eat with great delicacy.

  Outside, a whistle sounded again and something bumped heavily into the hull. Quickly, Isadora went back to the deck.

  Just in time to see Ryan Calhoun waving farewell to Mr. Warbass, whose launch was headed into port.

  “He left!” she said in dismay.

  “He did,” Ryan agreed.

  “But I wanted to—”

  “Captain, the navigator’s ready for our coordinates,” said Mr. Click, the second mate. “I’ve entered them into the deck log.”

  “Excuse me.” Ryan Calhoun walked away from her.

  Before she could protest, a grinding sound rumbled through the air. She saw men turning around the capstan, bringing in the great anchors from fore and aft. The ship rolled a little, wallowed and settled like a duck laying an egg. More shouts, more running about.

  Dear God, she was leaving. Leaving against her will. She was as much a prisoner as a pirate’s captive. She didn’t know whether to scream or weep.

  And then, high above, a wonder occurred.

  With a great, unearthly whoosh, the wind filled the sails.

  It was not an event she could have imagined or guessed at by watching from shore or looking at prints or paintings. The seamed canvas pulsed with a life of its own, much as the wings of a great bird took on their life from both the bird and from the wind that went underneath them and lifted. A burgeoning. A blossoming.

  By holding a rail and leaning back, she could gaze up and see nothing but white canvas and blue sky, their contrast sharp and so intense it made the eyes smart. Then she looked ahead at the sea rolling out before the bow and almost wept with the beauty of it. Glassy swells rose before the ship as the Swan pulled into the main trades. The sensation of speed was so acute that Isadora heard a stream of laughter. Pure, clear laughter.

  A
nd to her amazement, she realized that the glad sound was coming from her. It sprang from the depths of a joy she had never known before.

  When had she ever, ever laughed like this?

  She passed the first hour of the voyage in this rapturous state, simply standing with her hand gripping a shroud while the men went about their duties and the sea swept them into its vast embrace.

  She’d had no idea it would be intoxicating. She grew dizzy as she inhaled the salt tang, tinged with resin and tar. The blood seemed to pulse faster in her veins, giving her a heady feeling of possibility. She inhaled deeply, wincing when her corset stopped her from filling her lungs to the brim. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would wear the garment a notch looser. For what did it matter if she relaxed a bit? This was her adventure. She had no one to impress so long as she performed her duties. After the voyage she would never see these people again.

  She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds.

  The very thought opened her to something she had forbidden herself to do for a long time. She began to feel hope again. To yearn. She had always been good at dreaming, but what she had never done before was believe a dream could actually come true. She believed now. The wonder of setting sail created possibilities she had never considered before.

  Finally, she sensed a presence nearby and turned. There stood Captain Calhoun, looking handsome and windblown in clothing far different from his shore togs. He had on trousers of well-worn, glove-soft fabric that hugged his hips in a way that was positively indecent. In contrast, his shirt blew loose around the chest and shoulders, lending him a piratical air.

  Her resentment over the cat came rolling back at her. “Something else, Captain?” She was surprised—and rather proud—of her caustic tone.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She forced her gaze away from the amazing trousers. “No dogs to feed? Perhaps the resident hamster or vole?”

  Sunlight glinted in his eyes, but he didn’t smile. “No vole,” he said. “No hamster. The rats will fend for themselves.”

  “Then perhaps there’s something that actually requires my skills.”

  “Ah.” His gaze swept over her with lazy insolence. “You have skills?”

  Isadora looked at his intent face, the blue eyes, the wind-reddened cheeks. She refused to rise to his baiting. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, Captain. None at all.”

  Standing in the cockpit with William Click, who was taking a turn at the helm, Ryan kept a weather eye on Isadora Peabody. Her first day at sea was a marvel to her. She reveled in the wind and waves, conversing with the sailors with far less bashfulness than she’d exhibited earlier, and even joining in a small task or two—tying off a ratline, fastening the anchor hitch.

  When he saw her handling the sails or letting go the brails, he felt a stab of chagrin. He wanted her to suffer, not flourish. He wanted her to learn her place, not make a place for herself on shipboard.

  Yet every so often she would lift her face to the wind and close her eyes. A look of rapture would come over her, and in spite of himself, he could feel a strange, unwanted affinity for her. He felt the same sentiment under sail. Only a true lover of the sea could relate to the chest-tightening, ecstatic sense of anticipation.

  Christ. The woman even robbed that joy from him by learning to love what he had always loved.

  “How’s your mother doing, Captain?” asked Click.

  “The seasickness is at her. And her maid, too. I expected as much.” Ryan had checked on Lily and Fayette frequently, cracking open the door to their cabin to find them both lying green-lipped and limp upon their berths, Fayette praying softly and Lily staring miserably out the small portal. Isadora had offered to attend to them, but they declined, preferring to keep their misery private.

  “The new one doesn’t seem at all affected by it,” Click observed, nodding in Isadora’s direction. She stood like a figurehead with her face pointed into the wind, taking bracing gulps of sea air. “Odd bird, ain’t she?”

  Ryan studied the second mate, with his bitten-off ear and leather vest with the rabbit’s foot in the pocket and a juju bag full of bat bones on a string around his neck. “You would know, Mr. Click. You would know.”

  He charted the coordinates and observed the changing of the first watch. The Doctor served dinner, which Ryan ate standing up—scouse, hasty pudding and salt beef, a fresh apple and a healthy squeeze of lime juice.

  Then, drawn by an impulse of deviltry, he went to the bow where Isadora stood. Her bonnet—the silly gray one he disliked—had blown off and bounced against her back with each breath of the wind. Her light-brown hair had been plucked from its topknot, and yard-long streamers tangled idly in the breeze. She seemed oblivious to her dishevelment as she watched the progress of the ship.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked without greeting her.

  “I had half an apple for my dinner, and it was quite enough, thank you. I don’t want to risk getting seasick.” She pursed her lips in prissy superiority.

  “Eat something,” Ryan said intractably. “That’s an order.”

  She sniffed, poking her nose into the air. “Your orders are foolish. Last time you gave me an order, you missed your chance to get rid of me.”

  A lead weight sank slowly in Ryan’s gut. “Do tell.”

  “I was going to go back to Boston in Mr. Warbass’s launch, but you sent me on that foolish errand about the cat—”

  “You kept getting underfoot—”

  “—and by the time I was finished, the launch had left.”

  The lead weight of regret hit bottom. “Next time you decide to abandon ship, remind me not to stop you.”

  “Remind yourself not to be so rude,” she returned.

  An idea struck him. “We’ll be hailing ships all through the next several days. I’ll put you on one that’s headed back into Boston.”

  She gave that superior-sounding sniff again. “You’re too late. I’ve decided to stay. You see, I realized what the problem was.” Her tone reminded him of a schoolmarm’s lecture. “The upheaval before a voyage upsets even a seasoned traveler. It’s an enormous undertaking, leaving one’s home and becoming a part of a tiny universe here in the middle of the sea. Anyone with a half-decent imagination is bound to have misgivings.”

  She stared directly at him, and said, “I suppose I should thank you. This voyage is going to be an adventure I should not like to miss. It was rude of you to order me about, but since it had such happy consequences, I forgive you.”

  “Don’t forgive me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t apologize, you goose!”

  “Well!” Indignation huffed from her.

  They stood in discomfiting silence for a time, listening to the song of the wind through the shrouds, the rhythmic creak of timber and the surge of saltwater past the hull. Seating herself on a lashed crate, she took out a steel-tipped pen and wrote something on the paper secured to the marbled board she held.

  “What are you writing?” Ryan asked.

  “Blinding rush of blue. It’s the most perfect phrase to describe the way the sea races past the hull.”

  “A letter home, then?”

  “It’s…um…private.”

  She shouldn’t have said that. He snatched the letter from her. “There’s no privacy on shipboard.”

  “Captain!”

  He would have given it back, but he kept remembering her words to Chad Easterbrook. I shall write a letter daily, telling you of all my adventures.

  Ryan glanced down at the board. She had a fine, legible hand.

  “Dear Mr. Easterbrook…” He didn’t have to read further. She was writing to the upright, insufferable Chad Easterbrook. What the hell had he ever done to earn such constancy?

  “Give that back,” she said, standing up, raising her voice.
/>   Ryan told himself this was none of his affair. He told himself he shouldn’t feel a hot stab of irritation that this Yankee spinster had given her admiration and esteem to Chad Easterbrook.

  “Not until you let me count the ways you love him,” Ryan teased. “For truly, he is a man of many facets. At least two.” He glanced at the page again and read further. Instead of the breathless schoolgirl phrases he expected to find, the contents of the note shocked him completely.

  …main stateroom is in an untidy state, and there is a steel money safe secreted under the banquette…

  Fury made the words melt before his eyes. “Ah. Never let it be said you’re not thorough, my dear Witch of the Wave. But then, shouldn’t you be listed on the manifest as spy rather than clerk or translator?”

  “Give that back,” she said again, reaching for the letter.

  The wind rattled the paper and then plucked it from his fingers. “Oops,” he said.

  “How dare you,” she snapped, stepping forward, the pen clenched in her fist.

  “It was an accident.” He widened his eyes in innocence.

  She heaved an exasperated sigh. “I shall only write another.”

  “That’s how you did it, then,” he said, glaring at her. “You got Abel to send you on this voyage by promising to monitor my every move.”

  “You can hardly blame him. He didn’t find you in a trustworthy…state that first night.”

  “He found me hopelessly drunk and in the process of seducing a half-naked wench. Did you write that down, hm?”

  “I—”

  “Suppose I report to you each time I take a piss. Will you be writing that, too?”

  She squinted at him, then pushed down her eyeglasses and peered over the top of them. “You are the rudest man I have ever met.”

  “Sugar, if you think that was rude, hang on to your bloomers, because I intend to get a lot worse.”

  Ryan stood back, watching her. When she wasn’t squinting, her eyes were quite remarkable, gold-flecked and strangely compelling. “Why do you look over the top of those spectacles in order to see?”

  “Because everything up close is blurred when I look through them.” She snapped her mouth shut and blanched.