The Charm School

by Susan Wiggs

  He had taken Isadora Peabody in his arms. He had kissed her.

  In the past, flouting convention had been a way of life for him. But Isadora, milled like the straightest of spars by convention, made him understand that he was not immune to censure. That things he did could cause profound effects.

  What fool notion had possessed him? It was not that he regretted kissing her—he simply didn’t have the conscience for that. What he regretted was her reaction. She had been so startled, so vulnerable that he knew she was in danger of letting the kiss mean far too much to her.

  This could signal a disaster. This could change everything between them, just when they had begun to move toward an accord. With Isadora, he had a relationship he’d never thought possible with a woman. He had a true friendship. Trust. Mutual respect. Equal footing. Delight in shared interests.

  Perhaps she would even quit making those infernal reports to Abel.

  He had probably destroyed it all by kissing her. So long as they were friends, he couldn’t harm her. But if he dared to move into her heart, he would strip away all her defenses, open her to a hurt she didn’t deserve. She was too fragile for a rogue like him.

  He crushed his eyes shut against the glaring morning sunlight. Damn it.

  Goddamn it all to hell.

  There were girls aplenty for kissing. But there was only one Isadora.

  He remembered her stiff posture, her shocked expression last night. She had been outraged in every cell of her body. He knew it. Could feel it emanating from her.

  But when she had softened in his arms, when she had moistened her lips and timidly touched him, he’d forgotten who she was. Forgotten she was born and bred of the Beacon Hill elite. Forgotten she and her kind looked down on Southerners, particularly those who moved in the company of pirates and cutthroats. Forgotten that her heart belonged to Chad Easterbrook whether the upright bit of plant life deserved her or not.

  Ryan of all people understood what it was like to want something you couldn’t have. To want it with all your heart and soul. To want it with a passion that made nothing else matter. He should respect that in Isadora.

  He got up and bathed in the cool water from the basin at the washstand, using a spicy scented soap, then cleaning his teeth with a tooth powder that tasted like anise. He thought of the long, laughing conversations they shared. The bickering and bantering. The quiet moments reading books. The satisfaction of taking a sounding on shipboard and finding that their figures agreed. That was the Isadora he wanted back. He had to return to the place they were before he had stepped over the line, to the friendship, the camaraderie, the respect.

  But even as he thought it, he knew he would keep pushing her. He liked seeing her unbend, liked making her laugh, and hell, he liked seeing her get mad.

  He was through pretending he was a gentleman. She knew better than that, anyway. She knew damned well that he was a groping mass of male desire. No more pretending, then. No more standing aside while she dreamed of Chad Easterbrook.

  Ryan was moving in for a good time.

  Isadora’s nightmare began when she awoke. It started with a maid barely more than four feet tall. Scolding like a jungle parrot, she blustered into the room and started ordering Isadora around in a musical Brazilian patois.

  “My name is Angelica. You can have your coffee and churro while I do your hair. And for the riding today, you may not wear that strange norteamericano gown. I have brought something much, much better….”

  “What riding?” Isadora managed to ask. “I don’t know how to ride.”

  “That is no matter. The burro knows what to do. All you have to do is sit. A monkey can sit.”

  “I am certainly not going to ride a jackass. Truly, I cannot—” Isadora almost choked on her fried bread. “What in heaven’s name is that?”

  Angelica laughed, her face jolly and appealing despite the sad state of her teeth. “It is your costume for riding.”

  “I won’t do it. I won’t put that on.”

  “Senhora Peabody, you are not going to insult your hostess by refusing, are you?”

  “I’m afraid I shall have to.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot let you.”

  The argument went on, but the diminutive servant proved the stronger, and by eight o’clock Isadora stood in the courtyard, dubiously eyeing a sleepy looking burro. She felt utterly ridiculous—Angelica had made her put on a strange, wide-legged split skirt that barely covered her shins. “Like the gauchos wear,” the maid had declared, buttoning the back of a loose white blouse.

  She felt completely naked. Yet without her corset and longcloth petticoats, she detected a comfort and ease that was alien to her. Well, she thought. If Rose insisted on riding a mule for a bit this morning, she could oblige.

  But it wasn’t Rose who came out to greet her in the courtyard.

  It was Ryan.

  After all their days together on shipboard, Isadora told herself, she should be used to his startling handsomeness, but she wasn’t. Freshly dressed in fitted dark breeches and a blousy white shirt, he looked more outrageously attractive than ever.

  She couldn’t help herself. She kept thinking of last night. It changed everything. Last night he had kissed her—too intimately to be dismissed as a friendly gesture, too lightly to be construed as true passion.

  His regrets had come almost instantly, she recalled. He’d hastened to return to the house, and the rest of the evening he’d studiously avoided her while regaling his aunt with tales of his adventures at sea.

  Isadora had somehow managed to endure the evening by sitting stiffly, her back rigid, nodding when spoken to and pleading fatigue far earlier than she should have, then disappearing into her chamber. She would have been able to get through today if she didn’t have to see Ryan. The longer she spent away from him, the more she could convince herself that their embrace had been a figment of her imagination.

  But now she had to look him in the eye by the dazzling light of day. All the feelings he had stirred in her—the warmth, the yearning, the frustration, the ecstasy—had barely cooled and in fact heated anew when he came near.

  She angled the flat brim of her straw hat over her eyes. “Was this your idea?”

  “Good morning to you, too,” he said cheerfully.

  Clearly, the night before hadn’t affected him at all. He was back to being the friendly, unconventional Ryan she’d known from the start.

  “I don’t ride, you know,” she said.

  “Before you boarded the Swan, you didn’t sail, either,” he replied.

  “But there was a point to sailing. I have no idea what the point of riding an ass is.”

  “Ah, you’ll see.” He grinned and went over to one of the burros. “Do you know how to mount it?”

  She felt a blush splotching her neck and cheeks. “How difficult can it be?”

  “I’ll hold its head and you get on.” He reached for the bridle. The animal bit at him, large yellow teeth snapping loudly. Ryan pulled his hand out of harm’s way. “This must be a female.”

  “You are so amusing.”

  He managed to hold the beast and she surprised herself by swinging easily into the saddle. The animal was small and short-legged, so that helped, and once settled astride, she understood completely why she had been made to wear the gaucho pants.

  After they were both mounted, she looked across the courtyard at Ryan and burst out laughing.

  “What?”

  “Your noble steed,” she said. “What a picture you make. I should call you Don Quixote.”

  “You are so amusing,” he said, mimicking her tone. “Come, Sancho. Our quest begins.”

  “Our quest for what?”

  “You’ll see.” He patted his saddlebag, then kicked his heels into the burro’s flanks. The little animal trotted forward, and Isadora’s mount followed.

  She enjoyed the ride too much. She loved seeing the countryside from the back of a plodding burro. Everything passed with delicious slowne
ss. They rode two abreast on the gravelly mountain pathways, winding downward toward the city. The hot, dry sun felt good. The hat brim shaded her face, but she could feel the brush of heat on her bare arms and the backs of her hands.

  She and Ryan spoke little as they descended the steep road to the heart of Rio. Isadora kept thinking of the way Ryan had touched her, holding her as if she were something fragile and fine, something he didn’t want to hurt yet couldn’t let go.

  Then she remembered that this was Ryan Calhoun. He had probably learned the seductive manner of embracing a woman from his countless lovers, and he’d honed it to a fine art. He had, in fact, come from the arms of another woman as if it didn’t matter whose embrace he shared. She was making a fanciful moment out to be too big an affair. They were together in a scented garden, coaxing an exotic animal out into the light, and the moment had been no more than that.

  That’s all it was. That’s all it could ever be. That’s all she dared to want it to be.

  “You’re living inside your head, Isadora,” Ryan called to her.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He swept one arm out to encompass the view of the harbor, the sparkling waters and the distant mountains. “I’ve brought you to paradise and you’re scowling. What are you thinking about that makes you scowl?”

  She felt the rash of a new blush. “Nothing. This is a different mode of travel for me, and I’m not used to it.”

  “Well, try enjoying the scenery, and the travel won’t bother you so much.”

  He was right, she discovered. Rio was endlessly fascinating, from the Fountain of the Laundresses with its chattering servants and energetic water boys stationed at the spigots to the fashionable rua do Ouvidor, where mysterious, bejeweled donas went about in curtained litters.

  They visited the ship and watched the discharging of the cargo. Ryan’s next task was to check the inventory against that of the consignee, then come to a reckoning of a price.

  “We’ll sail back with more specie than any other ship in Boston Harbor,” Ryan declared. “A hundred thousand pounds sterling.”

  From anyone else, she would have dismissed it as an idle boast.

  They tethered their mules at the edge of the vast, busy marketplace. Lusty voiced vendors hawked their wares from beneath gaily colored awnings. Some chanted rhymes or banged wooden clappers to get attention. Mounds of fruit, flowers, fish, cloth and every sort of small ware cluttered the market square.

  Ryan took her hand. Isadora felt a twinge of pleasure but immediately denied it. He had grabbed hold of her because the crowd surged around him. Nothing more.

  “Let’s shop,” he said.

  “For what?” Her gaze took in a veritable banquet of sights and sounds—the fruit, the coffee and vegetables, hammered metals from the mountain mines, jerked beef and cod, ungainly sacks of beans and rice, brilliantly dyed cloth and bamboo cages with exotic birds.

  “For everything,” Ryan declared.

  She couldn’t help herself. She laughed with delight. No matter how exasperating he could be, Ryan Calhoun made everything fun.

  The hours sped by as they walked through the market. They ate melons, letting the juice dribble down their chins. They sent a special fifty-pound sack of coffee to the Swan to take back to the Peabodys as a gift and bought a silver samovar for Arabella’s wedding gift. They picked out silver filigree earrings for Lily and Rose, a tortoiseshell comb for Fayette and a fancy cigar for Journey.

  Ryan bought something else from the jeweler, but tucked the small box away before Isadora could see what it was. Doubtless a trinket for one of his lady friends, she thought with a stab of jealousy.

  What a calamity it was, finding that she was jealous of harborside whores.

  She thrust away the disgusting thought. She would not let it mar her day. If she must fix her hopes on a man, she should be thinking of Chad rather than allowing her attention to stray to such an inappropriate man as Ryan Calhoun. Chad had held her heart for so long. She would not turn her back on him for the sake of an inconstant, swaggering sea captain.

  She knew better than to believe she meant anything to Ryan. She told herself to concentrate on her goal to be an asset to the company. She was too smart to open herself to heartache over Ryan Calhoun.

  Having settled that issue in her mind, she hurried toward a brightly painted puppet theater. She laughed at the antics of a pair of marionettes, translating the silly story for Ryan.

  “They fight like cats and dogs,” she said, pointing to the papier-mâché man and woman bobbing before the crowd, “and they’ve both gone off to a masquerade fantasia, each determined to find a more worthy love. And each discovers an exotic stranger.”

  The crowd guffawed and clapped as the puppets danced.

  “Let me guess,” Ryan said. “When they take off the masks, they discover they’ve been in love with each other all along.”

  “Of course.”

  “Just like in real life,” he said with a chuckle.

  He put his hand on the small of her back in order to steer her toward more vendors’ stalls. They perused pyramids of papayas and mangos. Her body responded to his light touch before her mind could deny it. She felt the warmth, the flush of pleasure, and by the time she realized what she was feeling, it was too late to stop herself from reacting.

  He stopped at a display of carnival masks.

  “No,” she said, guessing his intent.

  “Yes.” He bought a handful of feathered-and-gilt masks and a colorful fringed shawl. “For the lady,” he explained.

  “I don’t need it.”

  “Which is precisely why you must have it.” And he looped the shawl around behind her, using it as a sling to draw her closer and closer to him. She thought she might die of embarrassment.

  Instead, something unexpected happened. She started to enjoy the moment. The vendor and his friends laughed and clapped with delight. Isadora put her hands over her head and pantomimed the style of a flamenco dancer. Her hat fell back and trailed on its strings. Ryan held out the shawl like a matador’s cape and she charged him, grabbing the fabric from his grasp and teasing him with it.

  When their pantomime was finished, Ryan bowed deeply. He took Isadora’s hand and presented her to the crowd like a showman at the circus. She laughed long and loud, quite unable to believe that she, Isadora Peabody of Beacon Hill, was playing a street performer in the middle of the Brazilian mercado.

  They were leaving the marketplace when a handsome tilbury rolled to a halt in the street by the burros. A slender, dignified man of middle years stepped out.

  “Captain Calhoun?”

  “At your service,” Ryan said.

  “Your chief mate said I’d find you at the mercado. I am Maurício Ferraro.”

  Ryan broke into a grin. “My elusive consignee!”

  “Congratulations on a most successful run.”

  “Congratulations on being the first to fill your warehouse with ice,” Ryan said with a conspiratorial wink. “May I present Miss Isadora Peabody.”

  “Charmed.” The dark, smiling Brazilian took her hand and held it to his lips with excessive courtesy. “I was hoping you would join me and my family for supper tomorrow. You and your delightful lady friend.”

  Isadora was so stunned to hear herself referred to in such terms that she barely heard Ryan say “Mighty obliged,” barely felt him steer her toward the burros and help her mount. Was that why everyone liked her? Because Ryan had shown her favor?

  She didn’t know what surprised her more—that Senhor Ferraro thought her delightful or that he assumed she was Ryan’s lady. The rest of the day passed in a delicious blur of activity. They took their time going back to the villa, stopping every so often to take in the arresting beauty of the exotic city. Everywhere Isadora looked, she saw new wonders, from the lush floral growth in every alley and garden to the jagged distant mountains with their smooth granite faces plunging into Guanabara Bay.

  “Why are we stopping
here?” she asked.

  He tethered the burros. “It’s Ipanema,” he said. “One of the most famous beaches in the world.”

  Indeed it was a remarkable place, populated by bathers in all shapes, sizes and colors. Parents relaxed in hinged wooden chairs shaded by giant parasols while children dug in the sand or chased balls or each other.

  As they walked, they sank into the sugar-white, sugar-fine sand. Ryan stopped at a bench and bade her sit.

  “I want to walk on the beach,” she protested.

  “So you shall.” Without asking for permission or explaining himself, he knelt in front of her, grabbed her left ankle and removed her shoe and stocking.

  She would have shrieked in protest but she was too shocked. By the time she found her tongue, both her feet were bare.

  “Why did you do that?”

  Calmly he removed his own shoes and socks. “It’s too hard to walk in the sand in shoes.”

  “It’s indecent.”

  He parked their shoes on the bench. “You’re not going to start that again. I won’t allow it.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s walk.”

  She took three steps in the warm sand and stopped. “Oh, dear.”

  “Now what’s wrong?”

  She looked down at her shockingly bare feet, buried to the arches in silken sand. “This is the most sinfully delicious sensation I’ve ever felt.”

  He laughed. “Oh, love. You have led a sheltered life.”

  They walked on, passing Sugar Loaf Rock. Beyond the rock, they found a deserted spot where cliffs towered over the shore and the waves stole onto the beach. Without hesitation, Ryan led her directly into the surf.

  “We mustn’t,” she said. “This is—”

  “Don’t squeak and squawk at me, Isadora,” he said with excessive patience. “It’s so tiresome when you do that.”

  The surf was creamy and sinuous as it rushed to the shore, swirling around their ankles. “It’s warm,” Isadora exclaimed, “and I was wrong.”

  “About what?”