The Charm School

by Susan Wiggs

  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 were 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 spongey 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 h
ad 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 the strength, she brought the club crashing down.

  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.