The Charm School

by Susan Wiggs

“I shall get right to it, then, for you are used to plain speaking. Captain Calhoun is in need of several thousand dollars for this transaction, and the only available source is the ship’s specie.”

  “A hanging offense, laying hands on that,” said Chips.

  “Piracy,” added Luigi.

  “At the very least, we’ll be stripped of our seamen’s papers if we’re caught,” Izard stated.

  “This was supposed to be my last voyage,” William Click said. “I’ve been saving up for a little farm.”

  “I’ve got a family to feed,” Gerald reminded everyone.

  “If I don’t pay my debts, I’ll land in jail for sure.” The Doctor stared mournfully down at his hands.

  “This wasn’t part of the deal.” Chips sounded belligerent. “I signed on for full share.”

  Isadora drew herself up, looking at each man in turn. “You are each free to determine what you can afford to do. Do you understand the meaning of that? You are free to decide.” She paused, feeling them waver. “Journey’s wife is not.” She fixed each man with a hard look. “I shall repay you myself out of my dowry money.”

  “You can’t do that,” Gerald objected. “What will you bring to your husband when you marry?”

  The laughter that bubbled up in her throat was painful. It was hard to believe that at one time, all she had dreamed of was marrying Chad Easterbrook. What a pitiful, self-deluded creature she had been. Ryan Calhoun had broken her heart, that was true. But he had also opened her eyes.

  She felt his gaze upon her now, and dared to meet that chilly stare. This man had forever laid waste to her hopelessly romantic dreams. She should be grateful to him, but at the moment the hurt pressing against her chest left no room for gratitude.

  “Believe me,” she said, “slavery is a far greater evil than my spinsterhood.”

  Ryan turned away, planting his hands at his waist and staring at the reedy shoreline in the distance.

  “What say you, gentlemen?” she asked, pretending not to notice his disgust. “Are you with your shipmate on this?” While she watched and waited, she held her breath, a hard knot in her throat.

  The Doctor shuffled forward. “I never did bear the yoke of slavery,” he said to Journey. “But I am an African, too, and your brother in spirit. Debt or no debt, I’ll throw in my share.”

  Journey shut his eyes, his face flooding with relief.

  “Take it off our sailors’ bills,” Gerald said. “Whatever you need.” He fixed Mr. Click with a flinty eyed stare. “Ain’t that right?”

  “Our sh-shares are huge on this trip,” Timothy added.

  “And Miss Isadora will make good on her promise.”

  “Never said I wouldn’t throw in my lot.” Click nodded his head in Journey’s direction. “Whatever it takes, that’s what we got to offer.”

  Journey made a choking sound, then turned away briefly. When he turned back, he could only mouth the words “Thank you.”

  Isadora beamed at them all, letting the knot in her throat unfurl. “I’ll go get the ledger books.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Izard murmured as he stood at the rail beside Isadora. They watched Ryan sculling for shore in a launch.

  “It will,” she stated. “All the figures summed up perfectly—”

  “I fear money’s not the problem.”

  She turned to study him. The chief mate was a puzzling man, quiet and somber, yet with a sturdy core of decency everyone respected, and an undeniable intelligence that made her listen when he spoke up. “So what, in your estimation, is the problem?”

  “Perhaps I should have spoken sooner. I don’t believe Beaumont will take the money. He won’t accept any sum for the wench and her babies.”

  “How do you know so much about this?”

  He hesitated, then said, “My late wife had African blood.”

  She gaped at him in wonder. “Mr. Izard—”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  “Would you have listened? Would anyone?” He spread his arms. “You might get to keep your dowry after all.”

  “That is not funny.” She started to pace, her teeth worrying her lower lip. “Something has to be done, then. Something bold. Something audacious. Something that will work.”

  Izard was silent for a long time. “Miss Isadora, what are the chances you could charm the stockings off an old Southern gent?”

  She laughed. “I couldn’t charm the peel off a banana, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Not even if three lives depended on it?”

  Her amusement faded. Self-doubt, her age-old companion, shadowed her thoughts. But then she glanced at the foredeck and spied Journey silhouetted against the late afternoon sky. He cut a lonely figure, tall and slender against the backdrop of the fiery clouds.

  Ain’t never seen my baby girl.

  Isadora straightened her shoulders. “I think, Mr. Izard, that I am about to become charming.”

  Ryan had expected a chilly reception at Bonterre, but the outright hostility of Hugh Beaumont took him by surprise. The moment he walked up the horseshoe-shaped drive, a houseboy went running, and Beaumont himself appeared on the gleaming white porch, flanked by soaring columns.

  He had changed little from Ryan’s boyhood recollection. He’d always been a tall, ramrod straight widower with long hair and a waxed moustache with handles wide enough for birds to perch on. He wore well-cut clothes of stark black and snow-white, a marked contrast to Ryan’s canary yellow shirt and peacock blue jacket. Maybe he should have listened to Journey and worn more somber colors, but it was too late now.

  “Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “it’s a pleasure to see you.” Ryan mounted the porch steps and stuck out his hand.

  Beaumont ignored it. “I take no pleasure in this meeting. And no Calhoun is welcome in my house.”

  Ryan flashed his best smile. “We’re off to a fine start, then, aren’t we? A dandy start. All right, sir. Suppose we forget I’m a Calhoun. I’ve come to make a business transaction with you, pure and simple. And then I’ll be on my way.”

  The waxed moustache twitched. “What sort of business?”

  “I’m interested in acquiring some slaves.” Ryan nearly gagged on the words. “The wench called Delilah and her young ones.”

  Beaumont tilted back his head and roared with laughter. “I guess they didn’t teach you much up there at Harvard College. Else you’d know damned well I’m on to you. You’re interested in Delilah because you took her man away, set the buck free.” His laughter stopped. “Don’t you see, boy? If you’d left well enough alone, that family’d be together.”

  Ryan used all of his self-control to keep from trying to pound common sense into Beaumont’s head. “Sir, I’m prepared to pay—”

  “Uncle Ryan! Uncle Ryan!” Blue came tumbling across the lawn, a little tousle-haired moppet in tow. “Hey Uncle Ryan! What you doing here? Are you going to stay for supper?” He unleashed a steady stream of questions as he led the little girl up the steps to the porch. “Can we go look at your boat again? You want to help me build a tree house?”

  “Whoa, there, son,” Ryan said, smiling as he went down on one knee. “This your sister?”

  “Uh-huh. Belinda. She’s three.”

  “Well, hey there, three-year-old Belinda.” Ryan winked at her. She stuck one finger in her mouth. Through a tumble of yellow curls, she peered at him shyly with eyes as blue as painted china. “I’m your uncle Ry—”

  “Children, come inside this instant,” said a nervous-sounding voice from the door.

  Ryan straightened up quickly. “Lacey, it’s good to see you again.”

  “I’m sure I can’t say the same,” she stated, then creaked open the screen door. Looking subdued but resentful, Blue and Belinda went to her side. Petite and beautiful, her hands moving in flutters of agitation, she kept her eyes averted from Ryan. “Father, I trust you won’t be long? It’s nearly the children’s bedtime.”
/>
  He nodded. With visible relief, Lacey let the door slap shut.

  Evening was coming on, a long flat lowering of the light over the bay. On the road that passed in front of the main house, a horse whinnied, and somewhere unseen in the distance, a deep voice sang a spiritual hymn. As always in the mysterious tidewater region, beauty and brutality were present in equal measures.

  Beaumont said, “I won’t do business with you, Calhoun. Is that clear?”

  Ryan drew a deep breath. “I’ll pay you double what they’re worth.”

  Beaumont smiled. “It’s not a matter of money, but one of principle. Allowing this sort of thing would upset the natural balance of things. I can’t simply sell a family into freedom. That would be irresponsible of me.”

  Ryan loosed a bark of incredulous laughter. “Good God, man, do you hear what you are saying?”

  Beaumont drew himself up. “Sir, you are the one who is having trouble hearing. I’ll do no business with you. The wench and her babies are not for sale at any price.” He made a loud exhalation of disgust. “Your entire family is a disgrace.”

  Ryan’s hand clenched into a fist. With a will, he kept it at his side. At least, he thought furiously, he would have no need of the ship’s money. But now he’d have to find another way to bring Journey’s wife north with them.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Beaumont,” Ryan said formally. “I shall give your regards to my brother.”

  “Sir, your brother knows exactly where he stands in my regard.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  “Pardon me. I believe I have another visitor.” Beaumont brushed past Ryan and walked down the steps.

  Ryan turned to see a tall black-clad woman in a plumed hat and beaded veil hurrying across the lawn. His mouth dried as he recognized her. Hell’s bells. Why had Izard allowed Isadora to come ashore? This could mean nothing but trouble. It could mean he’d hang even sooner than he feared. “What the devil—”

  “Do you know her?” Beaumont demanded, watching with interest.

  Ryan couldn’t imagine what she was up to. He was out of options with Beaumont, so perhaps he had best wait and see. Isadora had her faults, but stupidity was not one of them. He gave a noncommittal shrug and waited for her to approach.

  “There you are, Ryan Calhoun,” she declared in a remarkable Virginia accent. “I wondered where you’d run off to.” Before he could reply she made a dainty curtsy for Beaumont. “Sir, please pardon this terrible intrusion.”

  “No trouble at all, ma’am.” He paused, clearly expecting Ryan to make the introductions.

  Isadora spoke before he had a chance. She put out a hand gloved in black lace. “Isa—Isabel Swann, of the…the Hip-sucket Swanns. Up in Spotsylvania County, don’t you know. I’ve been promised a berth to Boston aboard Captain Calhoun’s ship. I was so afraid he had left without me.”

  Hugh, ever the know-it-all, smiled with gentlemanly politeness. “I see. Hugh Beaumont, at your service.”

  Behind the veil, she gave off an air of mysterious allure. “And I fear we must ask it of you,” she said. “Your service, that is.”

  “Oh?”

  She drew herself up stiffly. Censure seemed to radiate from behind the veil. “I came looking for Mr. Calhoun—we have been expecting him, you see—when our clarence became mired out on the road. Do you think some of your people could lend us a hand?”

  Trying to figure out the angle of her ruse, Ryan marveled at Isadora’s poised, calm, elegant performance. How different this beguiling creature was from the awkward girl who had first bumbled her way onto his ship.

  “Your carriage is mired?” Beaumont asked.

  “I fear so.” She aimed a censorious finger at Ryan. “It is all your fault for wandering willy-nilly about the countryside. Mr. Beaumont, if we could please get some help.”

  “Certainly, madam. I’ll order my overseer to bring you a band of men,” Beaumont said.

  “Thank you ever so much. We shall need a good number. We are quite deeply mired.”

  Where the hell had she learned that melting Southern accent? Ryan wondered.

  “And Mr. Beaumont, one more favor.” She leaned forward, put a hand on his sleeve and spoke in an intimate fashion that made Ryan bristle. “I have a confession to make as well. For years I’ve heard of a magnificent place called Bonterre. Now I’m enjoying my chance to see it.”

  And suddenly Ryan grasped her mad plan. Transporting escaped slaves was a crime. She and everyone involved would become fugitives with a price on their heads.

  And—God help them all—he was going to let her.

  “Oh, Mr. Beaumont, you do go on,” Isadora said with laughter in her voice. “I won’t ever want to leave if you don’t stop being so charming.”

  Strolling by her side in the falling dark, Hugh Beaumont straightened his cravat. “On the contrary, Miss Swann. You are the charmer, not I.”

  “Sir, my head shall explode from its swelling,” she protested.

  Ryan gave a derisive snort.

  Beaumont ignored him. “I have fallen completely under your spell.”

  She knew a moment of utter incredulity. The idea that a man, any man, might find her charming was beyond her comprehension. An astonishing novelty. Was she really being charming? Was this all there was to it?

  She was amazed by the skills necessity could inspire. There was a time when Isadora hadn’t had a bold bone in her body; now it seemed that everything depended on her being bold.

  She laughed again, amused by how easy it was to flirt and mimic the ways of a Southern social butterfly. “I insist that you stop it now, sir. My poor heart cannot take such flattery.”

  “And God forbid,” Ryan muttered, trudging along behind them, “that your heart should suffer damage from flattery.”

  Isadora chuckled silkily. Ye powers, was he jealous? Surely not at a time like this. He had to know how desperate the situation was. She had not discussed the plan with him. Watching from the side of the roadway, where they’d half sunk Hunter’s clarence in sticky black mud, she and the others had waited in the vain hope that perhaps Beaumont would sell the slaves to Ryan. When he had come out of the house alone, they knew they would have to set their plan in motion.

  A stoop-shouldered man arrived at the head of a work crew. By the light of three torches, Isadora could see they were Africans. She tried surreptitiously to get Ryan’s attention. He could ruin everything. When his gaze met hers, he aimed a fierce stare at her. “Miss…Swann.”

  She braced herself. “Yes?”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to roll up my sleeves and unmire the clarence.” He flicked his thumb and forefinger fussily at his wrist.

  She thought she might explode with relief. He seemed to be going along with her masquerade. It was quite a thing, to trust and be trusted by him on faith alone.

  They reached the mired carriage, a clarence hitched to Hunter’s only remaining horse, a tired nag she hoped Beaumont wouldn’t recognize in the uncertain torchlight. Ralph and Luigi had done an excellent job sinking the rear wheels in the soft mud of the salt marsh that bordered the road.

  The “mishap” had occurred near a dozen or so split-log cabins arranged haphazardly around a common area of bare earth.

  “Stand back, sirs, there you are.” Ralph motioned for Mr. Beaumont and Ryan to step away. “Don’t want to splash mud all over you.”

  A number of Hugh Beaumont’s “people” had come to help. Odd how he called them people yet treated them like livestock. One man, probably the overseer, whistled and shouted orders.

  Ralph Izard gave Isadora the briefest of nods, then cut his gaze away, the signal to carry on with their plan. She waved a handkerchief in front of her face. “Oh, my heavens,” she said breathlessly. “All of a sudden I feel quite faint.”

  Beaumont put a supporting hand beneath her elbow. “Shall I help you back to the house?”

  “That’s not necessary.” She tried to seem mortified. “It is a complaint of a very fem
ale nature.”

  That stopped any further speculation on his part. Ryan pursed his lips as if holding in mirth and turned his attention to the mired coach.

  “I shall find a place to rest over here.” Her heart pounded as she approached the slave compound. A woman standing by the well and another by the big open-air cookfire stared at her. What a horror she must look to them—a white woman coming uninvited into their midst. Chickens scratched and poked in the beaten-earth yard, and children played a game with sticks and rocks. They were no different from any children, trying to snatch the last moments of the day as twilight fell, yet in too short a time, they would lose that innocent abandon.

  Isadora felt as if she had entered a new and alien world, a place closed to a woman like her. A self-protective and savage air hung about the slave women. She guessed that they cultivated this frightening facade, for a white woman walking into their midst could mean nothing good. She was familiar with the antislavery tracts published in Boston, but nothing she had read had prepared her for this direct experience of the squalor and hostility that pervaded the compound.

  She despaired of being able to identify Delilah among these silent, suspicious, homespun-clad women. Her every instinct told her to flee, to hide, to shrink away from a place she clearly didn’t belong. Then she reminded herself of her purpose. Journey was waiting aboard the Swan for his wife and children. She couldn’t let him down. Besides, there had been a time when she hadn’t belonged on shipboard either, but she had become more at home there than in a drawing room on Beacon Hill.

  Holding her head high, she went to the well. How did a Southern lady ask a slave for a drink of water? she wondered wildly. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Please, I’d like a cup of water.”

  “Yes’m.” Without meeting Isadora’s eyes, the woman pressed on the well sweep and brought up a bucket.

  As Isadora drank the slightly brackish water from a tin cup, her veil kept getting in the way. A scrawny cat streaked across the dirt yard, and a small barefooted girl raced after it, giggling and oblivious to the tension of the women.

  “Celeste,” someone called, “you get yourself back here, right now!”