The Charm School (12 page)

They were worlds apart; it was simply the circumscribed closeness of shipboard life that gave the illusion of intimacy.

“I had best retire,” Isadora said.

“I know I shall’t sleep a wink, but I promised myself I would try.”

She started toward the companion ladder. Her feet, enclosed in the flimsy little boots with high, wobbling heels, moved uncertainly over the deck. The shoes, he decided, would have to go. So would the Beacon Hill matron costume. The voluminous black-and-gray skirts and petticoats, the rigid shell of the corset, all the trappings of propriety had no place on a working ship. Her damned hair alone was a problem, too, since she insisted in scraping it all up into a knot on her head and then letting those curls trail down in the front. So the hair, too, he decided. She’d have to change that along with the dress and the shoes.

He smiled at the image. Getting the very proper Miss Peabody to slap about on deck like a barefoot sailor would prove a challenge indeed.

Ryan had always enjoyed a challenge.

CHAPTER Seven.

You know how often we have longed for a sea voyage, as the fulfillment of all our dreams of poetry and romance, the realization of our highest conceptions of free, joyous existence. Let me assure you, my dears. that going to sea is not at all the thing that we have taken it to be.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands.

Isadora dreamed of a pack of wolves snapping at her from all sides, chewing the heels off her shoes, ripping her petticoats to shreds.

Rudely stirred from sleep by a piercing whistle, she lay in her bunk at dawn and knew the wolves in her dream were actually misgivings.

She inhaled air so damp it seemed to drench her lungs. Her back ached from lying huddled in a cramped space in the dark. Last night’s turkey and claret sat ill in her stomach, and when she rose to avail herself of the chamber pot—that in itself a disgusting operation she endured only by scrunching her eyes shut tight and refusing to think of it—she smacked her head on a beam so hard she saw stars.

Sitting on the edge of the bunk, she rubbed her head and peered out the woefully tiny portal. Indeed, they had left their berth in the harbor and were now at anchor; they’d be headed out to sea any moment.

The night before, she’d managed to struggle out of her corset and had slept in her chemise. She eyed the garment—a Corset Amazone that her mother had ordered specially from Freebodys—with loathing. The great fallacy of the corset was that it did not sheer off fullness; it merely displaced it to uncomfortable locales. Captain Calhoun had not been far wrong in calling it an iron maiden, after a medieval torture device.

Resigned, she stood up to don the corset. A sharp pain shot up her leg, stealing her breath. She sank back to the bunk, holding out her left ankle.

It resembled a great sausage, swollen and discolored.

Gingerly she touched the bruise, wincing at the pain. She must have injured herself when she fell off the ladder—directly onto Captain Calhoun.

This is not a pleasure cruise. His sarcastic words, uttered the night before, still rang in her ears.

Dear lord, had she ever actually thought she belonged on this voyage?

People had told Isadora all her life that she was foolish. Now, at last, she was fulfilling the prophecy. What possible business did she have on a ship, living among men of dubious repute and bound for the pirate-infested waters of the south Atlantic?

Gritting her teeth, she struggled through the ordeal of getting dressed, her conviction hardening with each moment. She was Isadora Dudley Peabody of the Beacon Hill Peabodys. She should be home reading a book or embroidering slipper tops, perhaps drinking tepid coffee from a china cup.

Not bumping around in a tiny cabin trying to tie her own stays and bring order to her wild, waist-length hair.

Perhaps, she thought, her urgent fingers grappling with stay wires and corset hooks, there was still time to turn away, to back out. If she hurried, she could get herself on a lighter boat or launch; surely there were any number of skiffs plying back and forth across Boston harbor.

Yes, that was the thing to do. That was precisely it. She looped her hair a few times and stabbed it into place with some pins, rammed on her bonnet and spectacles and hastened out of the cabin. Pain blazed from her ankle, but she forced herself to keep a steady gait. A wall of sea-fresh air greeted her in the companionway. Through the hatch, she could see men running to and fro, their faces intense as they discharged their duties, their voices raised in jolly song: “All hands on board! Farewell to friends!” Tis the signal for un mooring We’re bound across the ocean blue, Heave your anchor to the bow, And we’ll think on those girls when we’re far, far away, And we’ll think on those girls when we’re far, far away.”

Ryan Calhoun stood on deck and once again Isadora was struck by the dazzling male beauty that emanated like sunlight from him. He was sipping from an enameled metal mug and speaking with a customs official. They referred to a mass of scrolled papers strewn across the navigators’ desk. Though she hated to interrupt, she knew she had to act fast to get herself back home where she belonged.

Home? The house on Beacon Hill? When had she ever belonged there?

She thrust aside the questions. Though she might be a misfit in her own life, she was even more out of place here on this ship, where men in rope-belted trousers scrambled up rigging and masts and swore even when they knew a lady was around.

“Captain Calhoun,” she said, puffing a little as she hoisted herself up the companion ladder to the next deck. She hobbled along on her injured ankle.

“Captain, I must speak to you of a” — “Ah, Miss Peabody.” Ryan nodded brusquely at her. Then, rude as Foster Candy, he turned back to the port official.

“I’ve already furnished three copies of the manifest, sir. As to that claim form, I”

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 stem windows.

Staying low, Isadora followed, j “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 stem 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.

And 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.