The Charm School (25 page)

Almost as a penance for her wayward thoughts, she had written Chad another long and copiously descriptive letter. She pictured him reading the missive she had labored over. She hoped her verbal sketch of the marionette show in the marketplace would coax a smile from him, that he would be moved by her description of a Newborn babe left on the wheel at the Santa Casa de la Misericordia, that he would share her wonder at the fabulous hanging gardens around Rose’s villa.

Along with the letter, she included a terse report to Abel about Ryan’s progress with the cargo. She felt guilty doing so, but she had promised Abel. At least Ryan’s business acumen was above reproach.

She said so with honesty—and a touch of pride.

On New Year’s Eve, Rose would host an annual masked ball. For two days beforehand, the tantalizing fragrances of roasting meat and baking bread drifted through the house. A great pavilion went up where the samba band would play and extra servants arrived from the village of Tijuca.

Isadora worked in the kitchen with Lily, Rose and some of the maids, fashioning a centerpiece of tiny confections of glazed cherries and pineapple. She’d never sat with housemaids and done menial work, but she loved the feminine chatter and the giggles, the beauty of the candied centerpiece they were creating, piece by lovely piece, taking shape as the women’s conversation swirled around the long table of scrubbed pine.

“You must borrow one of my gowns from years past,” Rose said to her sister and Isadora.

“Each year, I order one specially made, so you’ll have plenty to choose from.”

Isadora bit her lip, remembering the dancing parties and soirees she had endured in Boston. How painful they were. These two beautiful sisters had no idea what it was like to stand in the shadows and overhear people discussing your complete failure in the marriage market. They had no idea what it was like to watch the man you love, silently praying he’d ask for a dance and then, when he didn’t ask, to take yourself and your tears and your broken dreams to bed with you.

“I confess I’ve never been fond of parties,” she forced herself to admit.

Lily and Rose exchanged a glance.

“You’ve never been fond of Boston parties,” Lily corrected her.

“This will be different.”

Rose nodded vigorously.

“Everything in Rio is different.”

Isadora couldn’t help smiling at her self-appointed duenas who simply refused to look at her and see what she was. Instead they saw a pleasant companion, a fellow traveler, another pair of hands to work on the decorations. Not an ungainly, unmarriageable spinster.

“That’s what I love about Rio,” she said.

“Are you going to object to every layer,” Lily demanded, “or will you hush up and let us work?”

“But this costume’s so … so … indecent,” Isadora protested, fingering the thin silk of the tiered gypsy skirt Lily and Rose had put on her.

Rose let loose with a stream of dismissive laughter. “My dear, you are in Rio, it is New Year’s Eve and you’re going to the masque in costume. You really have no choice.”

“Where are your scissors?” Lily asked.

“I need to trim this ribbon.”

She looked around the room.

“Fayette is so much better at dressmaking than I. Where is the girl? She’s been mooning about and wandering off for days.”

‘ “Then you and I will make do,” Rose said happily.

Isadora bit her lip. She had to force her gaze to stay level when she wanted to keep looking down to see that yes, it really was her in this full, tiered skirt of a color so brilliant she felt like one of the parrots in the jungle beyond the villa. Ankles bare and her feet strapped into sandals. A loose, scoop-necked blouse that showed a shocking inch of cleavage. Hair in a wild tumble, no combs or irons holding it in place.

“I’ll be a laughingstock,” she whispered.

Lily stepped in front of her, putting her hands on Isadora’s shoulders.

“Honey, they’ll laugh only if you let them.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s all to do with the way you carry yourself, the way you face the world.” She reached around Isadora and tied on a black silk half mask.

“Everything’s an illusion. You’re a gypsy woman, not Isadora Peabody.

You’re mysterious and alluring. Try swaying your hips, like so …”

“Sway my hips?” Isadora squawked.

And yet, with Rose on one side and Lily on the other, she followed their lead, feeling silly, then feeling nothing like Isadora. They were right, she conceded. Illusion was easy. Far easier than being herself.

“I must have been a gaucho in another life,” Ryan declared, looking down in admiration at his flamboyant costume.

“The women will love it.”

Journey eyed the vermilion sash and the tight black knee breeches with the silver studs down the side seams. “Impressive. Especially when you add the hat.” He tossed Ryan a flat-brimmed black hat sporting a scarlet plume.

Ryan donned his half mask of black silk.

“No one will ever recognize me now.”

“Yes, there must be dozens of red-haired gauchos with a fondness for garish dress.” “Am I really garish?” Ryan asked, smoothing the eye-smarting sash.

“You are.”

“Offensively so?”

Journey cracked a rare smile.

“No, honey. I reckon you like the attention.”

Ryan took a length of black silk and wound it around his head, pirate style, tucking away his bright coppery hair, then replacing the mask and hat.

“And what will your costume be?” Journey hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll be going as a phantom. I’ll be practically invisible.”

Ryan’s heart lurched, though he said nothing. Since the moment Journey had been ripped from his wife’s arms, a vital part of him had been missing. Even while laboring over his navigation tables or caught up in the teeth of a storm at sea, he wasn’t all there. Some part of him the part that was laughter and ease and warmth lay elsewhere. In Virginia. Toiling in the overheated kitchens of a white man’s plantation.

As always, the thought made Ryan furious.

“Soon, my friend,” he vowed.

“What’s that?”

“Soon. We’ll get to Virginia soon.”

Journey nodded. His face remained impassive, though his shoulders tensed.

“Looks like we’ll be ready to weigh anchor in a week. Ferraro must’ve liked you he sold you an extra ton of coffee beans at a good price.”

“It was Isadora he liked. We’re going to set another record with this trip.

Richest voyage on the Rio run.”

Journey let out a long, cautious breath.

“Price of a slave in Virginia hit an all-time high, according to the papers that Maine skipper brought from Savannah.”

The words sounded strained and forced, and why not? Ryan wondered. He nearly choked on them himself.

“I expect I’ll negotiate a price we can live with.”

Journey looked dubious.

“And if you can’t?”

“There’s enough specie in the Swan’s safe hold to buy a whole army.”

Ryan felt tainted saying it. He was not a good man. He never had been, though he’d never stolen from another, never even considered it. But for the sake of getting Journey’s wife and children to freedom, he would cross that line if need be.

“It’s mighty risky, Ryan.” Journey gave him another rare smile.

“But when have we ever turned away from a risk?”

The coiled tension inside Ryan unwound a little. “Certainly not tonight.

Come on, my friend. Let’s go dancing.”

CHAPTER Fourteen.

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

Amos Bronson Alcott, “Table Talk”.

As Ryan stepped onto the patio, he heard a chorus of female screams.

Perhaps Journey had been right, he reflected. Perhaps the color combinations of his costume were a bit too. vivid.

The music stopped and the crowd fell back. Instantly Ryan understood that the commotion was not for him. A masked horseman rode into their midst upon a skittish Andalusian mount. Laughing dangerously, he bore down on a woman dressed in silver-and-gold skirts. She screeched and ran from him—but not too quickly.

Lily rushed over to Ryan and clutched at his arm. “That’s Fayette.”

“I know. Mama.”

“I think you should do something.”

“Why? That’s Edison Cameros.”

“Who? Oh, that lecherous character from the waterfront.”

“He’s a good man. Mama.” Ryan smiled down at her. She wore the tall comb-and-lace mantilla of a Spanish noblewoman and, as always, looked quite beautiful.

“Then why is he riding down my maid as if she’s a fox to be hunted?”

“It must be love.” Ryan couldn’t suppress a grin. More than once he had observed Fayette and Edison meeting at the waterfront, disappearing into Cameros’s office and then emerging much later with stars in their eyes and their clothing suspiciously mussed.

Fayette looked at Lily over her shoulder and hesitated. Cameros reached down and grasped her by the arm. She screeched again, though musical laughter underlay her alarm. Someone from the crowd gave her bare foot a boost, and she was heaved across the saddle of Edison’s horse.

“Dear God, he’s riding off with her!” Lily exclaimed.

“Looks that way.”

As the romantic pair galloped out of the courtyard into the starry night, Ryan watched after them. Some of the ladies in the crowd waved lace-edged handkerchiefs, and the band started playing again.

“It’s a … a carnival prank, isn’t it?” Lily asked.

“I mean. Rose tells me these things happen, all in the spirit of fun.”

“I imagine they’ll have fun, Mama.”

She fell silent for several moments. The tinny melody of the band took over.

Then she turned to him, her eyes unnaturally bright with an understanding he knew she wasn’t ready to voice.

“You’re the one who should be having fun. Have I ever told you, son, that you are the most handsome man on earth?”

He laughed.

“I think I’d rather be the wisest. Maybe the richest.”

“Wisdom and riches. Your father had both. Yet he died miserable.”

Ryan blinked. This was the first time she had ever spoken so candidly of her marriage.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because even at the end, he didn’t give in to the one thing that could have saved him.” She sighed, staring off into the night, no doubt seeing a past that was invisible to Ryan.

“He should have taken the love I offered, but he never did, Ryan. Not ever.” She waved a hand impatiently.

“How I do go on. It’s the eve of a new year!”

The smile she gave him echoed the softness of the nights of his youth, when she used to sit by his bed and sing to him and Journey until they drifted, on the wings of her sweet voice, off to sleep. It never occurred to her that there was anything wrong with both boys sharing a bed, but only one having the right to grow up free. He hadn’t known the truth then, but he realized it now. She considered the slaves her family. She simply hadn’t known that they might want the freedom to choose.

He took her arm and escorted her onto the dance floor.

“Oh, don’t dance with your old mother.” She shooed him away, regal as she regained command of herself. “There are too many wonderful girls waiting for you.”

Isadora couldn’t quite understand how she had come to be here, in this airy patio, amid silky trumpet music | and exotic food smells, dressed in something that felt as insubstantial as a nightgown.

Indeed, the moment seemed to belong to another person. It was as if the spirit of Rio had invaded her blood and bones, possessed her, transformed Isadora Dudley Peabody into someone completely different.

A fanciful notion, but strangely accurate.

Though in truth it had been two lovely, relentless sisters who had possessed her.

Help me, she prayed silently, looking down at her scandalous gypsy costume.

This is surely a sin.

Yet a part of her stood aside and observed that other ladies—perfectly proper wives of foreign ship’s captains and coffee planters and politicians and Portuguese ministers—were garbed even more festively. And not only were they dancing and clapping to the music—they seemed to be enjoying it.

It struck Isadora that, despite the gypsy dress she wore, she occupied much the same position tonight as she did at the dancing parties and soirees her parents held in Boston. She stood on the side of the assembly, invisible, watching other people have a good time.

Across the open-air patio, she saw a broad-shouldered man slip from the shadows, stepping into a dazzle of colored light cast by an orange paper lantern.

Her breath caught. Ryan.

But Ryan as she had never seen him before. From the very first she had been startled by his flawless male beauty, though a certain careless flamboyance had kept him to a human level. As she grew to know him, she no longer dwelled upon his physical attributes, but came to enjoy the person he was.

Now the carelessness had given way to perfection. He had dressed for the masquerade in tight black leather breeches with silver-studded outer seams, tucked into tall boots. A wide-sleeved red shirt gathered at the wrists, a half mask of black silk, an outrageous plumed hat and a slim, lethal-looking dress sword swinging at his side completed the costume.

He was the storybook cavalier who had performed feats of derring-do in the novels that used to keep her loneliness at bay. He was the bold hero whose sword-fights, described in fireside tales, had given her chills. He was every perfect fantasy she tried so hard not to dream about but dreamed, anyway.

Heavens be, this was Ryan, she told herself, trying to quell the uncomfortable fluttering in her stomach. Ryan, who teased and gave commands and laughed in order to cover the strange darkness in his soul. Ryan, who strode across the patio, magnificently oblivious to the raft of beautiful girls who followed in his wake.

He went directly to the neighboring patrao’s daughter and bent gracefully over her lacy-gloved hand.

Isadora released an audible sigh as she watched him lead the giggling young woman out onto the tiled dance-floor, leaving behind a logjam of swooning ladies. She felt a peculiar agony in her heart. This was different from the ache of being ignored by Chad. That throbbed with the pain of futility, but the hurt of wanting Ryan was the hurt of a possibility being taken away.