Susan Wiggs - The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle - The Charm School

“And now,” said a voice behind her, “one question remains.”

Startled, Isadora turned, knocking her glasses askew with the abrupt motion.

The chief mate shouted orders, and the second mate repeated them. A rush of running feet pounded the decks.

“And what remains, Captain Calhoun?” Self-conscious, she straightened the spectacles.

“To assure myself that you aren’t having second thoughts.” He stepped toward her, took her hand and gave a gallant, mocking bow that made her insides churn with nervousness. A light breeze lifted the fringe of hair that showed beneath his cap, and the afternoon sunlight put a sparkle in his eyes.

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why would I be having second thoughts?”

He stared straight into her eyes, and she had the strangest feeling that he could see inside her to the matters that whirled through her mind. “Most women do,” he said.

I must go

Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the

young

Star captains glow.

—Herman James Elroy Flecker,

The Dying Patriot

“You know what’s curious?” Ryan asked, standing back from the captain’s table and watching Journey expertly pour the claret.

“Your taste in neck cloths?” Journey ventured, looking askance at the hibiscus-and-lime paisley cravat Ryan had donned for supper.

Ryan ignored him. “When I was in school, I could no more remember a Latin declension than the table of the elements. Yet on this ship I can keep every fact and figure as keenly in my mind as if God himself whispered them into my ear. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Maybe because Latin declensions don’t help you deal with dishonest stevedores.”

Ryan vividly recalled the endless hours of stumbling through lessons at Albion. “Why can’t I learn something simply for learning’s sake?”

“You’re starting to sound like your daddy.”

A chill slid through him. It was true. He recalled all those humiliating times he’d stood before Jared Calhoun, squirming inside while his father quizzed him mercilessly about Horace and the gospel and the price of tobacco in Richmond.

If you constantly have your head in the stars, his father used to demand, how are you going to keep your feet firmly on the ground?

“There’s no need, if I go to sea,” Ryan murmured.

“What’s that?”

Ryan shook his head. “Nothing. You know, I keep the stars up here, too.” He touched his temple. “Ever since we were lads, I’ve been able to read the stars as easily as most boys read their scripture.”

Journey put a cut glass stopper in the crystal decanter. The Silver Swan’s previous skipper had been a man of excellent taste and terrible business practices. When Abel Easterbrook discovered the extent of his cheating, he’d had the man hauled off in chains, leaving behind a salon full of his ill-gotten gains. Ryan had inherited comfortable quarters indeed.

Built into the wall of the cabin, invisible behind a false panel and snug against the hull itself, was the purser’s till, a safekeep of steel with a combination lock. Other than Abel himself, only Ryan knew the combination. When he sold the cargo in Rio, he’d receive payment in pounds sterling. It would all go into the till, never to be opened until Abel did the honors once they returned.

“I remember,” Journey said, “when we were lads we’d climb to our lookout on a clear night and navigate our way to the Spanish main.”

Ryan smiled, picturing the two of them lying side by side on the rough wooden planks of their tree house, hands clasped behind their heads, gazes turned to heaven. The breeze had stirred the poplar leaves, but to the boys’ ears it was the shush of the great deep Atlantic rushing past the hull of their ship. Their destination was a place he and Journey had conjured up from their imaginations. They had built it on their own boyish dreams, endowing the perfect island with everything a boy could want: gumdrop trees, geysers that spewed sarsaparilla, crystal clear freshwater pools for swimming. A pond in which the fish leaped for joy, grabbing right onto the end of their fishing poles. No chores, no schoolroom, no lessons, no stern tutor or disapproving papa, no mammy with a hickory rod.

“Did we ever actually reach that place?” Ryan checked the buttons of his cuffs. “I don’t remember.”

Journey set down the salt cellars, a thoughtful, distant expression on his face. “We’re still looking, Skipper. We’re still looking.”

A light knock sounded at the door, and in came his mother, attended by Fayette, her maid. He greeted the ladies with the Southern gallantry that had been bred into his very bones: a courtly bow, a charming smile, a sweep of his arm toward the table.

Then he spied Miss Isadora Peabody standing uncertainly in the companionway. A twinge of exasperation nagged at him. If she felt awkward, it was her own doing. She had used her influence with Abel to muscle her way aboard this ship. Ryan had resolved to use his position as skipper to make her regret it.

“You’re a crew member,” he said. “You’d best eat in the galley with the men.” He started to close the door.

“Oh, Ryan, for heaven’s sake,” his mother said, grabbing the door before it slammed. “Miss Peabody is my companion. I won’t hear of her eating hard tack and ale in the galley.”

“Truly,” Miss Peabody murmured, “if the captain orders me to go elsewhere, then I must obey.”

“But I’m the mother,” Lily said smugly. She elbowed Ryan aside. “Come in, and we shall celebrate our last night before departure.”

Isadora didn’t look at Ryan as she edged into the stateroom. He couldn’t quite bring himself to banish her. The painfully arranged hair, the trussed-up style of her black dress, the way she squinted behind her spectacles caused him to feel an unaccustomed tug of…of what? Annoyance, yes, and something perhaps akin to pity.

He tried to figure out why his mind kept clinging to thoughts of her. He’d always been a man who attracted pretty women, and Miss Peabody was not pretty. He enjoyed the charm of female company, yet she was not charming. He liked the inanity of lighthearted conversation, yet she was neither inane nor lighthearted.

So why did she plague him?

Perhaps it was the secrets she guarded within the hazel-and-gold depths of her eyes. In spite of himself, he wanted to know what thoughts hovered there, what ideas. What hopes and dreams.

Of course, he didn’t want to hear about her misguided passion for Chad Easterbrook, but other things about her—who she was and what she wanted, what she loved and hated, what surprised her, what delighted her, what angered her.

Immediately he pulled back. The only reason he wanted to discover her inner being was so that he could control her, keep her in line and keep her out of his affairs.

He treated her with a perfect parody of courtesy. “Our first night aboard the Swan,” he declared. “We must drink a toast.”

“I don’t drink strong spirits.” Her voice was quick and nervous.

“Then I assure you, we’ll only serve weak ones,” Ryan said. A warning look from his mother stopped him from going on.

“Have you any Cochituate water?” she inquired.

“No, I don’t have any Co-kit-tuate water,” he said, unable to resist mimicking her prissy accent. “This is a sea voyage, not a temperance crusade.”

He and Journey helped the ladies to their seats around the captain’s table. Once they were under way, formal meals like tonight’s supper would be rare, so Ryan intended to enjoy this one, Miss Peabody notwithstanding.

As Journey poured wine from the decanter, Fayette caught his eye. “I best get to the galley,” the maid said, fixing him with a censorious glare. “I don’t hold with no wine-drinking.”