Susan Wiggs - The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle - The Charm School

“I’m the skipper. Every aspect of every crewman’s life concerns me.” He let go of one hand and cradled her cheek in his palm.

She was too startled to pull back.

“Even if it were not for that,” he continued, “I would care, Isadora. I don’t have many good qualities, but I do care.”

“I…I…” She swallowed, then gave up trying to speak.

“Be safe,” he said. “That’s what today was about. Wear your clothes and fix your hair for comfort, not confinement. No one would look askance at you if you entered the galley for supper without all this frippery.” To punctuate his statement, he ran his hand across the ornate worked trim around her throat. “We’re simple men of the sea, not ballroom snobs on Beacon Hill.”

He stood, leaving her feeling curiously bereft, and went toward the door. “I shall see you on deck.”

“Wait!”

He turned back with an eagerness that startled her. “Yes?”

“You forgot your mirror.” She picked it up and held the palm-sized glass out to him.

“So I did.” He took it from her with a wink. “You’d not like to see me after shaving without a mirror. Not a pretty sight.”

She sat very still after he left, listening to the creak of the timber and the rush of the water past the hull.

Whiskers or no, she thought, Ryan Calhoun would always be a pretty sight.

Woman stock is rising in the market.

—Lydia Maria Child,

Letter (1856)

Ryan stared into the little mirror with fierce concentration as he drew a straight razor along the side of his jaw. The ship plunged into a trough, causing him to list to one side. He felt the subtle bite of the blade in his chin and swore.

But it was no less than he deserved, he decided. Isadora Peabody’s words still haunted him: Why does cruelty come so easily to you?

He’d wanted to deny it, but the truth was, thoughtlessness did seem to come naturally to him. It had ever been that way with Ryan and women. He was all too willing to partake of their physical charms, but the involvement always ended there. The minute he started to care about them in a deeper way, he made it his business to push them away with careless, cutting words.

Isadora, of course, was the first one he’d actually attacked.

“Have a towel, Skipper.” Journey tossed him one.

Ryan pressed it to his chin. “You’re my steward. You should be doing this.”

“I’m busy,” Journey said distractedly.

Ryan stopped the bleeding and lathered up again to finish shaving. “Did you take the morning readings?”

“I did. I’m reckoning our position now.” Journey gazed intently at the papers on the table in front of him. He had a gift for the logarithms of navigation, figuring in his head with lightning quickness. He gave the task his total attention, yet with his left hand, he fingered the small pouch he wore on a leather strap around his neck. The pendant lay against his heart. Toying with it was a habit, an unconscious tic. Delilah, the wife he’d left behind, had given him the pouch. Inside was a tiny love knot fashioned from a lock of her hair.

Ryan’s gut twisted with impatience and urgency. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t natural for a family to be separated like this. He recalled the morning he and Journey had left to go north. They had stopped at Bonterre, the neighboring plantation where Delilah lived.

Ryan had waited in the open carriage while Journey dropped to the ground near the slave quarters. An anguished smile had strained his face as Delilah came running out of one of the cabins, a toddler held against her hip and her thin cotton dress outlining the ripe shape of her pregnancy. Putting Ruthie down, she’d placed her arms around her husband’s neck, then risen on tiptoe to kiss him solemnly. And then she’d said something Ryan would never forget, something he wasn’t supposed to hear. But her words had been imprinted on his heart forever. “Honey,” Journey’s wife had said, “Life don’t work right when you’re not around.”

Ryan swore at the pain from that memory. He finished shaving and wiped his face, then went out on deck, leaving Journey to his navigational figuring.

A balmy day greeted Ryan. With a sweep of his gaze he read the wind and the sea; this was his gift. Marble-hard swells rose beneath a brisk wind from the west. They would cover a good distance today.

“Morning, Captain.” Ralph Izard bent over the deck, securing a new winch, for Ryan had decided to add an extra lifeboat as a safety measure. Izard’s face, chapped and furred with the beginnings of a beard, crinkled as he smiled briefly. “A fair wind, eh?”

“So it seems, Mr. Izard.” He indicated the tall leather-bound journal under the chief mate’s arm. “Is everything in order?”

“Aye, though I think we took on too little ballast,” he replied. “And maybe too many victuals.”

Ryan ignored the comment about the ballast. It would only be a problem in the heaviest of seas, and even then, his skilled crew could navigate an ugly storm. He didn’t much like paying for ballast, preferring to stoke the hold with paying cargo. Happily, the huge blocks of Vermont ice fulfilled that function.

“I’ll pay what it takes for the victuals,” he said. A lot of skippers cut corners by laying in inferior food in skimpy quantities for their sailors. Ryan knew better than to test their loyalty by taxing their stomachs. “A well-fed sailor is a happy sailor.”

“As you say, skipper. You’ll hear no back-slack from a crew that’s got its mouth stuffed with ladyfingers.” He winked, looking wise and world-weary at the same time.

Ryan moved on, though he thought about Ralph Izard for a moment. He liked the chief mate; Izard was his prime minister, boatswain, sailing-master and quartermaster all at once, and he excelled at what he did.

And he alone knew what no one else had guessed.

Ryan’s first record-breaking voyage had been a fluke.

It wasn’t his skill as a skipper that had brought the Swan to harbor so profitably, but a combination of good weather and blind beginner’s luck. Izard was well aware of this. He had never spoken of it, though the knowledge always hung between him and Ryan—unuttered yet undeniable.

He climbed the companion stair to the foredeck. A startling sight greeted him.

Isadora Peabody bent over a pair of deck chairs, tucking an olive-colored blanket around his mother and Fayette. The two women looked wasted and wan, still miserable with the sea sickness. Yet, finally, after Ryan had tried for days to coax them from their beds, they’d come on deck.

Isadora appeared different today. What was left of her hair was tied back carelessly with a ribbon, a few curls escaping to twine around her face. The sun, increasingly strong as they traveled farther and farther south, brought out a warm gold color in some of the strands. Her stiff brown dress appeared less cumbersome. Maybe she’d heeded his advice and left off a couple of those petticoats.

He knew he wouldn’t be asking her.

He stepped onto the deck, moving past the chicken coop. “Morning, ladies.”

Isadora straightened, her face hardening to a mask of indifference.

He scowled at her in annoyance. He wanted to ask her if she still wanted to be stuck to the windlass by her hair. God knew she deserved it.

“Hello, Ryan,” his mother said.

“Mama.” He bent and kissed Lily’s cheek. “It’s good to see you both out in the air.”

“Isadora convinced us. Since we couldn’t feel much worse, we agreed to sit on deck for a while.”

“I’ll see if your tea is ready,” Isadora said, moving past Ryan.

He caught a whiff of the soap she used—something clean and herbal—and he didn’t realize he was staring after her until his mother said, “So what exactly did you do to the poor girl?”