Susan Wiggs - The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle - The Charm School

The coach went on into a thick forest, but it was like no forest Isadora had ever seen. The trees grew immeasurably tall; they had thick glistening leaves and some blossomed with mysterious huge yellow-tongued flowers. Lush ferns carpeted the floor. Birds, the same green and yellow as the foliage, swooped here and there, and somewhere close by, a secret spring trickled.

She leaned back against the seat and trembled, simply trembled, for she felt as if she had landed in the middle of a dream, and she was terrified of waking up.

Yet when the coach ground to a halt on the crushed seashell drive of a vast pink villa, she dared to believe it was real.

The driver gave a whistle. A herd of houseboys swarmed over the carriage, helping them out and chattering away in a charming patois as they liberated the luggage. Isadora was delighted and challenged by the language. How different it was from her textbook Portuguese. The rapid, colorful slang barely gave the nod to the formal mother tongue.

She caught the eye of one of the boys and smiled pleasantly, greeting him in her best Portuguese.

He and his friends giggled uncontrollably.

Lily asked, “What did you say to them?”

“I hope I said it’s a pleasure to be here, but the way they’re giggling, I can’t be certain.” She found the boys enchanting. She could not be certain of their race. They were not black in the way Journey and the Doctor were, but neither were they Anglo. Their faces and bare legs were the color of the caffe com leche the port authorities had served at the landing.

She found it interesting that their race was indeterminate—and that it did not seem to matter in the least.

A high-pitched squeal issued from a colonnaded walkway leading from the main house. Lily became alert like a hound on the scent. She whirled around and answered the squeal with one of her own.

“Rose! Oh, my darling Rose!”

The two women fell into each other’s arms with such heartfelt emotion that Isadora and Fayette held hands and gulped back tears as they watched.

The two sisters made an entrancing pair. Lily was as pale and delicate as her namesake, and Rose was as bold and vibrant as hers. She wore an extraordinary garment—a tiered skirt that showed her shapely ankles and bare feet. Her blouse was cut low in the neck. Isadora could tell for certain that Rose wore no corsets and petticoats under the loose, light costume.

When Lily made the introductions, Rose embraced both Fayette and Isadora in turn. “Welcome to my home,” she declared. A touch of Virginia still accented her words, but her speech also had the rhythmic cadences of Brazil. She laughed at their stares and plucked playfully at Lily’s multilayered skirts. “We dress for the weather at Villa do Cielo, and so must you. Were it not for the hot-blooded nature of our menfolk, we would probably go about in the nude.”

Isadora stifled a gasp. Yet lightning did not strike simply because a woman mentioned something earthy. She decided she liked Rose very much indeed.

As Rose led the way under the blossom-draped colonnade, she looked up and saw that each flower was a perfect orchid.

Isadora knew she was going to enjoy Rio.

Be good and you will be lonesome.

—Mark Twain,

Following the Equator

Hot, sweet and languid—those were the dominant impressions Ryan had of Rio. After concluding his preliminary business with Ferraro’s agent, he arranged for the cargo to be discharged. Luigi, who spoke his native tongue with the team of Italian stevedores, had matters well in hand.

Before hiring a rig to convey him to his aunt’s in Tijuca, Ryan stood at the loud, busy waterfront and felt himself slowly fill up with a splendid feeling so rare that at first he couldn’t identify it. But it had a name—pride.

Pride that he had done something of consequence, and done it so well that even strangers on the wharves had learned who he was. Captain Calhoun, who carried a tiny crew and too much sail. Captain Calhoun, who had won a bonus for coming in days before his due date.

The wharf rats learned his identity as quickly as the shipping agents and local merchants. “I have the finest diamonds for sale,” hissed a smiling young man with oily hair and restless hands. “Come and see my selection.”

Ryan cheerfully declined the suspicious offer, only to find the oily merchant replaced by a soft-hipped whore. “You have been long time at sea,” she purred, running her tongue around her lips in a gesture that should be outlawed. “I make you happy, happy today.”

“Card game?” another man asked. “Faro or dice?”

Ryan grinned from ear to ear. He hadn’t even gotten paid yet.

And then, because a sudden hollowness opened up inside him, he held out his arm to the whore and asked, “What’s your name, sugar-pie?”

In the end, he realized he’d never even heard it. All he remembered was the ripeness of her, the intoxicating musk, the way her soft body opened to him, the way he sank into her. Yet the act had a disturbingly mechanical nature. He pleasured her, yes, but in a curiously detached fashion. And, in a curiously detached fashion, he found his own pleasure as well, and paid her handsomely for the encounter.

Late that afternoon, he emerged from the brothel with a head muzzy from drink, a body sated by sex and a jumble of confusing thoughts and misgivings. He had been offered contraband riches, sex, gambling, strong drink. At one time such things had been all he desired in life and he would have happily accepted. Yet now such pleasures held only faint allure for him. Instead, he went out to look at the teeming market and terraced hills and pastel palaces of Rio, and one thought tugged at him: none of this meant anything unless he had someone to share it with.

Someone who looked at the world with wide-eyed wonder. Someone who drank in new sights and sounds with a passion belied by her sober mien. Someone who took a new experience and clasped it to her breast like a precious treasure.

“The coach is ready,” Journey said, coming toward Ryan. “What the matter?” He peered at him. “You look sick.”

“Maybe. In my mind,” Ryan said, and he walked toward the carriage.

His Aunt Rose made an embarrassing fuss over him, exclaiming at his height, his handsomeness, the clarity of his cerulean eyes, the glossiness of his auburn hair.

Lily looked on, indulging her for a few moments before saying, “He’s my son, Rose dear. Not a show horse.”

“You should see me when I’m sober,” he said, swaying a little.

“Of course.” Rose hugged him. She smelled pleasantly of coffee and flowers. He hoped it masked his own less pleasant scent of liquor and cheap perfume. “Forgive me, Ryan. I wasn’t blessed with children of my own, so I must do all my mothering when I can.”

“And you do it with a natural grace,” he assured her, smiling despite a pounding headache. “Where is Isadora?”

Lily and Rose exchanged a knowing glance. Ryan cursed himself for letting his eagerness show.

Isadora came down the carved cypress stairwell, uncertainty evident in her stiff posture. “I—I apologize for keeping everyone waiting—”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Rose interrupted. “We keep no schedules at Villa do Cielo.”

“House of the sky,” Isadora softly translated. “What an enchanting image.”

“Now that we’re all together,” said Rose, “let us go in to supper.” She led the way across the arched foyer. Lily linked arms with her, and Ryan was confronted with the prospect of partnering Isadora.

He found the notion absurdly appealing.

He cocked out his elbow. “Shall we go?”

She sent him that startled, I-can’t-believe-you’re-being-nice-to-me look that gratified him even as it broke his heart. Had no one ever shown this poor woman a bit of courtesy?