Susan Wiggs - The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle - The Charm School

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 due as 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.”

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 Carneros.”

“Who? Oh, that lecherous character from the water-front.”

“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.