Susan Wiggs - The Charm School

“The Charm School draws readers in with delightful characters, engaging dialogue, humor, emotion and sizzling sensuality.”

—Costa Mesa Sunday Times

“Will appeal to fans across the board.”

—Library Journal on The Charm School

“In poetic prose, Wiggs evocatively captures the Old South and creates an intense, believable relationship between the lovers.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Horsemaster’s Daughter

“Wiggs is one of our best observers of stories of the heart. Maybe that is because she knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.”

—Salem Statesman-Journal

“[A] delightful romp…With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”

—Publishers Weekly on Halfway to Heaven

“A bold, humorous and poignant romance that fulfills every woman’s dreams.”

—Christina Dodd on Enchanted Afternoon

“A rare treat.”

—Amazon.com on The Firebrand, an Amazon.com

Best of 2001 title

“With this final installment of Wiggs’s Chicago Fire trilogy, she has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound as the relationships, characters and story unfold. Fans of historical romances will naturally flock to this skillfully executed trilogy, and general women’s fiction readers should find this story enchanting as well.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Firebrand

“Wiggs’s uncomplicated stories are rich with life lessons, nod-along moments and characters with whom readers can easily relate. Delightful and wise, Wiggs’s latest shines.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dockside

“Empathetic protagonists, interesting secondary characters, well-written flashbacks, and delicious recipes add depth to this touching, complex romance.”

—Library Journal on The Winter Lodge

“With the ease of a master, Wiggs introduces complicated, flesh-and-blood characters into her idyllic but identifiable small-town setting, sets in motion a refreshingly honest romance, resolves old issues and even finds room for a little mystery.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Winter Lodge (starred review)

“Wiggs explores many aspects of grief, from guilt to anger to regret, imbuing her book with the classic would’ve/could’ve/should’ve emotions, and presenting realistic and sympathetic characters…another excellent title [in] her already outstanding body of work.”

—Booklist on Table for Five (starred review)

“A human and multilayered story exploring duty to both country and family.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts on The Ocean Between Us

To the most charming group of people I know:

LIBRARIANS.

You probably don’t remember my name,

but you saw me every week. I was the quiet child

with the long pigtails and the insatiable appetite for

Beverly Cleary, Carol Ryrie Brink and

Louise Fitzhugh. I was the one you had to tap on the

shoulder at closing time, because I was still sitting

on a stool in the stacks, poring over Ramona’s latest

adventures or sniffling as I read Anne Frank’s diary.

I was the little girl with the huge wire basket on

the front of her bike—for lugging home a stack of

books that weighed more than I did. I never thought

to thank you back then, but I didn’t understand how

very much all those hours, and all those books, and

all your patience meant to me or to the writer I

would become. But I understand now. So this book

is dedicated to you, to all of you, in gratitude for

bringing books and readers together.

Acknowledgments

Part One: The Ugly Duckling

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: The Bird of Passage

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part Three: The Bird of Winter

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part Four: The Swan

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Afterword

Thanks to the usual suspects: Joyce, Alice, Christina, Betty and Barb. Also to Jill, Kristin and Debbie, who make this business much less isolating. Thanks also to my editors, Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson, who helped to shape this work with sensitivity and finesse. The passages from

Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling (translated from the Danish by Jean Hersholt) are drawn from copy number 1990 of the 2500 Limited Editions Club, copyright 1942 for the George Macy Companies, Inc. The author humbly acknowledges her debt to the wisdom of the great storyteller, who wrote “Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.”

“What nice little children you do have, mother,” said the old duck with the rag around her leg. “They are all pretty except that one. He didn’t come out so well. It’s a pity you can’t hatch him again.”

And the poor duckling who had been the last one out of his egg, and who looked so ugly, was pecked and pushed about and made fun of by the ducks, and the chickens as well. “He’s too big,” said they all. The turkey gobbler, who thought himself an emperor because he was born wearing spurs, puffed up like a ship under full sail and bore down upon him, gobbling and gobbling until he was red in the face. The poor duckling did not know where he dared stand or where he dared walk. He was so sad because he was so desperately ugly, and because he was the laughingstock of the whole barnyard.

When morning came, the wild ducks flew up to have a look at the duckling. “What sort of creature are you?” they asked, as the duckling turned in all directions, bowing his best to them all. “You are terribly ugly,” they told him, “but that’s nothing to us so long as you don’t marry into our family.”

—Hans Christian Andersen,

The Ugly Duckling (1843)

The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all.

—Henry James,

The Portrait of a Lady

Boston, October 1851

Being invisible did have its advantages. Isadora Dudley Peabody knew no one would notice her, not even if the gleaming ballroom floor decided to open up and swallow her. It wouldn’t happen, of course. Disappearing in the middle of a crowded room was bold indeed, and Isadora didn’t have a bold bone in her body.

Her mind was a different matter altogether.

She surrendered the urge to disappear, relegating it to the land of impossible things—a vast continent in Isadora’s world. Impossible things…a smile that was not forced, a compliment that was not barbed, a dream that was not punctured by the cruel thorn of disappointment.

She pressed herself back in a half-domed alcove window. A sneeze tickled her nose. Whipping out a handkerchief, she stifled it. But still she heard the gossip. The old biddies. Couldn’t they find someone else to talk about?

“She’s the black sheep of the family in more ways than one,” whispered a scandalized voice. “She is so different from the rest of the Peabodys. So dark and ill-favored, while her brothers and sisters are all fair as mayflowers.”