The Charm School (13 page)

When had she ever, ever laughed like this?

She passed the first hour of the voyage in this rapturous state, simply standing with her hand gripping a shroud while the men went about their duties and the sea swept them into its vast embrace.

She’d had no idea it would be intoxicating. She grew dizzy as she inhaled the salt tang, tinged with resin and tar. The blood seemed to pulse faster in her veins, giving her a heady feeling of possibility.

She inhaled deeply, wincing when her corset stopped her from filling her lungs to the brim. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would wear the garment a notch looser.

For what did it matter if she relaxed a bit? This was her adventure.

She had no one to impress so long as she performed her duties. After the voyage she would never see these people again.

She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf.

Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds.

The very thought opened her to something she had forbidden herself to do for a long time. She began to feel hope again. To yearn. She had always been good at dreaming, but what she had never done before was believe a dream could actually come true. She believed now. The wonder of setting sail created possibilities she had never considered before.

Finally, she sensed a presence nearby and turned. There stood Captain Calhoun, looking handsome and windblown in clothing far different from his shore togs. He had on trousers of well-worn, glove-soft fabric that hugged his hips in a way that was positively indecent.

In contrast, his shirt blew loose around the chest and shoulders, lending him a piratical air.

Her resentment over the cat came rolling back at her.

“Something else.

Captain?” She was surprised—and rather proud—of her caustic tone.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

She forced her gaze away from the amazing trousers. “No dogs to feed?

Perhaps the resident hamster or vole?”

Sunlight glinted in his eyes, but he didn’t smile.

“No vole,” he said.

“No hamster. The rats will fend for themselves.”

“Then perhaps there’s something that actually requires my skills.”

“Ah.” His gaze swept over her with lazy insolence. “You have skills?”

Isadora looked at his intent face, the blue eyes, the wind-reddened cheeks.

She refused to rise to his baiting. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.

Captain. None at all.”

Standing in the cockpit with William Click, who was taking a turn at the helm, Ryan kept a weather eye on Isadora Peabody. Her first day at sea was a marvel to her. She reveled in the wind and waves, conversing with the sailors with far less bashfulness than she’d exhibited earlier, and even joining in a small task or two—tying off a ratline, fastening the anchor hitch.

When he saw her handling the sails or letting go the brails, he felt a stab of chagrin. He wanted her to suffer, not nourish. He wanted her to learn her place, not make a place for herself on shipboard.

Yet every so often she would lift her face to the wind and close her eyes. A look of rapture would come over her, and in spite of himself, he could feel a strange, unwanted affinity for her. He felt the same sentiment under sail.

Only a true lover of the sea could relate to the chest-tightening, ecstatic sense of anticipation.

Christ. The woman even robbed that joy from him by learning to love what he had always loved.

“How’s your mother doing, Captain?” asked Click.

“The seasickness is at her. And her maid, too. I expected as much.”

Ryan had checked on Lily and Fayette frequently, cracking open the door to their cabin to find them both lying green-lipped and limp upon their berths, Fayette praying softly and Lily staring miserably out the small portal.

Isadora had offered to attend to them, but they declined, preferring to keep their misery private.

“The new one doesn’t seem at all affected by it,” Click observed, nodding in Isadora’s direction. She stood like a figurehead with her face pointed into the wind, taking bracing gulps of sea air.

“Odd bird, ain’t she?”

Ryan studied the second mate, with his bitten-off ear and leather vest with the rabbit’s foot in the pocket and a juju bag full of bat bones on a string around his neck. “You would know, Mr. Click. You would know.”

He charted the coordinates and observed the changing of the first watch. The Doctor served dinner, which Ryan ate standing up—scouse, hasty pudding and salt beef, a fresh apple and a healthy squeeze of lime juice.

Then, drawn by an impulse of deviltry, he went to the bow where Isadora stood. Her bonnet—the silly gray one he disliked—had blown off and bounced against her back with each breath of the wind. Her light-brown hair had been plucked from its topknot, and yard-long streamers tangled idly in the breeze.

She seemed oblivious to her dishevelment as she watched the progress of the ship.

‘ “Have you eaten?” he asked without greeting her.

“I had half an apple for my dinner, and it was quite enough, thank you. I don’t want to risk getting seasick.” She pursed her lips in prissy superiority.

“Eat something,” Ryan said in tractably “That’s an order.”

She sniffed, poking her nose into the air.

Your orders are foolish. Last time you gave me an order, you missed your chance to get rid of me.”

A lead weight sank slowly in Ryan’s gut.

“Do tell.”

“I was going to go back to Boston in Mr. Warbass’s launch, but you sent me on that foolish errand about the cat” — “You kept getting underfoot” — “—and by the time I was finished, the launch had left.”

The lead weight of regret hit bottom.

“Next time you decide to abandon ship, remind me not to stop you.”

“Remind yourself not to be so rude,” she returned.

An idea struck him.

“We’ll be hailing ships all through the next several days. I’ll put you on one that’s headed back into Boston.”

She gave that superior-sounding sniff again.

“You’re too late. I’ve decided to stay. You see, I realized what the problem was.” Her tone reminded him of a schoolmarm’s lecture.

“The upheaval before a voyage upsets even a seasoned traveler. It’s an enormous undertaking, leaving one’s home and becoming a part of a tiny universe here in the middle of the sea. Anyone with a half-decent imagination is bound to have misgivings.”

She stared directly at him, and said, “I suppose I should thank you.

This voyage is going to be an adventure I should not like to miss. It was rude of you to order me about, but since it had such happy consequences, I forgive you.”

“Don’t forgive me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t apologize, you goose!”

“Well!” Indignation huffed from her.

They stood in discomfiting silence for a time, listening”!

to the song of the wind through the shrouds, the rhythmic creak of timber and the surge of saltwater past the hull. Seating herself on a lashed crate, she took out a steel-tipped pen and wrote something on the paper secured to the marbled board she held.

“What are you writing?” Ryan asked.

“Blinding rush of blue. It’s the most perfect phrase to describe the way the sea races past the hull.”

“A letter home, then?”

“It’sum private.” She shouldn’t have said that. He snatched the letter from her.

“There’s no privacy on shipboard.”

“Captain!”

He would have given it back, but he kept remembering her words to Chad Easterbrook. / shall write a letter daily, telling you of all my adventures.

Ryan glanced down at the board. She had a fine, legible hand.

“Dear Mr. Easterbrook …” He didn’t have to read further. She was writing to the upright, insufferable Chad Easterbrook. What the hell had he ever done to earn such constancy?

“Give that back,” she said, standing up, raising her voice.

Ryan told himself this was none of his affair. He told himself he shouldn’t feel a hot stab of irritation that this Yankee spinster had given her admiration and esteem to Chad Easterbrook.

“Not until you let me count the ways you love him,” Ryan teased.

“For truly, he is a man of many facets. At least two.” He glanced at the page again and read further. Instead of the breathless schoolgirl phrases he expected to find, the contents of the note shocked him completely.

main stateroom is in an untidy state, and there is a steel money safe secreted under the banquette. Fury made the words melt before his eyes.

“Ah. Never let it be said you’re not thorough, my dear Witch of the Wave.

But then, shouldn’t you be listed on the manifest as spy rather than clerk or translator?”

“Give that back,” she said again, reaching for the letter.

The wind rattled the paper and then plucked it from his fingers.

“Oops,” he said.

“How dare you,” she snapped, stepping forward, the pen clenched in her fist.

“It was an accident.” He widened his eyes in innocence.

She heaved an exasperated sigh.

“I shall only write another.”

“That’s how you did it, then,” he said, glaring at her. “You got Abel to send you on this voyage by promising to monitor my every move.”

“You can hardly blame him. He didn’t find you in a trustworthy … state that first night.”

“He found me hopelessly drunk and in the process of seducing a half-naked wench. Did you write that down, hm?”

“I” — ;

‘ “Suppose I report to you each time I take a piss. Will! you be writing that, too?” j She squinted at him, then pushed down her eyeglasses | and peered over the top of them.

“You are the rudest | man I have ever met.”

“Sugar, if you think that was rude, hang on to your bloomers, because I intend to get a lot worse.”

Ryan stood back, watching her. When she wasn’t squinting, her eyes were quite remarkable, gold-flecked and strangely compelling.

“Why do you look over the top of those spectacles in order to see?”

‘ “Because everything up close is blurred when I look through them.”

She snapped her mouth shut and blanched.

“Perfect,” said Ryan. Before she could stop him, he yanked the glasses off her, taking a few strands of hair along with them.

She emitted an audible gasp, and, oddly, the sound excited him, for it reminded him of the startled inhalation of a woman who had been aroused. Of course, in this case the only thing he had aroused was her anger.

“Give those back.”

He dropped the spectacles overboard.

“Oops.”

She gaped at him.

“You … you … brute. Cad. Troglodyte. Goth.” She exhausted her supply of insults, and still he remained unmoved.

“I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“That was my only pair.”

“Then I guess you won’t be making any more of your sneaky little reports,” he snarled.

“I’ll do as I please. I’ll write what I choose.”

“No, you won’t. I am the captain of this ship. On land, that doesn’t mean much. But aboard the Swan it is everything. My word is law. My acts are unimpeachable.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed by this?”

“I rather hoped you would be.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“A pity. I guess I’ll have to find some other way to impress you.”

“Don’t bother,” she snapped.

“Nothing will work.” She turned on her heel, wobbling slightly with the motion. Her dignity, he could tell, was hanging by a thread. “Good day.

Captain Calhoun,” she said over her shoulder, then made her way down to her quarters.

CHAPTER Eight.

I can see the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled.

Jane Welsh Carlyle (1845).

Is there anything I can do for you?” Isadora asked the next day, cracking open the door to Lily’s chamber. She stepped back as the odor of sickness hit her. Lily and Fayette lay limp upon their bunks, their eyes staring dully at nothing.

Without waiting for an answer, Isadora helped herself to the cotton bib apron hanging on a wall hook and got to work. During the last years of Aunt Button’s life, she had taken charge of nursing her, and the experience of caring for another human being gratified her.

Willingly, she embraced the task.

She emptied the chamber pot and aired the bedclothes. She dispensed sponge baths, helped the women put on clean nightgowns and removed the others to launder them. She worked with fierce purpose, grateful for the activity. If she let herself be idle for even a few moments, she would burst with fury at Ryan Calhoun. At least the labor gave her some outlet for the angry energy coursing through her.

Holding the basket of clothes and linens in front of her, she tapped her foot on the galley floor. The Doctor glanced up.

“Aye, miss, what can I do for you?”

‘ “I should like a vat of hot water and some lye soap for washing.

Please.”

He considered this a moment. Then he nodded.

“I’ll put a kettle on—but it’s sea water, you understand. We don’t use the fresh for laundry.”

“I understand.” Within moments she was kneeling on deck, her sleeves rolled up and her elbows sticking out as she vigorously scrubbed the garments up and down a ridged washboard. She had never once in her life done laundry, and the task proved harder than it looked. The water kept sloshing all over her lap. She splashed herself in the face, and her eyes stung from the soap. As usual, her hair wouldn’t stay in its knot, and long strands fell forward to dip into the vat.

By the time she finished, she was nearly as wet as the clothes.

Yet oddly, she wasn’t concerned with her appearance. Back in Boston, someone was always correcting her posture, tidying her hair, evening out the drape of her dress. The men of the Swan did not seem to care in the least what she wore or what her hair looked like. It was quite liberating and, she supposed, quite wicked, to enjoy such an unconventional attitude.

With an exaggerated swagger, Ryan Calhoun strolled near, exquisitely dressed in popinjay attire, for earlier in the day they had hailed a British frigate.