The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

“The Fingers of God,” she translated.

“The nearest mountain town is Petropolis. In the summer, every carioca worth his salt moves up there for cooler weather and to get away from the yellow jack.”

She shuddered. “The yellow fever, you mean.” It was a terrible killer, she’d read, particularly virulent among Yankees who had no resistance to the disease. “It’s hard to imagine such a plague on a land so beautiful.”

She kept her gaze on the horizon, enthralled with the view, until her hands trembled with the effort of holding herself aloft. “Captain,” she said suddenly. “Look there—to the northeast.”

He glanced back over his shoulder and studied the sky. The distant clouds had a peculiar bruised quality. A yellowish caste tinged the light coming from that quadrant, and as she held on, Isadora noticed the heaviness of the seas. “There’s a storm coming, isn’t there?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. A squall.”

A shriek swirled up from the deck. “What in the name of heaven are you doing?”

Startled, Isadora lost her hold on the rigging. For a split second she hung weightless, flying free, doomed. Then, with a joint-twisting jolt, she stopped falling. Ryan had reached through the rigging and held her by the wrists, the cords in his neck standing out with the strain.

“I suggest,” he said between his teeth, “that you grab hold of the ropes. Now.”

She obeyed mechanically, her hands quicker than her mind. Another blister, this one on her left hand, burst as she took hold of the rigging.

“Get down from there this instant,” Lily called, her voice strident with fear. “Both of you.”

“Thank you,” Isadora said, staring with gratitude and incredulity at Ryan. “Truly, you saved my life.”

“I don’t appreciate having to save lives,” he grumbled, starting to climb down. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

Something in his voice gave her pause. With an unaccustomed prickle in her throat, she climbed down, groping carefully with each foot and then following it with the opposite hand. Her palms stung, but she didn’t care. The sensation of falling, and then of having Ryan catch her, had been extraordinary. Mere fright didn’t begin to cover it.

“Did you get hurt?” he asked.

“No.” She sent him a tremulous smile. “I’ve never scared anyone before. Not in that way, I mean.”

“Then in what way?”

She fixed her eyes on each successive rung of the rigging and spoke from a place she had always kept private. “I suppose I was quite frightening to the young men who were sent to dance with me at parties.”

He gave a derisive snort. “Then those young men were more yellow than greasy dogs.”

She didn’t want platitudes from him; she didn’t expect sympathy. “They never knew what to say to me, nor I to them, so it was awkward all around. As I said, frightening.” She felt her foot strike the planks of the deck and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Land sakes, child,” Lily scolded fiercely. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed.”

“And would have been if you’d shrieked a mite louder, Mama,” Ryan said.

“I couldn’t help myself. I generally shriek when a disaster is at hand.”

“No harm done.” Isadora felt suddenly as awkward as she had with the reluctant suitors of Boston. High in the rigging, looking across the vast sea at a land of such mystical beauty, she had felt like a different person. Now, with the solid oak deck swaying beneath her feet, she was herself again—ungainly, tongue-tied Isadora. She’d bared too much of herself up there. Ryan knew things she’d never told another soul.

Without daring to look at him, she said, “I’m afraid I’ve got some blisters. I’d best tend to them in the galley.”

She hurried away, but the wind carried Lily’s voice: “I know you weren’t happy with this arrangement, Ryan, but must you try to get rid of her by throwing her overboard?”

Twelve

A capital ship for an ocean trip

Was the Walloping Window Blind—

No gale that blew dismayed her crew

Or troubled the captain’s mind.

The man at the wheel was taught to feel

Contempt for the wildest blow.

And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,

That he’d been in his bunk below.

—Charles Edward Carryl,

Davy and the Goblin: A Nautical Ballad

The disaster came so swiftly and so completely that there was, Ryan conceded, a certain poetry in its magnificence. He’d felt the ominous heavy air when he and Isadora had been up on the mast. Though he had focused his attention on her to an alarming—and surprising—degree, a detached practical part of him had seen the power of the coming storm.

The untrained eye might have noted the darkish underbellies of the clouds. The optimistic sailor might have heeded the proximity of Rio and thought that perhaps they’d reach safe harbor before the violent squall struck.

Ryan knew better. A wind gall, luminous in its strange halo on the edge of a cloud, promised heavy rains to windward. He’d concealed his reaction from Isadora and his mother, but the moment he’d broken free of them he had convened the watch and sent them rushing about, battening the ship for a storm.

It struck within the hour, a long wall of wind and heavy seas pitching in from the far Atlantic. A swell hit the ship with such force that her timbers reverberated stem to stern, the vibrations driving up into the legs of those on deck. Gale winds plucked at the shrouds like a clumsy musician playing a badly strung fiddle.

Ryan and Izard met in the chart room. The chief mate’s eyes said what his voice would not—Ryan’s beginner’s luck had run out. Here was the storm that would test his true mettle as a skipper.

“We’ll heave to and make her fast,” Ryan said.

Izard didn’t argue. He merely nodded. An open hatchway let in a gust of wind that swept the charts off the slant-topped table. Wordlessly Izard stowed the charts and turned down the lantern.

As the ship plunged into its inevitable roll, Ryan passed Journey in the companionway. “Check on the women,” he said tersely. “Tell them to keep to their quarters.”

Though a chilling dread seized him, he couldn’t deny the tingle and spark of excitement that churned through him as he rushed out to the deck. Acres of foam surrounded the ship.

He shouldn’t like this, but God help him, he did. He desired the sea as he desired a woman’s body. The sea was his mistress, one with the power to heal, nurture, love, torture…or destroy at her caprice. Like a woman, she was dark, mysterious, unpredictable—impossible to skim over the surface; a man had to plunge in and sink deep.

“Heave,” he ordered. “Heave and sink her.”

The men didn’t need to be told twice. With a rusty whir of the hawse pipe, the heavy-weather anchors spun out and plummeted downward.

Scrolling waves rose higher and higher, and the Swan climbed helplessly to a foaming peak, then dove with breathtaking speed into the trough. Ryan stood in the cockpit with the second mate, both men mute with awe.

“We’ll be swamped,” Click promised him.

“I’ve got Craven and Pole manning the pumps.” Ryan heard a grinding sound, and regarded the cables while the stern fishtailed helplessly. “We’ve got to run before it,” he shouted.

“We’ll be lost for sure,” Click bellowed back. “We might have to jettison our cargo to boot!”

A crushing sense of defeat pressed at Ryan. Christ, not the cargo. The storm had grown mythically ugly, with the seething seas and the smoky clouds a vision of hell. He took a deep breath and bellowed the order past his own reluctance. “Up anchor, and take a double reef in the mains’l for hoisting!”

He knew in his gut it would take more men than he had to navigate the yawing ship through the gale. He refused to let himself think of disaster. Refused to think about his shame if he had to turn the ship over to the underwriters.

Timothy Datty came running, the wind blowing his feet out from under him. “My fault, skipper,” he said. “I fouled a rope.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Aye, sir!” the boy shouted.

“Carry on, then.” Ryan wrestled with the tiller and Timothy went aloft. He reefed the topsails. Luigi set the staysails, and the ship raced before the wind, sweeping up and down the swells, on no set course save that determined by the unrelenting storm.

Datty was in the process of hoisting the mainsail, precariously balanced on the lee yardarm. He reached over to fasten the earring, a short length of rope used to lash the upper corners of the sail to the yardarm.

At that moment a wave struck the ship, a huge slap of water so thick and deep that Ryan felt himself start to drown as the sea gushed over him. Instinctively he hung on to the tiller, opening his eyes to slits and seeing nothing but green water rushing past.

He was under deep. Perhaps the ship had turned. His lungs nearly burst, and when he was about to surrender to the urge to let go, the water slid away like the seas before Moses.

Drawing in a frantic breath, he became aware of two things—

Timothy Datty had fallen from the yardarm.

And in defiance of orders, Isadora Peabody had appeared on deck.

Lightning blazed near the ship. Ryan swore, pounding across the deck, trying to center himself under Datty. The youth hung from the earring, suspended from the jackstay. His slender body swung like the clapper of a bell, back and forth with the violent pitch of the ship.

Ryan didn’t stop to think. He grabbed a coil of rope and a gaff hook and started to climb. As he went up the rigging, he saw Isadora pitch in like a seasoned tar, helping Izard wrestle the tiller and taking physical risks, disobeying all good caution, flouting his command.

He had no time to grow angry at her. The storm swept him up in its teeth and he felt like the prey of a wolf that shook him, trying to break his neck. He hung on, his gaze never leaving Timothy. Any moment now the boy might lose his grasp, might fall into the house-high swells, never to be seen again.

I won’t let you fall. Ryan closed the vow into his heart as he climbed. Securing himself in the footrope under the yardarm, he tossed out the rope. Time and time again the wind snatched it away. The end of the rope flashed by too quickly. Impossible to grab it. Timothy’s face, running clear with rainwater and spume, was the greenish white of a marble slab.

His eyes rolled; his lips moved in mindless, hopeless prayer.

Ryan felt himself losing the boy. He shouted encouragement, screamed at the lad to hang on, but the wind stole his words.

He suspected Timothy wasn’t listening, anyway. He could see the slender hands frozen around the earring line. The lad was weakening. If he let go to grab the thrown line, he’d fall for sure.

“Here,” said a voice near Ryan, practically in his ear.

Incredulous, he looked through the rigging and saw Isadora, passing him the end of the rope. “Secure this to the yardarm and swing out and grab him.”

It was an insane idea. Datty hung too far out toward the end of the yardarm to reach. But if Ryan did as she said, if he swung out as the ship pitched leeward, he might be able to grab the boy.

“You want to see us both die, don’t you?” he shouted, but even as he did, he grasped the rope and lashed it to the yardarm.

On the deck below, Ralph and Journey held the other end of the line to rein him in after he pulled Timothy to safety. That was all the thought he would allow. Anything more and he’d talk himself out of it.

He watched the swells and waited until the ship pitched toward Timothy. Then, with a last look at Isadora—wet face, plastered hair, wide, terrified eyes—he pushed off from the foot rope.

The sensation of soaring was, for the briefest of moments, an ecstasy and a wonderment he hadn’t expected. The next moment he felt nothing. The sea rose up at him. He’d miscalculated the distance. He was going to miss Timothy altogether. He might even sweep the boy away for good.

“Again,” Isadora screamed. “You must try again!”

He belled out and then swung back.

And Timothy dangled right in front of him.

Ryan saw his own arm as if it were a stranger’s. Out it came, wrapping around Timothy’s slender form. He felt the whoosh of lungs emptying, and he could not have said if it was he or the boy who had made the sound.

His legs and chest burned as, with a heated whir, he slid down the rope and smacked, bruised but safe, into Journey and Ralph. Timothy sprawled on the deck, flexing his hands and shuddering.

As nimble as any seaman, Isadora descended from the rigging. Ryan dragged her to a hatch and all but stuffed her down a companion ladder, too furious to speak.

Then he braced himself. Until today, the sea had been his fair-weather friend. Now, retribution was at hand, and God knew, he deserved it. He was a careless man, sometimes even cruel in his carelessness. With hardly a thought for the consequences, he had ripped Journey from his family, offering little more than a wish and a prayer of reuniting them. He had lied through his teeth to gain command of the Swan. Now they would all die because of it.

He expected the storm to destroy him and the ship and cargo and crew. But instead, as quickly as it had whipped up, the squall skirled away to the northeast, leaving high seas and a brooding sky in its aftermath.

Ryan stood with Journey on the deck. “It’s over.”

“We survived,” Journey said.

“We did better than that,” Izard pointed out, joining them at the rail. He started to laugh with pure joy. “I took a reading. We’re less than ten miles out of Rio.”

Isadora sat in the galley, a rough green blanket draped around her shoulders and a mug of tepid tea cradled between her hands. Shaken and cautious, the Doctor had allowed a small fire in the stove to heat water for tea. She took a sip, glancing over the rim at Timothy Datty. Someone had put dry trousers and a shirt on him; now he lay fast asleep upon a bench, knees drawn up and hands cradling his cheek.

He looked exhausted by his ordeal and impossibly, achingly young. In the hollow of his lap, the ship’s cat slept. Setting her mug in a holder, Isadora stood and covered Timothy with the green blanket. Some impulse compelled her to put out a hand, brush the salt-stiffened, spikey hair away from his pale brow.

In that moment, she knew this lad was more than a shipmate to her. Dear God, they’d almost lost him.

“Get into some dry clothes,” said a voice from the doorway. “I don’t want you catching a chill.”

Yanked out of the sentimental moment, she turned to scowl at Ryan Calhoun. “I’m not at all cold. We’re in the tropics, remember?”

He tossed his head, damp hair sprinkling his shirt. It, like his trousers, was dry. He came into the galley, stopping in front of her, standing so close she could feel the heat from his body. She tried to step back, but he’d cornered her against the table. “Very well,” he said. “That wet dress gives us all an intriguing view of your smallclothes, so you might as well entertain us.”

She folded her arms protectively across her chest. “Only someone like you would find a storm at sea entertaining.”

“Someone like me,” he said, running his thumb down the inside of her arm until she batted his hand away. “And exactly which someone am I like?”

“Like…like the very devil,” she blurted out.

“Do tell,” he said, touching her other arm so that she unfolded that one, too. “I’ve been called many things, but not the devil.”

She knew she should find his nearness and the impudence of his touch offensive, but God help her, she didn’t. For some reason the gentle, insistent up-and-down motion of his hand soothed her, made it difficult to think. “Like Lucifer, you have a great capacity for strength and goodness. Yet you use your power to tease and torment me.”

“Is that what this is?” he asked with a delighted chuckle. “Teasing? Tormenting?”

“Why do you find this so amusing?” she asked, starting to feel light-headed and strange.

“Because I came here to thank you for your help during the storm and you’ve completely misconstrued my intent.”

She kept staring at his mouth. He was so much taller than she, that her eyes were level with his mouth. He had a wonderful, chiseled shape to his lips, and he smiled more easily than anyone she’d ever met.

“Then you’re…welcome. But you needn’t thank me.”

His hand lifted and the side of his finger slipped beneath her chin, bringing her gaze up to his. “True. In fact, you’re far more deserving of…”

For some reason, her eyes seemed to want to drift shut. And her mouth, her mouth wanted to…

“Deserving of what?” she asked faintly, her whisper barely audible above the noise of the dissipating storm.

He pressed closer. She felt herself lean into him, and then, swearing between his clenched teeth, he stepped back. “You’re far more deserving of a lecture on safety,” he said. “I ordered you to stay in your quarters, and you deliberately violated that.”

Mortified by the sense of forbidden intimacy that had surrounded her only moments ago, Isadora ducked beneath his arm and hurried to the door. “I didn’t hear any argument from you when you were up that yardarm,” she said.

“Then be sure to note that in your report to Mr. Easterbrook.” His insolent, ice-blue stare fastened on her bodice. He was trying to intimidate her, she thought. And, as she fled from the galley, she conceded that it was working.

They were obliged to wear ship and stand off from shore until the heavy seas abated. Ryan used the time to prepare for a grand entrance to Rio.

On his previous trip to the Caribbean, he’d learned that in a seaport, appearances were everything. He represented the ship’s interests to port authorities, shipping agents and consignees. To get the highest prices for his cargo, a skipper had to appear prosperous and well-groomed from stem to stern. Fortunately, the Swan was a fine-looking vessel, the crewmen diligent in their swabbing and polishing. The storm had caused only minor damage. The bark would look like a proud bird as she sailed into harbor.

Ryan kept the crew busy scrubbing down the decks and smoothing them with the holystone, polishing the brass, checking the sails and awnings for spots of mildew. Even the women pitched in, his mother pulling things from the linen locker while Fayette strung them along a line on the afterdeck. Isadora made reparations to the storm-battered hen coop and then—hugely amusing the crew—groomed the goat with a silver-backed hairbrush.

He tried to figure out what it was about her that so fascinated and infuriated him. They always seemed to rub one another the wrong way, even when things started out pleasantly enough. One moment they were laughing at a shared joke; the next they were grousing at each other over the most minor of issues. And sometimes he found himself—of all the damn fool things—pressing her into a dark corner and wondering what secrets she hid beneath her voluminous skirts.

He had always taken pride in his ability to understand the female of the species. He thought he knew what women wanted, what they needed, what they expected. And, until Isadora, he had been able to provide it with reliable regularity.

But this one, this intelligent, vexing, interesting female, did not seem to be taken by any of the usual charms. She didn’t care for fashion, though she clung to the restrictive modes of Beacon Hill out of habit. She was immune to flattery, for she neither trusted nor believed a compliment sent her way. She took no delight in the usual ladylike pursuits of needlework and gossip, finding more pleasure in perusing the Bowditch with Ralph Izard or conducting elocution lessons for Timothy Datty. To look at her, he’d never have guessed she had the strength to endure the storm, yet the hardships only made her quicker and more assured than she’d ever been on dry land. Worst of all, she was impervious to the unexpected mist of heat that pervaded the atmosphere whenever they found themselves alone together. He had no idea where his unwanted urge to be close to her came from. He meant to intimidate her, humiliate her, make her sorry she’d forced her presence on him, yet his plan kept misfiring. He kept catching himself enjoying the closeness far too much…and wanting far more than was good for both of them.

He was insatiably curious about her. She gave tirelessly to others, but what did she want for herself? He should ask her, and he would, if she’d ever deign to speak to him again after yesterday’s scene in the galley.

“There now, don’t you look a sight.” Journey came into the stateroom. “What is that color you’re wearing today—mango?”

Ryan plucked at his silken cravat, admiring the peach-blush shade of it. “One of my favorite colors.”

“Goes well with the lime green sash.”

Ryan ignored the wry censure in his voice. His steward favored somber colors and a dignified manner, but that didn’t suit Ryan. “There’s a reason for this,” he said.

“Yes. Horrible personal taste, for one.”

“So you say. But picture Ferraro’s cold storage plant. Hundreds of workers swarming about, dozens of skippers with ice to sell. Who will they remember next season—a black-clad downeast Puritan, or the dashing Captain Calhoun?”

Journey turned his hands palms-out and took a step back. “Never mind, then. Commerce before taste, always.”

“Captain!” Timothy rapped smartly at the door. “P-pilot’s here!”

Ryan strode out to the main deck. The harbor pilot had come over in a launch and boarded. Dark-skinned, a battered hat clutched beneath his arm, he was staring drop-jawed at Lily, who had come out with Fayette and Isadora to observe the arrival.

“I guess he found something prettier than you,” Journey said.

Lily wore a dress of lavender and lace, complete with a wide-brimmed picnic bonnet and a ruffle-edged parasol. Ryan had seen flower arrangements less elaborate than his mother.

Fayette stood dutifully behind her mistress, though the maid’s wide-eyed gaze devoured the busy harbor with tall ships moving in and out, pilot boats and launches scooting to and fro.

And then there was Isadora, already shrinking into herself, he observed with annoyance. Now that they were about to go ashore, she was reverting to the gawky, timid creature he’d met in Boston. She kept her shoulders hunched and her eyes cast down, though she darted an occasional glance toward Sugar Loaf, the massive upended rock that marked the harbor. She had trussed herself up in an ugly brown dress he hadn’t seen south of the tenth parallel and her hair, which had begun to look somewhat better than squirrel fur, had disappeared into an odd black-and-brown bonnet.

At least, Ryan mused, landfall had not leached the healthy color from her face and she hadn’t coughed or sneezed in weeks.

With a gracious smile, he strode toward the pilot. “Senhor, welcome aboard the Swan.”

“Oh, my,” Lily murmured, admiring his shore togs with a proud maternal head-to-toe glance. “My baby boy is too handsome for words, isn’t he, Isadora?”

Isadora gave him a quick look, then ducked her head. “As you say, there are no words.”

At that moment, the shoreline forts fired a salute. Ryan raised his arms to acknowledge the courtesy.

The pilot tore his gaze from Lily long enough to offer Ryan a bow and a gap-toothed smile. Ryan gestured at the wharves. “How much to bring us in to a berth?”

“Forty pound sterling, senhor. In now, and later out.”

Ryan clutched at his heart. “Did you hear that, Mr. Izard? Just when I thought we’d make landfall without incident, I’m attacked by a pirate.”

“Senhor, I do not understand. I offer a service at a fair price—”

“Fifteen pounds sterling and not a farthing more,” Ryan said.

The man sent a wounded look heavenward and released a long string of Portuguese lamentation.

Ryan waited patiently for his counteroffer, but instead, Isadora cleared her throat. “Captain Calhoun, the poor man said he has five daughters, and his mother-in-law has come to die in his house. I really do think the proper thing to do is to meet his price.”