The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

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 intractably. “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’s…um…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. I 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?”

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.

Nine

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. He insisted that a skipper must look prosperous to be perceived as a worthy merchant. Isadora suspected he merely liked to dress in fancy attire because he was vain.

Still, he had done some trading—Ipswich cotton for Glasgow wool—and made a nice profit. To the disgusting hilarity of the men, Ryan had offered to throw in Isadora for free.

She studied him furtively now, this man who seemed determined to make her regret this voyage. A froth of Irish lace adorned his neck, spilling out over a peacock blue waistcoat of figured silk. His expertly creased trousers were tucked into boots that gleamed with fresh polish.

Criminal, she thought resentfully. It was criminal that a man should look so comely in the middle of the ocean. Only Ryan Calhoun could wear such loud colors and make them seem brighter and richer. What a vain and self-centered man he was, to look so fine when she looked so…damp.

He lingered on the deck and watched her until she said, “Haven’t you anything better to do? Perhaps someone has a pocket watch or some books or other valuables that need to be pitched overboard.”

He chuckled. It infuriated her that he had such a charming laugh. She wished his laughter could sound as obnoxious as he truly was.

“I’m intrigued, Miss Peabody. Isn’t that Fayette’s calico dress?”

“It is. She and your mother are unwell. I have decided to look after them.”

“Why?”

“To keep myself from killing you,” she said between her teeth, increasing her vigor with the washboard.

“Ah. Still vexed about the spectacles?” He lifted one eyebrow, just so. “Good. Think about that next time you decide to record my misdeeds aboard the ship.”

“You should not have jettisoned my eyeglasses.” Isadora would not admit, on pain of death, that she did not miss the eyeglasses at all. Wearing them had been a great bother. They had never worked properly. She was always having to find a way to peer over or under the lenses. Without them, she could see much better.

A fact she refused to divulge to Ryan Calhoun.

“That is one thing you must learn about me, Miss Peabody,” he said. “I am a creature of impulse. I almost never think before I act.”

“An impressive quality, I’m sure.” She could not begin to explain how offensive his action had been. Regardless of whether they worked or not, the spectacles belonged to her. They were personal, perhaps as much a part as her brown hair and hazel eyes. She felt naked without them. They were a symbol of her identity, and he had taken that away.

An unwanted inner voice told her she used to hide behind them. She hushed the inner voice. It was not up to Ryan Calhoun to drag her out of hiding.

She lifted the heavy lump of sodden fabric out of the tub and slapped it on the deck. Picking up the tub, she staggered toward the rail to empty it. The weight of it unbalanced her, and she lurched forward. The tub sloshed over, a fount of gray wash water exploding upward and drenching Ryan Calhoun from head to toe.

His stylishly cut red hair. His exquisite lace neck cloth. His silken turquoise waistcoat. His creased trousers and gleaming boots.

Isadora stood back, blinking and aghast. Then a satisfying sense of justice settled over her. “Oops,” she said.

She expected fury from him, but he surprised her. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.

What a singular way to cope with a humiliating mishap, she thought, puzzled by his mirth. She studied his tanned, wet throat and curling long hair and strong white teeth and dancing eyes. He was so quick to laugh at his own expense.

“Touché, Miss Peabody. Touché.”

“The pleasure was mine, I’m sure,” she said. She had the most inexplicable urge to smile at him. Determinedly she kept her face blank, her mouth grim.

He whistled as he strolled down the deck, water squishing from his boots. Isadora stared after him, intrigued. The seamen on duty stared, too, elbowing each other and whispering.

Papa had warned her that travel by sailing ship meant days of tedium.

Papa, for the first time in his life, was wrong.

One morning at sunrise, after the changing of the watch, Ryan was walking the starboard rail when he came across the sail maker crouched on deck with Isadora.

Despite living in tiny quarters with a minimum of amenities, she clung to her lubberly fashion of wearing a tightly bound gray or black dress, a bonnet and that idiotic knotted coiffure. Yet the wind, far more persistent even than Isadora’s stubbornness, plucked long strands of hair from her bonnet and swirled them in the sun until the exposure made her hair glisten with gold highlights.

Between Luigi and Isadora lay a pile of ropes and pulleys. “This,” the sail maker said, holding it out to her, “is a heaving line. You throw it with a monkey’s fist, like so.” He demonstrated. Then Isadora took a turn with it, beaming when she succeeded.

“And this one?” She held up a decorated knot.

“A cat’s-paw. And this one, see, it’s got a knot to hold a line on a gangway, this is a Turk’s head.”

She took up the next one. “What do you call this back splice?”

“A dog’s cock,” Luigi said matter-of-factly.

Miss Isadora dropped it as if it had burned her. “Ye powers.”

Laughing to himself, Ryan approached them. “A lesson in your sea-going jargon?” he inquired.

Luigi winked, twitching his mustache. “The lady, she is a fast learner.”

“Then perhaps one day you’ll tell her how we refer to heaving in a line a bit.”

She stood up. “And what would the answer to that one be?”

“If the back splice makes you blush, I don’t think you’re ready to hear.” Goaded by one of his famous impulses, Ryan cocked out his arm. “I was about to take the morning longitude sights and thought you might like to join me.”

He told himself he’d invited her as a small reward. She had been performing the exhausting task of nursing his mother and Fayette. She’d earned a little civil conversation.

She eyed him suspiciously. Over the past several days they had circled one another with cautious interest. Ryan could never be certain what she would do next, this “idler” he’d taken on to do the translating and clerical work. As the crew settled into the predictable rhythms of life under sail, there was a subtle, indefinable difference in the air about them.

Ignorant of social graces, these rough sailors, these sons of Neptune simply accepted her. Ryan had expected them to defer to her, to behave differently in her presence, but instead, they took it upon themselves to initiate her into their way of life.

One day she might be seated on a crate with Luigi, mending sail with a big hooked needle. The next might find her laughing as Gerald Craven, the jibboom man, taught her to play a tune on the Portuguese accordion. In the galley, she showed the Doctor how to make fudge. Once, Ryan came out of the chart room to find her holding Chips’s hand in her lap. The sight gave Ryan a sudden hot sting of annoyance until he realized she was picking a splinter out of the carpenter’s hand.

She made friends of them. This willful young woman from Beacon Hill, who came from people who wouldn’t deign to let a boy like Timothy Datty black their boots, had suddenly taken on a different role aboard the Silver Swan. She wanted to know about Luigi’s impressive array of tattoos and what each one meant. She asked after Gerald Craven’s children, knowing they had come down with the measles shortly before the Swan set sail. She conversed readily and easily with Chips, ordinarily a quiet man who contented himself with his hand-carving. The Doctor let her dry her stockings in his galley, a privilege he wouldn’t afford Ryan. And even William Click, the unpopular second mate, was wont to sit with her of an evening, smoking his pipe and listening as she read from one of the many books she had brought.

“How are my mother and Fayette today?” Ryan asked as they made their way toward the chart room.

“Little better, I fear. I managed to get them to sip some broth, but they are both still reluctant to leave their beds.”

“Some folks never get their sea legs,” he said, then eyed Isadora, noting the way long trails of hair had been plucked from their pins. “You don’t suffer the mal de mer. What is your secret, Miss Peabody?”

“I’ve learned to be very cautious about what I eat.”

He narrowed his eyes, studying her. Were her cheeks less round? Did he detect dark circles under her eyes? “You’ll fall ill of weakness,” he warned her. “You’ll waste away.”

She laughed softly; she seemed to laugh far more readily at sea than on land. “I daresay I’ve a long way to go before facing that calamity, Captain.” She took a deep breath of the morning air. “Indeed, my health is much improved aboard this ship. I’ve not sneezed or sniffled since we left Boston.”

It was true, he realized with a start. The watery eyes, the reddened nose, the explosive sneezes—he’d seen none of them lately.

Ralph Izard stood on the foredeck, turning to greet them as they approached. “I think we can bring up the sea anchor, skipper,” he said to Ryan. “Seas’ve calmed a good bit since last night.”

“We’ve dropped anchor?” Isadora asked with a frown.

“A sea anchor,” Izard explained. “We used a drogue thrown overboard to keep the bow to the direction of the sea.” He indicated the windlass. “I was about to bring it up.”

“May I?” she asked, her face lighting up.

Izard glanced at Ryan, who shrugged. “Mind your fingers—we don’t want them pinched by the rope.”

Mr. Izard gave her a handspike and showed her how to insert it into the body of the windlass cylinder. Positioning herself behind the foremast, she began to work the apparatus. Slowly the thick rope, wet and hung with seaweed, began to emerge from the water.

“Steady now,” Izard said. “Keep her steady, and the rope will coil around it all of itself. Shall I give you a hand?”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice strained. “I can do this.” Grinding away at the windlass, she made a very strange sailor—though her full skirts and landlubber shoes impeded her progress. A long, rolling wave lifted the bow at a sharp slant.

“Careful,” Ryan said. “Chips lifted out some of the planks to get at the dry rot, and—”

“Oh!” The heel of her shoe caught in a crevice between some of the missing boards. The next happened so quickly Ryan was powerless to stop it. Her feet came out from under her, and she let go of the handspikes. The rope spun wildly on the spool, winding her hair around it along with the twisted line. A second later, she lay against the foremast, bound there by her own hair. Her face had paled to a pasty white.

“Miss Peabody!” Ryan dropped to his knees. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but…it pulls at my scalp. Can you free me?”

“It does too hurt,” he snapped, making a few tentative attempts at untangling her. “You were dragged by the hair and your head slammed against the mast. So quit trying to be valiant and admit it hurts like hell.”

She bit her lip. “It hurts like…the dickens.”

“That’s harsh,” Izard muttered.

Each time Ryan moved the windlass, it pulled at her hair. Frustrated, he called for Journey, who came running, his broad bare feet slapping on the deck.

“Good job, honey,” he said, clearly impressed. “We haven’t ever had someone get tangled up in the windlass before.”

“I should like to get up now,” Isadora said.

The sailors who were off watch came to see what was the matter. So did Luigi and Chips. William arrived shortly as well, and everyone gathered around the capstan to witness the woman with a yard of hair tangled in the gears and rope.

Isadora Peabody’s cheeks turned red. “If you don’t mind, I should like to get up,” she said again.

“Any ideas?” Ryan asked the men.

“We could cut the line.”

“It’s as thick as a man’s wrist. That would take all day, and we’d be billed for destroying the line.”

“Dismantle the knight-heads of the windlass and slide the hair and the rope off the side?”

“I just repaired that,” Chips objected. “Took me half a day. The man who touches it dies.”

“Unwind it the opposite way.”

“I tried that. It pulls. She’ll lose her whole scalp.”

Ryan and Journey looked at one another. Journey’s gaze flicked to the sheathed midshipman’s dirk Ryan wore in his belt. They had the same thought at the same time.

“Miss Peabody.” Ryan went down on one knee. “Close your eyes.”

“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” Her voice rose, quavering with distrust.

“Getting you out of this fix. Now, close your eyes.”

Isadora knew she was disobeying a direct order, but she didn’t care. The men began to murmur among themselves, and so she opened her eyes.

Just in time to see Ryan unsheath a thin-bladed knife. She screamed, scrambling back as far as the entanglement would permit, her hair pulling viciously at her scalp. The blade flashed in the sunlight, then came down with a thunk. She waited to feel a rush of blood, but instead she sprang free of the coil.

She sprawled on the deck, her face inches from the skipper’s booted foot. “You’ve gone mad, haven’t you?” she said in a shaky voice. “I’ve heard of this—men gone too long at sea lose their grasp on sanity, and—eek!” She put her hand to her head, where her hair should have been. Then she looked at the windlass. Her hair. Still caught in the coils of rope. But it was no longer attached to her head.