Calhoun Chronicles Bundle

by Susan Wiggs

  At his side stood a plump, smiling woman in a flowing pale dress. “May I present my wife, Amalia.” Though she was well past middle age and clearly no raving beauty, Doña Amalia’s dark eyes shone with affection for her husband and welcome for her guests. Her affable look drew Ryan in, and he found himself warming to her instantly.

  “Welcome to Rio,” she said, holding out both hands to Isadora.

  Maurício cocked his head to one side. “You are looking very formal, senhorita.” He winked. “And the two of you—are you affianced?”

  “Absolutely not!” she burst out.

  Ryan was offended by her vehemence.

  “An idle question,” Maurício said. “Come now. We will cure that with some food and wine!”

  The four of them went in to a supper of melon and shellfish, sherried mushrooms, a salad of fruit and greens, beefsteak and stewed vegetables and goiabada made of guavas and sugar. An array of wines and cordials accompanied each course.

  “I have heard much of Boston,” Amalia said, sprinkling shredded manioc root on her husband’s salad. “Your native city is a great center of learning, yes?”

  “Indeed it is,” Isadora replied. “People from Boston place a high premium on education.”

  “And scholarship has always been important in your family?”

  “Oh, yes. Though never quite so important as…” She caught herself, flushed and looked down at her plate. “As other things,” she finished vaguely.

  Ryan had an idea that those “other things” had to do with being witty and entertaining at parties, snagging the proper husband and resembling a silver-gilt ornament on a rich man’s arm. He took a deep drink of wine, scowling into his goblet.

  “How did you enjoy your sightseeing yesterday, senhorita?” Ferraro asked.

  “I found it all quite stunning. Your city is so incredibly rich in things to see and do.”

  “Then you must do it all,” Amalia insisted.

  “I wish I could, but that would take a lifetime.” She glanced at Ryan. “We have only a short time here, isn’t that so, Captain?”

  “Sadly, yes,” Ryan said.

  “I wish I could spend longer,” Isadora said.

  The Ferraros beamed. “That is Rio. Though your home might be elsewhere, Rio takes your heart, always.” They joined hands, and Ryan found the gesture oddly touching, for it was so open and unconscious.

  What would it be like, he wondered, to have that? To have someone you could reach out and touch, knowing she’d always be there? To have someone who knew without asking how you liked your salad?

  An old yearning tugged at him, a wish he’d had for many years. It was a simple wish, really. He wanted to share his life with someone the way the Ferraros shared theirs. In his travels, he’d seen wonders beyond imagining, he’d faced moments of danger and triumph, but it all added up to nothing because there was no one to tell about it, no one to listen to his hopes and fears and dreams.

  Ryan set down his empty goblet. Damn. He’d had too much wine.

  “You must miss the familiarity of your home,” Amalia said, motioning for a servant to refill Ryan’s cup.

  “Not too much.” Isadora ducked her head guiltily. “I mean no disloyalty, but my life in Boston was quite settled and predictable. I imagine I could be away for years and find everything unchanged upon my return.”

  Amalia laughed. “Surely your friends and family would not want to be deprived of you for too long.”

  A blush misted Isadora’s cheeks. “How very flattering to think there are those who would miss me.”

  “Of course there would be. Perhaps even a special gentleman—”

  “Dear heaven, no,” Isadora said, almost in a panic. Her hand went to her bosom as if her heart were trying to pound its way out of the cage.

  Senhor Ferraro laughed with delight. “When a lady protests so vehemently, it is always because of a special gentleman.”

  Isadora shut her eyes and smiled ruefully. “I am so unforgivably predictable.”

  Their hosts shared a knowing look.

  Ryan slammed back his wine. Chad Easterbrook again. What did she see in that vacant-headed epiphyte?

  With their cheery conversation and their pride in Rio, the Ferraros eventually put Isadora at her ease. At the end of the meal, Ferraro got Ryan’s attention. “We must go outside for our cigars. Amalia will not abide the odor in the house.” He bent and kissed his wife’s hand. “Can you do without us for a few moments?”

  “Of course. We’ll enjoy our coffee together,” Amalia said.

  Ryan followed his host onto a verandah bordered by an ornate plaster balustrade.

  “We should have no trouble getting you a cargo for Boston,” Maurício said. “You are days ahead of the winter fleet.”

  “Mr. Ferraro, I’m glad you brought up the cargo. I know this isn’t in the consignment agreement, but I won’t accept anything produced by slave labor.”

  The merchant gave a low whistle. “That leaves out a lot of the best coffee in the world.”

  Ryan nodded. “It almost ruined me on my last run to Havana, but I managed to find a tobacco and sugar factor who represented nonslave interests.”

  “I can help you,” Ferraro said after a moment. “I know a number of growers who employ paid labor.”

  Through the window they could see the ladies sipping their coffee and chatting. Ferraro lit the cigars and studied them through the threads of smoke. He probably had no idea that he was grinning like a lovestruck idiot at his wife.

  Ryan took a shallow puff of his cigar. “You’re a lucky man,” he said. “Life is sweet for you.”

  “God has seen fit to bless me,” he agreed, smiling even more as Amalia tipped back her head to laugh at something Isadora said. “I have the most beautiful wife in the world.”

  The heartfelt declaration resonated strangely through Ryan. Amalia Ferraro wasn’t slender. She wasn’t young. Her features were not arranged in any particularly breathtaking fashion. But Ryan had no doubt that in Ferraro’s eyes, she was a gift from heaven.

  “You’re a man who enjoys his blessings,” he said.

  “And you are not?”

  “I’m a man who has obligations,” Ryan admitted. “The blessings—I can always hope—will follow.”

  Ferraro nodded. “That is something an impatient young man would say.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  Ferraro studied the ladies, Amalia in her flowing white and Isadora in her stiff black-and-brown dress. “What you, like most impatient young men, fail to understand is that sometimes the sweetest blessing of all is right before your eyes.”

  Isadora decided that Christmas in the tropics was vastly preferable to Christmas in Boston. The days leading up to the feast day were warm and balmy, the people cheerful as they went about their chores and visits. In Boston there would be caroling parties and sleigh rides and fevered preparations, and aside from seeing Chad at these functions, she gladly did without them.

  Rose insisted that there was not much in the way of gift-giving in her household. On Three Kings Day people exchanged trinkets and fruits and nuts, perhaps a round of visits with neighbors and relatives and a parade of sail in the harbor.

  Isadora felt an odd calm settle over her as she drifted through the days at Villa do Cielo. Ryan stayed busy with matters of commerce, seeing to the discharge and sale of his cargo and securing goods for the run back to Boston. Though she rarely saw him, she caught herself wondering about him often.

  You are no expert on men, Isadora. And you’re especially no expert on me. He had all but said she didn’t know him, couldn’t even begin to know him. She knew she should be ashamed of her curiosity about him. Yet when she did think of Ryan, she didn’t experience the cold sweat and knotted stomach that thoughts of Chad inspired in her. Instead she felt…comfortable. Alive. And unafraid that the next step she took, the next word she uttered, would lead to disaster.

  Very slowly she was coming to realize what was happeni
ng between her and Ryan.

  Friendship.

  The thought filled her heart with lightness. She had never had a friend before. Never, not once in her life. When she was small, she’d had Aunt Button. Her loving aunt had been a gift from heaven, but not specifically a friend. Isadora had made the acquaintance of other scholars at Mount Holyoke Seminary, but none had held out the hand of friendship. By the time she returned home to Beacon Hill, her favorite company consisted of books and political tracts and pamphlets.

  Now she had a friend. What a singular notion. What a wonderful notion. She did not quite know what to do with the thought.

  Every once in awhile, she was reminded that when Ryan touched her, when he looked at her in a certain way, when he spoke in a low whisper into her ear, she felt something deeper than friendship. She dwelled far too long on the day they had gone sightseeing in Rio. She remembered too clearly his kiss in the darkened garden, and the moment on the beach when he had embraced her. They had come together so naturally, as if embracing were the next logical step along the road they were traveling together.

  Fortunately, reason had quickly returned. She had pulled away, he had turned away and the moment had ended without a lot of terrible awkwardness. She’d vowed afterward to avoid such encounters in the future. Ryan was her one true friend. She would not ruin that with impossible dreams of something that could never be.

  Almost as a penance for her wayward thoughts, she had written Chad another long and copiously descriptive letter. She pictured him reading the missive she had labored over. She hoped her verbal sketch of the marionette show in the marketplace would coax a smile from him, that he would be moved by her description of a newborn babe left on the wheel at the Santa Casa de la Misericòrdia, that he would share her wonder at the fabulous hanging gardens around Rose’s villa.

  Along with the letter, she included a terse report to Abel about Ryan’s progress with the cargo. She felt guilty doing so, but she had promised Abel. At least Ryan’s business acumen was above reproach. She said so with honesty—and a touch of pride.

  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 dueas 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 s
ounded 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.”

  Sixteen

  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.

  “Then why is he riding down my maid as if she’s a fox to be hunted?”

  “It must be love.” Ryan couldn’t suppress a grin. More than once he had observed Fayette and Edison meeting at the waterfront, disappearing into Carneros’s office and then emerging much later with stars in their eyes and their clothing suspiciously mussed.