The Charm School

by Susan Wiggs

  It wasn’t proper, Ryan thought, her seeing barechested men wherever she turned.

  Ducking under a shroud, she didn’t notice him until she was almost upon him.

  “Oh,” she said, “Captain Calhoun.”

  “I thought I’d take a turn at the helm.” He spoke with elaborate indifference.

  She eyed him nervously, as if she did not quite trust him—or herself with him. “I wanted to be topside when we cross the equator. Will you say when?”

  He was ridiculously happy to oblige. Perhaps that was the virtue of Isadora. Perhaps that was why the crew indulged her whims. Her wide-eyed curiosity about everything relieved the monotony of the long days at sea.

  “Mr. Datty, at the helm, sir,” he called to Timothy.

  “Aye, sir.” The boy arrived with a sharp salute that amused Ryan.

  He gave the helm to Timothy and his free hand to Isadora. She hesitated, eyeing his hand as if it were a venomous serpent.

  “It’s made of flesh and blood like any other man’s,” he said lightly, hiding his annoyance. Color misted her cheeks, and he laughed. “Unless that’s precisely the problem.”

  Almost defiantly, she put her hand in his. Hers felt…surprising. Yes, that was it. Women of her station were supposed to have soft, moist skin. Isadora, by contrast, had a sturdy grip and…calluses.

  “You take your lessons in sail making and seamanship seriously, I gather,” he said, leading the way to a companion ladder and reaching to help her up.

  “I take everything seriously, Captain.”

  “I noticed. Why is that, Isadora?” They came to the bow of the ship and he turned to study her.

  “I have no idea.”

  “There!” Ryan said suddenly, shading his eyes. “There it is!”

  “There what is?”

  “The equator.” He took out his spyglass and handed it to her.

  She closed one eye and peered through it. “What am I looking for?”

  “The equator. Isn’t that what you came here to see?”

  “See? But—”

  “Keep looking.” Furtively, Ryan plucked a hair from his head. On the pretext of adjusting the focus, he held the hair crosswise over the lens. “Now can you see it? The equator?”

  “Why, yes,” she crowed, clearly elated. “I do believe I can.” Her mouth curved into a smile that had a disquieting effect on him. “How fascinating. And isn’t that an elephant walking along the line?”

  He took the spyglass from her and put it away. “I was fairly certain you wouldn’t fall for that.”

  She regarded him with her usual prim disapproval, though her eyes still danced with humor. “I am not in the habit of ‘falling’ for things, Captain. I’ve no idea why you would attempt such a prank with me.”

  “To see you smile. You don’t do it often enough, and you should.”

  She regarded him somberly. “Why should I?”

  “Because…” Ryan began to feel foolish. “Because I order you to, and I’m the captain.”

  She rewarded him with a grin. “Then I suppose I have no choice.”

  He grinned back. “No, ma’am, I don’t guess you do.” He leaned back against a timber head. “We’re about nine hundred miles out from Rio.”

  “It sounds like an unbearably large number.” She shaded her eyes and gazed at the nothingness that surrounded them.

  “The briny blue. As far as the eye can see. That’s why I like the crew to get along.”

  “They seem to. Even Mr. Click has been quiet this past week. When do you think we’ll make Rio?”

  “Within the week. There’s a premium of a hundred dollars a day for each day under average for the whole trip.” He reached up, running his hand along an awning. “This looks good. Is it new?”

  “I doused it with salt water,” she said, meeting his puzzled gaze. “Luigi says it prevents mildew.”

  “So it does,” Ryan said, and though they spoke of mundane matters, he felt a beat of emotion that had nothing to do with awnings or deadlines or anything but the woman standing with him on his ship.

  This was new to him. She was new to him. In the past he’d been drawn to women whose beauty outweighed their brains, whose idle chatter rang louder than their common sense—in short, women who didn’t make him see himself for what he was—a spoiled, shallow young man who hadn’t grasped the importance of social conscience until it was too late. He used to prefer women who didn’t challenge him to be more than he was. But not anymore. He wasn’t certain exactly when or why it had happened, but at some point he had started to feel something soft and new for Isadora Peabody.

  “Look,” he said, nervous with the sensations churning in his gut, “I realize we haven’t been getting on—”

  “Not for lack of my trying.”

  He gritted his teeth to stifle a retort. “Don’t ruin my graciousness by being infuriating.”

  “I was not—”

  “Only because I’m stopping you. Now, hush up and listen. I was angry about the way you made yourself a part of this enterprise. You used your connections with Abel Easterbrook to your advantage.”

  “It’s no more than men of commerce do.”

  “Damn it,” he burst out, “you are the hardest person to offer an apology to.”

  She flinched at his language. “Is that what this is? An apology?”

  “Yes, damn it,” he shouted.

  “Well, it’s not working.”

  “Not for lack of my trying,” he said, mimicking her.

  “Steady there, miss,” Chips cautioned Isadora. “Keep one hand in the rigging no matter what, and make sure your feet stay balanced in the ratlines.”

  Though she had climbed only a few feet off the deck, Isadora felt vulnerable, particularly when the ship crested a swell and listed a little. Yet despite her uncertainty, she felt proud and excited. The Isadora who had left Boston Harbor would never have dared to climb a ship’s rigging. But since the men of the Swan had decided to teach her the ways of the sea, she had dared a hundred new things and her confidence grew every day.

  “What the devil—?” Ryan Calhoun hurried over, a scowl on his face. “Damn it, Chips, you can’t let the lady go aloft.”

  “It’s not his fault, Captain,” Isadora said hastily. “I insisted. I heard a rumor that Cape Frio is near and I wanted to see it.”

  The truth was, she wanted to see everything. For her, the voyage had grown and burgeoned into a journey of self-discovery. She had no idea what she would find at the end. All she knew was that she felt more at home aboard this ship than she ever had in the middle of her own life in blessedly distant Boston.

  “Come down from there this instant,” Ryan said, his voice harsh with command. He stood leaning against the capstan, looking unconsciously appealing as well as commanding.

  Isadora couldn’t stop the wave of warmth that engulfed her. Though he couldn’t know it, he had everything to do with her newfound sense of belonging. The way she looked or spoke or comported herself mattered not at all to Ryan Calhoun. He treated her no better and no worse than his crew of seamen. Thanks to him, she’d learned to endure a flash of male temper, to understand teasing and joking, to see humor in situations that used to appall the old Isadora.

  The amusing part was that he seemed to have no idea how good this was for her. She smiled bravely down at him. Climbing the spanker rigging had seemed such a grand idea when she’d first thought of it. Chips scrambled around like a monkey, making it look so simple. Yet now that she had begun her ascent, she began to regret it.

  “Don’t make me order you down,” Ryan said furiously.

  She quickly made up her mind. Pride demanded that she stay her course.

  Since crossing the equator several days earlier, they had gone back to avoiding one another. Let him save his roguish charm for girls with empty heads and full bosoms. Isadora was not about to be taken in by him.

  “I’m going to continue, Mr. Pole,” she said to Chips.

  The ship�
��s carpenter sent Ryan a helpless look. “Opposite hand and foot every time, miss, there’s the way. Opposite hand and foot.”

  “Damn it, I’ll keelhaul you, Pole,” Ryan shouted. “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “You won’t.” Chips failed to suppress a grin. “I have to help the lady. It’s her first time, you know.”

  Isadora tried not to smile as she grasped the rigging in one hand and raised her opposite foot to the next ratline. Her blowing skirts made the going awkward, and it was immodest in the extreme to climb in this manner, but she couldn’t help herself. She hungered for a sight of the wild, exotic land they had sailed so fast and so far to find.

  “I can see your drawers,” Ryan Calhoun called loudly.

  She nearly let go. Only a keen sense of self-preservation kept her hanging on. “A gentleman would not look. And he certainly wouldn’t make a comment.”

  “Who would ever mistake me for a gentleman?”

  The rigging bowed out in the opposite direction and Isadora realized he was climbing, too. In three quick hauls, he had hoisted himself into the ratlines and was facing her through the web of rope.

  “Since you insist on making this climb,” he said, “I’ll do it with you so I can save you if you start to fall.”

  “If I start to fall,” she said ruefully, “there’ll be no saving me.” She nearly laughed at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry. I do not plan to fall. And you really don’t have to climb with me.”

  “You’d rather have me stand on deck below you, looking up your skirts with the rest of them?”

  Her hands gripped the line with a vengeance. “I shall not answer that insolent question.” Without further ado, she continued upward, as she had seen the seamen do so often. The climb was harder than it looked, for the loose ropes tended to bow this way and that with the sway of the ship.

  She tried her best to ignore Ryan Calhoun. When they were halfway up the topmast, Isadora made the mistake of looking down.

  “Dear God,” she whispered.

  “It’s a long way down, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly.

  She ignored him. The deck appeared tiny, dotted with doll-size crates and hatches and coils. Due to the slant of the ship, she knew if she climbed any farther, she’d be out over open water.

  The wind whistled through her hair and the sun warmed her face. Lord, but it was hot. Sweat soaked her in places she dared not mention, and a blister had formed on the palm of her right hand.

  This was a terrible, foolish idea. Why had she wanted to climb the rigging today?

  “A bit higher,” Ryan urged her, his voice insolent and teasing. “Up here, where the ratlines are set too close together, we call this the ladies’ ladder. You’d think it was made for you.”

  She hated that he could see her fright. Setting her sights aloft, she continued to climb. The blister on her hand burst and then stung with sweat and grime from the rope. Far below, the sea resembled blue marble, veined in purest white, intimidating as a snake pit as it foamed and seethed around the ship.

  Oh, please, she thought helplessly. Let me survive this and I’ll never try anything adventurous again.

  Her gaze tracked the arrow-straight wake of the Swan, then found the horizon to the south. What she saw gave her such a jolt that she nearly let go of the rigging.

  “Steady there,” Ryan said, climbing up beside her. “You’re finally getting a good view of Brazil.”

  “It’s astonishing,” she said, forgetting to be mad at him. “The mountains are so beautiful—they look as though they’re draped in green velvet.”

  “There’s Corcovado, and the tallest ones are called ‘Dedos de Deus,’” Ryan said, indicating a row of five sharp peaks nudging the shoreline. The rich emerald green, set against the clear blue sky, created a picture so intense that Isadora’s eyes smarted.

  “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.