The Charm School

Perfect curls. A mature, deeply beautiful face. Eyes full of sympathy. One look into those eyes confirmed what Isadora had suspected—the woman had witnessed Isadora’s grinding humiliation.

“May I…help you?” Isadora asked.

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact.” The woman turned to Mrs. Hallowell. “I’m feeling the tiniest bit faint, Hester. Isadora has been so kind as to offer me the refuge of her chamber for a small rest.”

Mrs. Hallowell’s eyes narrowed. “But Lily, we were going to toast the new family circle.”

“I’m sure our guest’s comfort takes precedence over a toast,” Isadora murmured. Weak with gratitude, she led the woman up the stairs to her large, airy chamber and shut the door, smashing her backside against it for emphasis. “Thank you,” she said softly.

The woman waved away her thanks as she turned up the flame of a gaslight. “My name is Mrs. Lily Raines Calhoun,” she said.

Isadora detected a soft Southern accent in Lily’s voice. “How do you do? You’re visiting from out of town?”

“Indeed I am. I come from Virginia, though I’ve recently returned from three years on the Continent. The Hallowells were kind enough to invite me to your family’s party.”

“I hope you’re having a pleasant time.” Strains of music and a round of applause wafted up from the ballroom. Arabella and her handsome fiancé would be the center of attention now, surrounded by Lucinda and Quentin and Bronson and their parents, bursting with pride. Isadora suppressed the urge to clap her hands over her ears.

“As a matter of fact, I’m not. I’ve been hoping to have a word with Mr. Abel Easterbrook.”

“Oh, dear. I’m afraid he’s been called away from the party on business.”

Lily peeled off her gloves and lifted a crystal vial of rose water. “May I?”

“Of course.”

She sprinkled the fragrant water on her wrists. “I suppose I shall have to wait, then. I am no stranger to waiting.” She lowered her head, the gaslight touching a delicate profile, a face haunted by doubt. “I’m actually looking for Ryan Calhoun. As it turns out, he’s run off to sea aboard an Easterbrook vessel.”

Isadora’s problem with Chad faded quickly to pettiness. Here was a woman who had traveled across the Atlantic to see her husband—only to find him missing.

“Dear heaven, Mrs. Calhoun, I’m so sorry,” she said, crossing the room to take the lady’s hands. “I—what did you say his name was?”

“Ryan. Ryan Michael Calhoun.”

“What a marvelous coincidence,” Isadora said, hugely pleased to feel a sudden sense of purpose. “You needn’t bother with Mr. Easterbrook at all. I can take you directly to Ryan Calhoun. Tonight, if you wish.”

“What?”

“I know exactly where he is, Mrs. Calhoun.”

Two

Now our ship is arrived

And anchored in the Sound.

We’ll drink a health to the whores

That does our ship surround.

Then into the boat they get

And alongside they came.

“Waterman, call my husband,

For I’m damned if I know his name.”

—“A Man of War Song”

(traditional)

“What did you say your name was, sugar-pie?” Ryan Calhoun asked the woman in his lap. She and the others had arrived in bumboats even before the Silver Swan had moored. The harbor lovelies hadn’t waited for the docking; they did their most brisk business swarming aboard a ship that had dropped anchor after being at sea for months.

Thus, the Swan had found its berth courtesy of a harried harbor pilot, with a half-dozen bawds accompanying him.

“Sugar-pie suits me just fine,” she said with a moist-lipped laugh, then fed him a generous gulp of rum from the engraved silver flask he’d bought in Havana.

He raised no objection when the whore slipped the costly flask into the top of her worsted-silk stocking. Nothing could dampen Ryan’s spirits tonight. Dressed in his favorite lime-green waistcoat—with no shirt underneath—he sat on the high deck of the fastest bark in Boston; his crew reveled wildly as the moon rose over the harbor, and a vast quantity of sweet liquor boiled through his veins. Life for Ryan Calhoun was good indeed.

“’S’all yours, sugar-pie,” he said agreeably. “’S’all yours.”

“Aye-aye, skipper,” she said with a giggle.

He leaned forward so that his face was almost buried in her cleavage. Then he shut his eyes, his gently spinning head echoing the constant motion of the ship at sea, the ship that had been his home for the past nine months. What better life had a man but this? he wondered—a successful voyage, a well-endowed woman encumbered with nothing so inconvenient as a mind of her own, and a bottle of sugary Jamaican rum.

He breathed deeply of the soft, faintly sweaty flesh. Female musk. There was no more evocative substance the world over. So what if this woman had no name, so what if she was coarse, so what if she stole from him? She possessed the only thing worth having. It would take a better man than Ryan to quibble with Nature herself. Showing unsteady reverence, he kissed one breast, then the other, pressing his mouth into the softness pushed up by an artfully inadequate corset.

“Ooh, skipper.” Unblushing, she brought one long leg around his midsection. “I came here for more than teasing.”

He opened his eyes and blinked up into her painted, fleshy face. She had few qualities that properly belonged to a lady but for the shape, the name and that precious essence. He wondered if he was still sober enough to stagger off to his stateroom with her.

Leaning back in the deck chair, he could see into the gangway leading to the orlop deck. A man and woman in a hammock swayed with a familiar rhythm, the woman’s legs bare to the hams and hanging over the sides of the webbed sling. Another couple slept atop a coil of rope, a bottle cradled between them. Amidships, Chips and Luigi Conti made music with mouth harp and whistle while Journey, the steward, pounded out a rhythm on a skin drum. Dancing couples reeled and laughed, bumping into barrels and crates. Someone had unlatched the hen coop, and a few biddies ran around the deck in hilarious confusion.

Something distant and sober inside Ryan suddenly came to attention. For once in his misbegotten life, he’d succeeded. And not in a small way, but in a way all the world would notice. He’d made a voyage in record time; he’d delivered a fortune to the ship’s owner.

If only his father had lived, perhaps he would have acknowledged Ryan’s achievement. That would have been a first.

Ryan felt a peculiar thickness in his throat. He’d succeeded. He wished he could freeze this moment in his heart and keep it there forever. He wished he had someone besides a nameless prostitute to share it with.

He banished the darkness and resolved to enjoy his triumph.

“A toast!” he roared, holding the woman’s clasped hand aloft like a prize-fighter. “To the Swan, and to all her brave crew!”

“To us!” the men bellowed, clinking mugs.

Ryan aimed a crooked grin at his companion, who had begun squirming suggestively in his lap. “Sugar-pie, my legs are going numb.”

She screeched with laughter. “I hope that don’t affect the rest of you.”