The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

“There must be something about this life she can’t abide,” Ryan whispered, thinking of his own reasons for leaving Albion. “Maybe we should ask—”

“Miss Peabody will receive you in the garden,” the butler said from the doorway. “This way, please.”

Ryan and Journey followed him along a tall, narrow corridor hung with portraits. The family tree, Ryan assumed, noting that each subject seemed to be extraordinarily handsome. Either the painters were expert flatterers or this clan had been bred for show.

They passed through a glassed-in verandah and then emerged onto a clipped and sculpted yard. Paradise in miniature, Ryan thought, noting the vine pergolas and pruned yew trees, At the far end stood a gazebo with a domed roof and open sides. In the middle sat a woman in black, her head bent as she read a thick book in her lap.

“Miss Peabody?” Ryan said.

She looked up, blinking owlishly as if she had come from a dark place into the light. A pair of spectacles sat low on her nose, and she seemed to see better by peering over the top of the lenses.

“Yes.” Her voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said again. “Captain Calhoun. I am indeed pleased that you’ve come.”

He stood before her, watching her hands, expecting her to extend one for his kiss. Instead, she clutched the book very hard, displaying fingernails that had been bitten ragged. She had, of all things, the indirect, cowed look of a slave. As if she feared she might be beaten at any moment.

Discomfited by the thought, he opted for a formal bow from the waist. “This is Mr. Journey Calhoun, my associate and steward of the Swan.”

She clutched the book tighter. “Oh! I was expecting a note, not two grown men! I’m—um—pleased to meet you.”

Ryan had never met a more socially gauche woman in his life. He dared not look at Journey, for if their gazes met, they would surely dishonor her with a fit of sniggering.

She cleared her throat again and used one finger to push her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. Said nose was red and swollen; either she was unwell or the book had moved her to tears.

She sneezed violently into a crumpled handkerchief. Unwell, Ryan decided.

She tucked the handkerchief up her sleeve. “My apologies. It is the grippe, I fear.”

“Do you suffer from it often?”

“Constantly, Captain. Except in the springtime. Then it is the hay fever that plagues me, though I can seldom tell the difference between the two ailments—” She broke off, looking horrified. “Forgive me for going on about such a disagreeable subject.”

“I find nothing disagreeable about discussing you, Miss Peabody,” Ryan said, forcing his gallantry to its limits. He was here to refuse her offer, so he might as well do it politely.

She finally seemed to remember the book she was holding. “Pardon me,” she said, shutting the tome and setting it on the marble table beside her.

He turned his head to see its title. The symbols on the cover looked only vaguely familiar; he had made a point of sleeping through the classics at university.

“Ptolemy,” she said.

“In the original Greek,” he guessed.

“Oh, indeed. I wouldn’t want to read Ptolemy any other way. He has such a distinctive authority in the original.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Ryan said. He could hear a chuckle starting in Journey’s throat. “I take it you have a facility with languages.”

“Yes, yes, I do. I was fortunate to have been tutored by my late great aunt, who was quite the scholar in her day, and I also attended Mount Holyoke. I am conversant in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese and have a reading knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew.”

She was probably more knowledgeable than the majority of Harvard graduates, Ryan guessed. Curious. Why would her wealthy parents allow a girl such latitude?

“Miss Peabody,” he said, “I came in person because any other way would fail to do justice to the incredibly generous offer you made me.”

She pressed her nail-bitten fingers into a steeple. “Then you will take me? I’m going to Rio on your ship?”

“No.” He said it swiftly to kill the blooming hope on her face. “It is not that you are lacking in any way,” he hastened to add. “The fault is with me, and with my ship and crew. The Swan is a working vessel filled with working men. We could never live up to the standards of such a genteel lady as yourself.”

She flinched, looking down and to the side. Submissive, defeated. Ryan had the feeling he had drowned a kitten, and the feeling made him angry.

“I should think you’d let me be the judge of that,” she ventured timidly.

He gestured across the yard toward the house. “Nothing on the Silver Swan can compare to this. You cannot trade paradise for months in cramped quarters in the company of seamen.”

“I can, if only you will let me.”

What an irritating, intractable thing she was. Ryan paced the deck of the gazebo. “Ma’am, you seem to think your service as a translator is all that is required of you on this voyage. Rivera, our former translator, was also an able navigator.”

“Celestial or instrumental?” she asked.

“Both,” he fired back.

“Fine. I am versed in both. I’ve studied the Bowditch and have taken courses in spherical trigonometry.” Her timidity fell away as she spoke.

A low whistle came from Journey, who stood in the yard near the gazebo.

“I don’t use Bowditch,” Ryan said, struggling to hide his surprise.

“There’s no need. The position can be figured without it,” she agreed.

In truth, the trigonometric formulas were all black magic to Ryan, but he wasn’t about to admit it to this smug female. “So you understand a thing or two about navigation. That does not qualify you for this venture.”

“I daresay I know more than a thing or two.”

She lifted her chin in defiance. Defiance. Ryan imagined her on his ship, defying his orders.

“What’s the proper position for the royal yard?”

“Thirty-six degrees to the larboard beam…until you reach the equator. Then it changes to starboard.”

He turned his back to hide his amazement, looking out at the lawn as he asked, “Then tell me how to haul out into the stream.”

“You reef the studding sail gear.”

He refused to look at Journey, knowing he’d find him grinning from ear to ear. “And what about the chafing gear?”

“That’s simple,” she retorted. “You put it on and leave it there.”

“I concede, Miss Peabody, that you have startled and impressed me with your knowledge. But understanding the finer points of seamanship requires more than—”

“Good God, Calhoun, it really is you,” called a voice from the verandah.