The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

She looked outside again, her yearning palpable. The woman was as easy to read as an amateur card cheat. “No, there is not.”

Lily murmured a good-night and went to her quarters.

Resigned, he cocked his arm out at the elbow. “Shall we?”

She nodded but didn’t take his arm, preceding him up the companion ladder. Her crinolines and tight laced-up boots made the going chancey. She hesitated midway up the ladder. It was too dark to see what the trouble was; then Ryan heard a quiet ripping sound and an “Oh, dear.”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I seem to have stepped on the hem of my petticoat. I’ll just…just…oh, dear!”

She fell backward, slamming into Ryan. He reeled against an upright stanchion. The air left him in a whoosh and for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. Reflexively he’d flung his arms around her midsection when they’d collided. He hung on, marveling at the taut, hard shell of her corsets. Christ, how did the woman breathe?

“Oh heavens,” she said in a small, mortified whisper. “I’ve squashed you flat.”

“I’m fine,” he said quickly, setting her on her feet.

She tottered a little, then grabbed the side of the ladder. “Captain Calhoun, I am terribly sorry.”

She was so meek, so humble. This was the perfect opportunity to swath himself in the mantle of righteous anger, to declare her entirely unsuited to her duties and send her ashore. She’d offer no argument now.

But he studied the downward angle of her head, the shoulders sloping in defeat, and he thought of her in the garden that day, a dark weed amid the flowers of Beacon Hill, the spinster pining for a shipping heir, and realized that, with a word, he could squash her flat.

“Try holding your skirts up out of the way,” he suggested brusquely. “And tomorrow, wear fewer petticoats. And do lose the iron maiden.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Iron maiden. That damned corset.”

She took hold of the ladder again. Ryan stood on alert, ready to catch her in case she came crashing down. She didn’t. She scrambled up and waited topside for him to follow.

When they emerged onto the deck, a brilliant night greeted them. The southerly breeze sang lightly through the shrouds.

“Everything’s battened down and shipshape,” Gerald Craven said, his bald head gleaming in the starlight as he made his way toward the galley. “I took care of that stowage problem.”

“Excellent, Mr. Craven.”

“I understand badly stowed cargo and ballast can create a problem of balance,” Isadora said as Craven left.

Ryan was amazed she knew even the first thing about ballast. “You’ve been reading again.”

“Charles Dana. He explains why it’s so hazardous to have the cargo poorly stowed. In heavy seas, anything left out on deck could come loose and damage the ship—or the crew. In the hold, cargo rolling around could unbalance her.”

When she spoke of things she’d learned in books, she shed some of her awkwardness. As she stood holding the rail, he could see the strength of her grip on the varnished wood, the set of her shoulders as she faced outward from the darkened harbor. She wanted this voyage, wanted it badly. He didn’t have to ask her why. He knew. Thinking of her parents and siblings and the way the Peabody family functioned, he knew.

He wished she’d find another ship to make her escape on.

She pushed her glasses down her nose and lifted her gaze to the sky. “I love the autumn constellations,” she said. “Is it the cold, do you think, that gives them such clarity?”

“Perhaps. Why do you wear the spectacles if you’re always having to peer over them in order to see?” Ryan asked, impertinent and not caring that he was.

“My mother feared my eyes had gone weak from too much reading, so she insisted on the spectacles. To be honest, I think I see better without them.”

He bit his tongue to avoid saying something insulting about her mother. “So we’re off with the tide,” he said, changing the subject.

“I thought they’d never finish loading the cargo. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much ice.”

“White gold. Our success depends on getting it quickly to harbor in Rio. If the consignees are happy and I negotiate a nice cargo for home, the entire voyage should make Mr. Easterbrook happy.”

“I’m curious.” She turned to face him. The glow from the binnacle lamps flickered over her rounded cheeks, the lenses of her spectacles. “You are so very ambitious, so very set on earning a fortune at this.”

“Surely that doesn’t offend your Yankee sensibilities,” he said. This voyage, for Ryan, had many more complicated reasons, but he was quite clear on what he would do with the earnings.

“Heavens, no. But you must admit it’s unusual for a Southern gentleman to become a Yankee skipper.”

He was disgruntled at the way she had commandeered a place on the ship, yet curious all the same. “May I say something quite personal?”

“Can I stop you?”

“No.”

“Then go on.”

“Miss Peabody, I think we’re both the black sheep of our families. I because I refuse to build my fortune on the backs of slaves, and you because you…” Damn. He’d talked himself into a corner now.

“Because I’m the plain spinster in a family of beautiful and popular socialites,” she finished for him. “You are quite correct, Captain Calhoun.” She started to walk away.

He caught her arm. “Do not put words in my mouth. That’s not what I meant.”

She stared at his hand on her arm for so long that he felt awkward and released her. “I see. Then what, pray, did you mean?”

“Simply that…Oh, hell. Are you always this sensitive?”

“Yes. It is one of my great failings.” She looked toward the bow. They could see the silhouettes of Journey and Fayette there, shadows against the lights along the shore. They stood with their heads bent close, deep in conversation.

“They’re speaking of home,” Ryan explained. “Fayette can tell him things…no one else can possibly know.”

“Why would he want to hear news of the place where he was in bondage?” she asked.

Ryan hesitated, then decided there was no harm in telling her. “Because he left a part of himself behind.”

“What do you mean?”

“His wife and children. They belong to our neighbors, the Beaumonts.”

Her gasp ended on a quiet, heartfelt sob. “Dear lord,” she said. “Then freedom for him is exile.”

“It was a hard choice to make.” Ryan remembered how he’d lain awake night after night, agonizing as the day of his departure for Harvard drew closer. “If I freed him, he would never be able to see his family again. But if he remained a slave, he’d live as half a man, bound to me for all his days, and his children after him.”