The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

Following the Equator

Hot, sweet and languid—those were the dominant impressions Ryan had of Rio. After concluding his preliminary business with Ferraro’s agent, he arranged for the cargo to be discharged. Luigi, who spoke his native tongue with the team of Italian stevedores, had matters well in hand.

Before hiring a rig to convey him to his aunt’s in Tijuca, Ryan stood at the loud, busy waterfront and felt himself slowly fill up with a splendid feeling so rare that at first he couldn’t identify it. But it had a name—pride.

Pride that he had done something of consequence, and done it so well that even strangers on the wharves had learned who he was. Captain Calhoun, who carried a tiny crew and too much sail. Captain Calhoun, who had won a bonus for coming in days before his due date.

The wharf rats learned his identity as quickly as the shipping agents and local merchants. “I have the finest diamonds for sale,” hissed a smiling young man with oily hair and restless hands. “Come and see my selection.”

Ryan cheerfully declined the suspicious offer, only to find the oily merchant replaced by a soft-hipped whore. “You have been long time at sea,” she purred, running her tongue around her lips in a gesture that should be outlawed. “I make you happy, happy today.”

“Card game?” another man asked. “Faro or dice?”

Ryan grinned from ear to ear. He hadn’t even gotten paid yet.

And then, because a sudden hollowness opened up inside him, he held out his arm to the whore and asked, “What’s your name, sugar-pie?”

In the end, he realized he’d never even heard it. All he remembered was the ripeness of her, the intoxicating musk, the way her soft body opened to him, the way he sank into her. Yet the act had a disturbingly mechanical nature. He pleasured her, yes, but in a curiously detached fashion. And, in a curiously detached fashion, he found his own pleasure as well, and paid her handsomely for the encounter.

Late that afternoon, he emerged from the brothel with a head muzzy from drink, a body sated by sex and a jumble of confusing thoughts and misgivings. He had been offered contraband riches, sex, gambling, strong drink. At one time such things had been all he desired in life and he would have happily accepted. Yet now such pleasures held only faint allure for him. Instead, he went out to look at the teeming market and terraced hills and pastel palaces of Rio, and one thought tugged at him: none of this meant anything unless he had someone to share it with.

Someone who looked at the world with wide-eyed wonder. Someone who drank in new sights and sounds with a passion belied by her sober mien. Someone who took a new experience and clasped it to her breast like a precious treasure.

“The coach is ready,” Journey said, coming toward Ryan. “What the matter?” He peered at him. “You look sick.”

“Maybe. In my mind,” Ryan said, and he walked toward the carriage.

His Aunt Rose made an embarrassing fuss over him, exclaiming at his height, his handsomeness, the clarity of his cerulean eyes, the glossiness of his auburn hair.

Lily looked on, indulging her for a few moments before saying, “He’s my son, Rose dear. Not a show horse.”

“You should see me when I’m sober,” he said, swaying a little.

“Of course.” Rose hugged him. She smelled pleasantly of coffee and flowers. He hoped it masked his own less pleasant scent of liquor and cheap perfume. “Forgive me, Ryan. I wasn’t blessed with children of my own, so I must do all my mothering when I can.”

“And you do it with a natural grace,” he assured her, smiling despite a pounding headache. “Where is Isadora?”

Lily and Rose exchanged a knowing glance. Ryan cursed himself for letting his eagerness show.

Isadora came down the carved cypress stairwell, uncertainty evident in her stiff posture. “I—I apologize for keeping everyone waiting—”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Rose interrupted. “We keep no schedules at Villa do Cielo.”

“House of the sky,” Isadora softly translated. “What an enchanting image.”

“Now that we’re all together,” said Rose, “let us go in to supper.” She led the way across the arched foyer. Lily linked arms with her, and Ryan was confronted with the prospect of partnering Isadora.

He found the notion absurdly appealing.

He cocked out his elbow. “Shall we go?”

She sent him that startled, I-can’t-believe-you’re-being-nice-to-me look that gratified him even as it broke his heart. Had no one ever shown this poor woman a bit of courtesy?

She wrinkled her nose and pruned her lips in disapproval. “Captain Calhoun, what sort of business were you conducting?”

He didn’t feel ashamed, exactly. Sheepish, perhaps. “I took care of a…personal affair as well.”

“So I gather.”

“It was a long voyage, Isadora. It’s not natural for a man to…do without.”

“I’m certain I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“I’m trying to explain myself so you can include it in your report to Easterbrook.”

“Why, how dare—” She stopped as his mother and Aunt Rose came into view.

He pressed his arm against her until she took it. “Thank you, Captain,” she murmured.

“Now that we’re ashore, you should call me Ryan.”

“I couldn’t possibly.”

He gestured at his mother and aunt who crossed the patio ahead of them. “The other ladies do.”

“Your ladies of the night, I presume,” she said tartly.

“That would be ‘ladies of the afternoon,”’ he explained. “And for the record, there was only one. You are keeping score, are you not?”

She made a strange wheezing sound, but couldn’t seem to get a word out.

“I meant my mother and aunt,” he said, taking pity on her. “They call me by my given name.”

“They’re related to you.”

He winked at Isadora. “That can be arranged.”

Her gaze darted away. “You shouldn’t tease.”

Maybe I wasn’t. The idea was too absurd and too startling to voice aloud, yet the instant it occurred to him, it sent down roots that reached deep inside to a tender place in his heart. It was the oddest notion that had ever occurred to him. Isadora Peabody? The prim, bashful Yankee who dreamed of Chad Easterbrook?

Ryan had clearly been too long at sea.

Isadora had no appetite for supper, though the meal was both delicious and exotic. There was avocado seasoned with vinegar, yams and beefsteak and two kinds of wine, melon and guava and lemony ice shaved from the large block Ryan had brought his aunt as a gift.

Yet for all the bounty, Isadora could only pick at her food. She felt jumpy and out of sorts, and she wasn’t sure why. Eagerness, she decided, studying the ochre walls of the dining room, the arched doorway and windows with their carved wooden screens. That, and a decided enchantment with this strange new place, with the fragrance of orchids and tamarind trees and the strains of soft guitar music that came from the servants’ wing.

And disillusionment with Ryan. The moment he’d reached shore, he’d gone looking for a woman, which he had made a point of explaining to her without apology.