The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

She laughed again, wondering if it was the perfumed garden air, the wine she’d drunk, or sheer madness that made everything seem so delightfully funny.

“Ah, Isadora. If your laughter doesn’t tempt the little rodent, I don’t know what will.” He propped one foot on a garden bench made of tiled masonry. The negligently elegant pose looked wonderful on him. “You have the prettiest laugh I’ve ever heard.”

“And you, sir, have the glibbest tongue.”

He grinned. “Talked my way onto the Swan.”

“I have often wondered. How did you manage that?”

“I won’t say. You already find me despicable enough.”

“I don’t find you despicable,” she protested. “Just…exasperating.”

“Ah, exasperating. Does this mean I’m rising in your esteem?”

“At least it’s a feeling you can understand,” she said, “because you find me equally exasperating.”

He fixed her with an unreadable stare. “I was with a woman this afternoon.”

“I know that. I’m not stupid.”

“Were you shocked?” he asked.

“Was it worth it?” she countered.

“Are you going to report me?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On why you did it.” She bit her lip. “Besides…the explanation you gave me earlier.”

“To shock you? And perhaps…hell, I don’t know. It’s not…what you think. I came away feeling empty. It’s hard to explain.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because I’m a bad man.”

She shook her head. “I think you’re actually a good man with some very bad habits.”

He propped an elbow on his knee and gave her a dazzling smile. “Isadora—” He broke off and grabbed her hand, holding on tight. “He’s coming,” he muttered in a low voice.

“The monkey?” she whispered.

He nodded. They waited, straining to hear. A distant night bird called and another, even more distant, answered. Closer in, the bushes rustled with a furtive sound.

Isadora kept her grip on Ryan’s hand. She liked holding his hand. His bore calluses of hard work and a comfortable dry warmth. She couldn’t help but note the size—she had large hands for a woman but his were much bigger, swallowing hers so her fingers nestled safely inside. Safe. That was the way she felt with Ryan Calhoun. Safe, as if nothing in the world could harm her so long as she kept hold of his hand.

It was a fanciful notion. An un-Isadoralike notion. Yet it rang through her with a strange resonance.

Safe with him. When had she ever been unsafe? Physically—never. She had lived the sheltered life of the daughter of one of Boston’s first families. But in other ways her peril was constant. She could not even walk into her parents’ drawing room without feeling as if she were in danger of drowning.

It occurred to her that she hadn’t experienced the drowning sensation since she had left Boston. Not even in the deadliest moments of the great storm.

“There, see?” Ryan whispered, his lips so close to her ear. She shivered with the warm vibration.

Ye powers. Here she sat in a perfumed garden, holding hands with a man while he whispered in her ear. Her fevered imagination had, of course, conjured this moment many times. But the man in her daydream had always been Chad Easterbrook. And in her daydream, the moment had never, ever felt this delicious.

“I don’t see it,” she whispered back. She told herself no romance heated this moment. They shared only a mutual curiosity in what the exotic night would bring, a mutual anticipation of learning the secrets of the forest.

“A tiny shadow. It’s there.”

He did the most extraordinary thing. With a restrained gentleness so poignant it made her chest ache, he touched her cheek in order to turn her head toward the low shrubbery border. His touch nearly shattered her, for not since Aunt Button had someone caressed her with such tenderness. Yet this surpassed even Aunt Button’s affection, for this sent shivers radiating outward along her limbs and stirring up a strange pool of heat somewhere deep inside her.

“Do you see it now?” he whispered.

She forced herself to concentrate. “Heavens be. I think I do,” she said, mouthing the words, barely speaking them.

A tiny creature, furtive as a thief, darted out of the bushes and snatched up a chunk of papaya.

“He is so little,” she whispered. “Like a wizened old man.”

The monkey crouched over its find, stuffing its mouth greedily until it could hold no more. Then, grasping a piece of plantain in its tiny paw, it made off into the shadowy night forest.

Isadora felt a welling of wonder and joy in her chest. She could not have erased the smile on her face if she’d tried, but she didn’t try. She turned to Ryan, realizing that even though the creature was gone, he still kept his lips close to hers, still cradled her cheek in his large, warm hand.

“How wonderful,” she said. “I can’t believe we saw such an amazing creature.”

“You,” he said with laughter in his voice, “are a very hard woman to impress.”

“What do you mean?” She was amazed she could even get the words out, for his other hand let go of hers and slipped, as furtive as the night creature they had come to see, around her waist, holding her lightly but firmly.

Men had touched her there to dance with her, but they had been different. They’d all had the aspect of wooden soldiers forced in front of a firing squad. But Ryan…dear Lord, she could only think of him as Ryan now…he gave her the impression he actually wanted to be here, wanted to touch her.

He smiled gently, the faint torchlight softening his features. “What I mean is I’ve crossed oceans and battled storms to bring you here, and you’ve taken it all in stride. I haven’t seen you so perfectly enraptured, not once, until you saw the little fellow come stealing out of the forest.”

That’s not what has me so perfectly enraptured. The thought—and the utter truth of it—startled her. She nearly blurted the words aloud.

But at the last moment, she stopped herself. Because she didn’t trust herself, didn’t trust her heart. Didn’t trust Ryan not to break it.

“I suppose,” she said softly, with a touch of irony, “I seem terribly worldly and sophisticated.”

“Far too worldly and sophisticated for the likes of a Virginia farm boy turned sailor,” he said.

Still touching her. Holding her. His gaze a lodestone she could not look away from.

She managed a wobbly smile at his statement. “Farm boy? Judging by what your mother has told me of Albion, you grew up in a world of unimaginable wealth.”