The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

He covered his heart with the hat. “You wound me to the quick. Why will you not dance with me?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because,” he said with measured patience, “it’s what people do at dancing parties.”

“It’s not what I do.” Isadora drew herself up with exaggerated dignity. She’d rather be a wallflower than a spectacle. But she wanted to accept. She really did.

He stood silent for a moment. His gaze drifted from her face to her feet strapped into sandals. “Isadora Peabody, as I live and breathe.”

“This is supposed to be a masquerade. I’m supposed to be a mystery lady.”

“Oh, sugar-pie, you are that,” he said gallantly. “The Isadora Peabody I know would never show her ankles like a sailor on shore leave.”

“I’m not—that is, Isadora is not showing her ankles like a sailor on shore leave.”

“But the mystery lady is.”

She couldn’t help herself. She giggled. Giggled. Isadora was quite certain she had never giggled before. “Perhaps,” she admitted.

“And perhaps, being so mysterious, she would take a stroll with me in the garden.”

Remembering what had happened during their last garden stroll, Isadora hesitated.

Ryan held out his hand. “Come with me, my mystery lady.”

She got over her hesitation. Being in costume shielded her from the rigors of everyday propriety. She could be anyone she wanted tonight. A gypsy. A flamenco dancer. A pirate’s lady.

A forbidden thrill shot up her spine as she took his hand.

“So I wonder,” he said, leading her out between the colonnades, “why Isadora has avoided tonight’s festivities.”

“She’s never been good at them,” Isadora said. “She’s never been fond of standing at the edge of a dance floor and wishing she were up in her chamber reading a good book.”

“Why does she always stand at the edge?”

“Because no one has ever brought her into the circle.”

“The circle?”

“The charmed circle. It’s an imaginary place, but it’s very real, I assure you.”

His hand, quite naturally, touched the nape of her neck beneath the heavy waves of her hair, rubbing her, making her feel strangely languorous. “Describe this place to me.”

“Well, it is full of light and beauty and laughter.” She leaned her head back a little, enjoying the tender massage of his hand on her neck.

“And Isadora has never been invited to this mythical place.”

“Of course not.” They came to a stone rampart overlooking Guanabara. The distant winking lights draped the bay like a necklace of luminous diamonds.

“Why not?” her cavalier asked, lowering his hand to the small of her back.

“Because she doesn’t belong there.”

“In whose opinion?”

“Not in anyone’s opinion.” She stared out at the stars mirrored in the water. “It’s a fact, the way the world is, and it cannot be changed.” Being behind the half mask gave her the courage of anonymity, false though it was. “She is awkward and socially gauche. Why would anyone in the charmed circle find me—er, find Isadora—pretty or amusing?”

She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath and dared to look up into his eyes. Framed by the mask and gleaming with reflected light from the harbor, his regard appeared fierce. His fist gripped her upper arm, startling her.

“Because you are.”

The conviction in his voice caught her, but she made herself laugh a gypsy’s laugh. “You are too gallant for your own good, my cavalier. Isadora knows exactly who and what she is. After her adventures at sea, all her respectability will be gone. She has chapped skin and chopped-off hair. Her clothes don’t fit properly anymore. She seems to be slowly sinking into a shocking state of nature.”

He laughed, too, though the anger still churned in his eyes. Very deliberately, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. His touch felt different—invasive, intimate, slightly dangerous. “Isadora is in big trouble, then.”

In defiance of the balmy tropical night, a shiver touched the base of her spine. “Why do you say that?”

“Because she has a lot to learn.” He took a step toward her, gripping her tighter.

She brought her hands up between them and fluttered her fan, beginning to feel amazingly natural in the role of coquette. “And who is going to teach her?”

“A famous cavalier.” Before Isadora knew what was happening, he caught her in his embrace. “First, the dancing!”

“I don’t dance,” she blurted.

“But I do.” With a whoop of sheer delight, he swept her around the open rampart in time with the sensual, percussive samba music that drifted from the patio. He wrapped his arm around her waist, hugging her so that she could feel his hips against hers. He led her in a circle, holding her so snugly that she had no choice but to follow the sweeping motion. These were dance steps that would horrify Beacon Hill society. Steps that should have made Isadora stumble clumsily, yet they didn’t. She danced with abandon, a cavalier’s lady who was fascinating and graceful and at ease—everything Isadora Dudley Peabody was not.

The melody ended and her brash cavalier brought her to sit upon the stone rampart overlooking Guanabara Bay.

“It’s like a dream,” she said, gazing out across the silver-studded black velvet view.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not at the view.

For some reason that struck her as amusing and she laughed lightly, merrily, as if laughter were something she often did.

And in fact she did, when she was with Ryan.

No, not Ryan. She must not let herself think of him by name.

“Isadora,” he began, clearly unaware of her game.

She shushed him immediately, still laughing, boldly pressing her fingers to his lips. She nearly stopped laughing when she touched his lips, for they felt firm and slightly moist and feeling them created a strange flood of disturbing warmth inside her.

“Isadora is not here.”

He captured her hand, took it away from his mouth. “She’s not?”

“No. And you must not use her name.”