The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

She suspected some flaw in his logic, but she couldn’t quite decide what it was. While she pondered this, he matter-of-factly unbuttoned her bodice and parted it, carefully pulling it off her shoulder.

“What was the other reason?” he asked. “You said there were two.”

“Two what?”

“Reasons you can’t bathe here. And the first reason was not valid.”

“I’ve forgotten the second,” she said with a loud burst of woozy laughter.

He reached around behind her with both hands. She felt him unhooking the fastenings of her skirt. He smelled not unpleasantly of sweat, melon and smoke.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your clothes off.”

“Oh. Should you be doing that?”

“Sugar, I should have done this a long time ago.”

“Oh,” she said again, stepping out of her skirt as it pooled around her ankles. He grumbled and swore at the corset—“steel stays, for Christ’s sake”—and cast it away with a flourish. Then off came her shift, camisole and bloomers.

“Ye powers,” she said, puffing on the green cigar again. “I’m naked.”

“Be patient, love.” Ryan tore at his shirt and trousers. “In a moment, I will be, too.”

Nineteen

Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye.

—Samuel Lover

(1836)

True to his word, he bared all while she smoked the cheroot down to ashes and gaped like a ninny. She had always known he was perfection itself. She saw immediately that it was true all over. He had the strong muscular body of a Greek athlete and skin that was tanned—except in certain areas—and smoothly unblemished.

She was quite familiar with his broad, bare chest due to the long days at sea, but his thighs and buttocks and manhood were a novelty to her inquisitive gaze. “Oh, my,” she said.

“My indeed,” he said, staring back. He took her hand. “Shall we?”

“Shall we what?”

In answer, he turned, still keeping hold of her hand, and jumped off the edge of the rock into the lagoon. Isadora gasped at the cool silken shock of the water slipping over her. They went down, down, down, feet grazing the pebbled bottom and then they floated up, breaking the surface.

Isadora coughed violently, spewing out water. She flailed her arms, found Ryan and clung to him. “I remembered the other reason I shouldn’t bathe,” she said between coughs.

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know how to swim.”

He caught her against him, and she marveled at the feel of their flesh touching, sliding together, the water facilitating the movement. “Ah, Isadora. I adore-a you. Hold on to me, and I’ll show you.” Kicking out, he towed her to shallow water where her feet could touch the bottom of the lagoon. She loved the feel of the water gliding over her. In the sunlit places it was warm and buoyant; in the cooler shadows the dark eddies gave her a delicious chill. She was Eve, she was a wood nymph, she was a natural creature, never bound by the tight corset stays of convention. Here she was in this natural world with a man who looked like a god teaching her to swim. It was all a fantastic dream—the colors too bright for the mortal world, the lagoon too beautiful for ordinary humans.

“Take my hands,” he instructed her as they stood shoulder-deep in the water. “Let the current buoy you.”

The gentle downstream flow lifted her. He showed her how to flutter her feet, then held her at the waist while she moved her arms. She stood grasping a liana vine while he demonstrated a dive beneath the surface. She tried it, keeping hold of the vine but plunging in, feeling as sleek and weightless as a fish. She opened her eyes to a blurred sunlit world, then drifted upward, laughing as she broke the surface.