The Charm School

“…thought I was going to have to call you to help truss her up,” Thankful was saying, a chuckle in her voice.

“I’m glad you didn’t summon me,” Tilly replied. “I would have been consumed by the giggles.”

“And that dress. Wait ’til you see. She looks like a mishap in a sail-making factory.”

Isadora froze. Ordinarily she was quite awkward and given to noisy retreats, but not this time. This time, she felt as small as a mouse as she gripped the smooth-turned railing and made her way up the stairs. This time, her feet—as mortified as the rest of her—made not a sound.

Not a sound as she climbed up the stairs, walking slowly though she wanted to run to escape the hissing laughter wafting up from the landing. Not a sound as she moved along the carpeted hallway, not a sound as she pushed open the door to Arabella’s chamber, not a sound as she stood on the looped round rug in front of the cheval glass.

And then, looking at herself in the tall mirror, she made a sound. A sob.

The cut of the dress widened her figure to epic proportions. The pale linen washed her of all color save for the hot flags of shame that burned in her cheeks. Hanks of hair slipped from her Psyche knot, and the sausage curls on either side of her face grew wet and droopy as her tears soaked into them.

What had she been thinking, dressing this way? Who would ever want such a creature as this abomination in the mirror?

She returned to her own room and opened the French doors, walking out onto the balcony into the middle of an autumn day so glorious that its beauty mocked her.

She looked over the edge of the balustrade. It was a long way down. If she should happen to trip, if she should happen to fall, who would miss her?

She stood teetering on the brink, feeling a peculiar darkness close around her. How seductive it was, the idea that her misery could end so swiftly. So permanently. And so dramatically, with Chad Easterbrook’s note tucked close to her heart.

But in the end, she turned away, as cowardly of her own impulses as she was of everything else that required a backbone.

How long, she wondered, had she despised herself? She knew she hadn’t come to her unhappy state of self-loathing quickly or without deliberation. It had taken all of her endlessly long maiden years to reach it.

Sinful, Isadora told herself. And self-indulgent to feel this terrible. But then, she was a sinful creature. Every dark and unattractive impulse resided within her—sloth, envy, covetousness, yearning. Desire. She was guilty of all that and more.

From the time she left her great aunt’s house, she had been taught that a young lady must be pretty and popular. An accident of birth had placed her smack in the middle of two gorgeous sisters and two perfect brothers. How wonderful life must seem to them, how thrilling to awaken each day and know that it would be a pleasant one.

Isadora knew what happiness felt like. She had been happy once. She had been happy with Aunt Button.

She closed her eyes, thinking back to the days of her youth. When Isadora was five, Aunt Button came down from Salem. Strong-willed as a military general, she had no use for pretty things, and that included pretty great-nieces. She amazed Isadora by being more taken with her conversation and interests than with the charm and beauty of the others. She whisked her off to Salem and the Peabodys barely noticed.

Aunt Button and Isadora had a jolly time there—Isadora became better educated than any boy. Aunt Button taught her that there was nothing unseemly about this. Isadora’s appearance simply didn’t matter to her. Nor did it matter to Isadora.

Until the day Aunt Button died and Isadora was forced to return to the Beacon Hill mansion of her parents.

She would never forget the look on her mother’s face when she walked in the door. Her words were simple: “And here is Isadora, back with us again.” But it was the expression on her face that lived in Isadora’s heart and shaped all the days and months and endless years that came after.

The bright, untidy fourteen-year-old had no idea how to transform herself into a society belle. She knew too much Greek, Latin, Hebrew and mathematics to be popular and cared too much about social responsibility to be trusted.

So here she stood, dying by inches. Shriveling like a prune in the pantry, plain and colorless and feeling more desperate than ever. She wished her parents would leave her to her books and studies, but they kept thrusting her out into society where she gasped like a beached fish. And by shoving her before the shipping heirs and Harvard princelings, they had inadvertently sparked a dream in Isadora—the dream of Chad Easterbrook. It was absurd, really, to yearn for such a perfect specimen of manhood, but she couldn’t help herself. She kept thinking that if she tried hard enough, she might one day come to mean something to him.

Picking up a button hook, she strained her arms to reach the back. Yanking at one of the buttons, she heard a tearing sound, but she didn’t care. She would never wear this abominable dress again.

When she had stripped down to her chemise, she remembered Chad’s note—slightly damp—tucked between her breasts.

“Oh, Aunt Button,” she whispered to the empty room. “What shall I do? What can possibly save me now?”

She wanted to burn the note. She should burn it. But in the end she did something much, much better. She did exactly what her Aunt Button would have done: she gave in to her strengths, such as they were.

Walking purposefully to the writing desk by the window, she dipped a quill and composed a note of her own.

Four

A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race [the Yankees]; materially ambitious…. A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world.

—Samuel Eliot Morison,

Maritime History of Massachusetts

“This collar itches,” Journey complained. “This waistcoat chafes in my armpits.”

“Stop whining,” said Ryan. “I have a headache the size of Atlantis and I’ve got no idea what we’re doing here.”

“Wasting time, when we should be trying to save your sorry white backside,” Journey observed, running a long finger around the neckline of his boiled collar. “These shoes pinch,” he added.

Ryan whirled on him, seeing stars from the sudden movement. But after a few seconds he focused and saw that yes, he really was here, halfway up Beacon Hill at the Belknap intersection, on a mission so incredibly foolish he wondered if he might still be drunk from the night before.

“It’s not my backside that needs saving,” he said.

Journey, who was magnificently tall, looked down his nose at Ryan, who was also tall but not magnificently so.

“Then explain why I had to be the one to run your creditors off this morning.”

“What creditors?” Ryan demanded. “And how the devil did they find me?”

“Our arrival was announced at a party in one of these very strongholds,” Journey declared, gesturing. The solid brick mansions huddled shoulder to shoulder, a united front against the encroachment of riffraff. The staid facades of the houses and clipped greens of Boston Common stood in implacable denial that anything so upsetting as poverty existed in the world.

Ryan had come here often in his Harvard days. He’d attended stuffy essay readings and anemic musicales in this rarefied neighborhood. But when, foolishly, he tried to seek friendship based on something deeper than wealth or athletic prowess, he encountered a deep-rooted snobbery that raked over his senses like the holystone over a ship’s deck.

“This morning’s creditors were Mr. deLauncey of Harvard Trust and his associate, Mr. Keith,” Journey explained. “Apparently their generosity ends when a man leaves Harvard.”

Ryan trudged on. “And on top of everything, my mother decides to come back from Europe.”

“Uh-huh. And you know what else? She’s coming to Rio with us,” Journey said.

Ryan stopped again, reeling. Disbelief pounded harder than his headache. “What?”

“She and her maid, Fayette, signed on as passengers. She wants to go see your aunt in Rio.”

“Excellent. I’ve always dreamed of spending weeks at sea in the company of my mother.” With slow, plodding steps he continued walking. He loved his mother, he always had, but the two of them inhabited different worlds. Lily Raines Calhoun was like a hothouse gardenia—beautiful, delicate and overpowering when she was in full bloom.

She had no inkling of what he planned for this voyage and why it was so important. He hoped like hell she wouldn’t interfere.

“Do you suppose your mother will tell Mr. Easterbrook that you lied about your skipper’s credentials?” Journey ventured.

Ryan glowered at him. “You’re making my headache worse. And the money he made off me should stop any inquiries.”