Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs

“The Charm School draws readers in with delightful characters, engaging dialogue, humor, emotion and sizzling sensuality.”

—Costa Mesa Sunday Times

“Will appeal to fans across the board.”

—Library Journal on The Charm School

“In poetic prose, Wiggs evocatively captures the Old South and creates an intense, believable relationship between the lovers.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Horsemaster’s Daughter

“Wiggs is one of our best observers of stories of the heart. Maybe that is because she knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.”

—Salem Statesman-Journal

“[A] delightful romp…With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”

—Publishers Weekly on Halfway to Heaven

“A bold, humorous and poignant romance that fulfills every woman’s dreams.”

—Christina Dodd on Enchanted Afternoon

“A rare treat.”

—Amazon.com on The Firebrand, an Amazon.com

Best of 2001 title

“With this final installment of Wiggs’s Chicago Fire trilogy, she has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound as the relationships, characters and story unfold. Fans of historical romances will naturally flock to this skillfully executed trilogy, and general women’s fiction readers should find this story enchanting as well.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Firebrand

“Wiggs’s uncomplicated stories are rich with life lessons, nod-along moments and characters with whom readers can easily relate. Delightful and wise, Wiggs’s latest shines.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dockside

“Empathetic protagonists, interesting secondary characters, well-written flashbacks, and delicious recipes add depth to this touching, complex romance.”

—Library Journal on The Winter Lodge

“With the ease of a master, Wiggs introduces complicated, flesh-and-blood characters into her idyllic but identifiable small-town setting, sets in motion a refreshingly honest romance, resolves old issues and even finds room for a little mystery.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Winter Lodge (starred review)

“Wiggs explores many aspects of grief, from guilt to anger to regret, imbuing her book with the classic would’ve/could’ve/should’ve emotions, and presenting realistic and sympathetic characters…another excellent title [in] her already outstanding body of work.”

—Booklist on Table for Five (starred review)

“A human and multilayered story exploring duty to both country and family.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts on The Ocean Between Us

the CHARM SCHOOL

Susan Wiggs
the Charm School

To the most charming group of people I know:

LIBRARIANS.

You probably don’t remember my name,

but you saw me every week. I was the quiet child

with the long pigtails and the insatiable appetite for

Beverly Cleary, Carol Ryrie Brink and

Louise Fitzhugh. I was the one you had to tap on the

shoulder at closing time, because I was still sitting

on a stool in the stacks, poring over Ramona’s latest

adventures or sniffling as I read Anne Frank’s diary.

I was the little girl with the huge wire basket on

the front of her bike—for lugging home a stack of

books that weighed more than I did. I never thought

to thank you back then, but I didn’t understand how

very much all those hours, and all those books, and

all your patience meant to me or to the writer I

would become. But I understand now. So this book

is dedicated to you, to all of you, in gratitude for

bringing books and readers together.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Part One: The Ugly Duckling

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: The Bird of Passage

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part Three: The Bird of Winter

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part Four: The Swan

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Afterword

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the usual suspects: Joyce, Alice, Christina, Betty and Barb. Also to Jill, Kristin and Debbie, who make this business much less isolating. Thanks also to my editors, Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson, who helped to shape this work with sensitivity and finesse. The passages from

Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling (translated from the Danish by Jean Hersholt) are drawn from copy number 1990 of the 2500 Limited Editions Club, copyright 1942 for the George Macy Companies, Inc. The author humbly acknowledges her debt to the wisdom of the great storyteller, who wrote “Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.”

Part One
The Ugly Duckling

“What nice little children you do have, mother,” said the old duck with the rag around her leg. “They are all pretty except that one. He didn’t come out so well. It’s a pity you can’t hatch him again.”

And the poor duckling who had been the last one out of his egg, and who looked so ugly, was pecked and pushed about and made fun of by the ducks, and the chickens as well. “He’s too big,” said they all. The turkey gobbler, who thought himself an emperor because he was born wearing spurs, puffed up like a ship under full sail and bore down upon him, gobbling and gobbling until he was red in the face. The poor duckling did not know where he dared stand or where he dared walk. He was so sad because he was so desperately ugly, and because he was the laughingstock of the whole barnyard.

When morning came, the wild ducks flew up to have a look at the duckling. “What sort of creature are you?” they asked, as the duckling turned in all directions, bowing his best to them all. “You are terribly ugly,” they told him, “but that’s nothing to us so long as you don’t marry into our family.”

—Hans Christian Andersen,

The Ugly Duckling (1843)

One

The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all.

—Henry James,

The Portrait of a Lady

Boston, October 1851

Being invisible did have its advantages. Isadora Dudley Peabody knew no one would notice her, not even if the gleaming ballroom floor decided to open up and swallow her. It wouldn’t happen, of course. Disappearing in the middle of a crowded room was bold indeed, and Isadora didn’t have a bold bone in her body.

Her mind was a different matter altogether.

She surrendered the urge to disappear, relegating it to the land of impossible things—a vast continent in Isadora’s world. Impossible things…a smile that was not forced, a compliment that was not barbed, a dream that was not punctured by the cruel thorn of disappointment.

She pressed herself back in a half-domed alcove window. A sneeze tickled her nose. Whipping out a handkerchief, she stifled it. But still she heard the gossip. The old biddies. Couldn’t they find someone else to talk about?

“She’s the black sheep of the family in more ways than one,” whispered a scandalized voice. “She is so different from the rest of the Peabodys. So dark and ill-favored, while her brothers and sisters are all fair as mayflowers.”

“Even her father’s fortune failed to buy her a husband,” came the reply.

“It’ll take more than money—”

Isadora let the held-back sneeze erupt. Then, her hiding place betrayed, she left the alcove. The startled speakers—two of her mother’s friends—made a great show of fluttering their fans and clearing their throats.

Adjusting her spectacles, Isadora pretended she hadn’t heard. It shouldn’t hurt so much. By now she should be used to the humiliation. But she wasn’t, God help her, she wasn’t. Particularly not tonight at a party to honor her younger sister’s engagement. Celebrating Arabella’s good fortune only served to magnify Isadora’s disgraceful state.

Her corset itched. A rash had broken out between her breasts where the whalebone busk pressed against her sternum. It took a great deal of self-control to keep her hands demurely folded in front of her as she waited in agony for some reluctant, grimly smiling gentleman to come calling for a dance.

Except that they seldom came. No young man wanted to partner an ungainly, whey-faced spinster who was too shy to carry on a normal conversation—and too bored with banal social chatter to try very hard.

And so she stood against the block-painted wall, garnering no more attention than her mother’s japanned highboy. The sounds of laughter, conversation and clinking glasses added a charming undertone to the music played by the twelve-piece ensemble. Unnoticed, she glanced across the central foyer toward her father’s business study.

Escape beckoned.

In the darkened study, perhaps Isadora could compose herself and—heaven preserve her—wedge a hand down into her corset for a much-needed scratch.

She started toward the entranceway of the ballroom and paused beneath the carved federal walnut arch. She was almost there. She had only to slip across the foyer and down the corridor, and no one would be the wiser. No one would miss her.

Isadora fixed her mind on escape, skirting a group of her brothers’ Harvard friends. She scurried past a knot of her father’s cronies from the Somerset Club and was nearly thwarted by a gaggle of giggling debutantes. Moving into the foyer, she had to squeeze past a gilt cherub mirror and a graceful Boston fern in a pot with four legs.

One step, then another. Invisible. She was invisible; she could fly like a bird, slither like a snake. She pictured herself lithe and graceful, fleet of foot, causing no more stir than a breeze as she disappeared into nothingness, into freedom—

Deep in one of her fantasies, she forgot about her bow, which stuck out like a duck tail festooned with trailing ribbons.

She heard a scraping sound and turned in time to see that a ribbon had tangled around one of the legs of the fern pot. Time seemed to slow, and she saw the whole sequence as if through a wall of water. She reached for the curling ribbon a second too late. It went taut, upending the large plant. The alabaster pot shattered against the marble floor.

The abrupt movement and the explosion of sound caused everyone to freeze for precisely three seconds. Then all gazes turned to Isadora. The Harvard men. Her mother’s friends. Gentlemen of commerce and ladies of society. Trapped by their stares, she stood as motionless—and as doomed—as a prisoner before a firing squad.

“Oh, Dora.” As usual, Isadora’s elder sister Lucinda took charge. “What a catastrophe, and right in the middle of Arabella’s party, too. Here, let me untangle you.” A moment later a housemaid appeared with a broom and dust shovel. A moment after that, the ensemble started playing again.

The recovery took only seconds, but to Isadora it spanned an eternity as long as her spinsterhood. Within that eternity, she heard the censorious murmurs, the titters of amusement and the throat-clearings of disapproval that had dogged her entire painful adolescence. Dear heaven, she had to get away from here.

But how did one escape from one’s own life?

“Thank you, Lucinda,” she said dutifully. “How clumsy of me.”

Lucinda didn’t deny it, but with brisk movements she brushed off Isadora and smiled up at her. “No harm done, dearest. It will take more than a dropped plant to ruin the evening. All is well.”

She meant it, she really did, Isadora realized without rancor. Lucinda, the eldest of the Peabody offspring, was as blond and willowy as Botticelli’s Venus. She’d married the richest mill owner in Framingham, moved to a brick-and-marble palace in the green hills, and every other year in the spring, like a prize brood mare, she brought forth a perfect pink-and-white baby.

Isadora forced herself to return her sister’s smile. What an odd picture they must make, she thought. Lucinda, who had the looks of a Dresden china doll and Isadora, who looked as if she had an appetite for Dresden German sausage.

Her moment of infamy over, Isadora finally escaped to the study. It was the classic counting-room of a Boston merchant, appointed with finely carved furniture, books bound in tooled leather, and a goodly supply of spirits and tobacco. Breathing in the familiar smells with a sigh of relief, she shut her eyes and nearly melted against the walnut paneling.

“Heave to, girl, you look a bit tangled in your rigging,” said a friendly voice. “Something foul-hook you?”

She opened her eyes to see a gentleman sitting in a Rutherford wing chair, an enameled snuffbox in one hand and a cup of cider-and-cream punch in the other.

“Mr. Easterbrook.” Isadora came to attention. “How do you do?”

She imagined she could hear Abel Easterbrook’s joints creak with rheumatism as he levered himself up and bowed, but his smile, framed by silver side-whiskers, radiated warmth. “I’m in fine trim, Miss Isadora.” He seated himself heavily against the coffee-colored leather. “Fine trim, indeed. And yourself?”

I’m still madly in love with your son. Horrified at the thought, she bit back the words. One social blunder per hour should suffice even her.

“Though I’ve committed foul murder—” she gestured ruefully at the open door, indicating the Boston fern being carried off to the dust bin “—I am quite well, thank you, though the autumn weather has given me a case of the grippe. Did your ship arrive?” She knew Mr. Easterbrook’s largest bark was expected in and that he was anxious about it.

He lifted his cup. “She did indeed. Found a berth at harbor tonight, and she’s set to discharge cargo tomorrow. Broke records, she did.” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The Silver Swan grossed ninety thousand dollars in 190 days.”

Isadora gasped, genuinely impressed, for matters of business interested her. “Heavens be, that is quite an achievement.”

“I daresay it is. I have the new skipper to thank.” Easterbrook toyed with the chain of the money scales on the gateleg table by his chair. Isadora liked Abel Easterbrook because he treated her more like a business associate than a young—or not so very young—lady. She liked him because he had fathered Chad Easterbrook, the most perfect man ever created. Neither of which she would admit on pain of death.

“A new captain?” she inquired politely.

“He’s a brash Southerner. A Virginia gent, name of Calhoun. Had such impressive sailing credentials that I hired him on the spot. I judge a man by the cut of his jib, and Calhoun seemed well clewed up.”

She smiled, picturing a grizzled old ship captain. Only a man as conservative as Abel would call his employee “brash.”

He took out a handkerchief and buffed his snuffbox until it shone. It was painted with the Easterbrook shipping emblem—a silver swan on a field of blue. “He’s still aboard the Swan tonight, settling the sailors’ bills. Hope to have a new sailing plan from him before the week is out. Next run is to Rio de Janeiro.”

“Congratulations,” said Isadora. “You’ve had a marvelous success.”

Abel Easterbrook beamed. “Quite so.” He lifted his cup in salute. “To you, Miss Isadora. Thank you for keeping an old salt company. And to my speedy new skipper, Mr. Ryan Calhoun.”

He barely had time to take a sip when a footman came in and discreetly handed him a note. Abel excused himself and left the study, grumbling about a business that couldn’t run without him.

Isadora hung back, savoring her solitude, and mulled over Mr. Easterbrook’s news. Ryan Calhoun. A brash Virginia gent. Isadora wasn’t brash in the least, though sometimes she wished she were.

She used the moment of privacy to adjust her corset, wishing she knew a curse word or two to describe the whalebone-and-buckram prison. On impulse, she picked up a dagger-shaped letter opener from the desk. Unable to resist the urge, she inserted the letter opener down the bodice of her gown to scratch at the rash that had formed there.

As she eased her discomfort, she chanced to look into the oval mirror hanging on the wall behind her father’s desk.

Peering over the thick lenses of her rimless spectacles, she saw herself for exactly what she was. Her hair was the color of a mud puddle. Her eyes lacked the pure clear blue so prized by her parents and so evident in her siblings. She had none of the gifts of laughter and beauty her brothers and sisters possessed in such abundance. Instead, she wore a sullen expression, and her nose was red from the sniffles.

If the Peabodys were a family that believed in magic—and being proper Bostonians they most certainly were not—they would call Isadora a changeling child: dark where the others were fair, pallid where the others were fashionably pale, round where the others were angular, tall where the others were petite.

The unforgiving mirror reflected a discontented creature in matronly black bombazine stretched over a bone-crushing corset. At her mother’s insistence, she wore her hair in a Psyche knot, for the Grecian mode—a topknot with streamers of cascading tendrils—was considered the height of fashion. The problem was, her long, unruly hair stuck out in all directions, and the delicate tendrils resembled fat sausage curls. She made the very picture of youth drying up like a fig on the shelf. The image filled her with such an immense self-loathing and shame that she wanted to do something desperate.

But what? What? Could she not even think of an imaginative way to banish her own misery?

Enough, she told herself, giving her bodice a last good scratch with the letter opener. As she did so, the door to the study blew open, and a fresh wave of revelers poured into the foyer. They brought with them the crisp smell of autumn and gales of cultured conversation.

Too late, Isadora realized the guests could see straight into the office. She froze, the letter opener still stuck halfway down the front of her. Loud male laughter boomed from the foyer. “Good God, Izzie,” said her brother Quentin, standing amid a group of his friends from Harvard. “Is this your imitation of fair Juliet?”

Too mortified to speak, she managed to extract the letter opener. It dropped with a thud on the carpet. Swept up on a wave of hilarity, Quentin and his friends headed for the ballroom.

Isadora stared down at the dagger on the floor. She wanted to die. She really wanted to die. But then she saw him—the one person who could lift her out of her wretched melancholy.

Chad Easterbrook.

With long, fluid strides he followed Quentin’s group to the ballroom, heading for the refreshment table to help himself to frothy cider punch. Immediately, several ladies in pastel gowns managed to sidle near him. Praying her faux pas had not been observed by Chad, Isadora returned to the ballroom.

Chad Easterbrook. His name sang through her mind. His image lived in her heart. His smile haunted her dreams. He moved with effortless grace, black hair gleaming, tailored clothes artlessly stylish. When she looked at Chad, she saw all that she wanted personified in one extraordinary package of charm, wit and sophistication. He wasn’t merely handsome to look at; the quality went deeper than that. People wanted to be near him. It was as if their lives became brighter, warmer, more colorful simply by virtue of knowing him. His ideal male beauty was the sort the Pre-Raphaelite painters strove to depict. His charm held the romantic appeal of a drawing room suitor; he beguiled his listeners with low-voiced witticisms and languorous laughter.

Isadora pushed her spectacles down her nose and stared, wanting him with such fierceness that her itching busk flared into a fiery ache. If only…she thought. If only he could look into her soul and see all she had to offer him.

But it was hard for a man to look into a woman’s soul when he had to see past bombazine and buckram and worst of all, a painful shell of bashfulness. The few times he’d deigned to speak to her, he’d asked her to relay a message to Arabella, whose hand in marriage he’d narrowly lost to Robert Hallowell III.

Still, she wished things could be different, that for once she could be the pretty one, the popular one—to see what it was like. To dance one time with Chad Easterbrook, to feel his arms around her, to know the intimacy of a private smile.

He and his cronies alternated between spirited bursts of laughter and dramatic whispers of conspiracy. Then, one by one, each young man paired himself off with a lady for the next dance. The tune was “Sail We Away” set to an irresistible rhythm and new enough to pique the interest of even the most blasé socialite.

Incredibly, Chad Easterbrook emerged from the group with no partner. He set down his crystal cup of punch and started walking toward Isadora. She watched, enraptured, as he crossed the room. She forgot to breathe as he stopped and bowed in gallant fashion, lamplight flicking blue tones in his hair.

“I don’t suppose, Miss Peabody,” he said in his melodic voice, “you’d consider doing me an enormous favor.”

She glanced over her shoulder and spied nothing but her father’s moose head hunting trophy from Maine. Her face aflame, she turned back to Chad. “Me?” she said, her voice breaking.

With a patient smile, he nodded.

She felt faint with amazement. “You’re addressing me?”

“Unless that moose bears the name Miss Peabody, I believe I am.” He spoke with the lazy, sardonic inflection that characterized longtime Harvard club men. “Come, Miss Isadora. Don’t leave me in suspense any longer. Don’t make me beg.”

Could he possibly want to dance with her? That had to be it. Chad Easterbrook wanted to dance with her. “I…I’d be delighted,” she managed to choke out. Oddly, she experienced the exchange as if she were an observer outside her body. The dowdy spinster and the dashing scholar. If the miracle weren’t happening right before her very eyes, she’d never believe it.

Bowing, he offered his hand. Isadora took it, glad for the moleskin gloves her mother insisted she wear, for that way Chad would never know how icy and clammy her palms were.

Since he stood a few inches shorter, she hunched her shoulders a bit, breathless with surprise and delight. So this is what it feels like, she thought, letting the melody enter her veins like fine wine. This is what a dream come true feels like.

Chad’s attention lifted her lighter than air; she felt more graceful than a swan on still water. Finally, finally she had broken through his indifference. Finally he was going to dance with her.

But instead of leading her out onto the parquet floor, he brought her into the domed alcove that had been her refuge at the start of the ball. Ye powers, an assignation? Was that what he wanted? She almost laughed aloud with delight.

A gold-fringed drape concealed them. Moist-eyed, tingling all over, she nearly burst with expectancy as she pushed down her spectacles and watched him. “Yes, Chad? What was it you wanted?”

He began rummaging in the pocket of his waistcoat. “This will take only a moment of your time…. Let’s see, I had it here somewhere….”

A watch on a chain slipped out of his pocket. In addition to the watch, he held a small gold ring with a blue topaz stone in it. Praise be, was he going to ask her to marry him? For the first time in her life, Isadora understood a lady’s need for a fan, for she had broken out in a copious sweat.

“I’d like you to take this.” He pressed the ring into her hand.

“Oh, Chad.” Her heart brimmed over with happiness. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll do it.” His smile was vague, his eyes restless as he pulled the curtain aside and scanned the crowd.

Her finger was too thick for the dainty ring. “Of course I will, but—”

“She’s there, in that lavender dress.” Putting one hand on Isadora’s shoulder, he leaned out of the alcove and pointed. “Lydia Haven. She’s dancing with Foster Candy. I took her ring as a prank and she’s so cross with me, she won’t allow me near her to give it back. Do tell her I’m sorry….”

Isadora didn’t hear the rest over the rush of blood in her ears. Through a blur of humiliation she saw Lydia Haven, ravishing in her lilac gown, tipping back her head as she laughed at a jest made by her dancing partner.

“You want me,” she managed to say, “to deliver Miss Haven’s ring to her?”

“That’s it exactly, there’s a girl.” With his hand tucked into the small of her back, he steered her out of the alcove.

The hard busk dug into her breastbone as she resisted him. “Mr. Easterbrook,” she said.

“Yes?”

She yearned to hurl the ring right into his excessively handsome face. Instead, she did something worse. Something much, much worse.

She looked him in the eye and said, “As you wish.”

“I knew I could count on you, Izzie my girl.” He gestured at the crowd. “Oh, look, you’ll have to hurry. The set’s ended.”

Hating herself, she marched off to do as he asked. She handed the ring back to its owner. Lydia gave her a lovely smile and said, “Why, thank you, Dora. I thought you were going to steal Chad clean away from me.” She and her friends giggled, each peal of mirth a lethal dagger. “Look at you in your black,” Lydia continued, fingering the gros grain ribbon trim on Isadora’s skirt. “What are you mourning, dear?”

The death of good manners, Isadora thought, but she was too mortified to speak. Pursued by female titters, she tried to beat a hasty retreat. But her way was blocked by a blond woman with a belled pointe skirt and an ivory-and-lace fan. The lady smiled tentatively, as if she were about to offer a greeting.

Isadora curtsied, hoping the flaming blush in her cheeks would subside. Only the stiff corset held her upright as she brushed past the woman. Had it not been for the merciless undergarment, she would have crumpled from pure shame. She had to get away, and quickly.

To her horror, she heard someone calling to her. “Dear, dear Isadora,” sang Mrs. Robert Hallowell Jr. The mother of Arabella’s intended, she beamed with the bright dazzle of social triumph. “Aren’t we fetching tonight?”

“Some of us are,” Isadora said in an undertone.

“How happy you must be to see your younger sister become a bride. Why, soon it will be just yourself and your dear, dear parents, all alone in this house. Won’t that be cozy?”

“We shall be cozy indeed,” she said to Mrs. Hallowell, “and how terribly kind of you to point it out.”

“Come along,” the older lady said. “We must raise a toast to the betrothal.”

No, dear God, no, she could not face them all now. Isadora had never been adept at concealing her feelings; her family would know immediately that she was upset, would question her in their unbearably well-intentioned way, and she would fall to pieces before them.

“Isadora, didn’t you hear me? You must come join the family circle. And where have your brothers got to?” Mrs. Hallowell waved her gloved hand impatiently.

Someone grasped Isadora’s arm. Startled, she gave a little cry and drew back to find herself looking at the blond woman she’d practically trampled while trying to escape the ballroom.

Perfect curls. A mature, deeply beautiful face. Eyes full of sympathy. One look into those eyes confirmed what Isadora had suspected—the woman had witnessed Isadora’s grinding humiliation.

“May I…help you?” Isadora asked.

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact.” The woman turned to Mrs. Hallowell. “I’m feeling the tiniest bit faint, Hester. Isadora has been so kind as to offer me the refuge of her chamber for a small rest.”

Mrs. Hallowell’s eyes narrowed. “But Lily, we were going to toast the new family circle.”

“I’m sure our guest’s comfort takes precedence over a toast,” Isadora murmured. Weak with gratitude, she led the woman up the stairs to her large, airy chamber and shut the door, smashing her backside against it for emphasis. “Thank you,” she said softly.

The woman waved away her thanks as she turned up the flame of a gaslight. “My name is Mrs. Lily Raines Calhoun,” she said.

Isadora detected a soft Southern accent in Lily’s voice. “How do you do? You’re visiting from out of town?”

“Indeed I am. I come from Virginia, though I’ve recently returned from three years on the Continent. The Hallowells were kind enough to invite me to your family’s party.”

“I hope you’re having a pleasant time.” Strains of music and a round of applause wafted up from the ballroom. Arabella and her handsome fiancé would be the center of attention now, surrounded by Lucinda and Quentin and Bronson and their parents, bursting with pride. Isadora suppressed the urge to clap her hands over her ears.

“As a matter of fact, I’m not. I’ve been hoping to have a word with Mr. Abel Easterbrook.”

“Oh, dear. I’m afraid he’s been called away from the party on business.”

Lily peeled off her gloves and lifted a crystal vial of rose water. “May I?”

“Of course.”

She sprinkled the fragrant water on her wrists. “I suppose I shall have to wait, then. I am no stranger to waiting.” She lowered her head, the gaslight touching a delicate profile, a face haunted by doubt. “I’m actually looking for Ryan Calhoun. As it turns out, he’s run off to sea aboard an Easterbrook vessel.”

Isadora’s problem with Chad faded quickly to pettiness. Here was a woman who had traveled across the Atlantic to see her husband—only to find him missing.

“Dear heaven, Mrs. Calhoun, I’m so sorry,” she said, crossing the room to take the lady’s hands. “I—what did you say his name was?”

“Ryan. Ryan Michael Calhoun.”

“What a marvelous coincidence,” Isadora said, hugely pleased to feel a sudden sense of purpose. “You needn’t bother with Mr. Easterbrook at all. I can take you directly to Ryan Calhoun. Tonight, if you wish.”

“What?”

“I know exactly where he is, Mrs. Calhoun.”

Two

Now our ship is arrived

And anchored in the Sound.

We’ll drink a health to the whores

That does our ship surround.

Then into the boat they get

And alongside they came.

“Waterman, call my husband,

For I’m damned if I know his name.”

—“A Man of War Song”

(traditional)

“What did you say your name was, sugar-pie?” Ryan Calhoun asked the woman in his lap. She and the others had arrived in bumboats even before the Silver Swan had moored. The harbor lovelies hadn’t waited for the docking; they did their most brisk business swarming aboard a ship that had dropped anchor after being at sea for months.

Thus, the Swan had found its berth courtesy of a harried harbor pilot, with a half-dozen bawds accompanying him.

“Sugar-pie suits me just fine,” she said with a moist-lipped laugh, then fed him a generous gulp of rum from the engraved silver flask he’d bought in Havana.

He raised no objection when the whore slipped the costly flask into the top of her worsted-silk stocking. Nothing could dampen Ryan’s spirits tonight. Dressed in his favorite lime-green waistcoat—with no shirt underneath—he sat on the high deck of the fastest bark in Boston; his crew reveled wildly as the moon rose over the harbor, and a vast quantity of sweet liquor boiled through his veins. Life for Ryan Calhoun was good indeed.

“’S’all yours, sugar-pie,” he said agreeably. “’S’all yours.”

“Aye-aye, skipper,” she said with a giggle.

He leaned forward so that his face was almost buried in her cleavage. Then he shut his eyes, his gently spinning head echoing the constant motion of the ship at sea, the ship that had been his home for the past nine months. What better life had a man but this? he wondered—a successful voyage, a well-endowed woman encumbered with nothing so inconvenient as a mind of her own, and a bottle of sugary Jamaican rum.

He breathed deeply of the soft, faintly sweaty flesh. Female musk. There was no more evocative substance the world over. So what if this woman had no name, so what if she was coarse, so what if she stole from him? She possessed the only thing worth having. It would take a better man than Ryan to quibble with Nature herself. Showing unsteady reverence, he kissed one breast, then the other, pressing his mouth into the softness pushed up by an artfully inadequate corset.

“Ooh, skipper.” Unblushing, she brought one long leg around his midsection. “I came here for more than teasing.”

He opened his eyes and blinked up into her painted, fleshy face. She had few qualities that properly belonged to a lady but for the shape, the name and that precious essence. He wondered if he was still sober enough to stagger off to his stateroom with her.

Leaning back in the deck chair, he could see into the gangway leading to the orlop deck. A man and woman in a hammock swayed with a familiar rhythm, the woman’s legs bare to the hams and hanging over the sides of the webbed sling. Another couple slept atop a coil of rope, a bottle cradled between them. Amidships, Chips and Luigi Conti made music with mouth harp and whistle while Journey, the steward, pounded out a rhythm on a skin drum. Dancing couples reeled and laughed, bumping into barrels and crates. Someone had unlatched the hen coop, and a few biddies ran around the deck in hilarious confusion.

Something distant and sober inside Ryan suddenly came to attention. For once in his misbegotten life, he’d succeeded. And not in a small way, but in a way all the world would notice. He’d made a voyage in record time; he’d delivered a fortune to the ship’s owner.

If only his father had lived, perhaps he would have acknowledged Ryan’s achievement. That would have been a first.

Ryan felt a peculiar thickness in his throat. He’d succeeded. He wished he could freeze this moment in his heart and keep it there forever. He wished he had someone besides a nameless prostitute to share it with.

He banished the darkness and resolved to enjoy his triumph.

“A toast!” he roared, holding the woman’s clasped hand aloft like a prize-fighter. “To the Swan, and to all her brave crew!”

“To us!” the men bellowed, clinking mugs.

Ryan aimed a crooked grin at his companion, who had begun squirming suggestively in his lap. “Sugar-pie, my legs are going numb.”

She screeched with laughter. “I hope that don’t affect the rest of you.”

“We’ll see when we get to the stateroom.”

Her hips ground down on him. “Who needs the stateroom?”

He had a fleeting thought of privacy, but the rum—and the whore’s sly fingers—coaxed a dark, desire-filled laugh from him. With slow, teasing movements he plunged his hand beneath her skirts. He found the stolen flask but passed it right over in pursuit of richer treasures.

No doubt the puritanical Mr. Easterbrook would be appalled to see such revelry on his ship, but Ryan banished the last of his scruples. No proper Bostonian would show up now. Anyone who strayed to the docks at this time of night deserved what he saw.

“I feel quite wicked being out so late,” Isadora confessed to Lily Raines Calhoun. She leaned back against the burgundy leather seat of the hooded clarence. Her father, who always demanded the best, had had the carriage fitted with a curved glass, like a show window, in the front. Lily and Isadora sat side by side on the rear seat, watching the city through the glass.

A waning moon cast the State House dome in pale gray; misty orbs of gaslight glowed along State Street, and shadows haunted side streets and Merchants’ Row.

“Your driver looked a mite startled when we told him we wanted to go to the harbor,” Lily remarked. “I do hope this won’t cause trouble with your family.”

“Believe me, Mrs. Calhoun, since the age of fourteen, I’ve done nothing but cause trouble for my family.”

Lily turned, the light on her face flickering from pale to gold in the swinging glow of the carriage lantern. “Whatever can you mean?”

Isadora toyed idly with the strings of her lace cap. “Until I was fourteen, I lived with a maiden aunt in Salem. I only saw my family once in a great while.” She thought back to the long, dreamy years with Aunt Button when nothing mattered more than spending a few hours reading a wonderful book. “It was an arrangement that suited all of us very well indeed. But when my great aunt died, I had to return to the house on Beacon Hill. I’m afraid I’ve been a trial to them ever since.”

“I can’t imagine you a trial,” Lily said.

“Yes, you can,” Isadora replied with gentle censure. “You’re too kind to say so. A plain spinster, awkward in conversation, clumsy on the dance floor—I’m a trial, especially to the Peabodys.”

“We all have our own unique gifts. It is incumbent upon the larger society to discover them.”

“And if they do not?”

Lily Calhoun turned on the seat so that she was facing Isadora. The shifting lamplight glazed her face with fire. Very deliberately, with her dainty gloved hands, she reached out and removed Isadora’s small rectangular-lensed spectacles, letting them dangle from the black silk ribbon around her neck.

“Why then, my dear Miss Peabody,” she said in her lazy, lovely drawl, “they aren’t seeing you at all.”

It was something so like Aunt Button would have said that Isadora felt a sudden lump in her throat.

“They are the Peabodys of Beacon Hill.” Isadora used her haughtiest accent, coaxing a smile from Lily. “They see the world as they think it should be seen.”

“Perhaps you’re in the wrong world, then.”

“It’s the only one I know, Mrs. Calhoun.” Isadora turned a rueful smile out the window. A newcomer—and a Southerner at that—couldn’t understand. In families like the Peabodys’, nothing changed, ever. It was the sacred mission of each generation of Peabodys to carry on exactly as their parents had before them, and so on until the end of time.

Misfits like Isadora were culled from the herd. Put off somewhere until weariness and middle age rendered them harmless. In old age, they could actually become useful as Aunt Button had. They could watch over the misfits of succeeding generations.

There had to be something else, Isadora often thought. But what? She yearned to fly away free, to escape. But what she wished to escape was her own life, and that was the one thing she couldn’t get away from.

She wanted to slap herself for even thinking in such bleak terms. Willfully she pulled her mind away from depressing thoughts and turned back to her companion.

Lily Calhoun stared straight ahead, her front teeth worrying her lower lip. “I’d best warn you about Ryan,” she said. “He’s the black sheep of his family, though I’ve never cared for that term.”

Isadora’s interest was piqued. Perhaps she and this Ryan Calhoun had something in common. “Is he a constant trial?”

“A trial? My dear, he could charm a pearl from an oyster.”

Isadora’s interest waned. She had nothing in common with a charming person.

“I had hoped that coming north would instill in him a sense of responsibility. Instead, the first thing he did upon leaving Virginia was to set his manservant free.”

“He had a slave?” Distaste coiled in Isadora’s belly.

Lily nodded. “He and Journey were like brothers.”

“And he freed his ‘brother.’”

“He did indeed.”

“Bravo,” Isadora said decisively.

“Abolitionist?” Lily asked.

“I am.”

“Now we know what topics of conversation we must avoid if we’re to be friends.” Lily paused, then added, “It’s strange being here in the company of Yankees. Most of you regard me as a half-educated Southern slavemistress.”

“I doubt that. Beacon Hill’s best families have made their fortunes milling cotton grown by slave labor. It’s considered gauche to bring the topic up—though that’s never stopped me from opposing it.”

The clarence lurched around the corner to India Street. Like reaching fingers, the darkened wharves projected out into Town Cove and Boston Harbor. The masts and spars of clipper ships, brigs, sloops and schooners rose against the night sky.

“Oh, my.” Lily gazed out at the dazzle of anchor lamps on black water. “It’s finally real to me. My Ryan really did run away to sea.”

“Mr. Easterbrook was most pleased with the job he did.” Isadora felt the urge to defend Ryan Calhoun, a man who’d had the courage to free a slave. “He made a voyage in record time. I understand the next run is to Rio.”

To Isadora, Rio de Janeiro was more than a place on a map. She and Aunt Button used to read stories of distant places. Rio had been a particular favorite, famous for its exotic carnivals. They had stayed up late, imagining the hot smell of roasting coffee and the sound of Latin tenors and samba music. When Aunt Button was too ill to see anymore, Isadora would sit and read aloud to her for hours. One of the last books they’d read together took place in Rio.

As they neared the berths of Easterbrook Wharf, Isadora reached for the speaking tube to alert the driver. She looked forward to meeting this man who pleased Abel Easterbrook and earned a fortune, this man who freed slaves. A black sheep who had succeeded so soundly in his chosen profession would be an inspiration to her.

Perhaps he was in his aft stateroom, resting after the fruitful voyage. Or perhaps he sat at the checkered counting table, doling out sailors’ bills to the common seamen. Perhaps—

The sound of shattering glass caused the horses to shy. While the driver subdued them, Isadora leaned over the running board and looked out.

The Silver Swan ran more than its anchor lamps. Bright Japanese lanterns swayed from her spars, halyards and outriggers, illuminating the decks. Every once in a while, someone set off a fireblossom that soared skyward with a whistle, then made a starburst of yellow sulfur light.

When the coach rolled to a halt, Isadora didn’t wait for the driver to open the door. She descended on her own, lurching a little when she landed.

Lily held back for the driver, then alighted like a butterfly on a flower. The tinny sound of pipes and the thud of a drum issued from the high decks of the bark.

“Carriage ho!” someone shouted, then loosed a braying laugh.

“Where away?” yelled another voice.

“Fine on the starboard quarter!” A shadowed shape came to the rail. Isadora tugged self-consciously at the knotted strings of her cap and patted her lacquered sausage curls.

“More ladies! More ladies!” shouted a rum-roughened voice. “Welcome aboard!”

More ladies?

Isadora straightened her shoulders and offered her arm to Lily. “I suppose we should board, then.”

Lily pressed her mouth into a flat line, and Isadora wondered what could be passing through her mind. The prodigal husband was supposed to humble himself and come home. Not force the wife to come to him.

“Come spare us a favor, loveys,” yelled the rum voice. “We just swallowed anchor after three seasons at sea!”

Lily paused. “I would suggest that you go back to the carriage. This will not be pleasant.”

“Nonsense. It was my idea to bring you here. If you’re going, I’m going.” Isadora took Lily firmly by the arm. They went aboard via the slanting gangplank, steadying themselves with the rope rails. The music’s tempo grew stronger; so did the laughter—and the syrupy stench of rum.

Isadora frowned in confusion. Mr. Easterbrook had implied that Ryan Calhoun was a skilled and disciplined skipper. Surely he would not allow—

“Oh, dear Lord above.” Lily stopped on the midships deck. Her grip on Isadora’s arm tightened.

The whole deck resembled a Hogarth painting—the lowest of the low, engaged in the lowest of pursuits. The screeching whistle was piped by a sailor with a mustache. A Negro man with a skin drum and another with a mouth harp accompanied him.

Isadora fumbled with her spectacles. Even in her imagination she could not have conjured up such a scene: jack-tars in loose trousers and striped shirts dancing with bare-legged women who kissed them in public. Chickens running willy-nilly around the deck. A huge bald man with a ring of gold gleaming in one ear stood drinking directly from an unbunged barrel, upended and balanced upon his bare shoulder.

She brought her shocked gaze in a full circle around the brightly lit deck, and at the last she found herself gaping at an extraordinary man. Like a king on a throne, he sat upon a big armless chair. Backlit by burning torches, the laughing man appeared almost inhumanly handsome with a long fall of fiery red hair flowing over his broad shoulders and framing his chiseled face. He wore a garish green waistcoat that left too much of his brawny arms and chest uncovered. Draped across his lap lay a woman whose bosoms spilled from her bodice. His left arm supported her generous girth; the other—heavens be—was plunged deep beneath the tattered folds of her skirts and petticoats.

Shocking as that sight proved to be, Isadora felt her attention captured by the man’s face and demeanor. He had not yet noticed them, for he was preoccupied with the woman. There was something darkly compelling about the way he kept his concentration riveted upon the lady, regarding her with total absorption as if he meant to lose himself in her.

The man with the drum began to beat a tattoo that curiously resembled the nervous warning of a rattle snake.

Finally the red-haired man looked up, raising his face from its fleshy pillow and peering over the woman’s bosoms. He studied Isadora for a moment; then, dismissing her, he moved his gaze to Lily. Giving a lopsided, beatific grin, he said in a smooth Virginia drawl, “Hello, Mother.”

Three

Why not seize the pleasure at once?

How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

—Jane Austen

(1798)

The music stopped. Ryan felt the whore shift on his lap as she twisted to see the newcomers. She scowled bleary eyed at the tall woman with the corkscrew curls poking out from the rim of a bonnet. “The fat one’s your mother?”

“No.” With as much poise as he could muster, he set the woman on deck and stood up, pressing the backs of his knees against the chair to steady himself. Chips, the carpenter, had the presence of mind to step forward and lead the whore away, pacifying her with a fresh flask.

Ryan did his best to straighten out his crooked grin. “Mother, what an unexpected surprise.”

“I clearly am,” Lily said.

Drunk as he was, Ryan read the disappointment in her face. It pulled down the corners of her mouth, made her hesitate for a heartbreakingly long moment before she reached out and embraced him.

He reeked of rum and cheap perfume. He pulled back quickly, not wanting to taint his mother. Nothing had changed since the last time he’d seen her, not really. At their parting, they had been standing together at Albion Landing in the south reaches of Chesapeake Bay. She’d warned him that eschewing the University of Virginia and going north to Harvard would demand more from him, far more than he could possibly imagine. Possibly more than he had within him.

Drunk or sober, he was doomed to disappoint his mother, no matter what he did. He regretted being so public about it. He gestured toward the high aft deck. “Come to the stateroom. We can talk there—”

“What in the name of Saint Elmo’s fire is going on?” demanded a furious voice.

Ryan blinked his bleary eyes and groaned. Abel Easterbrook. Just what he needed. For the first time, apprehension touched his spine with ice. Tonight’s revels had put his whole mission in jeopardy. He and Journey were so close to their goal. One more voyage, and they’d have the money they needed. Now, thanks to his lack of restraint, he might have put the next voyage in doubt.

Fixing yet another lopsided smile on his face, he hid his thoughts and bowed to greet his employer. The sweetness of rum pushed ominously at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, hoping he wouldn’t disgrace himself even more than he already had. “I was conducting a small celebration in honor of our safe return, sir.” He exaggerated the enunciation of each word, hoping the long, slurred vowels would simply be attributed to his Southern upbringing rather than all that rum. “I thought a bit of levity would be good for company morale.”

“You’re not paid to think.” Easterbrook’s stormy gaze swept the decks, taking in the half-clad couples crumpled in the shadows, the men clustered eagerly around the keg, the chickens poking through spilled crumbs. “I am shocked. Shocked, I say. Small celebration indeed.”

“It is, sir. You see, where I come from…” Ryan paused. He’d made up so many lies to get Easterbrook to hire him that he had to stop for a moment to recall them. “Uh, aboard the Twyla of famous memory, it was considered a grievous error to send the crew ashore sober. There was the danger, you see, that the men would take landlubber jobs and wouldn’t sign on for the next voyage.”

With a grand gesture, he encompassed the deck, littered with motley drunkards and coarse bawds. “These are the men who have given the Silver Swan her place in the record books. They have earned their reward.” He caught the eye of Ralph Izard, the chief mate. At his skipper’s pleading look, Izard clapped his hands, sending people lurching and stumbling belowdecks.

Ryan stepped back with a gallant point of his booted foot. “Mr. Easterbrook, allow me to introduce my mother, Mrs. Lily Raines Calhoun and her companion—” He broke off, eyeing the dark-clad woman in the spectacles. She stood with gloved hands clasped tightly as if praying for his immortal soul.

If she knew Ryan Calhoun at all, she’d realize her efforts were for naught. He was doomed. It would take more than a lady’s fervent prayers to save him.

Easterbrook bowed over Lily’s extended hand. Then he turned to the other woman. “Shiver my timbers, Miss Isadora. What in the name of Davy Jones are you doing here?”

“You know each other?” Ryan staggered against a hatch coaming, putting out a hand to catch himself.

“I was summoned from a social gathering at her father’s home, damn your eyes. I have no idea what she’s doing here.”

The woman called Miss Isadora cleared her throat. “Well, I thought—that is, Mrs. Calhoun happened to ask about her…son, and since you’d mentioned that he was here with the Swan I thought, er, that is, Mrs. Calhoun was a guest at our party tonight, as were you, sir. Only she was a guest of the Hallowells—the groom’s family, you see. She seemed so eager to locate Mr.—er, Captain Calhoun, so I deemed it reasonable to suppose we would find him aboard.”

Ryan wondered if the lady had been at the rum, so garbled was her explanation. He eyed her downward sloping shoulders, her twisting, praying hands. Christ, the woman was terrified.

“Mr. Easterbrook.” Lily’s voice slid like warm molasses into the conversation. “Miss Peabody was kind enough to conduct me here when she learned I was looking for my son.”

The timbre of her voice coaxed a puppy-dog smile from the old codger. Lily Raines Calhoun had that way about her. She was a sorceress with her voice, her accent, her intimate inflections. With the softest of comments, she had the power to mesmerize her listeners. Only Ryan could discern the steel beneath the gossamer silk of her voice. Especially when she said the words “my son.”

He was in trouble. He was in terrible trouble.

And as always, he didn’t give a damn.

“And now, thanks to you,” Lily continued, sending a lovely, supplicating smile at Abel Easterbrook, “I have found him. Perhaps you would be so gallant as to drive us home, Mr. Easterbrook.”

“It would be my honor,” Easterbrook said. “I can conclude my business in a moment or two.” He turned to Ryan. “I was shanghaied from a dancing party by my houseman. It seems Rivera is being sought by the police for questioning.” Clasping his hands behind his waist like an admiral, Easterbrook paced in agitation. “Police are on the trot for runaway slaves these days.”

During Ryan’s absence, the Fugitive Slave Law had gone into effect, making it illegal to abet or harbor runaways. “Rivera’s not involved in that,” he said quickly. “He’s got more games than a ship has rats, but none of them involve fugitives.”

“Then where in Hades is he?”

“I’m afraid Rivera didn’t return with us. He married a woman in Havana and wouldn’t leave her.” There was, of course, much more to the story—a duel, a bribe, a furious father, a forced marriage—but Ryan knew better than to over-explain the matter, particularly in mixed company.

“Well, he’s a criminal and good riddance,” Abel said.

“He was a mighty fine interpreter,” Ryan reminded him, struggling to think past the fog of rum in his brain. “The best we had.”

“So now I am liable for his debts, and I have no Spanish interpreter for future voyages. Well done indeed, Captain.”

The woman called Isadora Peabody whispered something in a nervous breath.

“What’s that?” Abel demanded grumpily.

“I speak Spanish.” Miss Isadora looked appalled that she had actually dared to utter a word. Staring at the planks, she added, “Also French, Italian and Portuguese. My great aunt tutored me in languages, and then at Mount Holyoke Seminary I continued—” She broke off, clearing her throat. “My, I do go on. Forgive me. What I mean to say is, if you have documents that need translating, I could perhaps help.”

“Thank you for the offer, my dear. But I could never prevail upon a lady.” Easterbrook swung back to Ryan again. “You, sir, are an irredeemable dandy-cock and worse.”

Ryan tried his best to bear the insult with proper stoic contrition. But he couldn’t help it. When he opened his mouth, laughter burst out. It took several tries to stop. Finally he found a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Mr. Easterbrook, forgive me. I hope you’ll understand that this small festive occasion is the only amusement we’ve had in a hundred eighty days, and that you’ll—”

“Calhoun?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Shut up, Calhoun.”

“Sir,” the Peabody woman said, “I realize this is only my opinion, but earlier this evening you spoke of Mr. Calhoun’s prodigious talent for running a fast, profitable ship.”

Ryan squared his shoulders. “Ma’am,” he said unsteadily, “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re a fine judge of character.”

She eyed him suspiciously, then cut her gaze away—in fright or in disgust, he couldn’t tell.

Easterbrook cleared his throat. “I will grant you this. You have made a difficult voyage in record time. You have added a fortune to the company coffers. And so I am trying to convince myself to give you a second chance. Tuesday at five o’clock I shall come here to discuss a new sailing plan. At that time, I expect you to have a new translator in place and the Swan’s cargo discharged, her papers in order and a new cargo lined up for the winter ice run to Rio de Janeiro.”

Ryan had no idea how he would accomplish all that in such a short time. But he needed the post, needed to skipper another command. More desperately than anyone could imagine. He wished the seriousness of his cause had occurred to him before the harbor bawds had swarmed aboard.

All his life he’d been borne along by personal charm, good looks and a general lack of respect for convention. Those shallow virtues weren’t enough anymore. Now he had to dig deeper and see if he had what it took to succeed. And so he nodded smartly. “You will have it. You can count on me.”

“Don’t disappoint me, Calhoun.”

“I shan’t, sir.”

Easterbrook tossed him a suspicious glare. Then he cocked out both arms. “Allow me, ladies.”

Ryan sagged against the deck chair, allowing himself a long, slow sigh of relief. If he could survive both his mother and his employer tonight, how hard could tomorrow be?

It was impossible, Isadora decided the next day as she stood in the parlor of her parents’ Beacon Hill mansion. Impossible to believe he still might want her.

She sneezed explosively, clapping a handkerchief to her nose and cursing the persistent grippe that plagued her. Then she looked down for the hundredth time at the hastily dashed-off note that had been delivered this morning. From Chad Easterbrook.

After the sting of her humiliation the night before, the invitation soothed her like a balm. Suddenly the world didn’t look so bleak; suddenly the colors of autumn she spied out her window glowed with stunning vibrance. It was a perfect day, with the russet leaves swirling in the breeze and Squire Pickering’s hawthorn hedge ablaze with sunset colors. Asters and mums and unexpected bursts of late-blooming roses decked the long, narrow, tiered garden in the back.

She sneezed again. A pity the colorful season plagued her this way.

Chad Easterbrook’s note affected her in the same manner the autumn colors adorned the landscape. He turned her drab world bright. Judging by their conversation the night before, she had no reason to hope that he would show her favor. But oh, she hoped. Hoped until she ached with it. Perhaps this time would be different. This time, doing his bidding would endear her to him.

She had to believe that. She had to believe there was an end to her loneliness. That something—someone—could fill the well of emptiness inside her. And that someone was Chad Easterbrook.

She sighed, holding herself very stiff and straight so that the busk of her corset wouldn’t stab into her. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself a small smile of triumph. Chad wanted her to participate in the afternoon’s diversion—a croquet match on Kimball Green.

She pictured the scene: Chad and his crowd wearing dress whites and assembled on the green for croquet. She glowed at the thought of being one of the happy group as they spent a lazy afternoon in laughter and sunshine. Thanks to Chad, she would soon be a part of his charmed world.

Lovingly, a smile playing about her lips, she folded his note and tucked it in the most romantic spot she could think of—beneath her busk.

It itched.

The memory of the ball reared in her mind. She pictured herself stumbling to help Chad with his romantic entanglement. Making a spectacle of herself by knocking over the plant. Being seen scratching her chest with a letter opener. Stammering an excuse to Mrs. Hallowell. Rushing off to find Ryan Calhoun at the harbor.

The thought of the red-headed Virginian, his lap draped with a half-clad woman and his belly full of rum, brought an unexpected twitch of disgust to Isadora’s mouth. No matter how deeply she humiliated herself, she had never sunk to that level.

She had finally met someone who was more of a disgrace than she was.

He would never know what a comfort he was to her.

She straightened her shoulders. Today would be different, she thought, holding back a sneeze. Today she’d redeem herself from last night’s fiasco.

First, a dress. Though she had absolutely no sense of fashion, she knew better than to wear black to a croquet match. She plucked up her skirts and hurried to her chambers, opening the walnut clothes press and peering inside.

Dear heavens. When had she managed to amass such a collection of black, brown and gray? She had black gowns with black lace. Black gowns with brown piping. Black gowns with gray eyelet. But there—off to one side. It was an ecru tea gown made for some awkward, forgotten social occasion. The dress was just the thing for an afternoon of croquet.

She rang for Thankful, and the maid arrived in a trice, setting her feather duster on the bed. “Well, it’s different, miss, and that’s a fact,” Thankful said, picking up the pale India cotton dress.

“Do you think it’s too different from my usual style?” Isadora asked.

“Yes, it is.” With the brisk efficiency that had served her—and the Peabody family—well for three decades, Thankful took up her stay hook and freed Isadora from the black day gown. Then she held up the new dress. “Let’s see if we can make this fit.”

Isadora obediently put up her hands, and Thankful dropped the gown over her head, saying, “You know, your sister Arabella always looked so lovely in this color. The veriest picture, she was—” Thankful unapologetically put her knee in the middle of Isadora’s back and tugged hard “—stepping out with Lord knows how many gentleman callers….”

Isadora clutched the bedpost to steady herself as the maid struggled with the closures on the gown. She stopped listening to Thankful’s chatter. She’d heard the stories many times—Lucinda’s social triumphs, the duel that had almost erupted between two of Arabella’s suitors, Quentin’s habit of stepping out with a different young lady every night, Bronson’s liaisons with the best girls in Boston….

As the maid prattled on and performed the punishing ritual of forcing the dress to contain her, Isadora tried not to wince. She had often wondered why a lady’s garments must hurt. Corsets strangled, shoes pinched, ornamental combs dug into delicate scalps and society said “Ahh,” and made admiring noises. It had always been a puzzle to her.

“Thankful,” she said, “I think the stays are as tight as they need be.”

“One more twist, there we are,” the maid said. “I declare, you should follow the example of your mother and sisters, miss. They never seem to mind sacrificing a bit of comfort for fashion.”

Isadora didn’t argue. The maid, like everyone else in the world, simply could not understand what had happened with the middle daughter of Boston’s leading couple. She was the product of the same careful breeding that had given Beacon Hill her gorgeous sisters and gallant brothers. Yet Isadora was nothing like them. Not even close.

“There you are,” Thankful pronounced, stepping back and wiping the sweat from her brow. “Will there be anything else, miss?”

“No, thank you.” Isadora smoothed her hands down over the skirt, feeling better already. A pretty gown was the thing to win Chad’s attention.

She picked up a small hand mirror on a side table. By holding it out in front of her, she could admire the dress in individual pieces—high, puffy sleeves, ribbed panel, taut bodice, full skirts.

Setting aside the mirror, she noticed Thankful had left behind her feather duster. Rather than ring for the maid again, Isadora decided to take it to her. Hurrying along to the servants’ back stairway, she didn’t realize until it was almost too late that Thankful and the kitchen maid, Tilly, were gossiping in the stair.

“…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.”

A black-lacquered coach rumbled past, the muscular team straining up the red brickwork slope. It felt strange to tread these streets, this place of pretense. The inhabitants pushed hard at the wheels of commerce, yet their wealth was inherited, built solidly on the backs of the opium and slave trades. Not so different from his own father, Ryan reflected, though rather than trafficking in slaves he had merely owned them.

Ryan was considered a traitor to his class for enrolling in the radical Yankee institution known as Harvard. When he’d been dismissed from the university, he’d never thought to return to Beacon Hill again. Certainly he didn’t think he’d be welcome, having disgraced himself by running away to sea.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Journey grumbled. “You should have written the plaguey female a note and said no thank you to her offer.”

Ryan scanned the discreet brass plaques identifying each house they passed. Greenwood, Appleton, Kimball, Lowell…they were known as Boston’s First Families, and they were a clannish lot.

“Some things, my dear Journey, demand a personal reply,” he explained. “Besides, I’m curious about this plaguey female, as you call Miss Isadora Peabody.” He patted the letter in his waistcoat pocket. “What sort of woman would make me such an outrageous offer?”

Journey grinned, his teeth flashing in his deep brown face. “You must have impressed the bloomers off her, Captain.”

“A frightening thought.”

They walked along a brutally trimmed hedgerow, coming to an intimidating Palladian manse near the corner of Chestnut and Beacon Streets. The Peabody home. Ryan had known some Peabodys in college—Quentin and Bronson. Relations of some sort?

He stood back, getting a crick in his neck as he looked up at the towering house. The glaring sun stabbed into his brain, reviving his headache. “I suppose we can assume,” he said to Journey, “that she did not make this offer because she is in need of money.”

“Probably not.” Journey tugged at the shining black wrought iron gate-pull. He let them both in and they crossed a rigorously disciplined garden, Grecian in flavor, with a shiny silver gazing ball on a pedestal in the middle of a box hedge maze.

The door knocker depicted Neptune with cheeks puffed out and a frown on his face. Ryan lifted the handle. Before he knocked, Journey said, “A question, Skipper.”

“What is it?”

“Have you found a translator for the next voyage?”

Ryan sighed, his head still pounding, the taste of rum old and sticky in the back of his throat. “My friend, it was all I could do this morning to find the floor beneath my bunk.”

Journey studied him, brown eyes probing with a depth that had been plumbed by years of friendship. “Why do you drink like that, honey?” he asked softly. “Why do you drink until you make yourself crazy?”

Ryan rapped smartly with the knocker. “Because it’s easier than staying sane,” he muttered. His life, he reflected, wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. He was supposed to be sitting on his front porch sipping a mint julep while a mute servant waved a punkah fan over his head. Instead, he’d become a sea captain in charge of a shockingly motley crew. A Southern man committed to a cause that had virtually destroyed his family.

The door swung open on silent hinges. Ryan found himself greeted by a butler in a plain broadcloth suit. The little gent appeared to be well familiar with the trappings of the socially acceptable, for in one brief glance he took in the expensive cut of Ryan’s suit and deemed it adequate.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

Ryan bowed from the waist. “I am Ryan Calhoun, here to see Miss Peabody, if you please.”

The butler stepped back, allowing him to enter. He and Journey stood upon a plush Turkey carpet of red and violet. A gilt mirror adorned one wall, and in the corner was a plant stand without a plant on it.

“I shall see if Miss Arabella is at home,” the butler said.

The name didn’t sound familiar to Ryan, nor to Journey, judging by the jab he gave Ryan with his elbow.

“That would be Miss Isadora, would it not?” Ryan said.

The butler allowed his eyes to widen—whether at Ryan’s Southern drawl or at the mention of Miss Isadora, he couldn’t tell.

“You are here to see Miss Isadora?”

Ryan smiled patiently. “That’s correct. Is she at home?”

“I…” The diminutive man cleared his throat. “I shall inquire. If you like, you may wait in the parlor.” He gestured.

“Your man can go around to the servants’ entrance in the rear.”

Ryan expected the error. “This is Mr. Journey Calhoun, and he isn’t a servant, but my business partner.”

The calm, self-possessed man seemed to be unraveling by inches. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand. “I…I see. Would you please excuse me?”

“By all means.” You officious little snot, he added silently as the butler scurried away.

“You should have sent me around the back,” Journey said. “The food and conversation’s better, anyway.”

“You’re no servant, damn it.” Ryan strolled boldly into the ornate parlor. A chandelier glistening with cut crystal droplets lorded over an arrangement of expensive furniture and objets d’art. A Revere tea service and an array of sparkling cut glass decanters graced a sideboard.

“Didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Journey said. “You recharted your entire life so I wouldn’t be a servant.” He leaned his elbow on the blue-and-gilt fireplace mantel, a slender Meissen vase in the center.

“That’s true,” Ryan said at length. “That’s for damned sure. And don’t think for a minute I regret it.”

A peculiar feeling washed over Ryan. He loved this man, loved him with a ferocity he’d never felt for his own brother. He and Journey had come up together, from sassy rough-and-tumble seven year olds to the men they were now.

The fact that one had been master and the other a slave hadn’t interfered in the friendship—at least, not at first.

Ryan checked his appearance in a gilt-framed mirror. Considering the night he’d had, he looked remarkably well put together, his red hair recently cut by Timothy Datty, the cabin boy. His collar and sky-blue frock coat were crisp and clean, thanks to Luigi Conti, the sail maker who was particular about such things.

He had been seven years old and formally dressed the first day Journey had been brought to him, he recalled. Father had made him wait in the hot summer parlor of Albion, and precisely at noon, Purdy had brought in a little boy with a skinny neck and huge eyes.

“This be my nephew Journey,” Purdy had said, her gaze cutting down and to the side in the manner of most slaves. “He’s a real good boy, ain’t you, Journey? A real good boy.”

And Journey had surprised Ryan. Instead of the meek, deferential countenance bred and beaten into the house servants and field hands, he looked Ryan directly in the eye and spoke in a high, clear voice: “I’m the best boy there is.”

That had been the beginning. The lazy, hot growing-up years had been a time of turbulence balanced with moments of exquisitely sweet tranquillity. They played and fought together, went fishing and boating on Mockjack Bay together. Ryan slept in a mahogany four-poster bed, Journey on a straw pallet on the floor; but more often than not, when Purdy brought breakfast in the morning, she’d find them both splayed out in the big bed. When Ryan went to church, Journey waited in the carriage outside. When Journey wanted to learn to read and cipher, Ryan taught him in secret, by the light of a tallow stub cribbed from the kitchen.

When Journey’s father was sold to pay off the debts of Ryan’s father, Ryan wept and raged with him.

By the time the boys turned sixteen, Journey was married and a father himself. Ryan had seduced a number of local girls, and debutantes from all the best families had begun to notice him.

Life would have gone on in this vein except for two extraordinary things. First, Ryan elected to attend Harvard, Yankee radicals and all. And second, he insisted on bringing Journey with him.

Journey had fought him every inch of the way. He adored his wife and children, who lived at a neighboring plantation. But Ryan was insistent, even lordly about it. No proper gentleman matriculated at a university without his manservant. It was Journey’s duty to go. He had no choice.

Ryan had a plan. He couldn’t even tell Journey, because the slave’s wrath and grief had to be convincing.

Ryan smiled into the mirror, remembering the day he crossed the Mason Dixon line and gave Journey his freedom. Journey had held the manumission papers to his chest, unable to speak as the tears rolled down his face.

Now their shipping enterprise had brought them one step closer to their ultimate goal—to buy Journey’s wife and babies, bring them north and set them free.

“Got to be something wrong with her,” Journey said, startling Ryan out of his remembrances.

“Wrong with who?”

“The plaguey woman.” Journey’s gaze tracked along one wall that was entirely covered by shelf after shelf of books. “Why would a body want to leave a house like this?”

“There must be something about this life she can’t abide,” Ryan whispered, thinking of his own reasons for leaving Albion. “Maybe we should ask—”

“Miss Peabody will receive you in the garden,” the butler said from the doorway. “This way, please.”

Ryan and Journey followed him along a tall, narrow corridor hung with portraits. The family tree, Ryan assumed, noting that each subject seemed to be extraordinarily handsome. Either the painters were expert flatterers or this clan had been bred for show.

They passed through a glassed-in verandah and then emerged onto a clipped and sculpted yard. Paradise in miniature, Ryan thought, noting the vine pergolas and pruned yew trees, At the far end stood a gazebo with a domed roof and open sides. In the middle sat a woman in black, her head bent as she read a thick book in her lap.

“Miss Peabody?” Ryan said.

She looked up, blinking owlishly as if she had come from a dark place into the light. A pair of spectacles sat low on her nose, and she seemed to see better by peering over the top of the lenses.

“Yes.” Her voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said again. “Captain Calhoun. I am indeed pleased that you’ve come.”

He stood before her, watching her hands, expecting her to extend one for his kiss. Instead, she clutched the book very hard, displaying fingernails that had been bitten ragged. She had, of all things, the indirect, cowed look of a slave. As if she feared she might be beaten at any moment.

Discomfited by the thought, he opted for a formal bow from the waist. “This is Mr. Journey Calhoun, my associate and steward of the Swan.”

She clutched the book tighter. “Oh! I was expecting a note, not two grown men! I’m—um—pleased to meet you.”

Ryan had never met a more socially gauche woman in his life. He dared not look at Journey, for if their gazes met, they would surely dishonor her with a fit of sniggering.

She cleared her throat again and used one finger to push her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. Said nose was red and swollen; either she was unwell or the book had moved her to tears.

She sneezed violently into a crumpled handkerchief. Unwell, Ryan decided.

She tucked the handkerchief up her sleeve. “My apologies. It is the grippe, I fear.”

“Do you suffer from it often?”

“Constantly, Captain. Except in the springtime. Then it is the hay fever that plagues me, though I can seldom tell the difference between the two ailments—” She broke off, looking horrified. “Forgive me for going on about such a disagreeable subject.”

“I find nothing disagreeable about discussing you, Miss Peabody,” Ryan said, forcing his gallantry to its limits. He was here to refuse her offer, so he might as well do it politely.

She finally seemed to remember the book she was holding. “Pardon me,” she said, shutting the tome and setting it on the marble table beside her.

He turned his head to see its title. The symbols on the cover looked only vaguely familiar; he had made a point of sleeping through the classics at university.

“Ptolemy,” she said.

“In the original Greek,” he guessed.

“Oh, indeed. I wouldn’t want to read Ptolemy any other way. He has such a distinctive authority in the original.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Ryan said. He could hear a chuckle starting in Journey’s throat. “I take it you have a facility with languages.”

“Yes, yes, I do. I was fortunate to have been tutored by my late great aunt, who was quite the scholar in her day, and I also attended Mount Holyoke. I am conversant in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese and have a reading knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew.”

She was probably more knowledgeable than the majority of Harvard graduates, Ryan guessed. Curious. Why would her wealthy parents allow a girl such latitude?

“Miss Peabody,” he said, “I came in person because any other way would fail to do justice to the incredibly generous offer you made me.”

She pressed her nail-bitten fingers into a steeple. “Then you will take me? I’m going to Rio on your ship?”

“No.” He said it swiftly to kill the blooming hope on her face. “It is not that you are lacking in any way,” he hastened to add. “The fault is with me, and with my ship and crew. The Swan is a working vessel filled with working men. We could never live up to the standards of such a genteel lady as yourself.”

She flinched, looking down and to the side. Submissive, defeated. Ryan had the feeling he had drowned a kitten, and the feeling made him angry.

“I should think you’d let me be the judge of that,” she ventured timidly.

He gestured across the yard toward the house. “Nothing on the Silver Swan can compare to this. You cannot trade paradise for months in cramped quarters in the company of seamen.”

“I can, if only you will let me.”

What an irritating, intractable thing she was. Ryan paced the deck of the gazebo. “Ma’am, you seem to think your service as a translator is all that is required of you on this voyage. Rivera, our former translator, was also an able navigator.”

“Celestial or instrumental?” she asked.

“Both,” he fired back.

“Fine. I am versed in both. I’ve studied the Bowditch and have taken courses in spherical trigonometry.” Her timidity fell away as she spoke.

A low whistle came from Journey, who stood in the yard near the gazebo.

“I don’t use Bowditch,” Ryan said, struggling to hide his surprise.

“There’s no need. The position can be figured without it,” she agreed.

In truth, the trigonometric formulas were all black magic to Ryan, but he wasn’t about to admit it to this smug female. “So you understand a thing or two about navigation. That does not qualify you for this venture.”

“I daresay I know more than a thing or two.”

She lifted her chin in defiance. Defiance. Ryan imagined her on his ship, defying his orders.

“What’s the proper position for the royal yard?”

“Thirty-six degrees to the larboard beam…until you reach the equator. Then it changes to starboard.”

He turned his back to hide his amazement, looking out at the lawn as he asked, “Then tell me how to haul out into the stream.”

“You reef the studding sail gear.”

He refused to look at Journey, knowing he’d find him grinning from ear to ear. “And what about the chafing gear?”

“That’s simple,” she retorted. “You put it on and leave it there.”

“I concede, Miss Peabody, that you have startled and impressed me with your knowledge. But understanding the finer points of seamanship requires more than—”

“Good God, Calhoun, it really is you,” called a voice from the verandah.

Miss Peabody made an uncomfortable little whimper in her throat. Ryan shaded his eyes as a party of white-clad young people came hurrying toward him.

He recognized the men from his Harvard days: Quentin Peabody, famous for his tennis serve and infamous for his phenomenal stomach, which held vast quantities of liquor. His brother Bronson, so attractive he was almost pretty, was deeply studious and well-liked. Foster Candy, a braying ass of a fellow—or a veritable hog when it came to wallowing in the gossip pit—and Robert Hallowell whose only memorable quality was his family’s wealth. And finally Chad Easterbrook, Abel’s son and heir. He was graced with a godlike handsomeness and a frighteningly vacant mind.

They arrived in a tumble of laughter and introductions, and Ryan made the acquaintance of the ladies—Lydia Haven and Isadora’s sister, Arabella, who resembled a fashion doll in a dressmaker’s shop.

“What a pleasure to see you, Calhoun,” Quentin declared in the lazy, academic drawl of the longtime university man. “You made quite the stir when you lit out from Harvard, old chap. Quite the stir.”

“People at Harvard are easily stirred.” Ryan gestured at Journey. “I’d like you all to make the acquaintance of my business partner, Mr. Journey Calhoun.”

They just stared. Then Foster stepped forward, bowing from the waist. “The pleasure is ours,” he shouted, enunciating each word carefully. “I am sure.”

Journey grinned. “I’m African, sir. Not deaf.”

Their laughter had a nervous edge, but Quentin managed to turn the attention from Journey to Isadora. She sat like a statue, her face pale, her eyes cast down. The liveliness that had animated her moments ago had vanished.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” Quentin asked with a gamin chuckle, “Or is it true? Is my sister actually to be found in conversation with a gentleman rather than with her nose in a book?”

The others laughed. Isadora managed a tight, uncomfortable smile.

“Oh, do stop,” Arabella protested prettily, shaking a white lace fan. “Can’t you see you’re embarrassing poor Izzie?”

Isadora responded by sneezing violently into her handkerchief.

“Bless you,” Chad Easterbrook murmured automatically.

She sent him a tremulous smile, shy and curiously sweet. Judging by Chad’s expression, he had no appreciation of what was immediately apparent to anyone with half a brain—the poor girl was quite thoroughly in love with him.

“How was your croquet match?” she asked softly, her voice wavering a little.

“Oh, capital,” Chad said. Offhandedly he added, “Though you were missed, of course.”

“Yes, indeed.” Lydia Haven brushed out a flounce in her white dress. “You certainly were. It is always so amusing to have you around, Izzie.”

“Thank you. But…as I was compelled to inform Chad, I’m unwell. I’m…ah…” She sneezed again, pressing the rumpled handkerchief to her reddened nose.

“What can be keeping the refreshments?” Bronson wondered aloud. “I asked for lemonade to be served out here. I’ll go inquire.”

The women gathered in the gazebo, and the men wandered away, Foster and Robert lighting their pipes. They fell into conversation, none of it terribly interesting. Ryan realized he’d had a better time discussing navigation with Isadora. He listened with only one ear to the men’s talk. Until Foster addressed him directly.

“I’m told—though, of course, I have no experience of this—that as soon as a gentleman leaves the college, he finds himself in quite a calamity.”

Ryan lifted one eyebrow. “I’ve done all right.”

“But isn’t it true that all your tailors and gaming friends, so generous to Harvard men, are apt to call in their markers?” Foster persisted, his eyes narrowing with slyness. “Perhaps not. Perhaps they sent their dun notes to your dear mama.”

Ryan flexed his fist and took a step toward him. Journey planted himself in his path. “Easy, Skipper,” he said quietly. “Remember why we came here. Remember what’s important.”

Ryan took a deep breath. He had to stay focused on the business venture.

He ignored the talk until Isadora’s name came up.

“There’s a family joke, you know,” said Quentin in a low voice, “that our parents had to tie a codfish cake around Izzie’s neck to get the cat to play with her.”

Foster Candy made a choked sound of amusement. “There, old stick, I daresay I’d charge a steeper price than a fish cake!”

“Lemonade,” Bronson called, helping the butler wheel a wooden cart across the lawn.

The refreshments arrived and the talk started up again, but the drink tasted bitter to Ryan. As he stood back and watched the laughing, white-clad croquet party and Isadora sitting like a black crow on her stool, he wished he had never come here.

“She lives in hell,” he muttered to Journey.

“There are many kinds of hell. Some worse than others.”

Ryan knew Journey was thinking of his family, still in bondage in Virginia, their only hope of freedom resting with the fortunes of the Silver Swan. Yet Isadora Peabody suffered in her own way; that was apparent enough. While Southern families institutionalized their inhumanity, claiming a moral right to keep slaves and justifying it in the oddest of fashions, this proper Yankee society had its own subtle brand of torture.

It was a calculated cruelty, razor sharp, aimed at the most vulnerable. Miss Isadora had no defenses against the biting cleverness of her croquet-playing, lemonade-drinking peers. Timid socially, yet gifted with a fierce intellect, she was regarded as an aberration. Different and not to be trusted.

She was regarded as “poor Izzie.” But already Ryan realized she was “not-so-dumb Dora.”

Chad Easterbrook, vast in his mental absence, clearly had no notion that she worshiped him. Perhaps, then, it was the perfect match, Ryan mused cynically, leaning against a pergola and watching as Isadora sneezed yet again, and Chad blessed her and she gazed up at him as if he’d offered her the moon on a platter. He was capable of only selfish thought, and she suffered from an excess of thoughtfulness. Between the two of them they made a whole person. Possibly even an interesting person.

Except that it was clear to Ryan that they were not a couple. Lydia Haven commandeered the young man’s attention with all the determination of a battle chief leading a charge. He was hers, following her across the lawn like a trained spaniel and leaving Isadora to snuffle ungraciously into her handkerchief.

“We should go,” Ryan said. “Miss Peabody,” he continued, taking her hand and bowing, lifting it to his lips. “Your offer was more than kind, and for that I thank you. Good day.”

“But we haven’t—you can’t—”

Feeling terrible, he left her stammering. He heard one of the other young women sigh. He and Journey found their own way out and Ryan was relieved to leave the stifling atmosphere of the Peabody mansion behind.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Journey asked.

“Don’t you dare suggest it,” Ryan said, adding in his best Boston accent, “old chap.”

“But she speaks six languages—”

“No.”

“She’s miserable here—”

“No.”

“She’s a hell of a lot more interesting than the ladies you brought aboard last ni—”

“Damn it,” Ryan almost shouted, “no.”

Isadora refused to take no for an answer. So what if Ryan Calhoun turned out to be as shallow and mocking as Quentin and his friends? He had something she wanted—a way out of Boston. And she was determined to get it.

As she waited in the brick-fronted Merchants’ Exchange offices of Abel Easterbrook, she allowed herself a brief, satisfying moment of gloating. Though he didn’t know it, Captain Calhoun himself had given her the key to obtaining the post.

“Ahoy, Miss Isadora!” Abel opened the door to his inner chamber and greeted her with a bewhiskered smile. “Welcome aboard.”

“I shan’t keep you long, sir, for I know you’re busy.” She seated herself in the chair he held for her. Lithographs of ships and lighthouses graced the bradded-leather walls of the office and stacks of ledger books filled the shelves. She folded her gloved hands, inhaling the scent of ink and tobacco and paper—the scent of commerce.

“You have a marvelous office,” she said, shaking her head briefly when Abel offered her a cup of sherry.

“It’s been in the family for three generations,” he said. “One day it’ll all be Chad’s.”

A thrill shot down her spine. If Abel agreed to her plan, she could finally win Chad’s esteem. By the time Chad took over the company, Isadora intended to be indispensable to the enterprise. With her knowledge of the business, she would be a great asset to Chad. Perhaps a great enough asset to be his wi—

She cut the thought short. One step at a time, she told herself. “Have you had a chance to consider my proposal, sir?”

He tamped his pipe on a tray. “I have, Miss Isadora. Your credentials are copper-bottomed, unimpeachable. However, what you ask is impossible. I cannot allow you to sign on as a member of the crew of the Silver Swan.”

She kept her chin steady despite the urge to crumple in defeat. “May I ask why?”

“It’s not a woman’s place—”

“Ah, but it is.” She relaxed, pleased that she had prepared herself for this argument. “The Fairacre has not only a woman bo’sun, but the cook is a female as well.”

“The cook is the skipper’s wife,” he argued.

“She wasn’t when she signed on,” Isadora replied.

“I rest my case. I can’t let you be bound away with a shipload of jack-tars. God forbid you should come back married to one of them.”

She smiled at the irony. “Believe me, Mr. Easterbrook, there is no chance of any sort of…entanglement.” She thought of the ripe, laughing woman Ryan Calhoun had held in his lap the night she’d met him. If that sort was his preference, he wouldn’t look twice at Isadora. “And did you know,” she continued, “that the Pandora has three women aboard—and that she grossed a hundred thousand last year?”

“All right, I’ll concede that some crews include females. But Calhoun’s a loose cannon. You saw him the other night—he’ll give you the devil to pay and no pitch hot.”

“That is precisely why you need me. I alone know how important the Rio voyage is to you. I can be your eyes and ears on that ship, Mr. Easterbrook. I can make regular reports about Captain Calhoun’s behavior and the way he conducts his affairs.”

A crack appeared in his reluctance. “Wouldn’t mind having a barnacle on the hull for this voyage,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t be right to send a lady like you. He might shame you.”

“His mother will be there as a passenger—”

“He’ll probably humiliate her, as well.”

“Sir, I assure you, Mrs. Calhoun and I can look after our own reputations. The one who needs looking after is Captain Calhoun.”

“This is headed for rocky shoals, I can feel it.”

“Not at all. It will be smooth sailing, and I intend to see to it for your sake. Use the man’s skill as a skipper, but don’t let him scuttle your reputation as a leader in commerce.”

Her words made great headway into the kindly old man’s pride. Feeling herself close to victory, she said, “Mr. Easterbrook, you have ever been a visionary, on the leading edge of modern business. Engaging my services is the next logical step.”

Five

First ponder, then dare.

—Helmuth von Moltke

(attributed)

“C-can I h-help you, ma’am?” a young boy asked Isadora.

She turned on the dock to look at him. “Is this the Silver Swan?” Isadora asked.

The lad—a wiry, nervous boy of perhaps fifteen—nodded jerkily. “Yes’m.” He snatched off his tarpaulin seaman’s cap. “Tim-Timothy Datty, at your service.”

“I am looking for Captain Calhoun.”

“H-he’s aboard, but—”

“Good. I was hoping he would be.” She headed toward the gangway, stepping around the dock where brawny-shouldered stevedores were discharging the cargo. She tried not to stare but couldn’t help herself.

In contrast to the fitted frock coats, silk hats and chicken-skin gloves of drawing-room gentlemen, the men of the wharf wore loose trousers, shirts and neckerchiefs fastened with slip-ties. Crude expressions, spoken in a variety of foreign accents, filled the air. She could not fathom the meaning of poodle faking but she felt certain she didn’t want to know.

“M-ma’am.” Timothy Datty trotted alongside her. “C-c-captain’s not—”

“You needn’t stop what you’re doing to accompany me,” she said. “I know the way.”

He pressed his mouth shut, waving his hands. There was something earnest and appealing about the boy. A pity about his stutter. Elocution lessons and special readings might help, but she didn’t suggest it for fear of embarrassing him. Besides, she was in a hurry to see Ryan Calhoun.

She wondered if he would be surprised to see her. With a shiver of anticipation, she remembered the way he’d taken his leave of her after their meeting. He had crossed the lawn, looking as masterful and dignified as a young prince, and bowed over her hand. Even Lydia Haven had dragged her attention away from Chad long enough to notice the gallant gesture.

Isadora held Ryan Calhoun’s boldness in quiet fascination. While she shrinkingly obeyed the rules of her parents and society, Mr. Calhoun flouted convention and took his own path. Perhaps his very lack of protocol would make him see the sense in her plan, then.

One of the stevedores struck up a bawdy song in Portuguese, the strong, operatic voice ringing across the waterfront. Women’s body parts sounded so much more poetic in Portuguese, Isadora observed, trying her best not to blush. She headed up to the main deck and then climbed to the…she consulted her memory as she progressed. The afterdeck—yes, that was it—reached by means of a gangway and companion ladder.

She had burned the gaslight late the night before, studying a tome of nautical terms. At their meeting in the garden, Captain Calhoun had nearly exhausted her supply of knowledge, and she had stocked up on more. A deceptive practice, yes, but Isadora was desperate.

She could hear young Timothy Datty shouting to her from the dock far below, but with the singing stevedore and the screech of lifting gear, she couldn’t hear him. And why was he jumping up and down and waving his arms?

The deserted main deck had been cleared of crates and barrels, though a few remnants of the revelry remained—stray chicken feathers, a broken bottle, a spent cigar. She tucked away her apprehension and made her way to the captain’s stateroom, finding the door slightly ajar. Within, she could hear a faint thumping sound.

Clearing her throat, she knocked at the door. “Captain Calhoun, are you there?”

“Al…almost…” His voice sounded ragged, and he let out a gasp and a moan.

He was ill! Dear heaven, he might be dying in there. She pushed the door open and marched inside. “I’m here, Captain. Do you need any help?”

“I—oh, for Christ’s sake.” The crude words came from within a draped alcove.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked a female voice, also behind the drapes.

Isadora stopped in her tracks, frozen like a hunted rabbit. Heavens be, he was with a woman. In flagrante delicto. That must have been what Timothy had been trying to tell her. She willed herself to flee, willed her feet to turn toward the door, but she was too horrified to obey even common sense.

A hand, and then a head, appeared through the drapes. Isadora recognized the woman from the night of the party, the one with yellow hair and red lips and huge—

“I’m so sorry,” Isadora managed to whisper.

“Not half as sorry as me,” the woman said in a coarse voice. She exited from the bed, pushing her feet into a pair of slippers and tugging up her bodice as she clumped to the door. “Don’t summon me again unless you have time for me,” she called over her shoulder, then left in a huff.

Isadora knew she should follow, but horror held her rooted. She looked anywhere but at the bunk, trying to distract herself by cataloguing the details of her surroundings, but all appeared as a blur; she couldn’t concentrate.

“You are like a bad rash,” Ryan Calhoun said, coming out of the bed and jerking the curtain shut. “You won’t go away.” Grumbling peevishly, he pulled on a tall boot.

Isadora caught her breath. Seeing a gentleman with his shirt open at the throat, its tails loose over his trousers, his hair in tousled disarray, was a new experience to her. She even forgot to be insulted.

He yanked on the second boot and scowled at her. “Miss Peabody, I paid you the honor of a personal visit to tell you why I cannot bring you along on the voyage. So why are you here?”

“Because I need you,” she blurted, letting out her breath in a rush. Mortified, she cleared her throat, composing herself. “I mean, I was hoping you would see the sense in engaging my services as translator so that I wouldn’t have to prevail on Mr. Easterbrook.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’m afraid you left me no choice.” She took a folded letter from her reticule and handed it to him. “Your refusal compelled me to take matters into my own hands.”

Almost viciously, he broke the waxen seal on the letter. Angling the cream stock paper toward the light, he read it.

Trying not to fidget, Isadora looked around the room. The cabin resembled a merchant’s office and parlor in miniature. A long table aft was curved slightly to echo the fantail shape of the stern. Benches flanked the table, and in the middle rested a tray of crystal decanters clad in silver filigree. There was also a small writing desk with an industrious array of cubbyholes, and a tiny door leading, she supposed, to the water closet. A squat sea chest with an intimidating-looking lock rested near the upholstered aft bench. The stern windows, of leaded bottle-bottom glass, glittered with the afternoon light.

The light, though weak, fell kindly over Ryan Calhoun, illuminating his negligent pose, his rumpled clothing and the frown that deepened with every word he read.

And even scowling, Isadora couldn’t help but notice, he was an uncommon man. Some might even say beautiful in the classical sense, the wave of reddish hair almost Grecian, the height of his cheekbones and brow unmistakably patrician. Judging by the tight fit of his trousers beneath the trailing broadcloth shirt, the lady he’d been entertaining had every right to be resentful of the interruption.

“So you brought pressure to bear on Abel,” said Ryan, catching her staring at him. “Charming.”

“I dislike the implication of that. I merely presented my point of view and he agreed.” She prayed silently that Ryan Calhoun would never learn that her offer included spying on him. “Mr. Easterbrook is a man of commerce—a very successful one, as you well know. He was more than happy to approve my position.”

“And what does his son think of this, Miss Peabody?” A harsh cruelty edged Ryan Calhoun’s voice. “What does Chad think, or does he think at all? I’m not quite certain he knows how.”

She swallowed, finding her throat suddenly parched. “It was Abel’s decision. I’m sure I have no idea what Chad thinks.”

“How can you bear to be away from the gallant Chad for so long? Have you thought about that?”

She flinched. No one was supposed to know about her secret adoration of Chad Easterbrook. No one. How had this rude, blunt man guessed?

Ryan crushed the letter in his fist. “I won’t have it.”

Her first instinct was to flee. Not this time, she told herself. She straightened her shoulders, summoning her determination and rallying her courage. “I’m afraid you have no choice.”

He tossed the letter toward a bin beside the desk. It swirled around the rim, then went in. “If I have to use my dying breath to do it, I’ll prove to you that you’re not cut out for life at sea, Isadora Peabody.” He went to the door and held it open with mock gallantry. “Take that thought to bed with you tonight.”

Isadora took no pride in her methods of persuasion, and Captain Calhoun’s reaction wasn’t all she had wished for, but indeed she had won.

Standing in the parlor as she awaited her visitors, she closed her eyes and pictured the ship that would soon be her home for the next six months. Tall masts, sails as light and billowy as the very clouds, a sleek hull cutting a foamy white wake…it was a cosmos unto itself, a world of its own.

The Silver Swan. The very name evoked images of exotic wonder. She imagined herself swept into a strange and fabulous world, leaving behind this place where she had never fit in.

“You certainly look pleased with yourself, Isadora,” her mother said, gliding into the summer parlor. “Dare I hope you’re actually looking forward to having company?”

Isadora opened her eyes, the images in her mind vanishing like dust before a chill wind. “I suppose I am, Mother.”

Sophia Cabot Peabody flickered her fan before her face. “That’s a welcome change. Perhaps I can also count on you to attend Mrs. Fuller’s reading party.”

“No, Mother. After my dissertation at the last gathering, I doubt I’ll be welcome there again.”

As a social activity, reading parties were all the rage. The erudite of Louisberg Square and Beacon Hill gathered to exchange ideas, cultivate friendships and sometimes even romance.

“Do you wonder?” Sophia asked, her voice tinged with equal measures of affection and exasperation. “You cannot truly think that Dr. Channing actually meant for you to argue with his theory about the nature of human emotion.”

“How could I not? How absurd to claim women are so helplessly governed by their hearts that their heads empty right into them. His lectures are supposed to spark discussion.”

“But you’re not supposed to prove him wrong.”

“If he is, why not prove it?” Isadora countered. “The inventor of a theory should be able to defend it. Dr. Channing was simply put out because he could not answer my challenges.”

“Put out is stating it mildly.” Sophia straightened a fold of Isadora’s black dress. “I suppose the fault is mine for letting you live all those years in Salem. Your great aunt failed to instill in you the most fundamental lessons. Yes, a woman might be much smarter than a man. But if she dares to show it, she becomes a pariah.”

Isadora squeezed her mother’s hand. “Then I am destined to be a pariah. I have no judgment for this sort of thing. How was I to know he wasn’t looking for a challenge?”

Sophia smiled wryly. “No man is, my dear. No man.” Her smile widened as she looked past Isadora. “Not even your father,” she murmured, crossing the room to her husband.

Isadora watched her parents fondly, yet aware of the distance that had always lain between them. She could see the mutual respect they had for one another, could feel the affection they shared, yet she had no clue about the nature of their love. Was there passion? She couldn’t tell. To the outside observer, they were two excessively handsome people, gifted in commerce and conversation, certain of their place in the world. But passion? Did they know of such a thing? Did they care?

Thankful tapped discreetly on the parlor door. “Your guests have arrived.”

Isadora’s mouth went dry. This was it, then. The moment she had been waiting for and dreading. She needed her parents’ blessing on this venture.

“How delightful,” Sophia said, completely ignorant of the true purpose of the meeting. She had assumed it to be merely a social call. “Do show them in.”

Like a dazzle of sunshine, Lily Raines Calhoun flowed into the room. “Mr. and Mrs. Peabody. Miss Peabody. How kind of you to receive us on such short notice.”

Ryan entered behind her, looking even more appealing than he had the day before. He wore a well-tailored suit of clothes, though his waistcoat and cravat startled the eye. The cravat was a blinding royal blue, the waistcoat busy with a print of yellow banana fruit and exotic flowers.

He moved with a rolling gait, the unmistakable aspect of a man of the sea. From the corner of her eye, Isadora could see her father studying Ryan Calhoun, assessing him.

“Here is my son, Ryan,” Lily said, her graceful hand drawing him forward. He bent first over Sophia’s fingers, then Isadora’s. She thanked heaven for the black moleskin fingerless mitts she wore, for there was something searingly intimate about the gesture, and at least the fabric protected her from direct contact with his lips.

When Captain Calhoun looked up at her, his face was full of cruel-edged mockery. Isadora forced herself to hold her gaze steady. He was not going to make this easy for her. Very well. She would endure him.

She felt a familiar tickle at the back of her nose. Taking out a handkerchief with the lightning speed of a cavalier drawing a rapier, she stopped the sneeze in time.

Lily smiled at her. “Bless you, my dear.”

She said “Mah dee-ah” in the nicest way. As if she actually meant it. Isadora sensed she’d find an ally in Lily Calhoun.

Once they were all settled on the burgundy-striped chaise, the settee and the wing chairs before the hearth, Thankful served strong coffee laced with cream, and tea cakes heavy with honey and hazelnuts.

“And what is the name of your place in Virginia again?” Sophia asked sweetly.

Isadora held herself very still and secretly bit her tongue. Her mother knew more about the Calhoun family than Lily herself, no doubt. A number of not-so-discreet inquiries had informed her about the lavish plantation on Mockjack Bay, Virginia. Once it was established that the Calhoun family possessed only slightly less social status than the Lord Above, Sophia decided they were the right sort of people.

“Our place is called Albion. When my husband died, his elder son Hunter inherited it. Hunter is my stepson, and Ryan’s half brother.”

Isadora watched Ryan’s face carefully. A half brother. Did the two get along? Probably not, she decided, recalling Lily’s anecdote about Ryan disgracing himself by choosing Harvard over Virginia tradition.

He winked at her. Winked.

Heavens be, what was he up to now?

She pursed her lips and stared straight ahead, fighting a blush. Her mother and sisters were famous wits in conversation, but Isadora had never acquired the knack. She had no idea what to say to a man who winked at her. When she spoke her mind, she was considered offensive. When she echoed someone else’s opinion, she was denounced as boring. So whenever possible, she held her tongue and let her mind wander.

She knew she shouldn’t succumb to fantasy, but the murmurs of conversation lulled her, and before she knew it, she was a Southern belle at a place called Albion, where the sun always shone and the workers sang glad praises to the sky and the air was filled with birdsong and the scent of magnolias. Dressed in tulle flounces from a Paris couturier, she waited on the verandah while her favorite suitor galloped up on a white horse.

“Hello, Chad,” she would greet him demurely…except the man on the horse wasn’t Chad. He had flame-colored hair, a crooked grin, a provocative wink and…heavens be. What was Ryan Calhoun doing in the middle of her fantasy?

“…wouldn’t you say so, Isadora?” her mother was asking.

Jolted out of her reverie, Isadora nodded vigorously, having no idea what she was agreeing to. “Indeed I would, Mother.”

Ryan scowled at her.

“That is,” she hastened to add, “except that I also wouldn’t.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. What a hen-wit he must think her. She said, “And what do you think, Mr. Calhoun?”

“I think that sea voyages are dangerously unhealthy, particularly for a lady of delicate constitution,” he said. “If I may be permitted to agree with my hostess,” he added gallantly, inclining his head toward Sophia.

Isadora sent him a dagger glare. Didn’t he remember what Mr. Easterbrook’s letter said? Either he took Isadora along, or his position would be downgraded from skipper to second mate.

“I have been touring the Continent for years,” Lily said. “I’ve sailed from Gibraltar to Athens and suffered absolutely no ill health at all other than the usual mal de mer. Mr. and Mrs. Peabody, I was so hoping you would permit Isadora to go.”

Grateful for the support, Isadora perched on the edge of her seat. “You have always said that travel enhances a person’s character, Papa,” she reminded her father.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen my dear sister,” Lily said.

“Rose is the widow of a Brazilian planter. She lives in a magnificent villa high in the forested hills overlooking Guanabara Bay. I’ve promised her for years that I’d visit.” She lifted her cup to her lips and took and unhurried sip. “Isadora would be such an asset to the voyage. Ryan needs her expertise as a translator, but if she spoke not a word other than English, I would beg to have her along as my guest and my companion.”

“Did I say I needed her?” Ryan asked with a laconic half grin. “I don’t recall that.”

“Mother, I simply must go,” Isadora said in a rush, deciding not to dignify his insolent remark with a reply. “I know how deeply I would grieve were I deprived of my own dear sisters’ company.” She managed to say this with a sincere expression.

“Mr. Peabody,” Sophia said, addressing her husband formally, “what say you?” She framed it as a question, though Isadora knew she had already made up her mind.

“Well, most certainly I approve,” Papa assured her. “You know how I feel about broadening our daughters’ experiences.”

“Does Miss Isadora need broadening?” Ryan Calhoun asked, the very picture of innocence. He stared at her, daring her to crumple before his insults. “Where?”

“Perhaps I need to learn to pity those with feeble minds,” she snapped, surprised to feel anger rather than humiliation, and further surprised that the anger felt…rather good.

“Sailing a ship is an unusual vocation for a Harvard man,” Mr. Peabody observed, ignoring the heated exchange. “Particularly for such a young man. Don’t most sailors spend years working their way up to skipper?”

“Indeed they do, sir. I was fortunate to win my first command early.” He savored a sip of his coffee. “I grew up on Mockjack Bay, with a view straight out to the Atlantic. I’d sit for hours on the end of our dock, watching the ships come and go, stowing away on the short runs to neighboring farms.”

“I couldn’t get him to do a blessed thing,” Lily said with fond exasperation. “He and Journey even built a lookout in the top of a tree by the water. After I discovered he’d been stowing away on the local barges, I decided to let him follow his heart. He learned seamanship from Captain Hastings himself of the frigate Carlota.”

“When I discovered Mr. Easterbrook was looking for a skipper, I decided it was Providence itself drawing me back to the sea,” Ryan said. “None of my schooling could take that desire from me.”

Isadora felt her anger melting into something else as she studied him. He looked so romantic in his colorful, finely cut clothes that fit his trim form so well. He had one arm draped over the back of a chair, a thick lock of hair adorning his brow. He might have been a poet, though he lacked the pallor and thinness of a man of letters. No, Ryan Calhoun was too vigorous and too vibrant to toil in private with paper and pen.

A sea captain. Isadora realized that she was looking at a man who had become what he was born to be.

What a gift that was. Few people ever achieved that.

She refused even to contemplate what she was born to be. Maiden daughter, keeping her elderly parents company. When her beautiful nieces and nephews were old enough, she might serve as their tutor or chaperon.

The very thought made her shudder.

She lifted her chin. She was going on a sea voyage. Like it or not, Ryan Calhoun was going to save her from a fate of obscure mediocrity.

But as he looked across the room at her, there was nothing but mocking laughter in his eyes as he said, “And as for your schooling, Miss Peabody, I pray you are prepared for its hard lessons.”

Part Two
The Bird of Passage

“You don’t understand me,” said the duckling. “I think I’d better go out into the wide world.”

“Do you think this is the whole world?” the mother duck asked. “Why, it extends on and on, clear across to the other side of the garden and right on into the parson’s field, though that is farther than I have ever been.”

“Say there, comrade,” the wild geese said to the duckling, “you’re so ugly that we have taken a fancy to you. Come with us and be a bird of passage.”

—Hans Christian Andersen,

The Ugly Duckling (1843)

Six

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.

—Herman James Elroy Flecker,

The Old Ships

Everything was in order, from the perfectly packed traveling box—specially designed to fit the carriages of Brazil—to the dove gray bonnet Thankful had tied with a precise bow beneath Isadora’s chin. The bootblacked surface of her traveling trunk shone in the morning sun. She had a detachable pocket inside her black silk pongee skirts filled with paper money as well as gold and silver coins in the common currency of the high seas, pounds sterling.

Porters, stevedores, deckhands and passengers crowded the waterfront area, for at least nine ships would clear Boston harbor this day. Passersby paused to study the Peabody clan, and their expressions formed uncensored maps of their thoughts. They took in the silver dignity of the parents, the golden beauty of the brothers and sisters, then dismissed Isadora as a poor relation.

She hardened herself against the stares. Soon she would be gone from here, gone to a place she could only imagine, a place she and Aunt Button had found in their cozy nights by the fire in Salem. Her only regret was that Chad had not come to say goodbye.

Finally she saw it—the Silver Swan. The stately bark still held open its cargo hatches, taking on freight with rampant speed. The sight of the ship and the knowledge that the wind was in the right quarter for departure, filled her with excitement.

She nearly burst with anticipation. There was no chance of that, however. Thankful had been merciless in lacing her corset. The busk pressed like a restraining hand against her breastbone. Isadora wondered how, on shipboard, she would dress herself in stays each day, but she didn’t dare voice her fears aloud. She didn’t want to do or say anything to give her family second thoughts about letting her go.

Perhaps she would simply sleep in her stays.

A boatswain’s whistle pierced the air. “I should go aboard,” she said.

“Indeed.” Clearing his throat, her father turned to the porter who brought her things along in a large, creaky barrow. “You have everything you need—plenty of books—be certain you read the Emerson and send me your thoughts on it.”

“Of course, Papa. On the ship’s manifest I am listed—to my shame—as an idler. So I expect I’ll have plenty of time for reading.”

“Being an idler simply means you don’t take a turn standing watch,” Bronson said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “For that you can be grateful. The schedule sounds quite grueling for a common sailor.”

“There is nothing common about our Izzie,” Quentin declared.

“Behave yourself at Harvard, Quentin,” she said.

“What, and ruin my reputation?”

“Oh, Izzie.” Arabella hugged her. “And to think, when you return, I shall be a married lady!”

“I’ll bring you a special wedding gift. Something terribly exotic, I should think. A live parrot? A mango tree?”

Lucinda held the baby while her two toddlers clung to her skirts. “Dora, what an adventure. I never thought, of all of us, you would be the one to go sailing off to distant shores.”

Finally Isadora found herself facing her mother, and a world of memories and emotions swirled through her. Her mother loved her, of that she had no doubt, yet she was haunted by the pervasive feeling that she was a disappointment to this proud, handsome woman. That nothing she could do would ever please her entirely.

Except maybe disappear.

“I’ll write, Mother,” she promised dutifully.

“So shall I. And I want you to tell me everything that happens to you. Everything.” To Isadora’s astonishment, Sophia violated the dignity of the moment by bursting—oh so briefly—into sobs.

Her father snapped to attention as though someone had shoved a sword into his back. Within seconds, all three men were thrusting handkerchiefs at Sophia. Within a few more seconds, she had dried her face and was fussing with the ribbons of Isadora’s bonnet. “I wish you’d agreed to take Thankful along,” she said, not even acknowledging her outburst. “Remember to wear your hooded burnouse and stay out of the sun and the wind. They are so deleterious to one’s health and countenance.”

“Yes, Mother. Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye, everyone.” In spite of her eagerness to go, Isadora held a thick grief in her throat as she dispensed hugs to all and accepted sloppy, adoring kisses from her small niece and nephew. Then she turned away.

The stevedores paraded up and down gangways with barrels and crates in tow. Journey and some of the crewmen were present, shouting orders. She guessed that the man with the thin, mournful face and the whistle was Ralph Izard, the chief mate, and she recognized Timothy Datty, the boy who had tried so hard to stop her from humiliating herself.

He would soon learn the futility of that.

She turned to look at her family one last time, using a finger to inch her spectacles down so she could see over the blasted things. Gilded by a dazzle of morning light, the Peabody clan stood on the wharf as if posing for a portrait. Lucinda held the baby in her arms while the two elder children waved sweetly. Arabella and Sophia linked arms while the men formed a tall backdrop for the lace-clad ladies and children. Dear heaven, if there were a painter alive who could capture such magnificent beauty, he had not yet done so. And he should, really. It was truly the most perfect family ever.

Especially now, Isadora thought wryly.

She lifted her hand in a final farewell. And then she turned away, keeping her chin high and her gaze to the sky as she boarded the Silver Swan.

She knew better than to expect any sort of civilized welcome here. This was a working vessel, its entire purpose to make money. The decks swarmed with running sailors and porters, customs officers and agents and others she did not recognize. What a marvel it all was to her, the hogsheads and bundles that entered the belly of the ship in an endless parade, the eager agility of the sailors scrambling up through the rigging, readying her for the voyage.

The very idea of all these goods being sent to distant places captivated her. When something went abroad, did the experience change it in some fundamental way? Would that bolt of Framingham broadcloth somehow be transformed into something vibrant, something its creator had never imagined? Would the giant blocks of Vermont mountain ice, wrapped in a thick insulation of straw and burlap, be used to cool foodstuffs no Vermonter had ever dreamed of tasting?

She heard a clucking sound. A swaying stack of crates came lurching toward her. She could only see the cutoff duck trousers and bare feet of its bearer. When the column leaned precariously, she quickly stepped forward and pressed her hand against the top crate. “Careful, there,” she said.

“Thank you.” A head peeked out from behind the crates, showing a friendly, gap-toothed grin and a wizened African face. “Wouldn’t want to spill our dinner before we even set sail.” He had a vaguely melodic accent, light inflections lifting his words.

She peered over the top of her spectacles. “The chickens, you mean,” she said awkwardly.

“Some are layers, some will be for the stew pot.”

Keeping a hand on the crates, Isadora moved along the deck with the little African man. “You must be the cook, then.”

“Aye. Samuel Liotta from Jamaica, but they call me the Doctor, and so shall you. You must be the lady idler.”

“I will be serving as Captain Calhoun’s interpreter and clerk. My name is Isadora Dudley Peabody.”

“Welcome aboard, Missy,” the cook said brightly.

She helped him set down the crates. Peering into the pen, she discovered a small goat and a piglet.

“Alfredo and the pig, I calls them. One for milk, one for meat.” He dusted his hands on a canvas apron. “Come, then. Time to meet more members of the crew.”

The cook had, for whatever reason, decided to take her under his wing. With considerably better manners than she expected from a seaman, he introduced her to her shipmates.

Ralph Izard served as chief mate, which put him in charge of just about everything. As he rushed past, he had no time to talk, but he smiled cordially enough. She noted a certain sad resignation in his eyes.

William Click, the second mate, spoke with a Cockney accent and wore a short-handled quirt in a hip holster at his side. Chips, the carpenter, was tall and skinny; Luigi Conti, the Italian sail maker, was tiny, with merry eyes and a huge black mustache. Gerald Craven, the jibboom man with tattoed arms and a gold hoop earring, gave her a curt greeting, then hastened off to help Timothy haul down a tangle in the rigging.

Isadora brought her carpetbag to her assigned quarters. Here, she would spend her last night in Boston, and in the morning they would sail with the tide.

According to the Doctor, the Silver Swan was an unusual vessel. Sloop-rigged in order to carry less sail and thus a smaller crew, she had been built for a sea captain who insisted on traveling with his wife and four children. That accounted for the grandeur of the captain’s stateroom and for the snugness of the two side staterooms, which had once housed the children. Lily Calhoun and her maid would occupy one of the rooms, Isadora the other.

She found a single bunk, too short to accommodate her height, a single portal to let in the daylight and a single washstand with a lavatory and chamber pot. The cabin had the austere air of a monk’s cell, and she found that she rather liked the feel of it.

Lily and Fayette greeted her cheerily when they arrived. She accompanied them to their cabin, which was larger, with two boxlike bunks and a sitting area below the portal.

“Are you terribly excited?” Lily asked, helping her maid with a stubborn latch on a case.

“I hardly slept a wink all night.”

“It’s a little frightening, isn’t it?” Lily asked.

“It’s a lot frightening,” Fayette said, casting a suspicious glance at the door. “Only time I ever went somewhere with Mr. Ryan in charge was a day of fishing. We ended up in the middle of Mockjack Bay in a skiff, and he didn’t have no idea how to get back. No idea at all.”

Lily caught Isadora’s eye. “I believe Ryan was nine years old at the time.”

“He and that Journey. Always trouble.” Fayette shook her head mournfully and began filling a drawer under the bunk.

Lily smiled wistfully. “He was always a willful boy.”

“You spoiled him, and no mistake,” Fayette muttered.

“I suppose I did. His father paid him so little attention. I was Jared’s second wife,” she explained to Isadora. “With his first, he had Hunter, and Ryan seemed almost an afterthought. Jared wore me as an ornament on his arm, but he hadn’t the first idea what to do with a boy like Ryan.” She bit her lip. “Oh, dear. I mustn’t speak ill of the dead.”

Fayette chuckled. “Sweetie, that ain’t nothing we ain’t all thought of.” She glanced up at Isadora. “Beware the man who values you for your pretty face.”

“It’s not a worry that plagues me,” Isadora said wryly, pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. “And surely love grew with familiarity.”

“You are so very young, my dear,” said Lily. “As young as I was when I was raising Ryan. He grew up wild and free, and I fear I indulged his every whim, trying to make up for his father. Ryan was attractive, impulsive and charismatic, and he knew how to get what he wanted—from everyone but his father.”

“There’s always been a hole in that boy’s life,” Fayette said. “But it ain’t your place to patch it up. Let him find his own way, Miz Lily.”

Isadora felt a prickle of discomfort. People in her family never spoke of such intimate matters, particularly not with the servants.

“I think I shall go out on deck,” she said. “I don’t want to miss a thing.” She left the cabin and returned to deck, finding a spot beside an aft companion ladder where she seemed to be out of the way.

Captain Calhoun was in his stateroom with a shipping agent. She could hear them speaking, but couldn’t make out their words. She contented herself with watching the work go on, exchanging a word or two with the crewmen as they passed. She couldn’t believe how swiftly the hours had gone by as she made the acquaintance of the men who would be her only company for months on end.

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