The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

opposite direction and Isadora realized he was climbing, too. In three quick hauls, he had hoisted himself into the ratlines and was facing her through the web of rope.

      “Since you insist on making this climb,” he said, “I’ll do it with you so I can save you if you start to fall.”

      “If I start to fall,” she said ruefully, “there’ll be no saving me.” She nearly laughed at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry. I do not plan to fall. And you really don’t have to climb with me.”

      “You’d rather have me stand on deck below you, looking up your skirts with the rest of them?”

      Her hands gripped the line with a vengeance. “I shall not answer that insolent question.” Without further ado, she continued upward, as she had seen the seamen do so often. The climb was harder than it looked, for the loose ropes tended to bow this way and that with the sway of the ship.

      She tried her best to ignore Ryan Calhoun. When they were halfway up the topmast, Isadora made the mistake of looking down.

      “Dear God,” she whispered.

      “It’s a long way down, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly.

      She ignored him. The deck appeared tiny, dotted with doll-size crates and hatches and coils. Due to the slant of the ship, she knew if she climbed any farther, she’d be out over open water.

      The wind whistled through her hair and the sun warmed her face. Lord, but it was hot. Sweat soaked her in places she dared not mention, and a blister had formed on the palm of her right hand.

      This was a terrible, foolish idea. Why had she wanted to climb the rigging today?

      “A bit higher,” Ryan urged her, his voice insolent and teasing. “Up here, where the ratlines are set too close together, we call this the ladies’ ladder. You’d think it was made for you.”

      She hated that he could see her fright. Setting her sights aloft, she continued to climb. The blister on her hand burst and then stung with sweat and grime from the rope. Far below, the sea resembled blue marble, veined in purest white, intimidating as a snake pit as it foamed and seethed around the ship.

      Oh, please, she thought helplessly. Let me survive this and I’ll never try anything adventurous again.

      Her gaze tracked the arrow-straight wake of the Swan, then found the horizon to the south. What she saw gave her such a jolt that she nearly let go of the rigging.

      “Steady there,” Ryan said, climbing up beside her. “You’re finally getting a good view of Brazil.”

      “It’s astonishing,” she said, forgetting to be mad at him. “The mountains are so beautiful—they look as though they’re draped in green velvet.”

      “There’s Corcovado, and the tallest ones are called ‘Dedos de Deus,”’ Ryan said, indicating a row of five sharp peaks nudging the shoreline. The rich emerald green, set against the clear blue sky, created a picture so intense that Isadora’s eyes smarted.

      “The Fingers of God,” she translated.

      “The nearest mountain town is Petropolis. In the summer, every carioca worth his salt moves up there for cooler weather and to get away from the yellow jack.”

      She shuddered. “The yellow fever, you mean.” It was a terrible killer, she’d read, particularly virulent among Yankees who had no resistance to the disease. “It’s hard to imagine such a plague on a land so beautiful.”

      She kept her gaze on the horizon, enthralled with the view, until her hands trembled with the effort of holding herself aloft. “Captain,” she said suddenly. “Look there—to the northeast.”

      He glanced back over his shoulder and studied the sky. The distant clouds had a peculiar bruised quality. A yellowish caste tinged the light coming from that quadrant, and as she held on, Isadora noticed the heaviness of the seas. “There’s a storm coming, isn’t there?” she asked.

      “Uh-huh. A squall.”

      A shriek swirled up from the deck. “What in the name of heaven are you doing?”

      Startled, Isadora lost her hold on the rigging. For a split second she hung weightless, flying free, doomed. Then, with a joint-twisting jolt, she stopped falling. Ryan had reached through the rigging and held her by the wrists, the cords in his neck standing out with the strain.

      “I suggest,” he said between his teeth, “that you grab hold of the ropes. Now.”

      She obeyed mechanically, her hands quicker than her mind. Another blister, this one on her left hand, burst as she took hold of the rigging.

      “Get down from there this instant,” Lily called, her voice strident with fear. “Both of you.”

      “Thank you,” Isadora said, staring with gratitude and incredulity at Ryan. “Truly, you saved my life.”

      “I don’t appreciate having to save lives,” he grumbled, starting to climb down. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

      Something in his voice gave her pause. With an unaccustomed prickle in her throat, she climbed down, groping carefully with each foot and then following it with the opposite hand. Her palms stung, but she didn’t care. The sensation of falling, and then of having Ryan catch her, had been extraordinary. Mere fright didn’t begin to cover it.

      “Did you get hurt?” he asked.

      “No.” She sent him a tremulous smile. “I’ve never scared anyone before. Not in that way, I mean.”

      “Then in what way?”

      She fixed her eyes on each successive rung of the rigging and spoke from a place she had always kept private. “I suppose I was quite frightening to the young men who were sent to dance with me at parties.”

      He gave a derisive snort. “Then those young men were more yellow than greasy dogs.”

      She didn’t want platitudes from him; she didn’t expect sympathy. “They never knew what to say to me, nor I to them, so it was awkward all around. As I said, frightening.” She felt her foot strike the planks of the deck and breathed a sigh of relief.

      “Land sakes, child,” Lily scolded fiercely. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed.”

      “And would have been if you’d shrieked a mite louder, Mama,” Ryan said.

      “I couldn’t help myself. I generally shriek when a disaster is at hand.”

      “No harm done.” Isadora felt suddenly as awkward as she had with the reluctant suitors of Boston. High in the rigging, looking across the vast sea at a land of such mystical beauty, she had felt like a different person. Now, with the solid oak deck swaying beneath her feet, she was herself again—ungainly, tongue-tied Isadora. She’d bared too much of herself up there. Ryan knew things she’d never told another soul.

      Without daring to look at him, she said, “I’m afraid I’ve got some blisters. I’d best tend to them in the galley.”

      She hurried away, but the wind carried Lily’s voice: “I know you weren’t happy with this arrangement, Ryan, but must you try to get rid of her by throwing her overboard?”

      Twelve

      A capital ship for an ocean trip

      Was the Walloping Window Blind—

      No gale that blew dismayed her crew

      Or troubled the captain’s mind.

      The man at the wheel was taught to feel

      Contempt for the wildest blow.

      And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,

      That he’d been in his bunk below.

      —Charles Edward Carryl,

      Davy