The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

costume. You really have no choice.”

      “Where are your scissors?” Lily asked. “I need to trim this ribbon.” She looked around the room. “Fayette is so much better at dressmaking than I. Where is the girl? She’s been mooning about and wandering off for days.”

      “Then you and I will make do,” Rose said happily.

      Isadora bit her lip. She had to force her gaze to stay level when she wanted to keep looking down to see that yes, it really was her in this full, tiered skirt of a color so brilliant she felt like one of the parrots in the jungle beyond the villa. Ankles bare and her feet strapped into sandals. A loose, scoop-necked blouse that showed a shocking inch of cleavage. Hair in a wild tumble, no combs or irons holding it in place.

      “I’ll be a laughingstock,” she whispered.

      Lily stepped in front of her, putting her hands on Isadora’s shoulders. “Honey, they’ll laugh only if you let them.”

      “I don’t know what you mean.”

      “It’s all to do with the way you carry yourself, the way you face the world.” She reached around Isadora and tied on a black silk half mask. “Everything’s an illusion. You’re a gypsy woman, not Isadora Peabody. You’re mysterious and alluring. Try swaying your hips, like so….”

      “Sway my hips?” Isadora squawked.

      And yet, with Rose on one side and Lily on the other, she followed their lead, feeling silly, then feeling nothing like Isadora. They were right, she conceded. Illusion was easy. Far easier than being herself.

      “I must have been a gaucho in another life,” Ryan declared, looking down in admiration at his flamboyant costume. “The women will love it.”

      Journey eyed the vermilion sash and the tight black knee breeches with the silver studs down the side seams. “Impressive. Especially when you add the hat.” He tossed Ryan a flat-brimmed black hat sporting a scarlet plume. Ryan donned his half mask of black silk. “No one will ever recognize me now.”

      “Yes, there must be dozens of red-haired gauchos with a fondness for garish dress.”

      “Am I really garish?” Ryan asked, smoothing the eye-smarting sash.

      “You are.”

      “Offensively so?”

      Journey cracked a rare smile. “No, honey. I reckon you like the attention.”

      Ryan took a length of black silk and wound it around his head, pirate style, tucking away his bright coppery hair, then replacing the mask and hat. “And what will your costume be?”

      Journey hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll be going as a phantom. I’ll be practically invisible.”

      Ryan’s heart lurched, though he said nothing. Since the moment Journey had been ripped from his wife’s arms, a vital part of him had been missing. Even while laboring over his navigation tables or caught up in the teeth of a storm at sea, he wasn’t all there. Some part of him—the part that was laughter and ease and warmth—lay elsewhere. In Virginia. Toiling in the overheated kitchens of a white man’s plantation.

      As always, the thought made Ryan furious. “Soon, my friend,” he vowed.

      “What’s that?”

      “Soon. We’ll get to Virginia soon.”

      Journey nodded. His face remained impassive, though his shoulders tensed. “Looks like we’ll be ready to weigh anchor in a week. Ferraro must’ve liked you—he sold you an extra ton of coffee beans at a good price.”

      “It was Isadora he liked. We’re going to set another record with this trip. Richest voyage on the Rio run.”

      Journey let out a long, cautious breath. “Price of a slave in Virginia hit an all-time high, according to the papers that Maine skipper brought from Savannah.”

      The words sounded strained and forced, and why not? Ryan wondered. He nearly choked on them himself. “I expect I’ll negotiate a price we can live with.”

      Journey looked dubious. “And if you can’t?”

      “There’s enough specie in the Swan’s safe hold to buy a whole army.” Ryan felt tainted saying it. He was not a good man. He never had been, though he’d never stolen from another, never even considered it. But for the sake of getting Journey’s wife and children to freedom, he would cross that line if need be.

      “It’s mighty risky, Ryan.” Journey gave him another rare smile. “But when have we ever turned away from a risk?”

      The coiled tension inside Ryan unwound a little. “Certainly not tonight. Come on, my friend. Let’s go dancing.”

      Sixteen

      To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

      —Amos Bronson Alcott,

      “Table Talk”

      As Ryan stepped onto the patio, he heard a chorus of female screams. Perhaps Journey had been right, he reflected. Perhaps the color combinations of his costume were a bit too…vivid.

      The music stopped and the crowd fell back. Instantly Ryan understood that the commotion was not for him. A masked horseman rode into their midst upon a skittish Andalusian mount. Laughing dangerously, he bore down on a woman dressed in silver-and-gold skirts. She screeched and ran from him—but not too quickly.

      Lily rushed over to Ryan and clutched at his arm. “That’s Fayette.”

      “I know, Mama.”

      “I think you should do something.”

      “Why? That’s Edison Carneros.”

      “Who? Oh, that lecherous character from the water-front.”

      “He’s a good man, Mama.” Ryan smiled down at her. She wore the tall comb-and-lace mantilla of a Spanish noblewoman and, as always, looked quite beautiful.

      “Then why is he riding down my maid as if she’s a fox to be hunted?”

      “It must be love.” Ryan couldn’t suppress a grin. More than once he had observed Fayette and Edison meeting at the waterfront, disappearing into Carneros’s office and then emerging much later with stars in their eyes and their clothing suspiciously mussed.

      Fayette looked at Lily over her shoulder and hesitated. Carneros reached down and grasped her by the arm. She screeched again, though musical laughter underlay her alarm. Someone from the crowd gave her bare foot a boost, and she was heaved across the saddle of Edison’s horse.

      “Dear God, he’s riding off with her!” Lily exclaimed.

      “Looks that way.”

      As the romantic pair galloped out of the courtyard into the starry night, Ryan watched after them. Some of the ladies in the crowd waved lace-edged handkerchiefs, and the band started playing again.

      “It’s a…a carnival prank, isn’t it?” Lily asked. “I mean, Rose tells me these things happen, all in the spirit of fun.”

      “I imagine they’ll have fun, Mama.”

      She fell silent for several moments. The tinny melody of the band took over. Then she turned to him, her eyes unnaturally bright with an understanding he knew she wasn’t ready to voice. “You’re the one who should be having fun. Have I ever told you, son, that you are the most handsome man on earth?”

      He laughed. “I think I’d rather be the wisest. Maybe the richest.”

      “Wisdom and riches. Your father had both. Yet he died miserable.”

      Ryan blinked. This was the first time she had ever spoken so candidly of her marriage. “Why do you say that?”

      “Because even at the end, he