The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

it is full of light and beauty and laughter.” She leaned her head back a little, enjoying the tender massage of his hand on her neck.

      “And Isadora has never been invited to this mythical place.”

      “Of course not.” They came to a stone rampart overlooking Guanabara. The distant winking lights draped the bay like a necklace of luminous diamonds.

      “Why not?” her cavalier asked, lowering his hand to the small of her back.

      “Because she doesn’t belong there.”

      “In whose opinion?”

      “Not in anyone’s opinion.” She stared out at the stars mirrored in the water. “It’s a fact, the way the world is, and it cannot be changed.” Being behind the half mask gave her the courage of anonymity, false though it was. “She is awkward and socially gauche. Why would anyone in the charmed circle find me—er, find Isadora—pretty or amusing?”

      She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath and dared to look up into his eyes. Framed by the mask and gleaming with reflected light from the harbor, his regard appeared fierce. His fist gripped her upper arm, startling her.

      “Because you are.”

      The conviction in his voice caught her, but she made herself laugh a gypsy’s laugh. “You are too gallant for your own good, my cavalier. Isadora knows exactly who and what she is. After her adventures at sea, all her respectability will be gone. She has chapped skin and chopped-off hair. Her clothes don’t fit properly anymore. She seems to be slowly sinking into a shocking state of nature.”

      He laughed, too, though the anger still churned in his eyes. Very deliberately, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. His touch felt different—invasive, intimate, slightly dangerous. “Isadora is in big trouble, then.”

      In defiance of the balmy tropical night, a shiver touched the base of her spine. “Why do you say that?”

      “Because she has a lot to learn.” He took a step toward her, gripping her tighter.

      She brought her hands up between them and fluttered her fan, beginning to feel amazingly natural in the role of coquette. “And who is going to teach her?”

      “A famous cavalier.” Before Isadora knew what was happening, he caught her in his embrace. “First, the dancing!”

      “I don’t dance,” she blurted.

      “But I do.” With a whoop of sheer delight, he swept her around the open rampart in time with the sensual, percussive samba music that drifted from the patio. He wrapped his arm around her waist, hugging her so that she could feel his hips against hers. He led her in a circle, holding her so snugly that she had no choice but to follow the sweeping motion. These were dance steps that would horrify Beacon Hill society. Steps that should have made Isadora stumble clumsily, yet they didn’t. She danced with abandon, a cavalier’s lady who was fascinating and graceful and at ease—everything Isadora Dudley Peabody was not.

      The melody ended and her brash cavalier brought her to sit upon the stone rampart overlooking Guanabara Bay.

      “It’s like a dream,” she said, gazing out across the silver-studded black velvet view.

      “Yes, it is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not at the view.

      For some reason that struck her as amusing and she laughed lightly, merrily, as if laughter were something she often did.

      And in fact she did, when she was with Ryan.

      No, not Ryan. She must not let herself think of him by name.

      “Isadora,” he began, clearly unaware of her game.

      She shushed him immediately, still laughing, boldly pressing her fingers to his lips. She nearly stopped laughing when she touched his lips, for they felt firm and slightly moist and feeling them created a strange flood of disturbing warmth inside her.

      “Isadora is not here.”

      He captured her hand, took it away from his mouth. “She’s not?”

      “No. And you must not use her name.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because…” How could she explain it? “Because that would make the night real.”

      “And you don’t want it to be real?”

      She thought of the things in her life that were real—her family, the people she associated with in Boston, people who barely acknowledged her existence. “No,” she said earnestly. “Not tonight. At the end of this voyage, I shall soon enough face what is real.”

      “You mean Isadora will face it,” he corrected her.

      “Yes.”

      “And what is real to Isadora?”

      She paused, thinking. “The idea that she will serve her parents in their old age. And the rather pleasant prospect of helping to raise her nieces and nephews because her sisters are such good breeders. She will read great books and she’ll be a faithful letter writer, though she will write many more letters than she will ever receive. But that’s all right, for the reading and writing will fill her days. She has accepted the idea that she will never know passion, for no one feels passionate about Isadora—”

      “What?”

      “Passion. She’ll never know it.” She smiled, pleased that he had caught on. She had expected cynical teasing from him, but he kept surprising her. “So that is why you must keep reality at bay. You must let the night be magical.”

      He chuckled and squeezed his hand. “Sugar, don’t you know?”

      “Know what?”

      “Every night is magical.”

      She laughed softly, loving the easy feel of it, loving the breeze through her hair and the way his loose shirt blew against his chest, outlining its shape. The sweetness of the moment washed through her, loosening her, warming her.

      “You are never serious,” she said.

      “It’s not permitted for a cavalier to be serious.”

      “What about Captain Calhoun?” she ventured. “Is he ever serious?”

      “Only when it comes to serious matters.”

      “What sort of serious matters?”

      “Matters of the heart,” he said, lifting her hand and pressing it to his chest. “Matters of passion.” With an earnestness she’d never seen in him before, he said, “Suppose I told you I want a certain young lady of Boston.”

      She took her hand away from his heart. He meant her? No, impossible. She forced her mind to consider the more reasonable possibilities. Lydia Haven, the beauty of Beacon Hill. Her sister Arabella, who was still desired even though she was engaged. A society belle, perhaps, or one of the women from the docks.

      “Then why have you not courted her?” she inquired, trying to keep her humor up.

      “She seemed too chilly and self-contained and far too intelligent to take a fellow like me seriously. And of course, she yearns for someone else altogether.”

      She narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps your Boston lady’s coldness is a shield against getting hurt.”

      “Then I wish like hell she’d lower her defenses, for I would never hurt her.”

      “You wouldn’t?” Her question came out as a whisper because suddenly she knew. It was insane, but his Boston lady was…

      “Never.”

      “Then I wonder…what she is afraid of.”

      He moved closer to her on the stone rampart. “Take off the mask,” he said.

      “I’d rather