The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

from the hollow it left in the fecund ground.

      As she crouched in the shelter of a bush, her heart pounded painfully in her chest. Sweat trickled down her throat into the neckline of her dress. She wished she had listened to Angelica and gone native for today’s outing. But native garb always reminded her too poignantly of her excursion to the market with Ryan, whom she was trying her best to forget.

      The footsteps came closer. She thought of the warnings Angelica had given her when she’d started her forays into the wild. Native tribes lived in the forest; some of them were warlike or merely aggressively inquisitive. Rose had also warned her about the quilombos, bands of fugitive slaves that attacked first and asked questions later.

      A shadow slipped over her—huge, forbidding, sinister. She acted without thinking. Using all her the strength, she brought the club crashing down.

      Eighteen

      And there is even a happiness

      That makes the heart afraid.

      —Thomas Hood

      (1827)

      Shaking from fear and exertion, Isadora looked at the stick in her hand, then down at the body on the ground. “Ye powers,” she said, dropping to her knees. “Ryan.”

      He moaned, rubbing the back of his head. “I came here thinking you might be in danger,” he said. “But it appears you’re quite capable of defending yourself.”

      She dropped the stick, frowning. “Did I hurt you?”

      “Am I bleeding?”

      Gingerly she moved his hair aside. “I don’t see any blood.”

      Bracing his hands behind him, he sat up, adjusting a canvas knapsack on his shoulders. “You got me at the thickest part of my skull,” he said. “I suppose there’s no harm done.”

      “I’m ever so sorry.” But as she watched him lever himself to his feet and shake his head as if to clear it, her regret was tinged with wonder. Clubbing a man she believed to be an assailant was such an un-Isadoralike thing to do.

      “I like knowing you can defend yourself. But next time, do me a favor and practice on a tree or something.”

      She suppressed a smile, feeling equal parts silly and sheepish. “Why would you think I’m in danger?”

      A shadow passed over his eyes. They lost their usual sparkle and clarity, and as she often did, she sensed a depth in him he was reluctant to show. “You could get lost in here.”

      “I’ve kept to the path.”

      He took her hand. “So you have. As long as I’ve come this far, I might as well find this fabled spring or lagoon or whatever it is.”

      She felt a subtle thrill at the prospect of taking him on the trek with her. “Perhaps it’s the fountain of youth.”

      “Just what I need. To be a boy again.”

      “You still are,” she murmured, feeling an unexpected tenderness for him. They started up the path. She glanced at him sideways, liking the feel of her hand in his. “What was it like? Your boyhood?”

      “Like any Virginia boyhood, I imagine. A big house, a distant father and an army of tutors.”

      “And a staff of slaves,” she interjected. “Did it always strike you as unjust?” she couldn’t resist asking. “When you were younger?”

      “No. My father was a cold man, but not a harsh master. He never hired an overseer who was harsh, either. So I didn’t see the ugliest face of slavery when I was coming up. I never saw the flogging and torture. The starvation. The rape.”

      She winced.

      “The very young don’t often grasp subtle cruelties, and I suppose I was no different.” He took a deep breath, studied a liana hanging over the path, then held it aside for her to pass under. “I guess the first time I understood what slavery really meant was when Journey married Delilah. After the ceremony, they were given an hour of privacy. Then they took Delilah away—she belongs to a neighbor—and I watched them say goodbye. I watched Journey, who was well over six feet tall even then, break down and cry. There’s no way I could watch that and not feel the evil in my heart. So that was when I made up my mind.”

      She felt a thickness in her throat. “To set Journey free.”

      “Yes.” He walked on, still holding her hand. “How much farther is it, anyway?”

      “I’m not certain.” Her nerves buzzed with apprehension. Since the morning after the masque, they had not seen each other. Perhaps he’d forgotten the kiss. She prayed that he had, for it was embarrassing to think of it now, in the harsh light of day. He probably kissed women all the time. She had seen him do so, the very first night she’d met him.

      The trees towered like sentinels, their leathery leaves and buttressed trunks giving them the strange look of watchful giants. Slender vines, strong as rope, draped like cables from the abundant foliage. Tiger butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom. Long mosses festooned the branches like the beards of old men. Here and there, secreted in the crook of a tree, dangled another orchid or bromeliad, their aerial roots bristling from blossoms of amazing beauty.

      As they neared the top of the climb, a flight of macaws passed over. The colorful birds swooped so close that Isadora could feel the whir of their wings. Toucans and parrots squabbled in the high branches.

      But far more splendid than anything she’d seen so far was the waterfall. From a towering bluff of dark wet rock, the cataract hurled itself down into a deep, clear pool. Issuing forth a sound like thunder, the stream crashed with a violence that made her shiver. Yet where the falls plunged into the lagoon, the spray threw up rainbow arcs of light. The pervasive mist formed a layer of glitter, light as air, through the surrounding rocks and trees.

      Isadora caught her breath, feeling delirious with pleasure as she inhaled the tingle of the mist in her nostrils.

      “Well?” Ryan asked. “What do you think?”

      “It’s beautiful beyond words,” she said. “I wish I could capture it in a letter or sketch to show people, but it’s too big, too powerful for that.”

      “No letters then?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

      “No letters, nor even a journal entry. I’ve been quite the delinquent lately.” She held her breath, waiting for him to say something cutting about her reports to Abel.

      “Let’s go down near the water.” He took her hand again. “Careful, it’s slippery.”

      He found a spot on an outcropping of rock where the sun had penetrated the leafy canopy. Shrugging off his knapsack, he motioned for her to sit.

      Isadora felt awkward as she spread her skirts and sank down. What a lot of trouble skirts and petticoats were for a woman who dared to do more than sit in a parlor or garden arbor.

      “I brought lunch,” he said.

      She stared. “You planned this.”

      “Not exactly. In fact, I have a hundred other things I should be doing. But my dear aunt and mother had other plans for me.”

      Thank you, Rose and Lily.

      They dined on sausage rolls and melon and they scooped water from the lagoon into their cupped hands. “It is sweet,” Isadora exclaimed as droplets cascaded down the front of her. She didn’t care about getting wet, not when the water was more pure than the air itself.

      When they finished eating, Ryan took out a small greenish tube of tobacco that reminded her of a cheroot, or perhaps one of her father’s cigars. “Now this,” he said, “was not sent by my mother.”

      Striking a match on a rock, he lit it and smoked for a while, then held it out to her. “You smoke it like a cigar.”

      “I