The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

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