The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс
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whirled on him, seeing stars from the sudden movement. But after a few seconds he focused and saw that yes, he really was here, halfway up Beacon Hill at the Belknap intersection, on a mission so incredibly foolish he wondered if he might still be drunk from the night before.
“It’s not my backside that needs saving,” he said.
Journey, who was magnificently tall, looked down his nose at Ryan, who was also tall but not magnificently so.
“Then explain why I had to be the one to run your creditors off this morning.”
“What creditors?” Ryan demanded. “And how the devil did they find me?”
“Our arrival was announced at a party in one of these very strongholds,” Journey declared, gesturing. The solid brick mansions huddled shoulder to shoulder, a united front against the encroachment of riffraff. The staid facades of the houses and clipped greens of Boston Common stood in implacable denial that anything so upsetting as poverty existed in the world.
Ryan had come here often in his Harvard days. He’d attended stuffy essay readings and anemic musicales in this rarefied neighborhood. But when, foolishly, he tried to seek friendship based on something deeper than wealth or athletic prowess, he encountered a deep-rooted snobbery that raked over his senses like the holystone over a ship’s deck.
“This morning’s creditors were Mr. deLauncey of Harvard Trust and his associate, Mr. Keith,” Journey explained. “Apparently their generosity ends when a man leaves Harvard.”
Ryan trudged on. “And on top of everything, my mother decides to come back from Europe.”
“Uh-huh. And you know what else? She’s coming to Rio with us,” Journey said.
Ryan stopped again, reeling. Disbelief pounded harder than his headache. “What?”
“She and her maid, Fayette, signed on as passengers. She wants to go see your aunt in Rio.”
“Excellent. I’ve always dreamed of spending weeks at sea in the company of my mother.” With slow, plodding steps he continued walking. He loved his mother, he always had, but the two of them inhabited different worlds. Lily Raines Calhoun was like a hothouse gardenia—beautiful, delicate and overpowering when she was in full bloom.
She had no inkling of what he planned for this voyage and why it was so important. He hoped like hell she wouldn’t interfere.
“Do you suppose your mother will tell Mr. Easterbrook that you lied about your skipper’s credentials?” Journey ventured.
Ryan glowered at him. “You’re making my headache worse. And the money he made off me should stop any inquiries.”
A black-lacquered coach rumbled past, the muscular team straining up the red brickwork slope. It felt strange to tread these streets, this place of pretense. The inhabitants pushed hard at the wheels of commerce, yet their wealth was inherited, built solidly on the backs of the opium and slave trades. Not so different from his own father, Ryan reflected, though rather than trafficking in slaves he had merely owned them.
Ryan was considered a traitor to his class for enrolling in the radical Yankee institution known as Harvard. When he’d been dismissed from the university, he’d never thought to return to Beacon Hill again. Certainly he didn’t think he’d be welcome, having disgraced himself by running away to sea.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Journey grumbled. “You should have written the plaguey female a note and said no thank you to her offer.”
Ryan scanned the discreet brass plaques identifying each house they passed. Greenwood, Appleton, Kimball, Lowell…they were known as Boston’s First Families, and they were a clannish lot.
“Some things, my dear Journey, demand a personal reply,” he explained. “Besides, I’m curious about this plaguey female, as you call Miss Isadora Peabody.” He patted the letter in his waistcoat pocket. “What sort of woman would make me such an outrageous offer?”
Journey grinned, his teeth flashing in his deep brown face. “You must have impressed the bloomers off her, Captain.”
“A frightening thought.”
They walked along a brutally trimmed hedgerow, coming to an intimidating Palladian manse near the corner of Chestnut and Beacon Streets. The Peabody home. Ryan had known some Peabodys in college—Quentin and Bronson. Relations of some sort?
He stood back, getting a crick in his neck as he looked up at the towering house. The glaring sun stabbed into his brain, reviving his headache. “I suppose we can assume,” he said to Journey, “that she did not make this offer because she is in need of money.”
“Probably not.” Journey tugged at the shining black wrought iron gate-pull. He let them both in and they crossed a rigorously disciplined garden, Grecian in flavor, with a shiny silver gazing ball on a pedestal in the middle of a box hedge maze.
The door knocker depicted Neptune with cheeks puffed out and a frown on his face. Ryan lifted the handle. Before he knocked, Journey said, “A question, Skipper.”
“What is it?”
“Have you found a translator for the next voyage?”
Ryan sighed, his head still pounding, the taste of rum old and sticky in the back of his throat. “My friend, it was all I could do this morning to find the floor beneath my bunk.”
Journey studied him, brown eyes probing with a depth that had been plumbed by years of friendship. “Why do you drink like that, honey?” he asked softly. “Why do you drink until you make yourself crazy?”
Ryan rapped smartly with the knocker. “Because it’s easier than staying sane,” he muttered. His life, he reflected, wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. He was supposed to be sitting on his front porch sipping a mint julep while a mute servant waved a punkah fan over his head. Instead, he’d become a sea captain in charge of a shockingly motley crew. A Southern man committed to a cause that had virtually destroyed his family.
The door swung open on silent hinges. Ryan found himself greeted by a butler in a plain broadcloth suit. The little gent appeared to be well familiar with the trappings of the socially acceptable, for in one brief glance he took in the expensive cut of Ryan’s suit and deemed it adequate.
“Yes, sir?” he asked.
Ryan bowed from the waist. “I am Ryan Calhoun, here to see Miss Peabody, if you please.”
The butler stepped back, allowing him to enter. He and Journey stood upon a plush Turkey carpet of red and violet. A gilt mirror adorned one wall, and in the corner was a plant stand without a plant on it.
“I shall see if Miss Arabella is at home,” the butler said.
The name didn’t sound familiar to Ryan, nor to Journey, judging by the jab he gave Ryan with his elbow.
“That would be Miss Isadora, would it not?” Ryan said.
The butler allowed his eyes to widen—whether at Ryan’s Southern drawl or at the mention of Miss Isadora, he couldn’t tell.
“You are here to see Miss Isadora?”
Ryan smiled patiently. “That’s correct. Is she at home?”
“I…” The diminutive man cleared his throat. “I shall inquire. If you like, you may wait in the parlor.” He gestured.
“Your man can go around to the servants’ entrance in the rear.”
Ryan expected the error. “This is Mr. Journey Calhoun, and he isn’t a servant, but my business partner.”
The calm, self-possessed man seemed to be unraveling by inches. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand. “I…I see. Would you please excuse me?”
“By all means.” You officious little snot, he added silently as the butler scurried away.