The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс
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made a coaxing motion with her hand. “There you are.”
A small, sleek body shot past her to a dark corner under the stern windows. Staying low, Isadora followed. “Come out, you little scamp. Come and eat. I can’t believe he could forget to feed you this morning.”
She had nearly reached the cat when it tried to squeeze itself into a gap in the paneling. With a frown, she slid the panel aside. She saw, with some surprise, a large, steel money safe. The sight sent a nervous chill down her back, and she glanced guiltily over her shoulder. She should not be here. But now the cat was stuck inside.
“Here, kitty,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “Oh, do come out.”
The tiny cat poked forth a wary pink nose, then its small gray head, then its skinny body. Isadora took it gently beneath the middle and draped it over her arm. Trustingly, the cat relaxed like a fur stole. Nearly shaking with relief, Isadora slid the panel shut. She found the milk and sardines and, wrinkling her nose in distaste, created a horribly unappetizing mass in a small tray on the stern bench.
The cat settled down to eat with great delicacy.
Outside, a whistle sounded again and something bumped heavily into the hull. Quickly, Isadora went back to the deck.
Just in time to see Ryan Calhoun waving farewell to Mr. Warbass, whose launch was headed into port.
“He left!” she said in dismay.
“He did,” Ryan agreed.
“But I wanted to—”
“Captain, the navigator’s ready for our coordinates,” said Mr. Click, the second mate. “I’ve entered them into the deck log.”
“Excuse me.” Ryan Calhoun walked away from her.
Before she could protest, a grinding sound rumbled through the air. She saw men turning around the capstan, bringing in the great anchors from fore and aft. The ship rolled a little, wallowed and settled like a duck laying an egg. More shouts, more running about.
Dear God, she was leaving. Leaving against her will. She was as much a prisoner as a pirate’s captive. She didn’t know whether to scream or weep.
And then, high above, a wonder occurred.
With a great, unearthly whoosh, the wind filled the sails.
It was not an event she could have imagined or guessed at by watching from shore or looking at prints or paintings. The seamed canvas pulsed with a life of its own, much as the wings of a great bird took on their life from both the bird and from the wind that went underneath them and lifted. A burgeoning. A blossoming.
By holding a rail and leaning back, she could gaze up and see nothing but white canvas and blue sky, their contrast sharp and so intense it made the eyes smart. Then she looked ahead at the sea rolling out before the bow and almost wept with the beauty of it. Glassy swells rose before the ship as the Swan pulled into the main trades. The sensation of speed was so acute that Isadora heard a stream of laughter. Pure, clear laughter.
And to her amazement, she realized that the glad sound was coming from her. It sprang from the depths of a joy she had never known before.
When had she ever, ever laughed like this?
She passed the first hour of the voyage in this rapturous state, simply standing with her hand gripping a shroud while the men went about their duties and the sea swept them into its vast embrace.
She’d had no idea it would be intoxicating. She grew dizzy as she inhaled the salt tang, tinged with resin and tar. The blood seemed to pulse faster in her veins, giving her a heady feeling of possibility. She inhaled deeply, wincing when her corset stopped her from filling her lungs to the brim. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would wear the garment a notch looser. For what did it matter if she relaxed a bit? This was her adventure. She had no one to impress so long as she performed her duties. After the voyage she would never see these people again.
She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds.
The very thought opened her to something she had forbidden herself to do for a long time. She began to feel hope again. To yearn. She had always been good at dreaming, but what she had never done before was believe a dream could actually come true. She believed now. The wonder of setting sail created possibilities she had never considered before.
Finally, she sensed a presence nearby and turned. There stood Captain Calhoun, looking handsome and windblown in clothing far different from his shore togs. He had on trousers of well-worn, glove-soft fabric that hugged his hips in a way that was positively indecent. In contrast, his shirt blew loose around the chest and shoulders, lending him a piratical air.
Her resentment over the cat came rolling back at her. “Something else, Captain?” She was surprised—and rather proud—of her caustic tone.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She forced her gaze away from the amazing trousers. “No dogs to feed? Perhaps the resident hamster or vole?”
Sunlight glinted in his eyes, but he didn’t smile. “No vole,” he said. “No hamster. The rats will fend for themselves.”
“Then perhaps there’s something that actually requires my skills.”
“Ah.” His gaze swept over her with lazy insolence. “You have skills?”
Isadora looked at his intent face, the blue eyes, the wind-reddened cheeks. She refused to rise to his baiting. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, Captain. None at all.”
Standing in the cockpit with William Click, who was taking a turn at the helm, Ryan kept a weather eye on Isadora Peabody. Her first day at sea was a marvel to her. She reveled in the wind and waves, conversing with the sailors with far less bashfulness than she’d exhibited earlier, and even joining in a small task or two—tying off a ratline, fastening the anchor hitch.
When he saw her handling the sails or letting go the brails, he felt a stab of chagrin. He wanted her to suffer, not flourish. He wanted her to learn her place, not make a place for herself on shipboard.
Yet every so often she would lift her face to the wind and close her eyes. A look of rapture would come over her, and in spite of himself, he could feel a strange, unwanted affinity for her. He felt the same sentiment under sail. Only a true lover of the sea could relate to the chest-tightening, ecstatic sense of anticipation.
Christ. The woman even robbed that joy from him by learning to love what he had always loved.
“How’s your mother doing, Captain?” asked Click.
“The seasickness is at her. And her maid, too. I expected as much.” Ryan had checked on Lily and Fayette frequently, cracking open the door to their cabin to find them both lying green-lipped and limp upon their berths, Fayette praying softly and Lily staring miserably out the small portal. Isadora had offered to attend to them, but they declined, preferring to keep their misery private.
“The new one doesn’t seem at all affected by it,” Click observed, nodding in Isadora’s direction. She stood like a figurehead with her face pointed into the wind, taking bracing gulps of sea air. “Odd bird, ain’t she?”
Ryan studied the second mate, with his bitten-off ear and leather vest with the rabbit’s foot in the pocket and a juju bag full of bat bones on a string around his neck. “You would know, Mr. Click. You would know.”
He charted the coordinates and observed the changing of the first watch. The Doctor served dinner, which Ryan ate standing up—scouse, hasty pudding and salt beef, a fresh apple and a healthy squeeze of lime juice.
Then, drawn by an impulse of deviltry, he went to the bow where Isadora stood. Her bonnet—the silly gray one he disliked—had blown off and bounced against her back with each breath of the wind. Her light-brown hair had been plucked from its topknot, and yard-long