The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс
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her as a small reward. She had been performing the exhausting task of nursing his mother and Fayette. She’d earned a little civil conversation.
She eyed him suspiciously. Over the past several days they had circled one another with cautious interest. Ryan could never be certain what she would do next, this “idler” he’d taken on to do the translating and clerical work. As the crew settled into the predictable rhythms of life under sail, there was a subtle, indefinable difference in the air about them.
Ignorant of social graces, these rough sailors, these sons of Neptune simply accepted her. Ryan had expected them to defer to her, to behave differently in her presence, but instead, they took it upon themselves to initiate her into their way of life.
One day she might be seated on a crate with Luigi, mending sail with a big hooked needle. The next might find her laughing as Gerald Craven, the jibboom man, taught her to play a tune on the Portuguese accordion. In the galley, she showed the Doctor how to make fudge. Once, Ryan came out of the chart room to find her holding Chips’s hand in her lap. The sight gave Ryan a sudden hot sting of annoyance until he realized she was picking a splinter out of the carpenter’s hand.
She made friends of them. This willful young woman from Beacon Hill, who came from people who wouldn’t deign to let a boy like Timothy Datty black their boots, had suddenly taken on a different role aboard the Silver Swan. She wanted to know about Luigi’s impressive array of tattoos and what each one meant. She asked after Gerald Craven’s children, knowing they had come down with the measles shortly before the Swan set sail. She conversed readily and easily with Chips, ordinarily a quiet man who contented himself with his hand-carving. The Doctor let her dry her stockings in his galley, a privilege he wouldn’t afford Ryan. And even William Click, the unpopular second mate, was wont to sit with her of an evening, smoking his pipe and listening as she read from one of the many books she had brought.
“How are my mother and Fayette today?” Ryan asked as they made their way toward the chart room.
“Little better, I fear. I managed to get them to sip some broth, but they are both still reluctant to leave their beds.”
“Some folks never get their sea legs,” he said, then eyed Isadora, noting the way long trails of hair had been plucked from their pins. “You don’t suffer the mal de mer. What is your secret, Miss Peabody?”
“I’ve learned to be very cautious about what I eat.”
He narrowed his eyes, studying her. Were her cheeks less round? Did he detect dark circles under her eyes? “You’ll fall ill of weakness,” he warned her. “You’ll waste away.”
She laughed softly; she seemed to laugh far more readily at sea than on land. “I daresay I’ve a long way to go before facing that calamity, Captain.” She took a deep breath of the morning air. “Indeed, my health is much improved aboard this ship. I’ve not sneezed or sniffled since we left Boston.”
It was true, he realized with a start. The watery eyes, the reddened nose, the explosive sneezes—he’d seen none of them lately.
Ralph Izard stood on the foredeck, turning to greet them as they approached. “I think we can bring up the sea anchor, skipper,” he said to Ryan. “Seas’ve calmed a good bit since last night.”
“We’ve dropped anchor?” Isadora asked with a frown.
“A sea anchor,” Izard explained. “We used a drogue thrown overboard to keep the bow to the direction of the sea.” He indicated the windlass. “I was about to bring it up.”
“May I?” she asked, her face lighting up.
Izard glanced at Ryan, who shrugged. “Mind your fingers—we don’t want them pinched by the rope.”
Mr. Izard gave her a handspike and showed her how to insert it into the body of the windlass cylinder. Positioning herself behind the foremast, she began to work the apparatus. Slowly the thick rope, wet and hung with seaweed, began to emerge from the water.
“Steady now,” Izard said. “Keep her steady, and the rope will coil around it all of itself. Shall I give you a hand?”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice strained. “I can do this.” Grinding away at the windlass, she made a very strange sailor—though her full skirts and landlubber shoes impeded her progress. A long, rolling wave lifted the bow at a sharp slant.
“Careful,” Ryan said. “Chips lifted out some of the planks to get at the dry rot, and—”
“Oh!” The heel of her shoe caught in a crevice between some of the missing boards. The next happened so quickly Ryan was powerless to stop it. Her feet came out from under her, and she let go of the handspikes. The rope spun wildly on the spool, winding her hair around it along with the twisted line. A second later, she lay against the foremast, bound there by her own hair. Her face had paled to a pasty white.
“Miss Peabody!” Ryan dropped to his knees. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but…it pulls at my scalp. Can you free me?”
“It does too hurt,” he snapped, making a few tentative attempts at untangling her. “You were dragged by the hair and your head slammed against the mast. So quit trying to be valiant and admit it hurts like hell.”
She bit her lip. “It hurts like…the dickens.”
“That’s harsh,” Izard muttered.
Each time Ryan moved the windlass, it pulled at her hair. Frustrated, he called for Journey, who came running, his broad bare feet slapping on the deck.
“Good job, honey,” he said, clearly impressed. “We haven’t ever had someone get tangled up in the windlass before.”
“I should like to get up now,” Isadora said.
The sailors who were off watch came to see what was the matter. So did Luigi and Chips. William arrived shortly as well, and everyone gathered around the capstan to witness the woman with a yard of hair tangled in the gears and rope.
Isadora Peabody’s cheeks turned red. “If you don’t mind, I should like to get up,” she said again.
“Any ideas?” Ryan asked the men.
“We could cut the line.”
“It’s as thick as a man’s wrist. That would take all day, and we’d be billed for destroying the line.”
“Dismantle the knight-heads of the windlass and slide the hair and the rope off the side?”
“I just repaired that,” Chips objected. “Took me half a day. The man who touches it dies.”
“Unwind it the opposite way.”
“I tried that. It pulls. She’ll lose her whole scalp.”
Ryan and Journey looked at one another. Journey’s gaze flicked to the sheathed midshipman’s dirk Ryan wore in his belt. They had the same thought at the same time.
“Miss Peabody.” Ryan went down on one knee. “Close your eyes.”
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” Her voice rose, quavering with distrust.
“Getting you out of this fix. Now, close your eyes.”
Isadora knew she was disobeying a direct order, but she didn’t care. The men began to murmur among themselves, and so she opened her eyes.
Just in time to see Ryan unsheath a thin-bladed knife. She screamed, scrambling back as far as the entanglement would permit, her hair pulling viciously at her scalp. The blade flashed in the sunlight, then came down with a thunk. She waited to feel a rush of blood, but instead she sprang free of the coil.
She sprawled on the deck, her face inches from the skipper’s booted foot. “You’ve gone mad, haven’t you?” she said in a shaky voice. “I’ve heard of this—men gone too long at sea lose their grasp on sanity, and—eek!”