The Charm School (26 page)

Fanning herself with the painted fan that hung from a cord around her waist, she pressed herself against the wall to watch. Like a skilled physician, she attempted to discover the true nature of her ailment.

Seeing Ryan like this so handsome, so romantic hurt her. Why?

Because she missed Chad, perhaps. Ryan revived all her longing for the man she had wanted for years. He placed her squarely in the path of heartbreak again. Had she learned nothing from being trampled by a handsome man?

She resolved to stand aloof and try to enjoy the evening. The ache in her heart melted into a dull throb that was almost bearable when combined with the rhythmic thump of the music and the sinuous melody of the horns. Isadora did what she did best—she became invisible, retreated into her realm of the mind, with a wall of glass between herself and the real world, a safe place where she could watch unobserved.

Ryan danced with girl after girl, each one prettier than the last, prettier than Isadora’s sisters, prettier than Lydia Haven. Isadora leaned against a vine-draped column, wondering what Chad was doing right now, wondering what Chad would look like in studded trousers of oiled leather that gleamed in the multicolored light.

And then the unthinkable happened. The dance ended and Ryan headed in her direction.

“Oh, no,” she said, the words coming too easily.

“I shall’t fall into that trap again.” She recalled the awful moment with Chad in Boston when she had been so certain he wanted to dance with her but all he really wanted was to send her on a fool’s errand.

Ryan bowed before her, sweeping off the plumed hat. “May I have this dance, senhorita?” “No,” she said—too quickly.

He covered his heart with the hat.

“You wound me to the quick. Why will you not dance with me?”

“Why do you care?” “Because,” he said with measured patience, “it’s what people do at dancing parties.”

“It’s not what / do.” Isadora drew herself up with exaggerated dignity. She’d rather be a wallflower than a spectacle. But she wanted to accept. She really did.

He stood silent for a moment. His gaze drifted from her face to her feet strapped into sandals.

“Isadora Peabody, as I live and breathe.”

“This is supposed to be a masquerade. I’m supposed to be a mystery lady.” “Oh, sugar-pie, you are that,” he said gallantly.

“The Isadora Peabody I know would never show her ankles like a sailor on shore leave.”

“I’m not—that is, Isadora is not showing her ankles like a sailor on shore leave.”

“But the mystery lady is.”

She couldn’t help herself. She giggled. Giggled. Isadora was quite certain she had never giggled before. “Perhaps,” she admitted.

“And perhaps, being so mysterious, she would take a stroll with me in the garden.”

Remembering what had happened during their last garden stroll, Isadora hesitated.

Ryan held out his hand.

“Come with me, my mystery lady.”

She got over her hesitation. Being in costume shielded her from the rigors of everyday propriety. She could be anyone she wanted tonight.

A gypsy. A flamenco dancer. A pirate’s lady.

A forbidden thrill shot up her spine as she took his hand.

“So I wonder,” he said, leading her out between the colonnades, “why Isadora has avoided tonight’s festiv- | ides.”

“She’s never been good at them,” Isadora said.

“She’s never been fond of standing at the edge of a dance floor and wishing she were up in her chamber reading a good book.”

“Why does she always stand at the edge?”

“Because no one has ever brought her into the circle.”

“The circle?”

“The charmed circle. It’s an imaginary place, but it’s very real, I assure you.”

His hand, quite naturally, touched the nape other neck beneath the heavy waves of her hair, rubbing her, making her feel strangely languorous.

“Describe this place to me.”

“Well, it is full of light and beauty and laughter.” She leaned her head back a little, enjoying the tender massage of his hand on her neck.

‘ “And Isadora has never been invited to this mythical place.”

“Of course not.” They came to a stone rampart overlooking Guanabara.

The distant winking lights draped the bay like a necklace of luminous diamonds.

“Why not?” her cavalier asked, lowering his hand to the small of her back.

“Because she doesn’t belong there.”

“In whose opinion?”

“Not in anyone’s opinion.” She stared out at the stars mirrored in the water.

“It’s a fact, the way the world is, and it cannot be changed.” Being behind the half mask gave her the courage of anonymity, false though it was. “She is awkward and socially gauche. Why would anyone in the charmed circle find me—er, find Isadora— pretty or amusing?”

She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath and dared to look up into his eyes. Framed by the mask and gleaming with reflected light from the harbor, his regard appeared fierce. His fist gripped her upper arm, startling her.

“Because you are.”

The conviction in his voice caught her, but she made herself laugh a gypsy’s laugh.

“You are too gallant for your own good, my cavalier.

Isadora knows exactly who and what she is. After her adventures at sea, all her respectability will be gone. She has chapped skin and chopped-off hair.

Her clothes don’t fit properly anymore. She seems to be slowly sinking into a shocking state of nature.”

He laughed, too, though the anger still churned in his eyes. Very deliberately, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

His touch felt different—invasive, intimate, slightly dangerous.

“Isadora is in big trouble, then.”

In defiance of the balmy tropical night, a shiver touched the base of her spine.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she has a lot to learn.” He took a step toward her, gripping her tighter.

She brought her hands up between them and fluttered her fan, beginning to feel amazingly natural in the role of coquette.

“And who is going to teach her?”

“A famous cavalier.” Before Isadora knew what was happening, he caught her in his embrace.

“First, the dancing!”

“I don’t dance,” she blurted.

“But I do.” With a whoop of sheer delight, he swept her around the open rampart in time with the sensual, percussive samba music that drifted from the patio. He wrapped his arm around her waist, hugging her so that she could feel his hips against hers. He led her in a circle, holding her so snugly that she had no choice but to follow the sweeping motion. These were dance steps that would horrify Beacon Hill society. Steps that should have made Isadora stumble clumsily, yet they didn’t. She danced with abandon, a cavalier’s lady who was fascinating and graceful and at ease—everything Isadora Dudley Peabody was not.

The melody ended and her brash cavalier brought her to sit upon the stone rampart overlooking Guanabara Bay.

“It’s like a dream,” she said, gazing out across the silver-studded black velvet view.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not at the view.

For some reason that struck her as amusing and she laughed lightly, merrily, as if laughter were something she often did.

And in fact she did, when she was with Ryan.

No, not Ryan. She must not let herself think of him by name.

“Isadora,” he began, clearly unaware of her game.

She shushed him immediately, still laughing, boldly pressing her fingers to his lips. She nearly stopped laughing when she touched his lips, for they felt firm and slightly moist and feeling them created a strange flood of disturbing warmth inside her.

“Isadora is not here.”

He captured her hand, took it away from his mouth. “She’s not?”

“No. And you must not use her name.”

“Why not?”

“Because …” How could she explain it?

“Because that would make the night real.”

“And you don’t want it to be real?”

She thought of the things in her life that were real— her family, the people she associated with in Boston, people who barely acknowledged her existence.

“No,” she said earnestly.

“Not tonight.

At the end of this voyage, I shall soon enough face what is real.”

“You mean Isadora will face it,” he corrected her.

“Yes.”

“And what is real to Isadora?”

She paused, thinking.

“The idea that she will serve her parents in their old age. And the rather pleasant prospect of helping to raise her nieces and nephews because her sisters are such good breeders.

She will read great books and she’ll be a faithful letter writer, though she will write many more letters than she will ever receive.

But that’s all right, for the reading and writing will fill her days.

She has accepted the idea that she will never know passion, for no one feels passionate about Isadora”—” What?”

“Passion. She’ll never know it.” She smiled, pleased that he had caught on.

She had expected cynical teasing from him, but he kept surprising her.

“So that is why you must keep reality at bay. You must let the night be magical.”

He chuckled and squeezed his hand.

“Sugar, don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“Every night is magical.”

She laughed softly, loving the easy feel of it, loving the breeze through her hair and the way his loose shirt blew against his chest, outlining its shape.

The sweetness of the moment washed through her, loosening her, warming her.

“You are never serious,” she said.

“It’s not permitted for a cavalier to be serious.”

“What about Captain Calhoun?” she ventured.

“Is he ever serious?”

“Only when it comes to serious matters.”

“What sort of serious matters?”

“Matters of the heart,” he said, lifting her hand and pressing it to his chest.

“Matters of passion.” With an earnestness she’d never seen in him before, he said, “Suppose I told you I want a certain young lady of Boston.”

She took her hand away from his heart. He meant her? No, impossible.

She forced her mind to consider the more reasonable possibilities.

Lydia Haven, the beauty of Beacon Hill. Her sister Arabella, who was still desired even though she was engaged. A society belle, perhaps, or one of the women from the docks.

‘ “Then why have you not courted her?” she inquired, trying to keep her humor up.

“She seemed too chilly and self-contained and far too intelligent to take a fellow like me seriously. And of course, she yearns for someone else altogether.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Perhaps your Boston lady’s coldness is a shield against getting hurt.”

“Then I wish like hell she’d lower her defenses, for I would never hurt her.”

“You wouldn’t?” Her question came out as a whisper because suddenly she knew. It was insane, but his Boston lady was. “Never.”

“Then I wonder … what she is afraid of.”

He moved closer to her on the stone rampart.

“Take off the mask,” he said.

“I’d rather not.”

“I’d rather you did.” He removed it and set it aside.

The scented night breeze touched her face where the mask had been.

“Why are you doing this?”

‘ “Because I want to know exactly who you are when I kiss you.”

Stunned, she could do nothing but sit and watch him remove his own half mask of black silk. And then he began.

It was not the sort of kiss he had given her before, the sweetly spontaneous one in the garden. Nor was it the kind of kiss she had always envisioned, aflame with heated passion. Instead he was careful, deliberate, almost clinical. He lifted a tendril of her hair that had drifted across her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Then he took her face between both hands, skimming the pad of his thumb along her lower lip as if to prepare it for the touch of his mouth.

One of his hands dropped, fingers playing over her throat and collarbone, so indecently exposed by the daring blouse. With an assurance Isadora could not possibly imagine ever feeling, he lowered the hand and let it curve around behind her so that he was embracing her, holding her close, their bodies touching, their lips getting closer and closer.

She made a feeble attempt to stop him, to stop the intimacy and the terrible overwhelming emotions welling up from a place inside her she had never explored until this moment. But she didn’t want to stop him, not really. He was the most beautiful man in the world; she was plain Isadora Peabody, and she might never again get the chance to kiss someone like him.

Aching with the bleakness of that thought, which mingled painfully with her yearning, she closed her eyes.

And he kissed them. Her eyelids.

She was amazed.

And then he kissed her cheek and her temple and the side of her nose.

And behind her left ear and—heavens be—her neck where a pulse leaped so frantically she feared she might swoon.

“You look …” he whispered, still kissing her there, up and down, oh so gently.

“Yes?” she prompted in a hoarse, alien voice. Dear God, maybe a miracle had occurred. Maybe he was going to say she looked pretty.

“You look … as if you’re about to face a firing squad.” “Oh …” she said weakly, opening her eyes a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean” — “Don’t apologize. Just—if you possibly can—try to seem as if you’re enjoying this.” “But I am,” she said with great urgency.

“Truly. I simply … this is a new activity for me and I don’t quite know how to behave.” “What I’d like,” he said wickedly, “is for you to misbehave.”

“I’m certain I’ve been doing that ever since I set foot on your ship,” she said, not even half joking.

“Then it’s a start,” he whispered, leaning close again. “It’s a start.”

And he began kissing her again, his leisurely exploration so maddening and frustrating she nearly screamed, for he seemed to be touching and kissing all of her except the parts that needed him the most. She bit her tongue to keep from telling him that. It would be too forward, too humiliating.

Too pathetic.

But then, his gently questing mouth strayed upward along her throat, and almost by accident she dropped her chin a little, and their lips met.