The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

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СКАЧАТЬ look into the oval mirror hanging on the wall behind her father’s desk.

      Peering over the thick lenses of her rimless spectacles, she saw herself for exactly what she was. Her hair was the color of a mud puddle. Her eyes lacked the pure clear blue so prized by her parents and so evident in her siblings. She had none of the gifts of laughter and beauty her brothers and sisters possessed in such abundance. Instead, she wore a sullen expression, and her nose was red from the sniffles.

      If the Peabodys were a family that believed in magic—and being proper Bostonians they most certainly were not—they would call Isadora a changeling child: dark where the others were fair, pallid where the others were fashionably pale, round where the others were angular, tall where the others were petite.

      The unforgiving mirror reflected a discontented creature in matronly black bombazine stretched over a bone-crushing corset. At her mother’s insistence, she wore her hair in a Psyche knot, for the Grecian mode—a topknot with streamers of cascading tendrils—was considered the height of fashion. The problem was, her long, unruly hair stuck out in all directions, and the delicate tendrils resembled fat sausage curls. She made the very picture of youth drying up like a fig on the shelf. The image filled her with such an immense self-loathing and shame that she wanted to do something desperate.

      But what? What? Could she not even think of an imaginative way to banish her own misery?

      Enough, she told herself, giving her bodice a last good scratch with the letter opener. As she did so, the door to the study blew open, and a fresh wave of revelers poured into the foyer. They brought with them the crisp smell of autumn and gales of cultured conversation.

      Too late, Isadora realized the guests could see straight into the office. She froze, the letter opener still stuck halfway down the front of her. Loud male laughter boomed from the foyer. “Good God, Izzie,” said her brother Quentin, standing amid a group of his friends from Harvard. “Is this your imitation of fair Juliet?”

      Too mortified to speak, she managed to extract the letter opener. It dropped with a thud on the carpet. Swept up on a wave of hilarity, Quentin and his friends headed for the ballroom.

      Isadora stared down at the dagger on the floor. She wanted to die. She really wanted to die. But then she saw him—the one person who could lift her out of her wretched melancholy.

      Chad Easterbrook.

      With long, fluid strides he followed Quentin’s group to the ballroom, heading for the refreshment table to help himself to frothy cider punch. Immediately, several ladies in pastel gowns managed to sidle near him. Praying her faux pas had not been observed by Chad, Isadora returned to the ballroom.

      Chad Easterbrook. His name sang through her mind. His image lived in her heart. His smile haunted her dreams. He moved with effortless grace, black hair gleaming, tailored clothes artlessly stylish. When she looked at Chad, she saw all that she wanted personified in one extraordinary package of charm, wit and sophistication. He wasn’t merely handsome to look at; the quality went deeper than that. People wanted to be near him. It was as if their lives became brighter, warmer, more colorful simply by virtue of knowing him. His ideal male beauty was the sort the Pre-Raphaelite painters strove to depict. His charm held the romantic appeal of a drawing room suitor; he beguiled his listeners with low-voiced witticisms and languorous laughter.

      Isadora pushed her spectacles down her nose and stared, wanting him with such fierceness that her itching busk flared into a fiery ache. If only…she thought. If only he could look into her soul and see all she had to offer him.

      But it was hard for a man to look into a woman’s soul when he had to see past bombazine and buckram and worst of all, a painful shell of bashfulness. The few times he’d deigned to speak to her, he’d asked her to relay a message to Arabella, whose hand in marriage he’d narrowly lost to Robert Hallowell III.

      Still, she wished things could be different, that for once she could be the pretty one, the popular one—to see what it was like. To dance one time with Chad Easterbrook, to feel his arms around her, to know the intimacy of a private smile.

      He and his cronies alternated between spirited bursts of laughter and dramatic whispers of conspiracy. Then, one by one, each young man paired himself off with a lady for the next dance. The tune was “Sail We Away” set to an irresistible rhythm and new enough to pique the interest of even the most blasé socialite.

      Incredibly, Chad Easterbrook emerged from the group with no partner. He set down his crystal cup of punch and started walking toward Isadora. She watched, enraptured, as he crossed the room. She forgot to breathe as he stopped and bowed in gallant fashion, lamplight flicking blue tones in his hair.

      “I don’t suppose, Miss Peabody,” he said in his melodic voice, “you’d consider doing me an enormous favor.”

      She glanced over her shoulder and spied nothing but her father’s moose head hunting trophy from Maine. Her face aflame, she turned back to Chad. “Me?” she said, her voice breaking.

      With a patient smile, he nodded.

      She felt faint with amazement. “You’re addressing me?”

      “Unless that moose bears the name Miss Peabody, I believe I am.” He spoke with the lazy, sardonic inflection that characterized longtime Harvard club men. “Come, Miss Isadora. Don’t leave me in suspense any longer. Don’t make me beg.”

      Could he possibly want to dance with her? That had to be it. Chad Easterbrook wanted to dance with her. “I…I’d be delighted,” she managed to choke out. Oddly, she experienced the exchange as if she were an observer outside her body. The dowdy spinster and the dashing scholar. If the miracle weren’t happening right before her very eyes, she’d never believe it.

      Bowing, he offered his hand. Isadora took it, glad for the moleskin gloves her mother insisted she wear, for that way Chad would never know how icy and clammy her palms were.

      Since he stood a few inches shorter, she hunched her shoulders a bit, breathless with surprise and delight. So this is what it feels like, she thought, letting the melody enter her veins like fine wine. This is what a dream come true feels like.

      Chad’s attention lifted her lighter than air; she felt more graceful than a swan on still water. Finally, finally she had broken through his indifference. Finally he was going to dance with her.

      But instead of leading her out onto the parquet floor, he brought her into the domed alcove that had been her refuge at the start of the ball. Ye powers, an assignation? Was that what he wanted? She almost laughed aloud with delight.

      A gold-fringed drape concealed them. Moist-eyed, tingling all over, she nearly burst with expectancy as she pushed down her spectacles and watched him. “Yes, Chad? What was it you wanted?”

      He began rummaging in the pocket of his waistcoat. “This will take only a moment of your time…. Let’s see, I had it here somewhere….”

      A watch on a chain slipped out of his pocket. In addition to the watch, he held a small gold ring with a blue topaz stone in it. Praise be, was he going to ask her to marry him? For the first time in her life, Isadora understood a lady’s need for a fan, for she had broken out in a copious sweat.

      “I’d like you to take this.” He pressed the ring into her hand.

      “Oh, Chad.” Her heart brimmed over with happiness. “I don’t know what to say.”

      “Say СКАЧАТЬ