The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс

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      Ryan followed his host onto a verandah bordered by an ornate plaster balustrade.

      “We should have no trouble getting you a cargo for Boston,” Maurício said. “You are days ahead of the winter fleet.”

      “Mr. Ferraro, I’m glad you brought up the cargo. I know this isn’t in the consignment agreement, but I won’t accept anything produced by slave labor.”

      The merchant gave a low whistle. “That leaves out a lot of the best coffee in the world.”

      Ryan nodded. “It almost ruined me on my last run to Havana, but I managed to find a tobacco and sugar factor who represented nonslave interests.”

      “I can help you,” Ferraro said after a moment. “I know a number of growers who employ paid labor.”

      Through the window they could see the ladies sipping their coffee and chatting. Ferraro lit the cigars and studied them through the threads of smoke. He probably had no idea that he was grinning like a lovestruck idiot at his wife.

      Ryan took a shallow puff of his cigar. “You’re a lucky man,” he said. “Life is sweet for you.”

      “God has seen fit to bless me,” he agreed, smiling even more as Amalia tipped back her head to laugh at something Isadora said. “I have the most beautiful wife in the world.”

      The heartfelt declaration resonated strangely through Ryan. Amalia Ferraro wasn’t slender. She wasn’t young. Her features were not arranged in any particularly breathtaking fashion. But Ryan had no doubt that in Ferraro’s eyes, she was a gift from heaven.

      “You’re a man who enjoys his blessings,” he said.

      “And you are not?”

      “I’m a man who has obligations,” Ryan admitted. “The blessings—I can always hope—will follow.”

      Ferraro nodded. “That is something an impatient young man would say.”

      “You don’t agree?”

      Ferraro studied the ladies, Amalia in her flowing white and Isadora in her stiff black-and-brown dress. “What you, like most impatient young men, fail to understand is that sometimes the sweetest blessing of all is right before your eyes.”

      Isadora decided that Christmas in the tropics was vastly preferable to Christmas in Boston. The days leading up to the feast day were warm and balmy, the people cheerful as they went about their chores and visits. In Boston there would be caroling parties and sleigh rides and fevered preparations, and aside from seeing Chad at these functions, she gladly did without them.

      Rose insisted that there was not much in the way of gift-giving in her household. On Three Kings Day people exchanged trinkets and fruits and nuts, perhaps a round of visits with neighbors and relatives and a parade of sail in the harbor.

      Isadora felt an odd calm settle over her as she drifted through the days at Villa do Cielo. Ryan stayed busy with matters of commerce, seeing to the discharge and sale of his cargo and securing goods for the run back to Boston. Though she rarely saw him, she caught herself wondering about him often.

      You are no expert on men, Isadora. And you’re especially no expert on me. He had all but said she didn’t know him, couldn’t even begin to know him. She knew she should be ashamed of her curiosity about him. Yet when she did think of Ryan, she didn’t experience the cold sweat and knotted stomach that thoughts of Chad inspired in her. Instead she felt…comfortable. Alive. And unafraid that the next step she took, the next word she uttered, would lead to disaster.

      Very slowly she was coming to realize what was happening between her and Ryan.

      Friendship.

      The thought filled her heart with lightness. She had never had a friend before. Never, not once in her life. When she was small, she’d had Aunt Button. Her loving aunt had been a gift from heaven, but not specifically a friend. Isadora had made the acquaintance of other scholars at Mount Holyoke Seminary, but none had held out the hand of friendship. By the time she returned home to Beacon Hill, her favorite company consisted of books and political tracts and pamphlets.

      Now she had a friend. What a singular notion. What a wonderful notion. She did not quite know what to do with the thought.

      Every once in awhile, she was reminded that when Ryan touched her, when he looked at her in a certain way, when he spoke in a low whisper into her ear, she felt something deeper than friendship. She dwelled far too long on the day they had gone sightseeing in Rio. She remembered too clearly his kiss in the darkened garden, and the moment on the beach when he had embraced her. They had come together so naturally, as if embracing were the next logical step along the road they were traveling together.

      Fortunately, reason had quickly returned. She had pulled away, he had turned away and the moment had ended without a lot of terrible awkwardness. She’d vowed afterward to avoid such encounters in the future. Ryan was her one true friend. She would not ruin that with impossible dreams of something that could never be.

      Almost as a penance for her wayward thoughts, she had written Chad another long and copiously descriptive letter. She pictured him reading the missive she had labored over. She hoped her verbal sketch of the marionette show in the marketplace would coax a smile from him, that he would be moved by her description of a newborn babe left on the wheel at the Santa Casa de la Misericòrdia, that he would share her wonder at the fabulous hanging gardens around Rose’s villa.

      Along with the letter, she included a terse report to Abel about Ryan’s progress with the cargo. She felt guilty doing so, but she had promised Abel. At least Ryan’s business acumen was above reproach. She said so with honesty—and a touch of pride.

      On New Year’s Eve, Rose would host an annual masked ball. For two days beforehand, the tantalizing fragrances of roasting meat and baking bread drifted through the house. A great pavilion went up where the samba band would play and extra servants arrived from the village of Tijuca.

      Isadora worked in the kitchen with Lily, Rose and some of the maids, fashioning a centerpiece of tiny confections of glazed cherries and pineapple. She’d never sat with housemaids and done menial work, but she loved the feminine chatter and the giggles, the beauty of the candied centerpiece they were creating, piece by lovely piece, taking shape as the women’s conversation swirled around the long table of scrubbed pine.

      “You must borrow one of my gowns from years past,” Rose said to her sister and Isadora. “Each year, I order one specially made, so you’ll have plenty to choose from.”

      Isadora bit her lip, remembering the dancing parties and soirees she had endured in Boston. How painful they were. These two beautiful sisters had no idea what it was like to stand in the shadows and overhear people discussing your complete failure in the marriage market. They had no idea what it was like to watch the man you love, silently praying he’d ask for a dance and then, when he didn’t ask, to take yourself and your tears and your broken dreams to bed with you.

      “I confess I’ve never been fond of parties,” she forced herself to admit.

      Lily and Rose exchanged a glance. “You’ve never been fond of Boston parties,” Lily corrected her. “This will be different.”

      Rose nodded vigorously. “Everything in Rio is different.”

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