The Charm School by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page B

discreet brass plaques identifying each house they passed.
    Greenwood, Appleton, Kimball, Lowell. -they were known as Boston’s First Families, and they were a clannish lot.
    “Some things, my dear Journey, demand a personal reply,” he explained.
    “Besides, I’m curious about this plaguey female, as you call Miss Isadora Peabody.” He patted the letter in his waistcoat pocket.
    “What sort of woman would make me such an outrageous offer?”
    Journey grinned, his teeth flashing in his deep brown face.
    “You must have impressed the bloomers off her, Captain.”
    “A frightening thought.”
    They walked along a brutally trimmed hedgerow, coming to an intimidating Palladian manse near the corner of Chestnut and Beacon Streets. The Peabody home. Ryan had known some Peabodys in college—Quentin and Bronson.
    Relations of some sort?
    He stood back, getting a crick in his neck as he looked up at the towering house. The glaring sun stabbed into his brain, reviving his headache.
    “I suppose we can assume,” he said to Journey, “that she did not make this offer because she is in need of money.”
    “Probably not.” Journey tugged at the shining black wrought iron gate-pull.
    He let them both in and they crossed a rigorously disciplined garden, Grecian in flavor, with a shiny silver gazing ball on a pedestal in the middle of a box hedge maze.
    The door knocker depicted Neptune with cheeks puffed out and a frown on his face. Ryan lifted the handle. Before he knocked.
    Journey said, “A question, Skipper.”
    “What is it?”
    ‘ “Have you found a translator for the next voyage?”
    Ryan sighed, his head still pounding, the taste of rum old and sticky in the back of his throat.
    “My friend, it was all I could do this morning to find the floor beneath my bunk.”
    Journey studied him, brown eyes probing with a depth that had been plumbed by years of friendship.
    “Why do you drink like that, honey?”
    he asked softly.
    “Why do you drink until you make yourself crazy?”
    Ryan rapped smartly with the knocker.
    “Because it’s easier than staying sane,” he muttered. His life, he reflected, wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. He was supposed to be sitting on his front porch sipping a mint julep while a mute servant waved a punkah fan over his head. Instead, he’d become a sea captain in charge of a shockingly motley crew. A Southern man committed to a cause that had virtually destroyed his family.
    The door swung open on silent hinges. Ryan found himself greeted by a butler in a plain broadcloth suit. The little gent appeared to be well familiar with the trappings of the socially acceptable, for in one brief glance he took in the expensive cut of Ryan’s suit and deemed it adequate.
    “Yes, sir?” he asked.
    Ryan bowed from the waist.
    “I am Ryan Calhoun, here to see Miss Peabody, if you please.”
    The butler stepped back, allowing him to enter. He and Journey stood upon a plush Turkey carpet of red and violet. A gilt mirror adorned one wall, and in the corner was a plant stand without a plant on it.
    “I shall see if Miss Arabella is at home,” the butler said.
    The name didn’t sound familiar to Ryan, nor to Journey, judging by the jab he gave Ryan with his elbow.
    “That would be Miss Isadora, would it not?” Ryan said.
    The butler allowed his eyes to widen—whether at Ryan’s Southern drawl or at the mention of Miss Isadora, he couldn’t tell.
    “You are here to see Miss Isadora?”
    Ryan smiled patiently.
    “That’s correct. Is she at home?”
    “I …” The diminutive man cleared his throat.
    “I shall inquire. If you like, you may wait in the parlor.” He gestured.
    “Your man can go around to the servants’ entrance in the rear.”
    Ryan expected the error.
    “This is Mr. Journey Calhoun and he isn’t a servant, but my business partner.”
    The calm, self-possessed man seemed to be unraveling by inches. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand. “I … I see. Would you