The Charm School (29 page)

“Hemp. A common weed, really. Here. Inhale the smoke and hold it a moment.

Like this.” He drew on the thin cigar until its tip glowed an angry red.

He closed his eyes, holding himself still for a moment, then he exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke.

Isadora draped her arms around her drawn-up knees. “And I should do this because … ?”

“Because it’s something new. Different. You will feel the most interesting effects.” He grinned.

“Temporary, I assure you.

I would never do anything permanent to you, Isadora.” He offered the cigar again.

She hesitated. Soon she would be back in Boston, that world of stifling convention and proscribed rules. She’d never get this chance again. She took the proffered cheroot, touched the slightly moist end to her mouth, pursed her lips and sucked on it.

“Now that,” Ryan said, still grinning, “is ladylike.”

She spat out the smoke, wrinkling her nose at the sweetish herbal taste.

“It’s awful,” she said.

“When will I feel the effects?”

“You have to inhale the smoke along with a breath of air. Try again.

Remember to hold it.”

She put the cheroot in her mouth, going cross eyed as she peered down at the glowing tip.

Roaring with laughter, Ryan fell back on the rock.

She ignored him and inhaled deeper. Her lungs fought to expel the offensive substance, winning the battle as she blew it all out with a terrific cough.

Her vision hopelessly blurred by tears, she made yet another attempt.

Finally she succeeded in trapping the smoke inside her long enough to feel a distinct tingling sensation. Little shocks of torch like warmth eddied up and down her arms, her legs, making her feel weightless and euphoric.

She tried several more inhalations, enjoying the perception that each moment seemed to spin out with honeyed slowness, watching the colors of the rain forest meld and blur upon the water and hearing the buzz and whir of the birds and insects grow loud in her ears.

Ryan watched her with increasing fascination.

“You took to that quickly, Isadora.”

She giggled. He was the only person in the world who could make her giggle.

“I am a quick study.” She took a deep puff to demonstrate.

“No wonder so many men smoke cigars.”

He laughed again.

“This is a bit different.”

Suddenly the water in the lagoon looked too clear and cool to resist.

She unbuttoned her shoes and rolled her stockings down, never stopping to wonder if she should.

“Oh, my,” she murmured, swirling her bare toes in the water.

“Do you like it?”

“I believe I do.”

As so many other moments with Ryan, this one stood apart from the rest of her life. This was a magical place, she concluded, filled with mystery and excitement. Though a part of her wished to stay here forever, she knew she would have to return to her previous existence very soon. Then she looked at Ryan and wondered if it was even possible to go back, unchanged, and fit into her former life.

He folded his arms behind his head, leaned back against a tree trunk and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Have you had a good time in Rio, Isadora?”

She felt silly and pleasant from the smoking.

“Do you ask that of all your interpreters?”

“Of course,” he said, deadly serious.

She inhaled more smoke, then handed it back to him. “I had better stop now.”

‘ “Why stop now?” he asked, inhaling to keep the red tip burning.

“Are you afraid I might kiss you again?”

She blushed furiously, but the herb made her tongue loose.

“Maybe I’m afraid you won’t.”

Each movement very deliberate, he set down the cheroot. With his gaze intent upon her, he got up and went to her side, quite unapologetically taking her face between his two hands and kissing her firmly on the mouth.

‘ “If I’d known you were worried, I would have done something about it long ago.” He removed his own shoes and socks and sat beside her on the rock, slowly kicking his feet back and forth.

“How quickly do you suppose I can convince you to take a swim with me?” “Here?” she asked, gesturing at the lagoon. Her hand floated very far away, not even a part of her.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“I shall have to think about it. There. I’ve thought about it. Yes indeed, I should like to bathe here. There are only two problems.”

“And what are they?”

“First, I have no bathing costume.” She picked up the cheroot and took a worried puff. A nice floating calm wafted over her.

He stood and extended his hand, helping her up.

“Isadora.

Toreador-a. I adore-a you. You don’t need a bathing costume. We’re completely alone here.”

She suspected some flaw in his logic, but she couldn’t quite decide what it was. While she pondered this, he matter-of-factly unbuttoned her bodice and parted it, carefully pulling it off her shoulder.

“What was the other reason?” he asked.

“You said there were two.”

“Two what?”

“Reasons you can’t bathe here. And the first reason was not valid.” “I’ve forgotten the second,” she said with a loud burst of woozy laughter.

He reached around behind her with both hands. She felt him unhooking the fastenings of her skirt. He smelled not unpleasantly of sweat, melon and smoke.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your clothes off.”

“Oh. Should you be doing that?”

“Sugar, I should have done this a long time ago.” “Oh,” she said again, stepping out of her skirt as it pooled around her ankles. He grumbled and swore at the corset “steel stays, for Christ’s sake” and cast it away with a flourish. Then off came her shift, camisole and bloomers.

“Ye powers,” she said, puffing on the green cigar again.

“I’m naked.”

“Be patient, love.” Ryan tore at his shirt and trousers. “In a moment, I will be, too.”

CHAPTER Sixteen.

Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye.

Samuel Lover (1836).

1 rue to his word, he bared all while she smoked the cheroot down to ashes and gaped like a ninny. She had always known he was perfection itself. She saw immediately that it was true all over. He had the strong muscular body of a Greek athlete and skin that was tanned-except in certain areas—and smoothly unblemished.

She was quite familiar with his broad, bare chest due to the long days at sea, but his thighs and buttocks and manhood were a novelty to her inquisitive gaze.

“Oh, my,” she said.

“My indeed,” he said, staring back. He took her hand.

“Shall we?”

“Shall we what?”

In answer, he turned, still keeping hold of her hand, and jumped off the edge of the rock into the lagoon.

Isadora gasped at the cool silken shock of the water slipping over her. They went down, down, down, feet grazing the pebbled bottom and then they floated up, breaking the surface.

Isadora coughed violently, spewing out water. She flailed her arms, found Ryan and clung to him.

“I remembered the other reason I shouldn’t bathe,” she said between coughs.

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know how to swim.”

He caught her against him, and she marveled at the feel of their flesh touching, sliding together, the water facilitating the movement.

“Ah, Isadora. I adore-a you. Hold on to me, and I’ll show you.” Kicking out, he towed her to shallow water where her feet could touch the bottom of the lagoon. She loved the feel of the water gliding over her. In the sunlit places it was warm and buoyant; in the cooler shadows the dark eddies gave her a delicious chill. She was Eve, she was a wood nymph, she was a natural creature, never bound by the tight corset stays of convention. Here she was in this natural world with a man who looked like a god teaching her to swim.

It was all a fantastic dream—the colors too bright for the mortal world, the lagoon too beautiful for ordinary humans.

“Take my hands,” he instructed her as they stood shoulder-deep in the water.

“Let the current buoy you.”

The gentle downstream flow lifted her. He showed her how to flutter her feet, then held her at the waist while she moved her arms. She stood grasping a liana vine while he demonstrated a dive beneath the surface. She tried it, keeping hold of the vine but plunging in, feeling as sleek and weightless as a fish. She opened her eyes to a blurred sunlit world, then drifted upward, laughing as she broke the surface.

He swam over to her.

“You are a quick study. I’ve never taught anyone to swim before.”

“You’re not teaching me to swim, Ryan. You are teaching me to live.”

She leaned her head back, dipping in her hair, gazing up at the blue sky framed by towering branches and exotically shaped leaves.

“In Boston, each day was the same. I got up, I had breakfast, I spent a few hours reading or writing correspondence. Sometimes there might be an invitation but it was always for more reading or conversation at someone else’s house.” She giggled.

“It sounds so silly, yet what could be sillier than swimming naked in a lagoon in the middle of the jungle?”

She waved her hand absently in the crystalline water. “It’s not that I dislike Boston,” she said.

“I think it’s more that Boston dislikes me. Society favors women who are witty, charming and amusing.”

He swam toward the cascade.

“You are all of that. I never laughed so much as I do with you.”

“But you’re the only one.” She experimented with her hands. If she paddled them away from her, she drifted backward.

“All the young women who are socially successful in Boston are not merely witty and charming. They’re also extremely pretty.”

“So are you,” he said.

She laughed.

“Whatever it is that we smoked has made me quite drunk.

But not nearly so drunk that I would believe that.” He started to speak.

She held up her hand.

“I am untidy and ungainly, with no sense at all of how to dress or comport myself. I have a unique gift for making others feel awkward.

I”

He dove beneath the water and surfaced in front of her, so close she could see the way the myriad droplets magnified his pores.

“You are absurd. Absurdly adorable. Isadorable. I wish I could make love to you.”

She watched his face, his mouth, mesmerized.

“I think you already are.”

“Not with mere words, love. With my hands. My mouth. My body.”

She drifted back, fascinated yet not frightened in the least. This was Ryan, after all.

“You mustn’t.”

“I know that.”

She thought for a moment.

“Why mustn’t you?” “Because,” he said with excessive patience, “you must keep yourself chaste and pure.”

“Oh,” she said.

“For Chad?” She hadn’t thought about him in days. At the moment she couldn’t even recall what he looked like.

“Chad.

What sort of name is that, anyway? It sounds like a fish or perhaps a skin condition.” She paddled on her back to the waterfall and let it beat upon her head. The water was cold; it created a delicious shiver when it mingled with the warmer water of the lagoon.

“I think you should do it anyway,” she said suddenly.

“Do what?”

“Make love to me.”

He started to laugh as if she’d made a joke. Then he narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

“Why?”

“Because … I’ve never done it before. Like smoking the hemp leaves.

It is my last day in Brazil. We are completely alone.” She swam out from under the waterfall and looked at him directly.

“No one ever need know.”

He lunged through the water, pulled her toward him.

She studied his wet face, his slicked-back hair, his soft blue eyes as he guided her to calmer waters. A smile lifted one side of his mouth.

“No one ever need know, eh?”

“No one’s ever wanted to before, so you understand I’m curious.”

“Curious. About what I’d do when—if—I were to make love to you.”

“Yes.”

He grinned wickedly.

“I really like your question, Isadora.” He moved back and swam in a slow, deliberate circle around her.

“If\ were going to make love to you, I would start by undressing you.”

“You’ve already done that.”

“Then I’m already making love to you.”

She felt a jolt of awareness deep in her belly.

“Oh, my. Then it’s too late for honor?”

“It might be.” “Oh, my,” she said again.

“What would you do next?”

“I think perhaps I would start with your hand. You have very expressive hands so I thought I might—here— it’s easier to show you.” He grabbed her hand, held it gently in his.

“I’m glad you stopped chewing your nails.” He kept his gaze on her face as he slowly lifted her hand to his lips.

“If I were going to make love to you, I would do this.” He kissed one finger after the other, lavishing attention on each as if it were a sacred relic.

No, a profane relic, for he was not at all reverent. He slipped a finger in his mouth and sucked at it, eliciting a gasp from her.

“Would that offend you if I did it?”

She felt light-headed, woozy from smoke and desire.

“It would make me wonder what you’d do next.”

“I’d pull you against me. Like this.”

She found herself in his arms, bare breasts against bare chest, her mouth almost touching his.

“If we were actually making love,” he said, “I would hope that you wouldn’t be offended by this.”

“By what?”

He shifted his hips.

“Oh!”

“That’s merely an indication’ of how much I’d want you if we were making love.”

“I’m feeling—that is, I would be feeling—some indications myself,” she confessed.

“Very good. And then, of course, I’d kiss your lips. Like this.” He lowered his head.

Ah. She was lost, lost in his kiss. She had the irrational yet undeniable feeling that every moment since she’d first laid eyes on him—dissolute, with a half-dressed doxy in his lap—had been moving her toward this encounter.

She felt an upsurge of dizzying emotion, and she clung to him, digging her fingers into his bare shoulders, amazed to feel the silky ripple of muscle beneath her touch.