Calhoun Chronicles Bundle by Susan Wiggs

past, he had no time to talk, but he smiled cordially enough. She noted a certain sad resignation in his eyes.
    William Click, the second mate, spoke with a Cockney accent and wore a short-handled quirt in a hip holster at his side. Chips, the carpenter, was tall and skinny; Luigi Conti, the Italian sail maker, was tiny, with merry eyes and a huge black mustache. Gerald Craven, the jibboom man with tattoed arms and a gold hoop earring, gave her a curt greeting, then hastened off to help Timothy haul down a tangle in the rigging.
    Isadora brought her carpetbag to her assigned quarters. Here, she would spend her last night in Boston, and in the morning they would sail with the tide.
    According to the Doctor, the Silver Swan was an unusual vessel. Sloop-rigged in order to carry less sail and thus a smaller crew, she had been built for a sea captain who insisted on traveling with his wife and four children. That accounted for the grandeur of the captain’s stateroom and for the snugness of the two side staterooms, which had once housed the children. Lily Calhoun and her maid would occupy one of the rooms, Isadora the other.
    She found a single bunk, too short to accommodate her height, a single portal to let in the daylight and a single washstand with a lavatory and chamber pot. The cabin had the austere air of a monk’s cell, and she found that she rather liked the feel of it.
    Lily and Fayette greeted her cheerily when they arrived. She accompanied them to their cabin, which was larger, with two boxlike bunks and a sitting area below the portal.
    “Are you terribly excited?” Lily asked, helping her maid with a stubborn latch on a case.
    “I hardly slept a wink all night.”
    “It’s a little frightening, isn’t it?” Lily asked.
    “It’s a lot frightening,” Fayette said, casting a suspicious glance at the door. “Only time I ever went somewhere with Mr. Ryan in charge was a day of fishing. We ended up in the middle of Mockjack Bay in a skiff, and he didn’t have no idea how to get back. No idea at all.”
    Lily caught Isadora’s eye. “I believe Ryan was nine years old at the time.”
    “He and that Journey. Always trouble.” Fayette shook her head mournfully and began filling a drawer under the bunk.
    Lily smiled wistfully. “He was always a willful boy.”
    “You spoiled him, and no mistake,” Fayette muttered.
    “I suppose I did. His father paid him so little attention. I was Jared’s second wife,” she explained to Isadora. “With his first, he had Hunter, and Ryan seemed almost an afterthought. Jared wore me as an ornament on his arm, but he hadn’t the first idea what to do with a boy like Ryan.” She bit her lip. “Oh, dear. I mustn’t speak ill of the dead.”
    Fayette chuckled. “Sweetie, that ain’t nothing we ain’t all thought of.” She glanced up at Isadora. “Beware the man who values you for your pretty face.”
    “It’s not a worry that plagues me,” Isadora said wryly, pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. “And surely love grew with familiarity.”
    “You are so very young, my dear,” said Lily. “As young as I was when I was raising Ryan. He grew up wild and free, and I fear I indulged his every whim, trying to make up for his father. Ryan was attractive, impulsive and charismatic, and he knew how to get what he wanted—from everyone but his father.”
    “There’s always been a hole in that boy’s life,” Fayette said. “But it ain’t your place to patch it up. Let him find his own way, Miz Lily.”
    Isadora felt a prickle of discomfort. People in her family never spoke of such intimate matters, particularly not with the servants.
    “I think I shall go out on deck,” she said. “I don’t want to miss a thing.” She left the cabin and returned to deck, finding a spot beside an aft companion ladder where she seemed to be out of the way.
    Captain Calhoun was in his stateroom with a shipping agent. She could hear them speaking, but couldn’t make