The Charm School Read Free

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 blase 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