Curse of the Blue Tatoo by L.A. Meyer (2004)

We return to the delightful adventures of Jacky Gaber, who has been set ashore in Boston by her shipmates once they discovered she is a girl, and deposited in the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, run by headmistress Pimm. Obviously she doesn't fit in and her only friend is Amy, though she gets along with the staff. Her nemesis is Clarissa, the daughter of a Virginia slave owner. Jacky is constantly trying to write letters to her true love Jamie and he to her, but they keep being intercepted. Jacky can't resist playing music and gets in plenty of trouble for it, though for a while she strikes up a partnership with a drunk, but good fiddle player Gully. She makes friends - and enemies - all over town, helping people out in her unusual way. she also picks up a whole new set of skills - horseback riding, cooking, cleaning, plus she learns french and more music at the school, so all in all, becoming more well rounded.

I found out these are classified young adult as well as historical fiction, but they are great on the detail. I got a real sense of early Boston, what a girls school was all about (including how the men who married these educated ladies thought about it and them), the class system, the gender system, bars, ports, legal systems in those day. Lots of colorful characters made this a delight once again.