The Wedding Challenge. Candace Camp

that his polite tone did not.

      “I know you will think me very foolish,” she said.

      “Oh, no.” He smiled. “I have a sister, and I am aware of how confining the restrictions of Society are, how the rules weigh upon a young woman of spirit.”

      Callie could not help but smile back at him. Her fears had been foolish, she told herself. He seemed not at all disapproving of her actions; indeed, his smile, his face, his voice…all seemed both kind and understanding. Nor was there anything about him that bespoke the roué—no leer, no suggestive tone or improper suggestion.

      “Then you will not…tell anyone…?”

      “About coming upon you walking?” he finished. “Of course not. There is little to remark on in meeting a young lady who is taking a stroll, is there?”

      “No, there is not,” Callie agreed, swept with relief.

      “But, please, allow me to escort you back to your home.” He politely offered her his arm.

      “I am not going there. I am bound for Lady Haughston’s house.”

      He looked a bit puzzled, but to Callie’s relief he did not pursue the oddity of her deciding to take a stroll to Francesca’s house at this time of night, but merely said, “Then I shall be happy to escort you to Lady Haughston’s, if you will but show me the way. I am not, you may have guessed, well acquainted with London.”

      “I did not think that I had seen you before,” Callie admitted, taking his arm and starting once more down the street.

      “I have spent nearly all my time at my estate since coming into the title,” he told her. “I am sorry to say that it was in a rather sorry state of affairs. I have not had a great deal of time for…” He shrugged.

      “Frivolities?” she suggested.

      He smiled, glancing at her. “I do not mean to imply that a life spent here is frivolous.”

      Callie grinned. “I take no offense, I assure you. Indeed, I know that a great deal of it is frivolous.”

      “There is nothing wrong with a little frivolity.”

      There was something quite exhilarating about walking along this way with this man—even their rather ordinary words seemed tinged with a feeling of daring and excitement. It was extremely rare for her to be alone with a man other than her brother for any length of time. And to be alone with any man at this time of night on a dark street was simply unheard of. Callie had never before done anything that would so shock everyone she knew. Yet she could not find it in herself to regret it. She did not, she realized with a little bit of surprise, even feel guilty or wrong. What she felt was free and fizzing with excitement.

      Because she was a candid woman, she also knew that the way she felt inside did not come entirely from the adventure of being in this time and place. Indeed, most of the exhilaration bubbling up inside her had to do with this particular man.

      She stole a sideways glance at him, taking in the hard straight line of his jaw, the upward swoop of his cheekbone, the faint shadow of beard that colored his cheek this late at night. There was something hard and powerful about him, not just in the obvious physical strength of his wide shoulders and tall frame, but in the air of confidence and competence he exuded. She sensed that, even as he smiled and talked to her, he was alert and watchful, his gray eyes always searching, his muscles tensed and ready. He was, she thought, the sort of man to whom people naturally turned in a crisis. But, conversely, she suspected that he was also not a man whom it was advisable to cross.

      It occurred to her, with a little jolt, that in that way he was rather like her brother. Not as urbane as the duke and with a more roguish sort of charm. Still, she sensed that there was in him that same hard core that lay in Sinclair, a dark and immutable center that belied the aristocratic trappings and British gentility.

      As if he sensed her eyes on him, he glanced over at her, his own eyes shadowed and dark. He did not smile or say anything, just looked at her, but Callie felt a sizzle of intense attraction snake down through her.

      She looked away, afraid that her eyes would betray the sheer physicality of what she felt. Lord Bromwell unsettled her; she responded to him in a way she could not remember with any man. But the uncertainty, oddly, seemed to draw her rather than repel her. She wished that she knew what Sinclair disliked about this man, why he had reacted so sharply to seeing him with her.

      “I must apologize for the way my brother acted,” she began, again looking over at him.

      He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “It is only natural for a brother to worry about his sister. To want to protect her. I understand, having a sister, also.”

      “I hope that you are not so heavy-handed about protecting her,” Callie replied with a smile.

      He chuckled. “Indeed not. I fear she would have my hide if I tried to tell her what to do. She is a little older than I, though she would not like to hear me tell anyone so, and she is more accustomed to telling me what to do than the other way ’round.” The twinkle left his eyes, and there was steel in his voice, however, as he went on. “Still…I would despise any man who tried to harm her.”

      “I love my brother and my grandmother, but sometimes they can be a bit smothering,” Callie admitted.

      “Is their smothering why you are walking to Lady Haughston’s by yourself so late at night?”

      Callie hesitated, then answered noncommittally, “I am going to Lady Haughston’s to ask her for a favor.”

      She was relieved when he did not point out that she had not actually answered his question…or that it was rather an odd time to be asking for a favor. She was all too aware of that fact herself. It had been foolish of her to strike out on her own as impulsively as she had. It had been only her good fortune that it was Lord Bromwell she met and not some ruffian.

      “You must think me young and silly,” she said, flushing a little. “Clearly I acted in the heat of anger.”

      “No.” He smiled down into her face. “I find you young and very beautiful.” He paused, then added, the mischievous sparkle once more in his gaze, “And perhaps something of a trial to your overprotective relatives.”

      Callie laughed. “No doubt I am.”

      She looked up and found it was terribly hard to look away. It took a conscious effort to pull her gaze from his, and she knew that she had stared at him far too long for politeness. Her throat was dry, and her mind seemed astonishingly blank. She cast about for something to say, telling herself that she was acting like a schoolgirl at her first dance.

      “I see you are not wearing your hat,” she said at last, groaning a little inwardly at the inanity of her comment.

      “No, I left it behind. I found I could not bring myself to look quite that foolish on the street.”

      “Foolish! No!” she bantered. “I thought your hat was quite dashing.”

      She realized, with a little skip of her pulse, that she was flirting with him again, as she had earlier this evening. He responded in the same way, his voice light, yet laced with an underlying warmth and meaning, his eyes bright as he looked at her.

      “You have not changed out of your attire, either.” He reached out with his forefinger and pushed her hood back a little, exposing the downward dip of her Tudor cap in the front. “I am glad. ’Tis a fetching hat.”

      Callie realized that they had drifted to a halt, standing quite close together. His fingers still lingered at the edge of her hood.

      “But I am glad you took off the mask,” he continued, his voice turning husky. “Your face is far too lovely to hide even a part of it.”

      His fingertips brushed down her cheek, and Callie’s breath caught in her throat. She thought that he was going to kiss her again, and her heart began to pound in her chest. She thought of the heat that had flared