The Wedding Challenge. Candace Camp

in any particular gentleman?”

      Callie shook her head. “No. I am quite happy as I am.”

      “You will not always remain the most sought-after young woman in London,” her grandmother warned.

      “Then she should enjoy it now,” Rochford stated, effectively ending the conversation.

      Grateful for her brother’s intervention, Callie turned her attention to the window, peeking past the curtain at the carriages disgorging passengers before them. It was not, however, quite as easy to ignore her grandmother’s words.

      Callie had spoken the truth: she was largely content just as she was. She enjoyed the social whirl of London during the spring and summer months—the dancing, the plays, the opera—and during the rest of the year she could also keep herself well-occupied. She had friends she could visit. She had grown especially close, over the last few months, to Constance, the new wife of the Viscount Leighton, and when the duke was at Dancy Park, Callie spent a great deal of time with her, for Redfields, Dominic and Constance’s home, was only a few miles from Dancy Park. The duke had a number of other residences which he periodically visited, and Callie often went with him. She was rarely bored, for she enjoyed riding and long walks in the country, and she did not disdain the company of the local folk or the servants. She had been almost entirely in charge of the duke’s household since she was fifteen, so there were always things to do.

      Still, she knew that her grandmother was right. The time was approaching when she would need to marry. In two more years she would be twenty-five, and most girls were wed by then. If she remained single after that, she would soon be regarded as a spinster, which was not, she knew, a particularly pleasant position to occupy.

      It was not that Callie had anything against marriage. She was not like her friend Irene, who had always declared that she would never wed—a conviction that she had recently given up when she met Lord Radbourne. No, Callie expected to marry. She wanted a husband and children and a house of her own.

      The problem was, she had never found anyone whom she wanted to marry. Oh, there had been a time or two when she had fallen into an infatuation, when a man’s smile had made her heart flutter, or a set of broad shoulders in a Hussar’s uniform had increased her pulse. But those had always been fleeting things, soon over, and she had yet to meet a man whom she thought she could be happy to see over the breakfast table every morning—let alone give herself up to in the vague, darkly fascinating and slightly frightening rites of the marital bed.

      Callie had listened to other young women enthusing over this gentleman or that, and she had wondered what it must be like to tumble with such seeming ease into the deep chasm of love. She wondered if those girls had any idea of the opposite side of such love—the tears she had seen her mother shed, even years after her husband’s death, the soft sad ghost her mother had become long before she actually died. She wondered if it was because she was aware of the sorrows love could bring that she found it more difficult to fall in love…or was it simply something lacking within herself?

      She pushed aside such gloomy thoughts as the ducal carriage pulled up to the front steps of the brightly lit house and a footman sprang forward to open their door. She was not about to allow anything, either her grandmother’s criticisms or her own doubts, to spoil her first evening out in London.

      Reaching up, she made sure her dainty half mask was in place over her eyes; then she took the hand her brother offered and climbed down from the vehicle.

      They were greeted inside the ballroom by Lady Francesca Haughston, easily recognizable despite the narrow blue satin mask she wore. Lady Francesca, a vision in cream and gold and blue, was masquerading as a shepherdess—not the actual sort, of course, but the romantic ideal. Her blond curls were caught up by blue ribbons that matched the wide ribbon wrapped around her white shepherd’s staff, just below its crook. She wore a blue satin overskirt, draped to reveal a froth of white flounces on the skirt beneath, each draping point pinned by a rosette. Her feet were shod in golden slippers.

      “Bo Peep, I presume,” Rochford drawled, bowing over Lady Francesca’s hand, and she curtseyed to him.

      “You, I can see, did not bother to don fancy dress,” she retorted. “I should have known. Well, you shall have to answer to Lady Odelia. She was quite set on the idea of a masquerade, you know.”

      She gestured toward the woman who sat across the room. On a raised dais, Lady Odelia sat enthroned—there was no other word for it—in a high-backed chair padded in blue velvet. On top of her hair she wore an orange wig, and her face was painted white. A circle of gold was thrust into the mass of bright curls, and a high starched ruff rose up from her dress behind her head. Ropes of pearls hung from her neck down over her brocade stomacher and skirts, and rings bedecked her fingers.

      “Ah, Good Queen Bess,” Rochford remarked, following Francesca’s gaze. “The aging one, I presume.”

      “Don’t let her hear you say that,” Francesca replied. “She cannot stand for long to receive guests, so she decided to hold court instead. Rather appropriate, I think.”

      Francesca turned toward Callie, holding out her hands and smiling with affection. “Callie, my dear. At least I can count on you. How lovely you look.”

      Callie greeted the other woman with a smile. She had known Lady Haughston all her life, for Francesca was Viscount Leighton’s sister and had grown up at Redfields, not far from the duke’s own Dancy Park. Francesca was several years older than Callie, and Callie had regarded her with awe and affection when she was a child. Francesca had married Lord Haughston and moved from Redfields, but Callie had continued to see her now and again when Francesca came to visit her parents. Later, when Callie had had her own coming out, they had associated frequently, for Lady Francesca, a widow for the past five years, was one of the leading ladies of the ton. Her sense of style was impeccable, and even though she was now in her early thirties, she was still one of the most beautiful women in London.

      “I am completely in your shadow, I assure you,” Callie told Francesca. “You look absolutely beautiful. But how did Aunt Odelia manage to trap you into receiving guests?”

      “Oh, my dear, she did much more than that. She did not feel that she could put on a ball in her own honor, so that fell to her sister Lady Radbourne and, of course, the new Countess of Radbourne—you know Irene—” Francesca swiveled to include the woman standing beside her.

      “Of course,” Callie answered. The ton was not a large group, and she had known Lady Irene superficially for some years. A few months earlier she had come to know her better when she had married Gideon, Lord Radbourne, who was in some collateral way related to Lady Calandra and the duke.

      Irene smiled in her frank way and greeted her, “Hello, Callie. Good to see you. Is Francesca telling you how I imposed on her good nature?”

      “Hardly an imposition,” Francesca demurred.

      Irene laughed. She was a tall woman, with thick, curling blond hair, and she looked stunning dressed in the white drapery of an ancient Greek. Her odd golden eyes were lit with laughter. Marriage, Callie thought, agreed with Irene. She was more beautiful than ever.

      “What Francesca means is that it was worse than that,” Irene explained, glancing at Francesca with affection. “You know how hopeless I am at parties. The entire thing fell to Francesca, so you must compliment her for the fact that it has come off so well. Or at all, frankly.”

      Francesca smiled amiably and turned to greet the next partygoer as Callie moved down the receiving line to Irene and her husband, Lord Radbourne. Gideon, Lord Radbourne, had come to the party tonight dressed as a pirate, and it was, Callie reflected, a guise that suited his rather unconventional looks. With his dark, slightly shaggy hair and powerful build, he looked more like someone who might stop one’s ship and rob it than like a gentleman, and he did not seem at all uncomfortable to have a cutlass thrust through his wide sash.

      “Lady Calandra,” Gideon greeted her, executing a brief but serviceable bow. “Thank you for coming.” A smile warmed his hard features for an instant. “It is good to see