The Wedding Challenge

Candace Camp

For Leslie Wainger, editor extraordinaire,

for her wisdom and her talent for sharing it.

THE Wedding CHALLENGE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

LADY ODELIA PENCULLY’S BIRTHDAY BALL was the event of the Season—even though the Season had not yet begun. Not to have been invited was a cause for deep social embarrassment. To have been invited and not attend was unthinkable.

Either by blood or by birth, Lady Pencully was related to half the most powerful and wealthy families in England. The daughter of a duke and a countess by marriage, she was a pillar of Society, and it was rare that anyone dared cross her. During her heyday, she had ruled over the ton as she did her family, with an acid tongue and an iron will, and even though she had, with age, remained more and more at her country estate, rarely coming to London even for the Season, she was still a force to be reckoned with. A prodigious correspondent, she kept up to date with the latest scandals and news, and was never averse to dashing off a note to anyone whom she felt needed the benefit of her advice.

So this year, when she announced that she would celebrate her eighty-fifth year of life with a grand ball, it immediately became the one event that no one of any social standing or pretenses thereof could risk missing, even if it was in London in January, the most unfashionable and difficult time of the year. Neither snow nor cold nor the difficulties of opening up a town house for a brief visit could hold back the ladies of the ton, who comforted themselves with the fact that at least it would not be true, as it usually was in January, that no one would be in town, since everyone who mattered would be coming to Lady Odelia’s party.

Among those who drove into London from their country estates was the Duke of Rochford, along with his sister, Lady Calandra, and their grandmother, the dowager Duchess of Rochford. The duke, one of the rare few who would have dared to refuse Lady Odelia, had been disinclined to do so. He was, after all, her great-nephew, and he was a man who believed in carrying out his family responsibilities. Besides, there was business he needed to attend to in London.

The dowager duchess had come because, while she had never really liked her late husband’s older sister, Lady Pencully was one of the few people left of their generation—though, the duchess was careful to point out, Lady Pencully was a number of years older than she—and was, moreover, one of the even fewer number of women whom the duchess considered of equal standing. Lady Odelia was, quite simply, one of the duchess’s set, despite Odelia’s sometimes rather shocking lack of manners.

Of the three in the carriage waiting in the long line of carriages creeping along Cavendish Crescent toward Lady Pencully’s door, only the youngest, Lady Calandra, was looking forward with eagerness to the evening.

At twenty-three years of age, Callie, as she was known to those close to her, had been out for five years, so a London ball, especially one given by an octogenarian relative, would not normally have been cause for excitement. However, she had just spent several long months at the Lilles family country estate, Marcastle, months made even longer and drearier by an inordinate number of drab rainy days and the constant presence of her grandmother.

In the usual way of things, her grandmother was accustomed to residing a good part of the year in her home in Bath, happily reigning over the slow and genteel social scene of that community, and only occasionally, particularly during the Season, coming up to London to make sure that her granddaughter was conducting herself properly.

However, at the end of the last Season, the dowager duchess had decided that it was well past time for Lady Calandra to be married, and she had taken it as her primary occupation to get the girl engaged—to the proper sort of gentleman, of course. To that end, she had sacrificed her usual winter course in Bath for the cold drafts of the historic family estate in Norfolk.

Callie, therefore, had spent the last few months cooped up by the inclement weather, listening to the old lady’s strictures on her behavior, admonitions of her duty to marry, and opinions regarding the suitability of the various peers of the realm.

As a result, the prospect of a real ball, with dancing, friends, gossip and music, set her stomach fluttering in anticipation. To make it even more interesting in Callie’s opinion, Lady Odelia’s party was a masquerade ball. This fact had not only allowed Callie the added fun of devising a costume, it also provided the evening with an intriguing air of mystery.

She had, after much careful consideration and consultation with her seamstress, settled on the guise of a woman of the reign of Henry VIII. Not only did the close-fitting Tudor cap look quite fetching on her, but the deep crimson color of the gown was a perfect foil for her black curls and fair skin—and a welcome change from the usual white to which an unmarried young woman such as herself was limited.

Callie glanced across the carriage at her brother. Rochford, naturally, had eschewed any disguise, wearing his usual elegant black evening suit and white shirt, with a crisp, perfectly tied white cravat, his only concession to the evening a black half mask worn across his eyes. With his dark good looks, of course, he still looked sufficiently romantic and faintly sinister enough to have most of the ladies at the ball gazing in his direction and sighing.

He caught Callie’s glance and smiled affectionately at her. “Happy at the thought of dancing again, Callie?”

She smiled back at him. Others might find her older brother a trifle distant and cool, even forbidding, but she knew that he was not at all cold. He was merely reserved and rather slow to warm to people. Callie understood his manner; she, too, had learned that when one was a duke, or even a duke’s sister, any number of people wanted to ingratiate themselves with one not for friendship, but for the social and monetary benefits they hoped to receive. She suspected that Sinclair had had even more bitter experience with this phenomenon than she, for he had come into his title and wealth at a young age, and had not had the protection and guidance of an older brother.

Their father had died when Callie was only five, and their mother, a sweet woman with a perpetual air of sadness, had gone to her grave nine years later, still mourning their father. Her brother was Callie’s only real family, except, of course, for her grandmother. Sinclair, fifteen years older than Callie, had assumed the role of guardian as well as brother, and as a result, he had been more like a young, indulgent father to her than a brother. She suspected that one of the reasons he had been willing to come to London for their great-aunt’s party had been because he knew how much she herself would enjoy it.

“Indeed, I am looking forward to it,” she answered him now. “I don’t believe that I have danced since Irene and Gideon’s wedding.”

It was well known among Lady Calandra’s family and friends that she was an active sort, preferring a ride or a brisk walk through the country to sitting with her needlework beside the fire, and even by the end of the Season, she never tired of dancing.

“There was Christmas,” the duke pointed out, a twinkle in his eye.

Callie rolled her eyes. “Dancing with one’s brother while Grandmother’s companion plays the piano does not count.”

“It has been a dull winter,” Rochford admitted. “We shall go to Dancy Park soon, I promise.”

Callie smiled. “It will be wonderful to see Constance and Dominic again. Her letters have been brimming over with happiness, now that she is in the family way.”

“Really, Calandra, that is hardly the sort of thing one mentions to a gentleman,” the duchess commented.

“It’s only Sinclair,” Callie pointed out mildly, suppressing a sigh. She was well-used to her grandmother’s strict views of appropriate behavior, and she did her best not to offend the woman, but after three months of the duchess’s lectures, Callie’s nerves were beginning to wear thin.

“Yes,” Rochford agreed with a grin for his sister. “It is only I, and I am well aware of Callie’s scapegrace ways.”