The Wedding Challenge

“Yes. For sailing all over the world, you see—though I’m not entirely sure that Sir Francis Drake actually circumnavigated the globe. But that would scarcely matter to Aunt Odelia.”

“Little wonder that Radbourne did not care to come in that costume.”

“No, but it was not the globe that put him off so much as those puffed short pants.”

Callie laughed. “I am surprised you were able to get him to come in costume at all. Sinclair would not consider it, beyond a mask.”

“Doubtless the duke has more dignity to lose,” Irene replied lightly. “Besides, I have found ’tis quite amazing the persuasive power a wife can exert on her husband.” Her eyes glittered behind her gold mask, and there was a soft, provocative curve to her mouth.

Callie could feel a faint blush rising in her cheeks at the implication of the other woman’s words, and she felt a not unfamiliar twinge of curiosity. Women were usually quick to cease any discussion of the marriage bed if an unmarried girl was around, so Callie had heard very little about what happened in the privacy of a couple’s bedchamber, although, as was usually the case in a girl who had been raised in the country, she had some degree of knowledge of the basics of the act, at least among horses and dogs.

Still, Callie could not help but wonder about the feelings—the emotions and the physical sensations—that were involved in that very private human act. To ask a direct question was, of course, unthinkable, so she had had to glean what she could from conversations she overheard and, sometimes, an inadvertent slip of the tongue. Irene’s comment tonight was, she thought, different from most that she had heard from married women. Though lightly humorous, there was a pleased tone to her voice—no, more than that, there was the almost purring sound of someone who thoroughly enjoyed participating in that wifely “persuasion” about which she spoke.

Callie cast a sideways glance at Irene. If there was anyone who would talk about such a thing to her, she thought, it would be Irene. She cast about for some way to keep the conversation going in the direction Irene had taken, but before she could think of anything to say, she glanced across the room, and every thought left her head.

A man stood leaning against one of the pillars that marched along either side of the room. He looked negligently at ease, his arms crossed, one shoulder to the pillar. He was dressed in the style of a Cavalier, his wide-brimmed hat pinned up on one side and with a sweeping plume on the other. Soft leather gloves with wide, long gauntlets encased his hands and lower arms. His fawn breeches were tucked into soft boots that were elegantly cuffed just below the knees, and slender golden spurs hung at the heels. Above his trousers he wore a matching slashed doublet, bare of any ornamentation, and over that was a short round cape, tied casually at the neck and caught on one side behind the elegant thin sword hanging at his waist.

He could have stepped from a painting of the nobles who had fought and died for their doomed king, Charles I—elegant, and whipcord lean and tough. The dark half mask that hid the upper portion of his face only added to the air of romance and mystery that hung about him. He was glancing about the room, his expression arrogant and faintly bored. Then his eyes met Callie’s and stopped.

He did not move nor change expression, yet somehow Callie knew that he had become instantly, intently alert. She gazed back at him, her steps faltering. A slow smile spread across the lower half of his face, and, sweeping off his hat, he bowed extravagantly.

Callie realized that she was staring, and, with a blush, she took two quick steps to catch up with Irene. “Do you know that man?” she asked in a hushed voice. “The Cavalier?”

Irene glanced around. “Where—oh. No, I don’t believe I do. Who is he?” She turned back to Callie.

“I do not think I have ever seen him before,” Callie replied. “He looks…intriguing.”

“No doubt it is the costume,” Irene told her cynically. “The most impossibly dull sort would look dashing in the clothes of a Royalist.”

“Perhaps,” Callie agreed, unconvinced. She was tempted to turn and look back at the man, but she resisted the urge.

“Calandra! There you are!” Lady Odelia exclaimed in her booming voice as they approached the dais upon which the old lady sat.

Callie smiled as she stepped up to greet her great-aunt. “May I offer you my felicitations, Aunt Odelia?”

Lady Odelia, a formidable-looking woman even when she was not dressed up in the manner of Queen Elizabeth, allowed a regal nod and gestured Callie forward with a gesture worthy of that monarch. “Come here, girl, and give me a kiss. Let me look at you.”

Callie obediently bent and kissed her great-aunt’s cheek. Aunt Odelia took both Callie’s hands in hers and stared up at her intently.

“Pretty as ever,” she announced in a satisfied voice. “Prettiest of the lot, I’ve always said. Of the Lilles, I mean,” she offered in an aside to Irene.

Irene nodded her understanding, smiling. She was one of the few women in the ton who held no fear of Lady Pencully; indeed, she rather enjoyed the old woman and her blunt ways. She had, in fact, engaged in a few lively discussions with Odelia that had sent everyone else scurrying out of the room and left the two women flushed, eyes snapping, and quite pleased with themselves and each other.

“Can’t imagine what is wrong with young men today,” Lady Odelia went on. “In my day a girl like you would have been snapped up her first year.”

“Perhaps Lady Calandra does not wish to be ‘snapped up,’” Irene offered.

“Now, don’t go putting your radical ideas into her head,” Lady Odelia warned. “Callie has no desire to be an ape-leader, do you, my dear?”

Callie suppressed a sigh. “No, Aunt.” Was she never to get away from this topic today?

“Of course not! What intelligent young girl would? ’Tis time you put your mind to it, Calandra. Ask that chit Francesca to help you. Always thought the girl had more hair than wit, but she managed to get this one to the altar.” Lady Odelia gestured toward Irene, who rolled her eyes comically at Callie. “I would not have taken odds on that happening.”

“Indeed, Aunt,” Irene put in. “To hear you and Lady Radbourne speak of it, one would assume that your grandson and I had nothing to do with the matter, only Lady Francesca.”

“Hah! If I had left it up to you two, we would still be waiting,” Lady Odelia tossed back, the twinkle in her eyes counteracting the bite of her words.

The two of them continued to bicker in a playful fashion, and Callie realized with a rush of gratitude that Irene had skillfully led the obstreperous old woman away from the subject of Calandra’s own unmarried state. She cast her friend a look of gratitude, and Irene responded with a smile.

Callie stood, idly listening as her companions strayed into an apparently endless and comfortably familiar list of items about which Irene and her husband’s great-aunt enjoyed crossing swords. She glanced up at Irene just as her words suddenly came to halt and saw that Irene was looking over Callie’s shoulder. Just as Callie started to turn around to see what had caused the sudden interest on Irene’s face, a masculine voice sounded behind her.

“Pardon me, Your Highness, but I come seeking the favor of this fair maiden’s hand for the next dance.”

Callie swung around, and her eyes widened as she found herself staring up into the masked visage of the Cavalier.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MAN WAS, Callie realized, even more intriguing up close than he had been at a distance. The black half mask concealed the upper portion of his face, but it also emphasized the strong, chiseled jaw and well-cut, sensual mouth that lay below it. The eyes that looked out through the mask were fixed on her with a gaze that was decidedly warmer than was polite. He was tall, with wide shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, and he exuded a powerful masculinity that owed only part of its aura to the dashing costume he wore.

She should have given him a setdown, Callie knew, for she was certain that she did not know the man, which made it quite forward of him to ask her to dance. However, she found she had no desire to snub him. Indeed, what she desired was to put her hand in his and let him lead her out onto the floor.

However, Callie was certain that she would not be able to dance with him, for Lady Odelia would doubtless blister his ears for his impudence. Callie waited, with an inner sigh of regret, for that lady’s words.

“Of course,” Lady Odelia said—nay, almost purred, Callie thought, as she glanced at the old lady in surprise.

Irene’s face registered a similar sense of shock as she, too, turned toward Lady Odelia. But Lady Odelia was smiling with what could only be called pleasure at the Cavalier, and when Callie did not move, she waved her hand in a shooing motion toward her.

“There, girl, do not stand rooted on the spot. Get to the floor before the orchestra starts again.”

Callie did not need to be told twice to do what she wanted. If Lady Odelia had given her blessing to dancing with this man, it would satisfy the requirements of propriety—and prevent any upbraiding from her grandmother. But there was nevertheless a whiff of something illicit about dancing with a perfect stranger that she found enticing.

She quickly placed her hand on the arm the stranger held out to her, and they went down the step of the dais and onto the dance floor. Callie was very aware of the man’s arm beneath her hand, the muscle hard under the soft material.

“I should not dance with you, you know,” she told him, a little surprised at the flirtatious tone that bubbled up in her words.

“Indeed? And why is that?” He looked down at her, his eyes twinkling.

“I do not know you, sir.”

“How can you be sure?” he countered. “We are masked, after all.”

“Still, I am certain that we are strangers.”

“But is that not the point of a masquerade? That you do not know who anyone is? And so, surely, it is only to be expected that one would dance with a stranger. The usual rules do not apply,” he told her, and his gaze slid down her face in a way that made Callie feel suddenly warm.

“None of them?” she asked lightly. “Indeed, sir, that sounds dangerous.”

“Ah, but that is what makes it exciting.”