The Wedding Challenge. Candace Camp

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 a familiar face.”

      Callie smiled. It was common knowledge that Gideon was not at ease in the company of his peers—bizarre events in his childhood had caused him to be raised from childhood in poverty in London, and he had survived and even prospered solely by using his wits. When he was returned to his proper station as an adult, he had fit in poorly with the other members of the ton. He was not much given to talking, and he had so far managed to avoid most social occasions. But he had found a proper fit with Irene, whose blunt speech and disregard of other’s opinions were equal to his own. On the occasions when Callie had been around him, she had found him quite interesting.

      “It is a pleasure to be here,” Callie assured him. “I fear that winter at Marcastle has grown quite monotonous. And, in any case, one could hardly not attend Aunt Odelia’s birthday ball.”

      “That seems to be the case with half of England,” Gideon opined with a glance at the crowded ballroom.

      “Let me take you over to visit the guest of honor,” Irene suggested, linking her arm through Callie’s.

      “Traitor,” her husband said in a low voice, though the warmth of his smile as he looked at his wife belied his caustic word. “You are simply seizing the opportunity to get out of this damnable receiving line.”

      Irene let out a laugh and cast a teasing smile at Lord Radbourne. “You are quite welcome to join us if you wish. I am sure that Francesca will be well able to handle the new arrivals.”

      “Hmm.” Lord Radbourne adopted a considering pose. “Greeting guests or facing Aunt Odelia—a difficult choice indeed. Is there not a third, more attractive, alternative—perhaps dashing into a burning building?”

      Gideon smiled at his wife in a way that was almost a caress and went on, “I had best stay here, else Aunt Odelia will no doubt take me to task again because I did not come as Sir Francis Drake as she suggested, a globe under my arm.”

      “A globe?” Callie repeated sotto voce as she and Irene strolled away.

      “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, СКАЧАТЬ