The Wedding Challenge Read Free Page A

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