The Wedding Challenge Read Free Page B

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