The Wedding Challenge

The duke stood, watching the other man in silence, until Calandra had disappeared inside the ballroom. Then he said in a quiet voice as hard as iron, “Leave my sister alone.”

Bromwell looked amused as he crossed his arms and considered the man before him. “How deliciously ironic…to hear the Duke of Rochford so concerned over the honor of a young woman. But, then, I suppose, it is different when the young woman is the duke’s sister, is it not?”

With a sardonic look at Rochford, he started to walk around him, but the duke reached out and caught his arm. Bromwell went still, his gray eyes icing over. He looked down at the other man’s hand on his arm, then up at the duke’s face.

“Have a care, Rochford,” he said softly. “I am not the boy I was fifteen years ago.”

“Indeed?” Rochford asked, letting his hand fall to his side. “You were a fool then, but you’re ten times a fool now if you think I will allow you to harm my sister in any way.”

“I believe Lady Calandra is a woman grown, Rochford. And you are the fool if you think that you can keep her heart from going where it chooses.”

An unholy fire lit the duke’s dark eyes. “Damn it, Bromwell. I am telling you—stay away from my sister.”

Lord Bromwell gazed back at him, his expression unyielding, then turned without a word and walked away.

CALLIE WAS FURIOUS. She could not remember when she had been so angry with her brother—indeed, so angry with anyone—as she was now. How dare he speak to her as if he were her father? And in front of another person! A stranger!

Her throat was tight, and tears pricked at her eyelids. But she refused to cry. She would not let him see, would not let anyone see, how Sinclair’s words had affected her.

She walked through the ballroom, looking neither left nor right, not even sure what she intended to do, only walking as fast as she could away from what had happened on the terrace. Through the red haze of her anger, she noticed that the ballroom was virtually empty and that the musicians were absent from their positions on the small stage at one end of the room.

Supper. The guests were all at the casual midnight buffet in the small ballroom across the hall. Callie started toward it, remembering at the last second that she still wore Lord Bromwell’s Cavalier cloak around her shoulders. She reached up and untied it, hastily folding it into a compact pad of material as she entered the small ballroom and looked around.

She saw her grandmother at last, sitting at a small table with Aunt Odelia and another elderly woman, their plates of delicacies still on the table before them. Lady Odelia, of course, was holding forth. The duchess listened politely, spine as straight as ever, not touching the back of her chair, and her eyes blank with boredom.

Callie walked over to the table, and her grandmother turned, seeing her. “Calandra! There you are. Where have you been? I could not find you anywhere. I sent Rochford to look for you.”

“Yes, he found me,” Callie answered shortly. She glanced at the other two women with the duchess. “Grandmother, I would like to leave now, if you don’t mind.”

“Why, of course.” The duchess looked, frankly, relieved, and immediately started to rise. “Are you all right?”

“I—I have a headache, I’m afraid.” Callie turned to her great-aunt, forcing a smile. “I am sorry, Aunt Odelia. It is a wonderful party, but I am not, I’m afraid, feeling at all the thing.”

“Well, of course. All the excitement, no doubt,” the old lady responded, a trifle smugly. She turned toward her companion, giving a decided nod that caused her orange wig to slip a bit. “Girls these days just don’t have the stamina we did, I find.” She swung her attention back to Callie. “Run along, then, child.”

“I will send a footman to find Rochford and tell him we wish to leave,” the duchess told Callie, turning and gesturing imperiously to one of the servants.

“No! I mean…can we not just go?” Callie asked. “My head is throbbing. And I am sure that Rochford will be well able to find his way home on his own.”

“Why, yes, I suppose.” The duchess looked concerned and came around the table to peer into Callie’s face. “You do look a bit flushed. Perhaps you are coming down with a fever.”

“I am sure Lady Odelia is right. It is simply too much excitement,” Callie replied. “All the dancing and the noise…”

“Come along, then,” the duchess said, nodding in farewell to her companions and starting for the hall. She glanced down at Callie’s hand. “Whatever are you carrying, child?”

“What? Oh. This.” Callie glanced down at the folded cape in her hand, and her fingers clenched more tightly upon it. “It’s nothing. I was holding it for someone. It doesn’t matter.”

Her grandmother looked at her oddly but said nothing more as they continued toward the cloakroom. As they passed the wide double doorway into the main ballroom, they heard Rochford’s voice. “Grandmother, wait.”

The duchess turned, smiling. “Rochford, how fortunate that we met you.”

“Yes,” he replied shortly. He no longer looked quite so thunderous, Callie noted, but his face was set and devoid of expression. He glanced toward her, and she looked away from him without speaking. “It is time to go.”

“So now we are to leave just because you say so?” Callie flared up.

The duchess gave her granddaughter a curious look and said, “But, Callie, dear, you just told me that you wished to go home.”

“I should certainly think so,” Rochford put in with a sharp glance at his sister.

Callie would have liked to protest his tone, as well as his peremptory order that they leave the ball, but she could scarcely do either without looking foolish, she knew, so she merely inclined her head and turned away without another word.

“I am sorry, Sinclair,” her grandmother apologized for her. “I fear she is not feeling herself.”

“Clearly,” the duke replied in a sardonic tone.

A footman brought them their cloaks, and they went down to their carriage. On the way home, the duchess and Rochford exchanged a few remarks about the party, but Callie did not join in the conversation. Her grandmother cast her a puzzled look now and then. Her brother, on the other hand, looked at her as little as she looked at him.

Callie knew that she was behaving childishly, refusing to speak to Rochford or meet his eyes, but she could not bring herself to act as if everything were all right. And she was not sure she could say anything to him about the feelings that roiled inside her chest without bursting into tears of anger—and she refused to do that. Far better, she thought, to seem childish or foolish than to let him think that she was crying because he had hurt her.

When they reached the house, Rochford sprang lithely down from the carriage and reached up to help the duchess, then Callie, who ignored his hand and walked past him into the house. She heard her brother sigh behind her, then turn and follow her up the steps into the foyer. He paused to hand his hat and gloves to the footman as Callie headed for the wide staircase leading up to the next floor, her grandmother moving more slowly behind her.

Rochford started down the hall in the direction of the study, then stopped and turned. “Callie.”

She did not turn around, merely took the first step up the stairs.

“Callie, stop!” His voice rang out more sharply, echoing a little in the vast empty space of the large entryway. As if the sound of his own voice had startled even him a little, he continued in a more modulated tone, “Calandra, please. This is ridiculous. I want to talk to you.”

She turned and looked down at him from her place on the stairs. “I am going up to bed,” she told him coldly.

“Not until we have talked,” he replied. “Come back here. We shall go to my study.”

Callie’s dark eyes, so like her brother’s, flashed with the temper she had been keeping tamped down for the past half hour or more. “What? Now I cannot even go to my bedchamber without your permission? We must obey you in every detail of our lives?”

“Damn it, Callie, you know that is not the case!” Rochford burst out, scowling.

“No? That is all you have done for the last hour—order me about.”

“Callie!” The duchess looked from one to the other, astonished. “Rochford! What is this about? What has happened?”

“It is nothing to be concerned about,” Rochford told her shortly.

“No, nothing except that my brother has suddenly become a tyrant,” Callie lashed out.

Rochford sighed and ran his hand back through his dark hair. “The devil take it, Callie, you know I am not a tyrant. When have I ever been?”

“Never until now,” she retorted, blinking away the tears that filled her eyes.

It was, indeed, Rochford’s past history of kindness and laxity that made his present actions so much harder to bear. He had always been the most loving and easygoing of brothers, and she had treasured their relationship all the more whenever she heard other girls talk about their brothers or fathers, who issued orders and expected obedience.