The Wedding Challenge by Candace Camp Read Free Book Online Page B

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