Candace Camp - The Wedding Challenge

CANDACE CAMP

“Lively and energetic secondaries round out the formidable leads, and…the mystery surrounding Gideon’s parentage continues to unravel until the very last pages, assuring readers a surprise ending well worth waiting for.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Bridal Quest

“Camp delivers another beautifully written charmer, sure to please fans of historicals, with enough modern appeal to pull in some contemporary romance readers.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Marriage Wager

“A clever mystery adds intrigue to this lively and gently humorous tale, which simmers with well-handled sexual tension.”

—Library Journal on A Dangerous Man

“The talented Camp has deftly mixed romance and intrigue to create another highly enjoyable

Regency romance.”

—Booklist on An Independent Woman

“[An] entertaining, well-written Victorian romantic mystery.”

—The Best Reviews on An Unexpected Pleasure

“A smart, fun-filled romp.”

—Publishers Weekly on Impetuous

CANDACECAMP

The Bridal Quest

The Marriage Wager

Promise Me Tomorrow

No Other Love

A Stolen Heart

A Dangerous Man

An Independent Woman

An Unexpected Pleasure

So Wild a Heart

The Hidden Heart

Swept Away

Winterset

Beyond Compare

Mesmerized

Impetuous

Indiscreet

Impulse

Scandalous

Suddenly

Watch for the next installment of

Candace Camp’s Matchmakers series

The Courtship Dance

Coming February 2009

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Dear Reader,

The Wedding Challenge is the third book in the MATCHMAKER series and was probably the most fun to write. (And, yes, there are books that, no matter how much I love them, are not fun while I’m writing them.)

However, this book was like telling a story about old friends, since I’ve written about Callie and her brother and Francesca in the first two books. Callie is a little younger than most of my heroines, and I enjoyed presenting her youthful enthusiasm and joie de vivre. And even though it’s set long ago and far away, with customs and manners that are years removed from us, I think that the challenges Callie faces will be something that most of us women can relate to.

So choose your favorite reading place and settle down for a few hours with some good friends. Happy reading!

Best wishes,

Candace Camp

For Leslie Wainger, editor extraordinaire,

for her wisdom and her talent for sharing it.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

LADY ODELIA PENCULLY’S BIRTHDAY BALL was the event of the Season—even though the Season had not yet begun. Not to have been invited was a cause for deep social embarrassment. To have been invited and not attend was unthinkable.

Either by blood or by birth, Lady Pencully was related to half the most powerful and wealthy families in England. The daughter of a duke and a countess by marriage, she was a pillar of Society, and it was rare that anyone dared cross her. During her heyday, she had ruled over the ton as she did her family, with an acid tongue and an iron will, and even though she had, with age, remained more and more at her country estate, rarely coming to London even for the Season, she was still a force to be reckoned with. A prodigious correspondent, she kept up to date with the latest scandals and news, and was never averse to dashing off a note to anyone whom she felt needed the benefit of her advice.

So this year, when she announced that she would celebrate her eighty-fifth year of life with a grand ball, it immediately became the one event that no one of any social standing or pretenses thereof could risk missing, even if it was in London in January, the most unfashionable and difficult time of the year. Neither snow nor cold nor the difficulties of opening up a town house for a brief visit could hold back the ladies of the ton, who comforted themselves with the fact that at least it would not be true, as it usually was in January, that no one would be in town, since everyone who mattered would be coming to Lady Odelia’s party.

Among those who drove into London from their country estates was the Duke of Rochford, along with his sister, Lady Calandra, and their grandmother, the dowager Duchess of Rochford. The duke, one of the rare few who would have dared to refuse Lady Odelia, had been disinclined to do so. He was, after all, her great-nephew, and he was a man who believed in carrying out his family responsibilities. Besides, there was business he needed to attend to in London.

The dowager duchess had come because, while she had never really liked her late husband’s older sister, Lady Pencully was one of the few people left of their generation—though, the duchess was careful to point out, Lady Pencully was a number of years older than she—and was, moreover, one of the even fewer number of women whom the duchess considered of equal standing. Lady Odelia was, quite simply, one of the duchess’s set, despite Odelia’s sometimes rather shocking lack of manners.

Of the three in the carriage waiting in the long line of carriages creeping along Cavendish Crescent toward Lady Pencully’s door, only the youngest, Lady Calandra, was looking forward with eagerness to the evening.

At twenty-three years of age, Callie, as she was known to those close to her, had been out for five years, so a London ball, especially one given by an octogenarian relative, would not normally have been cause for excitement. However, she had just spent several long months at the Lilles family country estate, Marcastle, months made even longer and drearier by an inordinate number of drab rainy days and the constant presence of her grandmother.

In the usual way of things, her grandmother was accustomed to residing a good part of the year in her home in Bath, happily reigning over the slow and genteel social scene of that community, and only occasionally, particularly during the Season, coming up to London to make sure that her granddaughter was conducting herself properly.

However, at the end of the last Season, the dowager duchess had decided that it was well past time for Lady Calandra to be married, and she had taken it as her primary occupation to get the girl engaged—to the proper sort of gentleman, of course. To that end, she had sacrificed her usual winter course in Bath for the cold drafts of the historic family estate in Norfolk.

Callie, therefore, had spent the last few months cooped up by the inclement weather, listening to the old lady’s strictures on her behavior, admonitions of her duty to marry, and opinions regarding the suitability of the various peers of the realm.