A Matchmaker for a Marquess

by Christi Caldwell

  Her task which was, in fact… him.

  “Barry?” Concern wreathed his sister’s voice.

  And yet, Barry was unable to formulate a response.

  Fire sparked to life and quickly sizzled through his veins. A growl built in his chest and climbed into his throat. Ignoring his sister as she called after him, he quit the parlor and went in search of the little traitor.

  Chapter 7

  If Meredith were being honest with herself following the duchess’s formal dinner, when the party had begun to gather for the evening’s games of blind man’s bluff, she’d wanted to join in the fun.

  She’d wanted to enter that same room where she’d played that same game a lifetime ago. She’d wanted to wander around, a silk cloth draped over her eyes, breathless with excitement and anticipation.

  She’d of course made her excuses.

  Because servants didn’t take part in those festivities.

  Spinsters also didn’t take part in those games, not without earning looks of censure or pity.

  But she’d wanted to.

  Lying in a bed she’d slept in so many times, her hands clasped atop her chest, Meredith opened and closed the locket at her throat.

  Click-click-click-click.

  When was the last time she’d taken part in any frivolous activity? When was the last time she’d felt breathlessly excited about… anything or anyone? Or smiled or laughed?

  Click-click-click.

  Meredith abruptly stopped.

  She let her necklace fall.

  Why, she could not call forth a single moment after she’d departed Berkshire. For not long after they’d gone, she’d discovered that her father was sick. His had been an illness in his mind that had progressed in a way that had required her to devote the whole of her days to care for him. Then, after that, she’d immediately begun the process of finding employment and building her business. There’d been no time for anything but work.

  So the happiest memories she carried were of this place.

  She braced for the memory of Patrin to traipse in and, along with it, the old familiar hurt that had dulled but lingered.

  And, this time, it did not come.

  For… she had been breathless… and not so very long ago.

  Recently, in fact.

  Whoa, love…

  Her breath grew shallow at the memory of Barry’s husky laugh and the sough of his breath. Her hand reflexively went back to the chain at her throat.

  “Stop it.” She whispered the command into the quiet, to make it more real. She’d been a fool where another man was concerned and had been wise to never trust another thereafter.

  Lusting after Barry as she did now? Was pure folly that jeopardized the stability his parents had proffered, all of which hung contingent upon Meredith securing a bride for Barry.

  A bride selected from the ladies who were engaging in the games that Meredith wished to be part of.

  There were no games for people like Meredith, however, because… well, in short, there was no time for anything else. As such, she’d believed herself incapable of enjoying the childish pursuits. Barry wouldn’t. Barry, prone to smile and laugh, would never make apologies for taking his pleasure where and when he would.

  Barry, who was also playing blind man’s bluff with some entirely suitable-for-him young lady.

  An unexpected frisson wound its way through her, sharp and green and biting and feeling very much like—

  Her bedroom door exploded open, and she shrieked. The panel hit the wall with such force it bounced back and nearly caught Barry in the face. And it would have if he hadn’t slammed his foot out to keep it from closing.

  “B-Barry?” Meredith burrowed under her blankets. With a dangerous silence made more volatile by the still-thrumming echo of the slammed door, he slipped inside.

  “Hullo, Meredith,” he purred on a silken whisper somehow more terrifying than the violent entry he’d made.

  “Leave my rooms a-at once,” she ordered in a more measured whisper, even if it emerged more squeak than anything. She was mindful that any guest or family member or servant might happen by, and her reputation would be shattered, along with her career. Even if it was just… Barry.

  “Oh, do you know, Miss Durant? I don’t believe I shall.”

  “Y-you should not be here, Barry,” she whispered, scrambling to her knees and clutching the coverlet close to her pounding heart.

  That managed the seemingly impossible: He stopped his forward approach. “Ohhh,” he said almost conversationally, as if they conversed over tea and biscuits and not in the middle of her bedchambers with Meredith attired in nothing more than her nightgown. “And where should I be?” Barry dipped his brows menacingly. “Below stairs with my mother’s distinguished guests?”

  She nodded. “Precisely.”

  “Forgive me.” He sketched a bow. “I should return, then.”

  “At least you’re now being reasonable.”

  And then, his gaze burning into her, he reached back and turned the lock with a decisive click that sealed them away together.

  “You were being sarcastic,” she blurted, clutching her coverlet all the tighter.

  “I was.”

  Barry started forward. The candlelight played off his sharp, chiseled features. When had he become this… beautiful?

  “You’ve gone silent, Meredith Durant. Feeling guilty, perhaps?”

  “I’ve nothing to feel guilty about.” Aside from this breathless fascination with him, her best friend’s younger brother who also happened to be her charge. Her heart hammered erratically in her chest.

  It was solely from fear for his reputation and her own. That was all it was.

  Why, as he stalked forward with sleek, pantherlike strides, did that feel like the greatest of lies?

  “Do you have anything to say to me, madam?” he purred, completing the image in her mind of the great Bengal tiger she’d observed alongside one of her charges at the Royal Menagerie.

  Meredith darted her tongue out, wetting suddenly dry lips.

  Barry’s gaze sharpened on her mouth, increasing the beat of her heart.

  “Th-this is hardly the kind of visit f-from a childhood friend.”

  “Ah, but then, does a friendship truly remain if one friend betrays the other?” He dropped a knee on her mattress, and Meredith, hugging her blankets close to her modest nightdress, scrambled back. She became tangled in her covers and fell back on her haunches.

  “Th-there’s been no betrayal,” she denied, breathless as she feinted left.

  Barry matched her movements. “No?”

  Meredith moved right, but he immediately anticipated and followed suit. “Of course not.”

  “Are you here with the intent of finding me a suitable wife?”

  Meredith stilled. “Oh. That.” He would be one of those lofty lords who’d fight the parson’s trap.

  His brows dipped. “Oh. That?” he repeated slowly, and she’d have to be stupid to fail to hear the satiny warning there.

  Her foot snagged the underside of her hem, and with a shriek, Meredith tumbled backward.

  Barry was immediately there. In one fluid movement, he’d scrambled across the bed and caught her with her head and back dipped precariously over the side. He guided her back onto the mattress and remained there, effectively framing her between his elbows, trapping her. He lowered his brow to hers.

  Meredith’s heart beat erratically.

  At her near fall? Or his body’s nearness?

  The safer answer was the former. She secretly feared, however, it was the latter.

  Alas, with the dangerous narrowing of his gaze that he now worked over her face, that awareness remained entirely one-sided. “I am not pleased with you, madam.”

  Her chest rose and fell at the press of his body against hers.

  “I can see that,” she whispered. “And g-given that, I’d expect you would have let me happily fall,” she said in a bid to be blasé, the tremble in her
voice making a mockery of her efforts.

  Barry lowered his face closer. “Ah,” he murmured, closer still, his breath warm against her lips, a satiny soft caress.

  Her lashes fluttered. He is going to kiss me. And she’d not been kissed in so long. The kisses she’d received had been hasty and sloppy, but something in Barry’s embrace said his mouth would teach her all the reasons some ladies traded their reputations for sin. Meredith tipped her head back to receive that kiss.

  “But that is the difference,” he murmured. “I’m not the ogre, madam.”

  The… ogre.

  The cool admonishment had the same effect as the cold water he’d managed to cajole the serving maids into substituting in Meredith’s bath some fifteen years earlier. “Are you calling me an ogre?”

  “No.” He paused. “I already called you one.”

  Meredith pushed against his chest. Lusting after him, indeed. “Get off me at once, Barry Aberdeen.”

  Alas, it was hard to muster the chilling matchmaker tones she’d used on improper gentlemen approaching her charges, when one’s night shift was rucked about her thighs while a man held one trapped.

  “Or what? You’ll scream for help? That would certainly ruin your plans, as well as my mother’s.”

  Oh, she’d had quite enough of this. Meredith brought her knee up and caught Barry hard between the legs. Groaning, he collapsed atop her and muttered something that sounded very close to “ogre” in her ear.

  Meredith grunted, struggling to draw air into her lungs.

  Or rather, they both struggled to draw breath.

  Meredith bucked her hips until he rolled off of her onto his side. “Furthermore,” she carried on, slightly winded, “I’ll have you know that the proper term for a female ogre is, in fact, ogress.”

  *

  Barry didn’t know whether he wished to lambaste the chit for the violent blow and tart tongue or kiss her.

  With her delicate cheeks awash with color and her plaited hair draped over an exposed shoulder, she bore no hint of the straitlaced woman he’d reconnected with that morn.

  Even still writhing from her well-placed knee, this spirited, fearless version of her earlier self proved captivating. “Very apt moniker for you,” he muttered through the pain.

  Meredith swung her legs over the bed, and her white skirts fluttered about her ankles, but not before he caught a delectable flash of long legs and lush thighs perfect for a man to sink his fingers into.

  He swallowed a groan and rolled onto his back, forcing his gaze up to the cherubs silently jeering him with their knowing smiles for the devil he was.

  “Furthermore,” Meredith was saying as she sprinted across the room, her gold chain whipping about as she did, “you are being unreasonable.”

  That brought him upright. “I’m unreasonable?”

  She grabbed her wrapper from the back of the chair at her vanity and shrugged into it. “Yes. Un-reas-on-able.” She broke the word up into five syllables. “You are nearly thirty.”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  “A ducal heir.”

  “Am I? I didn’t know,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

  “You’re responsible for carrying on one of the oldest titles in the realm. You have families dependent upon you, including your own, for their security and safety. And as such, it makes entirely perfect sense that you’d marry.” On a huff, she belted her wrapper at the waist.

  The rub of it was, the infuriating woman was correct—on all scores and all points. Only… “How very cold you’ve become, Meredith,” Barry murmured. He stood and started a slow cross over to her.

  Meredith stiffened and followed his approach with wary eyes. “I’m not cold. I’m realistic, Barry.”

  What accounted for that wariness that had not been there before? It served as another reminder, to his sister’s point, that Meredith Durant, raised like a daughter in this household, had been forgotten, and her life since remained a mystery.

  He stopped before her. That wariness deepened in her eyes, and suspicion wreathed her delicate features. “Is that all I am, then? Hmm?” Unable to resist exploring the texture of her skin, he dusted his knuckles along her cheek. Satin. Pure, unblemished satin. Smooth and warm to the touch. “A title?”

  “Of course not.”

  Did he imagine the threadbare quality of her whisper-soft response?

  “And yet, you’ve a single purpose in being here. Finding me a suitable bride.” Barry placed his lips close to hers, and her breath caught audibly. He thrilled at the hint of her desire. “Rather mercenary of you, Meredith.”

  She brought her palms up and pressed them against his chest, and his heartbeat accelerated under her light touch. “Th-there can be more.”

  There can be more… For the whisper of a moment, he believed she spoke… of them.

  But then…

  “I’m not here to see that you only wed for rank, but rather with genuine affection for the woman whom you marry.”

  It all came rushing back. The fury that had sent him flying from the parlor and storming her chambers. His lips peeled back in an involuntary sneer. “Do not present your being here as though it is some generous bid of kindness on your part, some quest to see me happy.”

  Coupled with the rage swirling in his chest were shades of hurt he didn’t wish to feel. Long ago, he’d realized—and then accepted—that all the world saw nothing more in him than his future title. But Meredith Durant, the girl who’d been like a big sister, had never been among those numbers.

  Surprise lit her pretty brown eyes. “But I do wish to see you happy,” she said softly.

  How very convincing she sounded, as though she believed that very lie. “Ah, yes. And that is why you wished to know about my pastimes, is it not, madam?” He’d shared with her a passion he’d kept from all, content to give the world the image they craved of him. “Because you genuinely cared?” God, what a fool he was for confiding anything in her. Giving his head a disgusted shake, he stepped around her and made for the door.

  “Barry, I did ask because I wished to know,” she called, a strident edge there that rang with shades of truth. Shades of truth he’d be a fool to believe. “That is… at first, you are correct. I was thinking that I might gather information.” His shoulders tensed. “But only because I thought to help you make a match with someone who you might enjoy spending the remainder of your days with.”

  She’d given him the truth. “Good evening, Miss Durant,” he said coolly, striding for the door.

  There was the faint rustle of cotton skirts, and with an alacrity he’d forgotten her capable of, and admired her for as a child, she beat him to the door and placed herself against the panel.

  He folded his arms. “Step out of the way, Miss Durant.”

  “No.” Meredith lifted her chin. “Not until you hear me out. I did seek information earlier for the reasons I gave. But only partly, Barry. I…” She laid her hands against the door. “I wanted to know who you’ve become.” She paused. “Other than a rogue, that is.” Her gaze met his with a directness so very different than the sly slide-away glances of the women who’d sought his favor. “I don’t believe that is all you’ve been or become.”

  She was wrong. And because of his foolish pride, he couldn’t bring himself to admit as much. “Why?” he asked instead.

  “Because…” Some emotion glittered in her eyes.

  Did she recall the night she’d wept in his arms? When he’d just held her and then said goodbye?

  In the end, Meredith offered a casual shrug. “Because… I knew you.”

  Neither of them truly knew each other. Not any longer.

  But he wanted to find out. For some maddening, inexplicable reason, he yearned to loosen her plait and find the secrets she, too, carried.

  “Very well.”

  Meredith didn’t blink for several moments, then her eyes went saucer wide. “What?” she blurted, displaying shades of the unrestrained imp she’d been.
>
  He repressed a smile. “If I’m going to allow you to select my bride…”

  She gasped and touched a hand to her mouth in a belated bid to stifle that exhalation. “You’re going to let me serve as matchmaker for you?”

  “If,” he went on dryly. “I said if.” He didn’t know whether to be further entranced by the happiness softening her features or wholly insulted by what had brought it about. “If I allow you to pick my bride, there will be terms.”

  “Of course,” she said, frantically nodding. “Of course. However, I’m not selecting your bride. I’m helping you find a suitable match.”

  “Meredith,” he said warningly.

  “Yes, yes! Right, then.” Meredith darted around him, and muttering to herself, she found her way to her valise.

  He stared on, bemused, as she dug out a notepad and pencil and remained perched on her haunches.

  She cleared her throat. “Very well. As you were.”

  This time, he didn’t fight it. Barry laughed, his shoulders shaking with amusement, until tears leaked from his eyes.

  “Hush,” she whispered. “Someone will hear you.”

  He couldn’t care if the King of England himself had requested his presence with his arrival. “What in God’s name is th-that?” Through his vision blurred with tears, he caught the endearingly confused look as Meredith searched the room. He pointed.

  Meredith followed his gesture. “My notepad?” she asked slowly.

  His laughter redoubled. “God, you are positively m-mercenary, after all,” he guffawed. “Keeping”—it was too much—“nooooootes.” Barry clutched his side. “Oomph.”

  That effectively quelled his humor, and in the silence that echoed, it was hard to say who was more surprised by the book he’d taken square to the chest.

  As one, they looked to the small volume lying on its now-bruised spine. “Why, did you throw your notepad at me?”

  “No,” she exclaimed, sprinting over, her bare feet peeking out as she raced.

  Nimble as she might be, Barry beat her to it. He scooped up the pad. “I’m fair certain you did.” Oh, this was going to be a good deal more fun than he’d anticipated.