A Matchmaker for a Marquess

by Christi Caldwell

  He quirked his lips up in a half grin. “They are now.”

  Their eyes locked in a silent battle, and Meredith was the one to relent. “Very well,” she allowed. “I’ll abide by your ever-changing rules.” Not because she craved the secret parts of this grown-up Barry. Rather, she was required to know everything there was to know about him, for the work the duchess had hired Meredith to do.

  Liar.

  As he lowered his mouth close to her ear, her breath again caught, but was muffled by the hammering of her pulse and the din of the crowd. “I love being outside,” he murmured, his words a secret intended only for her discovery. “Not London. But here. Amongst nature where the air is pure and the sky clear. That is why I took you fishing, Meredith.”

  Had he whispered forbidden words to her, Meredith couldn’t have been more captivated, sucked into whatever maddening spell he now wove.

  Gentlemen didn’t prefer anything outside their clubs and their brandy and their billiards and horseflesh.

  “You look surprised, Mare,” he said dryly. Only, a wariness underscored his tone. One that she might have missed had she not been so very attuned to everything about this man. But she was listening, and she noted it.

  “In my experience, gentlemen tend to have singular interests… ones vastly different than matters of nature.” And solely channeled on nothing more than material pleasures. Why, even the man she’d given her heart to years earlier hadn’t been born to those elevated ranks, but had still been largely absorbed in horseflesh.

  Barry smiled, this one a different smile than any of the previous he’d turned on her. There was a faint trace of sadness to it. “I fear I must disappoint you, then, with my more scientific interests.”

  “I’m not disappointed,” she blurted before she could call the words back.

  Neither of them moved. Both going completely motionless with that admission.

  At that faintly breathless appreciation she’d revealed, Meredith prayed for the floor to open or rescue from above. “Not that it matters,” she said.

  His brows came together in a line she didn’t know how to interpret. “That is,” she amended, “it does matter as it pertains to how it might help me find you the ideal wife.”

  Unlike his previous reaction, there could be no doubting the annoyed frown that marred his otherwise perfectly formed lips. He was displeased. And why shouldn’t he be? You’ve reduced him and his future to a job his mother hired you on for. “Not because of the assignment,” she said. Stop talking. Alas, her tongue failed her. “That is, not because of the assignment. Not entirely anyway.” In the end, rescue came from the unlikeliest of places.

  “Meredith!”

  Or rather, people.

  She and Barry turned as one and faced the unexpected intruder. Only… she wasn’t an interloper. Not truly.

  “Emilia,” she said dumbly as the recently married marchioness came to a stop before them. On the heels of that informality, Meredith’s cheeks burned up. “Forgive me.” She sank into a deep curtsy, and when she straightened, it was hard to determine whose glower was greater: Barry’s or Emilia’s.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Emilia spoke at the same time that Barry said, “There’ll be none of that.”

  Her friend, Barry’s sister, looked over to her younger sibling and then nodded approvingly. “Precisely. There’ll be none of that. We’re friends.”

  Was that what they were? “Friends,” she murmured, testing that word. They certainly had been. But friends were also there for each other through the darkest moments. Friends shared each other’s lives.

  Emilia smiled so wide her cheeks dimpled. “Indeed.” How easily she stated her words as fact. In more than ten years, what had she and Emilia shared? “Isn’t that right, Barry?”

  And yet, for Emilia’s insistence, a lifetime had passed. A lifetime ago, she and Emilia certainly had been the closest of friends. Nay, they’d been like sisters, their bond forged in all but blood. Did friendship simply… resume as though years hadn’t passed, filled with a lifetime of hurts and moments missed, moments they’d never shared? “Thank you,” she said.

  As Emilia slid her arm through Meredith’s, she joined them in a way that angled Barry out.

  He bowed his head. “I’ll leave you two to your company.”

  An appeal for him to remain sprang to her lips, but remained unspoken. With Barry, there was an ease and comfort that she didn’t know with… anyone.

  She searched for some hint of regret layered within his deep baritone. But his tonality, along with his chiseled features, was carefully masked.

  How singularly odd that he’d once been the underfoot, bothersome younger brother whom she and Emilia had gone out of their way to avoid… and now it was his company Meredith craved.

  She resisted the urge to shift back and forth on her feet, feeling like a stranger for the first time in the company of the woman before her. Alas, Meredith was a matchmaker. A grown woman, well-versed on conversing… with anyone.

  They spoke at the same time.

  “You’ve been w—”

  “Meredith, I—”

  Emilia cleared her throat. “I’ve been very well. Though, that hasn’t always been the case since…” Since they’d last spoken? Since the other woman had neatly cut Meredith from her life? Her pretty blue eyes drifted briefly toward the floor. “I fear I’ve not been the best of friends,” Emilia murmured. “In fact, I fear I’ve not been even a remotely good one.”

  No. The tale of Emilia’s broken betrothal and subsequent broken heart should have come from her friend, and instead, Meredith had been reduced to reading those details in the scandal sheets. All the while, she’d been caring for her dying father.

  And yet…

  “I could have reached out, as well,” she said softly. It was an acknowledgment she’d not made before this moment, even to herself. It hadn’t been Emilia’s or Barry’s fault that the duke and duchess had turned out Meredith’s father. But it had been Meredith’s fault for resenting the friends she’d grown up with, when she could have reached out. “We both could have been more.” And with the secrets Meredith had retained and the parts of herself she’d withheld, Meredith now saw she also hadn’t been the best of friends. “We grew up as children do,” Meredith said gently. “We went on with lives of our own. It is the way of life,” she added, that reminder for the bitter person she’d been when she’d come here.

  “It is not the right way,” Emilia said, looking at her squarely. “Not in real friendships.”

  “Perhaps not,” she allowed. “But it does explain how two people”—as close as sisters—“drift apart.” Long ago, Meredith had been besieged with resentment at how easily she’d been snipped from the fabric of the Aberdeen family. Now, she accepted the change that time invariably wrought on all.

  “How unchanged you are.” Emilia’s murmurings held a wistful quality.

  How wrong her friend proved in this. Meredith had been changed in every way. She wasn’t at all the girl she’d been. Except, when you were with Barry, he remembered all the joy you found before your heart was broken and work became your purpose. “I’m not the same woman I was,” she said softly. No matter what Emilia saw, or thought she saw, a heart twice broken—first by love and then by the loss of a father—left a person irrevocably altered. “Time changes us all.”

  “Yes. It does.”

  They fell to a comfortable silence, both looking out at the guests mingling about the room. And Meredith found herself missing the company of another. Odd that as a child she’d gone out of her way to avoid Barry Aberdeen, and now she wanted nothing more than to slip from Emilia’s side and…

  What are you thinking?

  Barry was the subject of her work here. Any fascination with him and his attentions was folly.

  And then she found him. Several inches taller than most guests, he and his tousled ash-gold curls towered over the crowd.

  As if he felt her stare, Barry quirked his lips up,
setting her heart to dancing. And every reminder she’d just given herself rapidly faded. For this was not Barry’s magical smile that he turned on her. This was the rogue’s one. The dangerous one.

  Heat formed low in her belly.

  He winked.

  Meredith flared her eyes. Why, the scoundrel. He well knew the effect he was having on her. And here you stand, ogling him like—

  “Are you well, Meredith?”

  “No,” she muttered. She was not well. She was… She whipped her focus back to Emilia. “Why would I not be?” she squeaked. “I was just…” And then she took in her friend’s cocked head, and it hit her. Emilia hadn’t been speaking of this moment. “Oh,” she blurted. “You didn’t mean in this instance. You meant overall.” And with every incoherent prattling, Emilia’s brow grew increasingly befuddled. “Since we’ve been apart.”

  If her friend angled her head any more, it was going to be touching her shoulder. “Are you… unwell now?” her childhood friend ventured.

  “No!” Her voice emerged high-pitched to her own ears. “Why would I be?” Stop! Drawing on the reserve that had built her reputation, Meredith gave her throat a slight clearing. “I’ve been… well.” For it was true. For so long, Meredith hadn’t been. She’d had her heart broken, and then on the heels of that she’d lost her father. She’d since picked up the pieces, which was why she was able to now give the assurance she did. Of course, well and happy were altogether different matters.

  Emilia covered Meredith’s right palm with her own. “We should not let time or life separate us again. I want us to be friends once more.”

  She opened her mouth to remind her that they’d always been friends, but her friend cut in.

  “I mean friends who are there for one another and share their dreams and hopes and happiness.” There was a slight pause. “And the heartbreaks, too,” she said softly. “I’d have us return to the way we were.”

  A ball of emotion lodged in her throat, and she struggled to speak around it. How alone she’d been. For so long. “I’d like that very much.” And then proving just how little Emilia had, in fact, changed, even with the title of marchioness affixed to her name, there, amidst a room full of Society’s most prominent members, Emilia hugged Meredith.

  She let her arms hang by her sides for a moment and then returned the embrace. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  Meredith briefly closed her eyes. She had been so consumed by her resentment of the Aberdeens and lost in her work that she’d allowed herself to think the friendships she’d once had weren’t of importance. Now she realized she’d been lying to herself. She’d convinced herself she was fine enough without Emilia and Rowena and Constance, but ultimately she had missed them all.

  And Barry. You missed him, too.

  The rapidly increasing noise about the room penetrated the reunion she’d thought would never be, recalling her to the present. And her role and reputation. For being reunited in friendship with Emilia meant nothing for the work she did or the clients who’d hire her.

  Meredith stepped out of her friend’s arms.

  “I’ve noted the time you’ve been spending with Barry,” the other woman said without preamble.

  Had Emilia have yanked the Aubusson carpet out from under Meredith’s feet and sent her toppling, she couldn’t have been more thrown off-balance. “What?” she croaked, glancing frantically about. But the guests remained immersed in other exchanges of far greater interest than an old, unmarried matchmaker and the married marchioness she spoke to. If Emilia had noted that, it was likely that other people had as well. All her muscles tensed at the thought that the stolen moments she’d had with Barry had not been so very private, after all.

  Emilia’s gaze remained trained on her family’s guests, and when she spoke, she did so through lips that barely moved. “That is, I observed you both speaking a short while ago.” Some of the tension left Meredith. “And unless I was wrong in my assumptions this morn when Barry was missing from his usual early morn breakfast, he was, in fact, with you.”

  Just like that, all her muscles went taut once again. Her friend had noted much. Too much.

  “I…” She had no idea what to say. She had not one single coherent response to explain that she’d been off fishing… and kissing… not-so-little Barry Aberdeen.

  Emilia glanced over. “Of course, I’m well aware of why my mother has asked you here.”

  “You are?” A wave of giddy relief swept her. Her friend hadn’t been wondering after Meredith’s dangerous fascination—and even more dangerous agreement—with Barry but rather, she spoke of Meredith’s work with the young marquess.

  Emilia gave a flounce of her curls. “Come, it’s been a long while, but surely you’d neither forget nor underestimate my ability to ferret out my mother’s plans.”

  “No.” The burgeoning relief brought her lips up in a smile. “I’ve not forgotten.”

  “And though I’m generally not of a like opinion as my mother in, well”—Emilia’s nose scrunched up—“anything, I do happen to agree with her intentions for Barry.”

  The duchess’s intentions, which were, in fact… marriage.

  It was a sobering reminder, when it shouldn’t be, of the ultimate expected outcome for Barry at the end of Meredith’s time here.

  Her friend went on, wholly unaware of the tumult wrought by that reminder.

  “I’m not sure if you’ve been aware of the reputation Barry has earned?”

  “I…” A memory traipsed in of the rogue in the floral gardens reading from Byron. Meredith was well aware of Barry’s effect on women. Not even she, a straitlaced, proper matchmaker and companion, was immune to his charm. “I’ve not really had any interactions with him since we were younger,” she lied.

  Taking her by the arm, Emilia steered them deeper into the corner, and for one horrifying moment, she believed her friend intended to call her out as the liar she was. “It’s not good, Meredith,” her friend said bluntly. “It is not good at all. He is… a rogue.”

  The other woman looked at Meredith as though she expected some grand reaction or response to that revelation. “Surely not,” she allowed.

  “Indeed.” Emilia dropped her voice to the faintest of scandalized whispers. “He visits his clubs and rides. And enjoys spirits. His interests are quite singular, really.”

  Only, they weren’t. The world—and not long ago, Meredith—believed that to be the case about Barry. “I’m sure that isn’t all there is to him,” she said quietly, unable to stifle the defense of him even in the name of self-preservation. Even if she revealed more than she should.

  “There isn’t,” Emilia countered, her tone a blend of confidence and frustration, and that only stirred the latter sentiment in Meredith. “What the world sees of my brother is, in fact, exactly what he is.”

  How singularly unfair that the same world that had shamed Barry Aberdeen for his fascination of plant life and gardening should now condemn him for living the life they expected of him.

  “My brother would greatly benefit from a happy marriage,” Emilia remarked, all older-sister-like in her pronouncement. “And there’s no one I’d trust more to help him find a wife suitable for him than you.”

  Just like the duchess, Emilia thought Meredith would be the one to help maneuver Barry into a respectable union. “I’m honored,” she murmured. Or she should be. Given the time they’d been apart and the strangers they’d grown into, it was a remarkable display of trust from Emilia for the work Meredith did, and she should take it as the greatest of compliments. Instead, she found herself focusing on just one aspect of her friend’s assumption: the idea of Barry married. “I’d not just see him wed anyone for the sake of marriage.” And certainly not to some ruthless Diamond more intent on a title than a happy union.

  Her friend drew back like she’d been struck. “Never,” she said, her voice aghast. “But you can help him find someone that
would make him happy.”

  Her belly twisted in uncomfortable knots that made as little sense as her response to Emilia’s praise.

  More than half fearing her friend would prove perceptive and see things that Meredith didn’t want seen, she looked out.

  And found him.

  Barry stood alongside Lady Agatha Clarence. The woman was a spinster, firmly on the shelf, here at the duchess’s party as a companion for her younger, more beautiful sister. And yet, despite all that, Barry didn’t seek out the lovelier Lady Ivy, but the older sister. Whatever it was he now said to the lady earned a boisterous laugh.

  The woman had not been at the top of the duchess’s list for her son. She’d not been even at the bottom of it. And yet, known for her charitable work and effortless work running her family’s estates, she was unlike any of the simpering debutantes and, therefore, would make Barry a good future duchess.

  For some unexplainable reason, Meredith was filled with the urge to cry.

  “My mother is motioning to me,” Emilia muttered, thankfully drawing Meredith’s focus from Barry and over to the duchess.

  Only, it wasn’t solely the duchess with a gaze on Emilia. “As is your husband,” she said gently. The other woman’s features instantly softened. Warmth lit her eyes, and just like that, the tall, dark-haired marquess across the room transformed Emilia into the bright-eyed girl she’d once been. “Go,” she urged gently.

  Emilia tugged her hand. “Come with me.”

  “I…”

  The duchess clapped her hands, immediately compelling the room to silence.

  “The games are commencing,” Emilia persisted. “You always enjoyed blind man’s bluff.”

  Yes, when she’d been a girl. Just as she’d enjoyed fishing.

  She’d simply forgotten how much joy she’d found in those simple activities. Lady Agatha was being called to the center of the floor.

  Lady Agatha, who just then said something to those around her that set laughter up amongst the group… Barry Aberdeen included.