A Matchmaker for a Marquess

by Christi Caldwell

  Meredith fisted her palms tight at her sides. “Go,” she urged. “I am going to retire for the night.”

  Her friend looked as though she might protest, but glanced over to the still-waiting marquess.

  Seeing the other woman wavering, Meredith offered a smile. “We will speak again later,” she promised. “I’m here for the remainder of the house party.” All twelve days remaining, where she’d serve in the role of matchmaker to Barry and—

  A blindfolded Lady Agatha lunged and nearly caught Barry.

  Envy—vicious, green, unpleasant, and unwelcome—coiled tenaciously inside her chest.

  “If you’re sure,” Emilia said.

  She was entirely sure she wished to leave now. “I am.”

  Thankfully, Emilia took herself off, hurrying across the room, sidestepping the furniture that had been shoved out of the way and the guests dancing to escape Lady Agatha’s outstretched arms.

  Just then, the young lady feinted left and caught Barry with an exuberant laugh.

  Barry reached up to help the young woman out of the makeshift blindfold, and those tendrils of jealousy wound all the tighter inside Meredith.

  She forced herself to study the pair of them. She made herself look with an objective eye at Barry and the potential bride before him. That was how she’d built a career and a reputation—by carefully noting one’s subject and then inevitably recording everything that might help her successfully maneuver her client into a prosperous marriage.

  Only, why, watching the dark-haired spinster and Barry, could she not bring herself to focus on her work?

  Instead, she remained attuned to just one detail about the gentleman: his lips. They would tell her everything there was to know about his thoughts about Lady Agatha Clarence. The occupants of the room and the din that crowd created faded into a muffled hum of noise in her ears.

  And then he smiled.

  This was not the rogue’s smile. Or the dangerous one. But rather, the magical one.

  With that, Meredith quit the rooms. The laughter of the duchess’s guests echoed from the parlor, dogging her footsteps as she went.

  Meredith reached the crystal doors that led to the duchess’s prized rose gardens and let herself outside.

  The whisper of cool hung on the night air, and she welcomed it. The air proved invigorating. It cleared her head and restored her.

  Tomorrow, when she and Barry resumed their meetings, she’d do well to remember the purpose of her presence here. She resolved that there’d no longer be any confusion about her role… or about Barry Aberdeen’s fate once she was gone.

  Chapter 10

  After three rounds of blind man’s bluff, himself once in the role of blind man, Barry managed to make his escape.

  His footfalls echoed along the darkened corridors, softly marking the path he’d taken.

  Generally, he’d not found the games at his mother’s parties agonizing. Had even enjoyed them, an admission he’d never make to a soul and would take to his grave.

  Only, this time, this night, he’d found himself restless, eager to quit the rooms and the festivities and games. There’d only ever been one place that brought him a sense of calm. A place he’d stumbled upon during discourse between his father and mother, the duke lamenting his son’s peculiar interests. After that, Barry had stolen away only when the world wasn’t looking.

  As Barry reached the double doors leading to the duchess’s prized gardens, however, he did not delude himself into believing his desire to escape had anything to do with his unnatural fascination with botany or the tedium of the evening’s festivities.

  Rather, he’d retired for the evening because he’d been consumed with thoughts of one person. The one guest who’d not been present.

  Or rather, in this case, the one woman.

  The very woman who was here even now.

  Barry remained frozen, his fingers on the door handle.

  With her back to him, Meredith sat on a small, wrought-iron bench that, despite the rust that had begun to chip at the once-neat white paint, retained a place in the duchess’s gardens. The tips of her toes brushed the first row of his mother’s prized tulips.

  She would be here.

  There was an odd sense of rightness to her presence—not just in this place, but at Berkshire Manor—a rightness that went back to Meredith’s connection with Barry’s family. She’d been gone entirely too long. Slowly depressing the handle, Barry opened the door and slipped outside. She gave no indication she’d heard him.

  With her unaware of his presence, Barry drank in the sight of her. The moon cast a soft, natural light around her, wreathing her head with a pale halo that played off her dark tresses. Those dark strands stood in stark contrast to her cream-white skin, which had been satiny soft to his touch. His fingers curled reflexively around the handle as the memory of Meredith in his arms, and the sudden need to again know her in that way, took hold.

  You pathetic wretch. What manner of rogue are you? Lusting after Meredith Durant… a woman who’d been raised alongside him like another sister. His father’s late friend’s only child.

  There were a thousand and one reasons to quit his silent, appreciative study of her. So why did the task prove so bloody difficult? What was it about this woman that compelled him?

  Somewhere in the distance, a night heron called, cutting into the disquiet wrought over his inexplicable fascination. The bird’s muted cries were met with the immediate chitters of its mate.

  Quietly, Barry pushed the door closed behind him. “Miss Durant. How very unexpected seeing you here,” he said quietly. And it was. The gardens had never been a place he’d found her as a girl. But then, generally, she’d always been off with Emilia, and Barry had been the forgotten afterthought of a brother.

  Meredith’s narrow shoulders went taut, and she climbed to her feet so quickly that she sent gravel skittering into the tulip garden.

  “Barry,” she greeted.

  He smiled. “Not surprised to see me, Meredith?” he asked, drifting over. He stopped on the opposite end of the graveled path, directly across from her.

  She leaned forward, far enough to keep distance between them, but close enough that he easily spied the mischief dancing in her eyes. “I heard you.”

  He scoffed. “Impossible.”

  “You were never the quietest child, Barry.”

  “Untrue. I was eminently good at it. Need I remind you of your heart-of-a-duke pledge I overheard?”

  Bright crimson circles filled her cheeks. “Hush.”

  “Or your plans to steal your first kiss?”

  Meredith gasped and slapped her palms over those ever-brightening cheeks. “Barry!” She stole a frantic glance about.

  When was the last time he’d so enjoyed himself? “Forgive me.” He grinned. “To steal two kisses from two men… so you had basis of comparison…”

  Meredith groaned, muttering something into her hands that sounded a good deal like a threat upon his life and manhood. Then, suddenly, she let her arms drop to her sides, brought her chin up, and was once more very much the driven matchmaker who’d schooled him on all the reasons she should let him fulfill her task here. “I’ll have you know, I was a girl then.”

  “Yes.” He brushed his knuckles briefly along the high arch of her cheek. “You were a good deal of fun.”

  Sadness crept into her pretty brown eyes, and with it came a desire to call back the words that had ushered in that reaction. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, well, you are correct on that score.”

  “And you don’t allow yourself to find enjoyment in life anymore.”

  It wasn’t a question, and yet, she answered it anyway. “I do,” she said, her chin tipping up at a defiant angle.

  Barry crossed his arms. “Do you? Name one thing…”

  She made to speak.

  “That isn’t work,” he interrupted.

  Meredith folded her arms, matching his pose. “It is possible to enjoy one’s work.”

&nb
sp; “Indeed, but it’s still just that.” He tweaked her nose. “Work. Is that why you snuck away from the parlor after just one game of blind man’s bluff?”

  She stilled. “How—” Her cupid’s bow lips formed a neat, tight line as she cut off the remainder of her words.

  Barry grazed his index finger along the dainty point of her chin. “Yes, I noted your leaving, Meredith,” he murmured. He’d known the very moment she’d slipped away from the gathering and had wanted to follow along after her. “Well?”

  “I…” She closed her mouth and then tried again. “I…”

  He gave her a pointed look.

  “Very well,” she said tightly. “I’ll allow that I might not—”

  “Do not.”

  “—find enjoyment in those things I did as a girl of seventeen or eighteen.” Her voice took on a wistful quality. “But it is far better that way.”

  She sought to convince herself, he thought. “Better?” he asked, taking a step closer. “How could it be better?”

  “Safer,” she allowed.

  All his nerves went on alert.

  She’d been hurt. Someone had hurt her.

  Questions fairly burned his tongue with the urgency they demanded he ask them, an exigent need for the name of the person responsible for the change that had befallen her. So Barry might ruin the one who’d left a lasting legacy of hurt. “What happened after you left?”

  There was a palpable pause.

  “And don’t feed me half stories and words meant to protect my parents.”

  She started.

  “Of course I knew with the little you said before, Meredith.”

  Meredith wandered off, the same path she’d skipped along as a child and young woman. How measured she was in everything: her speech, her steps. And how much he thrilled at the moments where she faltered and revealed hints of who she’d been. That woman still existed within her. Somewhere. She’d kept her hidden, but she was there, buried under responsibility.

  “Would you?” he pressed. “Would you have swum or fished?” Or done any of the other things he’d so admired about her when she’d lived here at Berkshire Manor?

  At last, Meredith stopped and glanced back. An errant breeze toyed with the hem of her skirt, whipping it lightly against her legs, the fabric contouring to her long limbs. “Too much happened in my life.” Her father. “There wasn’t a time for laughter and joy, and then after…” Her gaze grew distant. After my father died. “Then there wasn’t a reason for it.”

  I wish I’d been there. I wish in those hardest of times that I had been close so she’d not have gone through all she had… alone.

  Because he cared about her… He always had.

  Not like this. Not with this all-consuming emotion that robbed him of sleep and had him thinking only of her.

  That realization threw his mind into tumult.

  For this, this desire to be with another person, with her happiness mattering more than his own or anyone else’s was wholly foreign. As unexpected as a bolt of lightning in a snowstorm.

  He wanted her to smile… but he wanted to be the one responsible for the delicate upturn of her lips.

  And standing there, staring at Meredith Durant, the irony was not lost on him: He, an avowed rogue who’d no intentions of marrying any respectable lady, found himself wanting the one who’d been gravely hurt by his family.

  *

  The temperature had long dropped and left the earth cold, and yet, there was something so very invigorating in it. There always had been. Meredith tipped her head up toward the star-studded night sky and inhaled deeply.

  “How I’ve missed the smells of this place,” she murmured. Pure, not clogged by coal and dirt, the Berkshire country air was so crisp it filled her lungs and cleared away the concerns that filled her mind.

  Feeling Barry’s gaze upon her, Meredith glanced over.

  He studied her through thick, golden lashes, his expression inscrutable, and even so, her belly quickened.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m sure I’ve bored you with talk of my past.”

  He joined her so they stood with their arms brushing. “Never.” He paused. “Now, fifteen years ago, my answer would have been decidedly different,” he teased, raising a smile to her lips that was effortless, when she’d believed those muscles incapable of such movements.

  Meredith nudged him in the side with her elbow. “You would have been twelve and more likely to have put ink in the flask I’d snuck from your father.”

  He smirked, entirely smug at her reminder of when he’d outed her and Emilia for pilfering the duke’s brandy. “This is true.”

  Several clouds passed overhead, blocking the moon and bathing the earth in shadows.

  She shivered and rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms. I should go…

  Those were the words she should speak, as a woman alone with a bachelor and certainly as a matchmaker responsible for coordinating a union for that very bachelor. With the passage of time, the years they’d known each other might as well have never been.

  “Here,” Barry murmured. Shrugging out of his jacket, he whipped the black garment around her shoulders.

  The soft woolen article hung large upon her frame, and she drew the fabric closer, burrowing deeper into its folds. The smell of sandalwood clung to the garment, the slightly woody, masculine scent so very perfect for the man he’d grown into. “When did you grow up, Barry Aberdeen?”

  “When you still lived here.” Clasping his arms behind him, he stared out at the gardens. “You just failed to note as much.”

  “Yes,” she murmured softly, as he wandered away from her. Only, she’d failed to note so much where he was concerned. She’d only ever seen Barry as Emilia’s bothersome brother. How much she’d missed. And how wrong she’d been about him.

  His gaze remained fixed on the stretch of gardens that continued on for as far as the eye could see, both at nightfall and during the heart of day.

  How very serious he also was. Intent. In ways she’d never before seen in him.

  But then, as he’d pointed out, she’d not really paid enough attention to notice those details about him.

  Was it that he was as aware of her as she was of him? His kiss earlier that morning, and his very presence here, spoke of one who was. And yet, having long ago surrendered her virginity, she was not one who’d be deluded into thinking there was necessarily more to a rogue’s physical response.

  Wordlessly, Barry turned and faced her. That slight movement drew his white lawn shirt tight along his arms, accentuating beautifully defined muscles better suited to a man-of-work than a powerful marquess. And then he began to walk toward Meredith.

  Slow.

  Pantherlike.

  His steps were sleek and predatory in a sexual way that sent her belly into a mad fluttering, and she recognized the lie she’d sold to the world so successfully. She’d come to believe it herself: Meredith was no proper miss. Only, she well knew, with a woman’s intuition and from the hint of passion she’d experienced in Barry’s arms, that making love with him would prove magical.

  And I want to know that passion. She wanted to know more than the faint stirrings she’d experienced as a girl and feel herself come alive in all her body’s splendor.

  He stopped before her.

  Meredith’s breath came hard and fast, the respirations shuddery and telling. And with that same unhurriedness that had marked his steps, Barry stretched a hand close.

  “B-Barry,” she whispered, her voice throaty and wanton to her ears. Her lashes fluttered as he slipped a hand inside her jacket.

  His jacket.

  As she struggled to draw air into her lungs, she proved very much the wanton she’d been as a girl, for she wanted his hands on her.

  Only, he proved not so very much the rogue the world purported him to be.

  “Here it is,” he said triumphantly, as if he’d been searching through a greenhouse drawer and not inside her—his—jacket. He withdrew a sm
all iron pair of…

  “Scissors?” Meredith blinked slowly. That was what had earned that devoted glimmer in his rogue’s gaze?

  Barry gave her a look like she’d kicked his dog. “I’ll have you know these are not scissors.”

  She gave thanks for the cloud cover that hid the moon’s glow and, with it, her burning cheeks. “They look like scissors.”

  He slid his fingers into the handle. “They are secateurs.” Barry weighed the peculiar object in his palm, a tenderness to his touch as he handled the inanimate scrap of metal with far greater longing than he’d shown her moments ago. “Cutting plants dates to the antiquity in Europe. Why, since ancient times, the Chinese have had specialized scissors they used for penjing and its offshoots.”

  As he wandered off into the gardens, she cringed. Envying an inanimate scrap of metal? “You are pathetic, Meredith Durant,” she mouthed after his retreating form. For his were not the steps of a scoundrel that begged a lady to follow. But mayhap that was the magic in them, for Meredith’s legs moved with a will of their own, carrying her after the gentleman. “What is a penjing?”

  As if he’d just recalled her presence, Barry paused and cast a glance back. He eyed her suspiciously. “That doesn’t seem like a question to benefit you in coordinating a match for me, Meredith.”

  No, it wasn’t. And yet, nearly all the questions she’d put to him, even the ones about him and his passions, hadn’t been asked with the thought of a match at the forefront of her mind. The realization sent terror ricocheting inside her chest. “Is it so hard to believe that I should simply be curious about what you’re speaking on?” she rejoined.

  There was another beat of silence. “It is the ancient Chinese art of depicting artistically formed trees, other plants, and landscapes in miniature. Not entirely dissimilar to our topiaries.” He motioned to one of the meticulous boxwoods as he continued walking. “Scissors used for gardening are not an altogether new concept. A French aristocrat, a fellow by the name of de Molleville, craftily designed the things,” he explained. “These, in fact, are one of the original pairs he constructed.”