A Matchmaker for a Marquess

by Christi Caldwell

  “Yes. I like flowers. I enjoy poetry. And I hate hunting because I despise the idea of senselessly slaughtering any creature just for sport. You spoke of being honest in who I am, so there it is. Now it is your turn.”

  Her lips parted, and he tried to make sense of the glimmer in her eyes. But then she blinked several times, clearing whatever emotion was there, and dove for her pencil.

  She proceeded to scribble frantically on her open pages.

  About me.

  She was recording the interests he’d shared. He yanked the book away.

  She cried out, “Barry.”

  “You, Miss Durant, or Miss Duranseau, are a hypocrite.”

  Meredith glared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “This time, you are not forgiven. Do you know what I believe?” He didn’t allow her to get in a word edgewise. “You’d speak to me of love and happiness to be found in marriage. You’d speak to me about simply being myself and sharing every part of myself with you. And you can’t even bring yourself to talk about… any part of yourself, really.”

  Frustration broiled in him. Because he wanted to know about her and the man who’d hurt her—and all her hurts—for reasons he couldn’t bring himself to analyze in this moment.

  “Very well.” Meredith let one shoulder rise and fall in a casual shrug belied by the tension emanating from her frame. “I was young. I was reckless in my actions and vowed to live my life in a way that is safe.”

  How careful she was even with the details she provided in her telling. That ambiguity only ushered in further questions and an ever greater need to know. “Who was the bounder?”

  She hesitated. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It mattered very much. “It matters because you matter,” he said quietly. Rage pumped through him. Questions swirled around the identity of that unknown bastard. Or worse… was it someone he did, in fact, know? Who? “What happened?” he made himself ask instead.

  Even in the dimly lit library, he caught the way her fingers twisted and clenched at the fabric of her pale-yellow dress. “I fell in love where I shouldn’t have. I trusted a man who said he’d love me forever, and he went on to fight Boney’s forces”—she gave another one of those little shrugs—“and returned with another. That is all. There’s nothing grand to the story, Barry. I was just any other girl with a broken heart.”

  He forced his features into a mask to keep from revealing the riot of emotions that even now tore through him. There could be no doubting… she’d fallen for a rake. Had he been a guest his family had entertained? A gentleman who’d broken her heart and left her hurting. His stomach churned.

  She said there was nothing grand to the story.’

  The story lay in her heartbreak.

  She’d loved… and someone had violated that gift.

  His chest was squeezed in a viselike grip—at her hurt. At the idea that some bounder had been the recipient of her affection and had brought her pain.

  Barry was staggered by the intensity with which he wanted to drive away the memories of that other man and replace them with new ones that only left her smiling.

  *

  She had told him.

  Meredith had confided in Barry about Patrin and his betrayal. Only her father had known and had carried it with him to the grave.

  Why had she told Barry?

  He set her notepad before her.

  Unable to meet his eyes, she fiddled with turning to a clean page in her book. Meredith cleared her throat. “We should begin.”

  “Haven’t we already begun?”

  Just like that, Barry restored them to the ease that had been there before any talk of Patrin and broken hearts.

  “We had, but you continue to distract, which I’m not altogether convinced isn’t a ploy,” she said with a smile.

  He waggled his eyebrows, startling a laugh from her.

  “As we were, then.” Chewing at the end of her pencil, Meredith reexamined some of the notes she’d recorded on Barry’s interests, and then flipped back to the empty sheet. “You enjoy poetry and botany, and you care for animals.”

  At his silence, she looked up. Red splotched his cheeks. “You aren’t divulging that.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I gather the better question is, you are keeping this information a secret?”

  Except, by the muscle ticking at the corner of his eye, that was precisely what he intended.

  “Why is it a secret?”

  He shifted in his chair. “Because it doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters if you wish to find a person who can love the real you and not the image you’ve crafted to fill whatever expectation you think Society has for you.”

  Barry scoffed. “Do you believe the women here desire anything more than landing a future duke and themselves a title of someday duchess? Do you truly believe any of the women invited by my esteemed mother truly want me as I am?”

  I do…

  The reply hovered at the end of her tongue, words she kept at bay.

  “I believe there are women who would appreciate who you truly are, Barry”—she held his gaze—“if you revealed more than the image you’ve crafted for the world.”

  A sound of frustration escaped him, and he jumped up with such speed, his chair scraped noisily over the floor. “If you believe that, you are naïve, Meredith Durant. We shared a schoolroom for several years, and then you resided here as my parents sacked tutor after tutor. Because first comes the dukedom, and any pursuits are secondary to it.”

  “They stifled your studies,” she said softly.

  He shrugged. “Dukes cannot be botanists. Dukes cannot be anything other than dukes, Meredith.” He spoke in a rote manner, words that had surely been delivered to him.

  Her resentment for Barry’s parents blazed to life with an even greater intensity. For reasons that had nothing to do with their careless disregard for her and her father’s future and everything to do with the fact that they’d seen Barry first as an heir and second as a son.

  She slowly came to her feet so that she stood positioned directly across from him. “Do you believe that?”

  He hesitated.

  “You don’t,” she said softly. “It’s why you still visit horticultural societies and carry gardening shears. And you don’t have to hide away parts of yourself, Barry. I’d have you marry a woman who appreciates who you truly are.”

  An image slipped in. Of Barry with some faceless, nameless woman. A woman who’d be the recipient of his teasing and clever schoolings on botany.

  Then the image shifted, and the lady wasn’t faceless, but rather, one of the flawlessly beautiful women his mother had assembled.

  Meredith was filled with the ugly urge to cry.

  He stepped around the desk. “Do you believe there is such a person, Meredith?” he murmured, coming closer. Ever closer. And then he was there, before her. Standing so close she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. And then she found herself promptly burned by the heat blazing from their depths. Barry stroked the backs of his knuckles along the curve of her jaw, his touch weighting her eyes closed. “Hmm?”

  She struggled through the quixotic caress to recall his question and then realized her answer: I am that person.

  And yet… she couldn’t be. Meredith forced her eyes open.

  “I do,” she at last replied, her voice throaty to her own ears. She smoothed her palms down the lapels of his jacket. The muscles of his chest jumped under her hands, defined, coiled muscles better suited to a man who worked in labor rather than one destined for a dukedom. “I believe there is a woman for you, Barry.” One who cannot be me… and I will hate her until I draw my last breath for having that which I want.

  His eyes darkened, and for one agonizing and horrifying moment, she believed he’d seen the truth of that realization. That glint gave way to raw desire, the kind of passion that a younger, proper, innocent woman would have failed to recognize for what it was. But Meredith saw and, in
that moment, selfishly wanted to take.

  With an animalistic groan, Barry lowered his head.

  Meredith was already going up on tiptoes to meet his lips.

  There was nothing tender about their joining. His lips slashed over hers again and again. As if he wanted to devour her.

  Heat pooled in her belly, for she wanted to be devoured by him.

  Meredith parted her lips and eagerly lashed her tongue against his. They dueled in a passionate battle she was all too content to lose.

  Her legs weakened under her, and Barry filled his hands with her buttocks and guided her back. Never breaking contact with her mouth, he shoved the fabric of her skirts high, exposing her hot skin.

  She moaned into his mouth just one word, all she was capable of. “Barry.”

  In response, Barry sank his fingertips into her thigh and lifted it about his waist, bringing her flush to his body. Her modest undergarments proved a thin barrier to the length of his hardened shaft that pressed against her core.

  Dropping her head back, she arched into him.

  “You are so beautiful,” he rasped out, moving his hips against hers, simulating the rhythm of lovemaking.

  And then the whole world was moving.

  Nay… it was just them.

  Slipping off the table, Meredith and Barry came crashing down hard.

  Pain shot into her hip and lower back as Barry’s larger frame crushed hers, slamming her against the floor.

  She grunted.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” he whispered, his voice ragged. He immediately shoved himself up onto his elbows. “As you can see, I’m not as good at this as I’ve been credited,” he muttered.

  Meredith’s frame shook, and then Barry’s scowl dissolved as he joined in, laughing.

  Lying on the floor, wrapped in Barry’s arms, her work scattered about them, she acknowledged the truth to herself.

  I love him…

  Oh, good God in heaven. It was a prayer. For this mistake… this folly was far greater than any error she’d made with Patrin.

  For Barry could never be hers… and yet—

  “Come.” In one fluid motion, he jumped up and helped her to her feet.

  They set to work tidying her workstation.

  She’d have to turn him over to another. It was what she was here to do.

  And yet, before she did, she intended to steal every moment of joy she could, and then the memory of them together would be enough.

  It would have to be.

  Chapter 12

  Three days.

  Three days was how long it had taken Barry to restore Meredith Durant to the spirited minx who’d once reveled in games and laughter.

  Three days in which she’d driven him absolutely and utterly mad.

  “You were entirely too gentle before. This time harder, Barry. But not so fast.”

  Hell. I’m going to hell, and of course it would be Meredith, the minx who tortured me in my past, to send me on my way.

  Before a gathering of his mother and father’s guests, no less.

  “It matters how you stroke it. I’d expect you would know that, Barry.”

  Barry briefly closed his eyes. Pall-mall had always been torturous, but this? This was a torture of a different sort, no less agonizing, just in different ways.

  Giving his head a slight shake, Barry opened his eyes and made a show of taking a practice swing with his mallet.

  Meredith slid closer to him. “Are you listening?” she whispered, her lyrical voice a siren’s song.

  “I am,” he said hoarsely. He’d been listening entirely too closely to the forbidden words rolling from her lips. “I’ll have you know, I’ve a reputation for being the best of those who’ve played here.”

  Meredith snorted. “That certainly remains to be seen.”

  Yes, yes, it did. Alas, it was just one more lie crafted by Society about the future Duke of Gayle. Yet again, Meredith was the only one to see through it. To actually look at him. And it only fueled his hunger for her and—

  “Is everything all right?”

  If anything were to sober a gent in the midst of wicked musings, it would be an annoyed call from one’s sister, who was with his brother-in-law. The pair stared down the length of the graveled path at Meredith and Barry.

  Meredith waved a gloved palm. “His lordship requires just one more lesson.”

  That pronouncement carried around the grounds and was met with a flurry of giggles and chuckles from the other guests in the middle of their own pall-mall games.

  He winced. “You’re shredding my reputation, love.” Devoting his attention to the ground, he brought back his mallet and smacked the ball.

  It bounced two jumps before gliding to a slow halt five paces ahead.

  Another round of laughter went up.

  Meredith sighed. “I confess to caring a good deal more about this particular point.” She jabbed a finger off to where Emilia and her husband prepared for their next shot. “And not at all about your wounded pall-mall pride.”

  With that, Meredith started after their ball.

  It was his rogue’s pride. Of all the humiliations, that was the greatest blow he’d been dealt. Meredith Durant’s absolute lack of awareness of the effects she and her words and her very presence alone were having on him.

  “Now,” the young woman was saying when it was her turn to hit. “Your focus is on your strokes. Keeping them smooth and slow,” she murmured and brought her mallet back and landed a perfect strike. The ball sailed ten paces forward in a perfectly straight line.

  Emilia waved back at them. “You’ve still some distance to make up,” she called out gleefully and then went back to assessing her and her husband’s latest shot.

  “She’s always been smug with pall-mall,” Meredith mumbled. “Let us not focus on that. She’s merely trying to distract you.”

  His mother’s guests could have simultaneously caught fire, and Barry would have been hard-pressed to pay note to anyone aside from the woman with whom he’d been partnered. “Now,” Meredith whispered. “You need to put it in the hole this time.”

  For the thousandth time, at least, since he’d partnered with Meredith Durant, wicked musings went traipsing through his head.

  He swallowed a groan.

  Meredith gave him another light tap with her mallet.

  He grunted. “What in blazes was that for?”

  “With all that groaning, you’re hardly invoking any manner of confidence, Barry.” Shoving back the enormous brim of the hideous bonnet she’d insisted on wearing, Meredith lifted a palm over her eyes and assessed the couple ahead of them. “I’d do better to find another partner. One who knows precisely where to put that ball.”

  He strangled on a laugh.

  Had she been any other woman, he’d have believed her entirely deliberate in her seduction.

  Alas…

  “You’re going to cost us this round, Barry,” Meredith muttered, the chastisement for his ears alone.

  “God forbid,” he said dryly.

  Folding her arms, Meredith let her mallet dangle awkwardly in her grip. “I do require that you focus,” she said. All the while, she tapped her scuffed boot in a quick beat upon the graveled path, churning up dirt and rock. “We’re not all that far away.”

  “I forgot how positively mercenary you are when it comes to pall-mall.”

  She knocked her mallet discreetly against the right side of his boot.

  “You’re making my point for me, love.”

  “At least one of us is making points… my lord.” She tacked on his title as an afterthought. That acknowledgment of his rank, however, had come less and less with the time they spent together. And the admonishment over his endearment… came not at all.

  In short, in their time together, Meredith had changed.

  He let fly his next shot.

  Meredith rushed ahead several steps, her gaze trained on that projectile, her entire body tense as she leaned forward, gesturing at the
ball as if she could will movement into it with frantic waves of her arm.

  He smiled wistfully.

  Nay, Meredith had not truly changed. She’d always been this woman. The one who thrilled at games and alternated between ruthlessly competitive and endearingly excited with each stroke of her mallet.

  She let out an exultant cry that faded to a groan as the ball just missed its mark.

  Meredith sank back on her heels and spun to face him. A wide smile wreathed her lips, dimpling her cheeks and doing odd things to his heart.

  “Given I fell short, I expected I’d have to wield this”—he held his mallet aloft—“as a means of warding off your blows.”

  “Of course not! That was much improved. How could I find fault with that shot?”

  “Mind if an old duke joins in?”

  Barry and Meredith looked down the graveled path.

  His father ambled down the path.

  “Your father is playing… pall-mall.”

  Barry shielded his eyes. “It certainly appears that way.” The whole world well knew that, aside from taking part in the hunts, the duke preferred sleeping as his next and closest activity of choice.

  Slightly out of breath, the duke stopped before them.

  “Your Grace,” Meredith greeted, falling into a curtsy.

  “Meredith,” he returned with a smile. “Mind if I partner with my son for this next round?”

  “Not at all, Your Grace,” she said, turning over her mallet.

  Barry frowned at how easily she’d relinquish her time with him. It was… a foreign state to find himself in. And here, with the only woman who’d ever mattered to him.

  After Meredith rushed off, his father didn’t waste any time. “Your mother is not happy with you,” he said as Barry gathered the ball and then started down to the beginning of the pall-mall path.

  “Given the frequency in which she is disappointed with me, I’d dare ask what is so different this time that she’d have you roused from a nap and force you to play in the hot summer sun?” he drawled.

  “It’s about the ladies present.”

  That gave Barry pause. “Ah, of course. My future brides.”

  His father’s bushy white brows came together. “Not all of them. They can’t all be your brides, but one of them.”