The Matchmaker

by Kay Hooper

  Now, as he watched her, he frowned. After being closer to her and gazing into the vividly luminous depths of her green eyes, his desire was stronger than ever, but something was bothering him and he didn’t know what it was. He felt oddly uneasy.

  He’d been satisfied with her reaction to him and to what he’d said to her; she might have run from him, but she hadn’t been able to hide her own awareness of an attraction. It was a good beginning. And though her final words might have daunted another man, Cyrus more or less ignored them simply because destruction wasn’t what he had in mind.

  Still, there was something about her that he couldn’t bring into focus. He thought about it for a while, watching her steadily, then pushed the question aside impatiently. To hell with it. Perhaps he was sensing in her a stronger than usual unhappiness. She was young, after all, younger than any of his other women in recent years; the young tended to feel things more deeply. Or thought they did, at least.

  Drummond had quite likely been as heavy-handed with her as he was with his horses; on horseback he had the necessary mechanics but obviously no skill. It was probably the same in the bedroom. No doubt he had treated Julia like fragile china until the wedding night and then shocked her with the coarse realities of panting, sweating male needs. She hadn’t felt passion in her husband’s bed, Cyrus knew that. There was something in her eyes that he’d seen only in the eyes of unawakened young women, a kind of unaware innocence that had nothing to do with physical virginity; it was another barrier that some men were too inept or insensitive to find their way past, and it was still intact in Julia.

  Cyrus was confident about his own abilities. He’d be patient for a while at least, let her protest to salve pride or convention or whatever was her particular nemesis. Give her a little time to get used to the idea. But she’d come to him eventually, and she’d be willing. He would make certain it was an enjoyable interlude, that he made her happy.

  In any case, Cyrus was prepared to do whatever it took to get Julia Drummond into his bed.

  —

  It was late by the time Julia said good night to Lissa at the top of the stairs. She was exhausted as she made her way past Adrian’s study, a parlor, a few spare bedrooms, toward the master suite. Bedroom, bathroom, and dressing room, the suite was distant from Lissa’s room and from the servants’ quarters.

  There was a light under the door, and Julia hesitated for an instant. She’d hoped her husband would be asleep. Her mouth was a little dry, but she opened the door quietly and went in, her mask firmly in place.

  He turned immediately away from the window, where he’d apparently been watching the street outside, and looked at her with narrowed eyes. He was still fully dressed. A bad sign.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded softly.

  Julia closed the door and leaned back against it, hardly noticing the protesting twinge of tender flesh over her shoulder blades. “I couldn’t close down the refreshment table until after midnight,” she said in a low, reasonable voice.

  “I told you.” His voice was harsh now. “I told you not to go to the party without me.”

  Julia would have protested that he’d told her at dinner he didn’t want to accompany her, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Nothing would make any difference now. After two years, she was all too familiar with the irrational way his rage fed on itself. Something had made him angry since she and Lissa had gone to the dance, some small thing he probably didn’t even remember now.

  He came toward her slowly, like a predator, smiling. He had the strap. Julia stared at him, and as the cold dread formed in the pit of her stomach, what she saw became unfocused, then darkened slowly until she didn’t see anything. Or hear anything. Or feel anything.

  Until he was finished.

  Chapter 2

  Cyrus Fortune wasn’t one of the nine-member city council of Richmond and he wasn’t particularly interested in politics, but he attended a meeting of the council a few days after the charity dance. He didn’t contribute, just watched and listened with a slight smile, his black eyes flicking from one man to another unreadably.

  “Cy, what are you doing here?” Noel Stanton slid into the seat beside Cyrus, his bushy brows lifted in an expression of exaggerated surprise.

  Since another heated discussion was going on at the front of the room, Cyrus didn’t bother to lower his voice. “Making certain the city isn’t run by thieves and scoundrels, of course. Is it, by the way?”

  “Well, of course it is,” Stanton told him severely. “You don’t think any honest man would want a councilman job, do you?”

  Cyrus smiled briefly, but said, “I’m surprised they chose Drummond as mayor; he’s a bit young for it.”

  “Your age.” Stanton, who was eyeing forty as his next milestone and not happy about it, shrugged tolerantly. “He sure as hell got the most votes in the election. Very smooth and charming.”

  Cyrus turned his head, studying the man he’d known for most of his life and one of the very few he trusted implicitly. “You don’t like him.”

  “I don’t like him. He’s pleasant enough, I suppose. The ladies seem to think he walks on water. When he married Julia Brand, I expected to see black crepe on half the doors in town.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.” Stanton smiled in amusement, the mustache that was as bristly as his eyebrows twitching like something alive. “But you should have seen all the wistful faces at the first dance the Drummonds attended after their honeymoon.”

  Cyrus returned his gaze to the front of the room and singled out Drummond. Tall, athletic, handsome; a blond man with a boyish face the ladies would certainly find attractive, and muddy brown eyes set under unusually straight brows. He didn’t like the eyes, Cyrus decided thoughtfully; there was a queer shine to them when Drummond turned his head a certain way. After a moment, he said, “Do you trust him, Noel?”

  Stanton leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “Depends. In business, yes, if he’s risking as much as I am. Politics—maybe, but he’s ambitious and I have a feeling he doesn’t care who he steps on. I’d lend him money on his word, but I don’t want him on any of my horses. An automobile is more suited to him, I’d say; he couldn’t jab at its mouth if he was annoyed.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen him on a horse,” Cyrus murmured.

  Stanton looked at him inquiringly. “Why the sudden interest in Drummond, Cy?”

  “Idle curiosity.”

  In a dry tone his friend said, “You’re never idle despite your lazy air, and your curiosity always means something. Going into business with Drummond?”

  “No.”

  “I see. She’s very beautiful.”

  Cyrus looked at him. “She is,” he agreed.

  Stanton wasn’t smiling. “And very young, Cy.”

  “If she isn’t too young for Drummond, she certainly isn’t too young for me.”

  “He married her.”

  “The only wife I want,” Cyrus drawled softly, “is someone else’s.”

  After a long moment Stanton said, “When you say something like that—and mean it, what’s more—I could really dislike you.”

  With no change in his faintly sardonic expression, Cyrus said, “Do you mean you don’t want to take my money tonight at the game?”

  Stanton snorted and looked away half angrily. “No, dammit, I don’t mean that. But I’ll tell you honestly—if I didn’t believe you drew the line at going after the wives of your friends, I wouldn’t let you into my house.”

  “I would never bed a man’s wife in his own house, Noel,” Cyrus said gently. “Even my manners aren’t completely hopeless.”

  “Cy, for God’s sake—”

  Chuckling, Cyrus said, “Relax. Felice is quite happy in your marriage—and I do draw the line there.” He gave his friend a somewhat dry look, but offered no further remarks on the touchy subject.

  Stanton wanted to remain angry. In all truth, he was often dismayed by his friend’s
unscrupulous pursuit of the women he wanted. It was a facet of Cyrus’s personality that had always struck him as wrong somehow, not morally, though it was that, of course, but simply because it didn’t quite seem to belong to the man he’d known for more than twenty years.

  And he was so—peculiar about it. Almost philanthropic, in fact, though he’d never used such reasoning as an excuse. Cyrus didn’t offer either explanations or excuses, and tended to become mocking or blandly uncommunicative if one of his friends pressed him for either. But Stanton had watched, and his friend puzzled him. On the face of it, most would say—and did—that Cyrus was a strongly sensual man who preferred a fleeting involvement with a succession of married women simply to avoid the entanglements of drawn-out affairs or the possibility of marriage for himself. There was more to it, though, Stanton thought—if that was even a part of it.

  Cyrus became involved only with unhappy married women, and Stanton was almost positive he’d never been wrong in his assessment. Whether through instinct, perception, or just observation, he consistently chose women who seemed, afterward, to settle down in their marriages with perfect contentment.

  It was strange, to say the least.

  “You’re frowning, Noel.”

  He looked at his friend and wished he could remain angry. But he couldn’t. “Cy, one of these days God or the devil’s going to teach you a lesson, and I hope I’m around to see it.”

  “A lesson?” Cyrus was smiling faintly.

  “Yes. Either you’ll pick the wrong lady, the wrong husband, or the wrong time, and find yourself up to your arrogant nose in trouble.”

  Cyrus laughed. “Consider me duly warned. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll leave.” He nodded toward the front of the room, where a discussion about property taxes was turning into a shouting match. “They’re going to be at it for quite some time, and I have an appointment in the park.”

  “What’s in the park?” Stanton asked blankly.

  “Julia Drummond,” Cyrus murmured, getting to his feet.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve persuaded her to meet you—and in such a public place—already?”

  “Unhappily, no. I haven’t seen her since the charity dance the other night. But she’s in the park now, and I want to see her while Drummond is otherwise occupied.”

  “You know she’s in the park? How?”

  Cyrus looked down at him for a moment, then smiled mockingly. “How else? The devil whispered in my ear, Noel. See you tonight.” He strolled out of the room as lazily as he’d entered, leaving his friend to sputter wordlessly.

  Once outside the building, Cyrus quickened his pace, though it wasn’t obvious since he merely took longer strides. He knew Julia was in the park, knew it without question, and if he did in fact owe his thanks for the knowledge to the devil, then so be it. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d known something with no rational way to explain it, and he’d gotten used to the odd sensation.

  Today, at least, he was too eager to see Julia to care how he knew where she was. He’d made up his mind at the dance to be patient, but hadn’t expected to not even see her in the days since. It had proved to be a novel frustration he didn’t like at all. As far as he knew, she hadn’t ventured outside the Drummond house. He had seen her sister the following evening at a large party, and had overheard her telling an older woman Julia was a bit under the weather.

  The older woman, obviously an acquaintance, had asked in a very discreet way if the “illness” was of the nine-month variety, and Lissa had replied with refreshing bluntness that, no, Julia wasn’t pregnant.

  Cyrus had been glad to hear it, though he was ruefully aware that even her pregnancy wouldn’t have stopped him. He felt a curious urgency when he thought of Julia, and the sensation had been growing steadily. He’d become aware of it the night of the dance—later when he was home—an edgy feeling of restless disquiet that was unfamiliar to him and not a little unnerving because he didn’t understand the cause of it. And if the disturbing sensation wasn’t enough, another puzzling thing had begun that night. Even though he tended to sleep soundly, that night he had awakened often from troubled dreams he couldn’t remember; each time, in the first fleeting moments after waking, he’d felt a ghostly sense of pain, terrible pain, that vanished when his eyes opened.

  For the next two nights the same thing had happened, though the sensation of pain had gradually faded. He’d always been prone to odd whims and notions, most of which turned out to be accurate and positive no matter how absurd they’d seemed at first, but this was something else, something new. It disturbed him. Once again, however, he pushed the uneasy thoughts away as he reached the park and saw Julia.

  She was sitting on a bench just off the sidewalk, smiling a little as she watched her sister and several other young people attempt to get a kite airborne. Cyrus slowed his pace as he approached her, taking the opportunity to look at her without her awareness. Today she was dressed in the Gibson Girl style just coming into fashion: a dark, tailored skirt belted tightly at her tiny waist, a long-sleeved, high-necked white blouse with a scarf tied at the throat, and a small, neat hat.

  Cyrus frowned slightly as he studied her very erect posture. He was no stranger to ladies’ lingerie, and disliked the current version of the corset, which was very long with steel or whalebone strips and had to be, he thought, one of the worst instruments of torture fashion had ever imposed upon women. The style pushed the bosom forward and the hips backward in exaggerated curves, making walking, standing, or sitting hideously uncomfortable, and cinched at the waist so tightly that normal breathing was impossible. “Ladylike” swooning was a publicly accepted result of the unnatural constriction, but Cyrus agreed with the opinions of doctors who stated forcefully and with considerable heat that it was physically dangerous and ought to be banned.

  It bothered him that Julia was obviously conforming to a ridiculous and dangerous fashion. She hadn’t followed yet another practice and resorted to padding above and below the waist in order to make the S-curve look even more exaggerated, but since she had a naturally tiny waist and full breasts, the corset alone was quite enough to give her the stylish appearance. At the dance she’d worn a rather concealing gown with a great deal of lace. Of course he hadn’t noticed any distortion of her slender figure. One of Cyrus’s somewhat peculiar talents was the ability to gauge a woman’s natural measurements accurately no matter what misleading fashion prevailed, and he’d known only that her figure was splendid.

  He didn’t like that corset, especially not on Julia.

  He sat down on the bench a foot or so away from her, and smiled when her startled eyes met his. “Hello.”

  Immediately, she returned her gaze to the young people some distance away. Her smile was gone; she was expressionless now. But her delicate hands twined tightly together in her lap and he could feel her tension.

  “Surely you can speak to me in public, can’t you, Julia?”

  “Not without being ruined,” she said a bit grimly.

  He couldn’t help but laugh, pleased by her honesty, but said, “That’s nonsense, and you know it. I often escort the wives of my friends, occasionally an unmarried young lady, and it does their reputations no harm.”

  “You are not a friend of my husband’s.” Then she paused and sent him a swift glance from guarded eyes. “Are you?”

  Gently, he said, “One doesn’t make a friend of a man and then seduce his wife. Not quite honorable, that. Friends are treated with more respect.”

  This time she turned her head and stared at him. “Of all the barefaced effrontery!” Her voice wasn’t so much shocked as incredulous.

  “I’m famous for it,” he said, nodding. “But the real effrontery would be if I did seduce a friend’s wife. In any case, if it’s my plain speaking you object to, I’m afraid that’s another trait I’m known for. It saves so much time, you see. I’m paying you the compliment of believing you’d prefer honesty to pretty speeches and bedroom lies. I want you, Ju
lia. And no matter what you’ve been taught, real desire doesn’t come dressed in silks and satins; it’s naked.”

  She looked away again, a little pale except for the heated skin over her cheekbones. A blush suited her, he thought, and it was uncommon among redheads. She was really quite lovely. And young, Noel had been right about that. But she was two years married, and there was no doubt she was a woman—even though her green eyes seemed to hold even more innocence than he’d first thought.

  “I’m married,” she said in a soft, still voice.

  “I hope you don’t believe that’s going to stop me,” Cyrus said calmly. “If you were happily married, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Have you no sense of decency?”

  He didn’t fail to notice she let his remark about her marriage go unchallenged. “By society’s definition? I suppose not. What does it matter?”

  Julia drew a short breath and looked at him with glittering eyes. “Then we’ll set decency aside, since that means nothing to you. And I’ll be as blunt as you’ve been. I don’t want you. I don’t want an affair. Is that clear enough?”

  “Let’s walk,” Cyrus said, rising to his feet and reaching for her hand.

  “No—”

  He grasped her hand before she could pull away, and gently but inexorably drew her up. “Don’t fight me, Julia,” he said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, “or you’ll attract the kind of attention you’d rather avoid.”

  “Do you often resort to blackmail?” she demanded tightly, walking beside him as he began strolling toward one of the paths that wound among trees and neat shrubs.

  “Only when necessary. Do admit you’re more comfortable walking—if it’s possible, that is, to feel anything but agony in that corset you’re wearing.”

  It was one of the least shocking things he’d said to her, and since “agony” was a fair description of what her tightly laced stays caused, particularly today, Julia was a little bemused to hear her own defensive reply. “To be fashionable—”