The Matchmaker (10 page)

Still, it might be amusing to watch the two of them struggle against fate.
For a while, anyway.
The only
danger to his plans would be if they mated now—but she
was too terrified to let that happen. He had made very
sure she would be.

In the meantime, he had to consider carefully the best
way to proceed. He had the gun primed and ready; all
that remained was to decide when to point it and pull the
trigger. He found it difficult to think of autumn in the sweltering heat of summer—but it would come, then
winter,
and it had to be over by then.

He thought he could afford a little more patience.
A
few weeks, perhaps.
But he'd have to keep a close
watch, and be alert to everything that was going on. He'd have to try to discover if there really was something other than the woman causing his womb-mate to change
and, if so, what it meant to his plans.

But he was confident.

"My compliments to the cook.
This is excellent."

“I’ll tell her. I'm sure she'll be pleased." Julia smiled politely at Cyrus, conscious of the strong feeling of
unreality. At the opposite end of the long table, Adrian
was laughing at a joke someone had told him, and
between her and her husband a dozen guests talked as
they ate dinner.

Just a normal party, that was all. Except that from the
moment Adrian had formally introduced her to Cyrus,
Julia had felt the strange sensation of everything around her being unreal and peculiarly deceptive. It wasn't only her tension or her acute consciousness of Cyrus and what
had passed between them; it was almost like watching a
play, and knowing it wasn't real, knowing when the
curtain came down it would be over.

It unnerved her.

She couldn't fault Cyrus's behavior. He'd been the perfect dinner guest, dividing his attention equally
between Julia and the lady on his right. His eyes
expressed nothing but mild enjoyment, his voice was
quiet and calm, and he hadn't betrayed by so much as
the slightest sign that he considered Julia anything other than his hostess at a social event.

Julia hoped her mask was half as deceptive. Her
emotional state was so odd, and between the heat,
Adrian's ragged temper, and the tension of knowing she'd have to get through this party, she was so ex
hausted she just wanted to find a dark, cool place
somewhere and sleep for a week. But she doubted
anyone suspected her feelings. Social manners had been
drummed into her all her life, and in the past two years
she had perfected her public behavior.

So she was able to talk to both Cyrus and the man on her left calmly about casual subjects, performing her duties as hostess with the elegance and grace for which
she was well known. No one, except perhaps Cyrus,
could possibly have guessed her serene facade concealed
a chaotic bundle of tense emotions.

* It was a bit easier for her later, when the party guests
arrived and the ballroom filled with the noise and
movements of nearly a hundred people. Julia kept busy
as hostesses always did, moving around the huge room
speaking to people, finding dance partners for wallflow
ers, performing introductions, and overseeing the ser
vants. She held on to her smile, acted by rote, and tried
not to think at all.

"The Populist Party won't last much longer," Cyrus said, leaning back against the balustrade with his arms crossed
over his chest.

"They sure as hell haven't been able to elect a
president," Fred Daulton said with a laugh, taking a
glass from a passing maid's tray and managing to "accidentally" bring his hand into contact with the breast of
the servant.

It was fairly dark on the veranda, Cyrus thought, so
maybe it had been an accident. Then again, since the darkly handsome Daulton had a reputation among his male friends for preferring servant-girls or whores to ladies, perhaps not. Cyrus took a glass from the girl's tray with a nod of thanks, and returned his attention to the
group of men who stood around him a few feet from the
open French doors of the ballroom.

"They got a foot inside Congress," Adrian Drummond
reminded the others.

"A small foot," Cyrus interjected. "But they have a few good ideas. The other parties may adopt some of them."

"Didn't know you followed politics,
Cy
," Noel com
mented a bit dryly.

"I read the newspapers."

"What's your party?" Drummond asked in a casual tone.

Cyrus lifted his glass in a faintly mocking salute. "I vote for the man, not the party."

Peter Reynolds slapped at a mosquito and said irritably, "There isn't a man worth voting for, not these days. Those fools in Washington are going to bring us all to ruin." He was a heavyset man of average height and
excessive arrogance who had been known to knock another man down for expressing different views. He
was also known for his unshakable belief that women's
suffrage would destroy the country.

"If we give them the chance," Adam Prescott said. He
was a tall man, blond like Drummond, and tended to be both cheerful and affable. Like the others in the group,
he was personally wealthy and quite influential in Rich
mond. "We need to make changes, and soon."

"Perhaps it's time for fresh blood," Adrian Drummond
suggested.
"New ideas."

"Do you have any?" Noel asked him, and only Cyrus
realized that the question was more than a little ironic.

"I have a few." Drummond went on to explain where
he stood on several subjects, expressing himself with
such appealing candor and earnestness that it took even
Cyrus a few moments to realize that the man's political
ideas were old and stale rather than new, strongly
favored, the rich and influential, and contained more
than a suggestion of about five different kinds of bigotry.

When the speech had ended, Cyrus said casually, "Interesting views. But there are other important issues. We all know where Reynolds stands on the subject of granting women the vote. What's your position?"

Drummond laughed. "I think any man would agree
the ladies should tend to their homes. They aren't
capable of logical thought, and certainly haven't the knowledge to form intelligent political opinions. Aside from which, can you imagine the lengths unscrupulous politicians would go to in order to secure female votes?
We'd have population explosions of bastards born nine
months after every election."

If he even knew that Cyrus himself was illegitimate,
he seemed to have forgotten the fact. Cyrus didn't
change expression, still smiling faintly when he said, "I
see. Then you favor strong laws restricting women's
rights—both in and out of marriage."

"Naturally.
We know what's best for them."

"Not according to my wife," Noel put in.

Indulgently, Drummond said, "Oh, they may resent a
few things, but the laws have to make sense. If we left it
up to the women, they'd have us turn all our money over
to them and be legally obliged to smile and give our names to other men's bastards."

Noel spoke up then with an innocent statement to the effect that he'd heard Congress was weakening on the
subject of women's suffrage which, with Reynolds a part
of the group, was tantamount to throwing the cat among the pigeons.

The attack on Washington instantly became a bit fiery
as at least three voices hotly questioned the rationality
and sense of the government. When Cyrus, who hadn't offered an opinion, slipped away to head toward the
ballroom, Noel followed him as far as the French doors.

"
Cy
, are you out of your mind?" he demanded in a low
voice. "I half expected you to ask point-blank if Drummond
would mind his wife being unfaithful to him."

Calmly, Cyrus said, "I got the information I was
looking for."

"Which is?"

"Have another drink, Noel. And enjoy the party." He strolled into the ballroom.

Julia had danced several times with guests, but it was
still something of a shock when Cyrus approached her
halfway through the evening and asked her to dance.

No one was near them, and Julia hesitated almost
imperceptibly before she gave him her hand.

He looked at her very steadily, and said in a quiet
voice, "I always dance with my hostess."

The musicians were playing a waltz, and as she went into his arms, very conscious of one big hand at her waist
and the other holding hers in a light clasp, she fought a
half-guilty, half-fearful impulse to look around for
Adrian. Cyrus seemed to read her mind.

"He's out on the veranda discussing politics. Don't worry, Julia. I really do always dance with my hostess."

He danced beautifully, with astonishing grace for such
a big man. She had to tilt her head back to look up at
him, and only the fact that he seemed so calm enabled
her to keep her own mask firmly in place. "Do you pick and choose social conventions according to what might
amuse you to obey?" she asked lightly.

"I'm afraid so. The trick in life is to set your own standards. Now, I happen to believe showing appreciation to ones hostess is a sensible and polite thing to do. On the other hand, not speaking to a lady until I've been formally introduced seems quite ridiculous."

"Is that why you spoke to Lissa?"

"She told you about that, I see. Then you must know if I'd waited to be introduced before speaking to her or, God forbid, touching her, she would have broken her neck. Instead, I broke a rule. Sometimes we have to do
that, Julia."

"You shouldn't—"

"I know
,
I shouldn't address you so familiarly. I won't,
except when no one can hear."

His voice roughened on the words, and it made her heart skip a beat. Quite suddenly, she couldn't think of anything to say.

After a moment, his tone casual again, Cyrus said,
"Lissa seems a very nice girl. I like her frankness."

"Oh, Lord, what did she say?" Julia asked involun
tarily.

A gleam of amusement lit Cyrus's eyes.
"Nothing
scandalous.
Just that I wasn't nearly as bad-mannered as
people said."

Even as Julia was thinking, He does have a laugh in his
eyes, she was saying, "I'm sorry, she shouldn't have said that."

"Why not?
It's perfectly true. I'm bad-mannered only
when I want to be. I hope you've noticed that tonight
I'm on my best behavior."

Julia didn't quite know how to respond, so it was lucky
the dance ended then. He escorted her to an unoccupied
settee placed against the wall, collected two glasses from
a passing tray, and sat down beside her with the correct foot of space between them.

Before she could say a word, he handed her a glass and
said, "I always spend a few minutes sitting with my
hostess."

She couldn't help but give him a wary look. "Do you?"

He smiled slightly. "I really do. I also spent over an hour talking politics with your husband, and I'll make a point of spending time with several other ladies before I go. No one will notice anything out of the ordinary, Julia."

Again he'd left her with nothing to say. She sipped the
chilled fruit juice in her glass, then unfurled her fan and began using it. Though the French doors leading to the veranda were standing open, the ballroom was uncomfortably hot, and with all the layers of clothing fashion demanded—most especially the rigid corset—Julia felt
enervated. She hadn't been so conscious of it before, and
with all her attention focused on Cyrus she had even enjoyed the dance, but now she could feel the effects of
heat and tension wearing away at her.

"Is it Adrian you're afraid of?" Cyrus asked abruptly.

Julia clung to her gracious and meaningless smile, but
she couldn't look away from those intent black eyes, and
was frightened that her own might be pleading. She kept
her voice low. "Please, you said you wouldn't—"

"I said I wouldn't show my feelings publicly and I
wouldn't keep pressing you. But I have to know the
truth, Julia. You didn't refuse me, you refused an affair. The very idea seemed to terrify you. All evening I've felt
the tension in you, wound so tightly it could snap at any minute. If it's because I'm here, then you're afraid of so
much more than simply betraying what might have been
between us." He drew a short breath, and the intensity
in his voice didn't show at all on his face. "You act like the
perfect wife, but it doesn't come from your heart. So where does it come from?"

"You have no right to ask me such a question," she said
softly. "My marriage is my own concern." She wondered
if her polite smile looked as unnatural as it felt.

"Julia—"

"Cyrus, please." She was at the end of her rope, and
the strain quivered in her voice. She'd used his given
name without thinking, realizing only when his eyes flickered.