The Matchmaker (17 page)

Seven

"Go inside," Cyrus told her minutes later, raising his
voice again to be heard above the dry whine and crackle of the wind. "I'll see to the horses."

He held her horse steadily enough for her to get out of
the buggy. She went up the temporary wooden steps at the side of his new house, where he had brought her.
"Inside" was an arguably inaccurate term, since the house's exterior walls hadn't
risen
high enough to en
close even the first floor, but the building was in the dry,
with flooring in place and a solid roof to hold off the
coming rain.

Julia stood just inside, shivering a little even though the wind whipping her skirt was still hot. Thunder was
booming almost continuously now, and lightning was
forking through the leaden gray clouds, but the rain
refused to fall.

She didn't want to go deeper into the house, not
alone. It seemed a bit eerie, shadowed by the roof high
above and the darkening afternoon. Bare studs marked
the placement of walls, windows, and doorways like
bones without flesh. A temporary interior stairway snaked
upward to disappear into the partially completed flooring of the second story. The darkly hulking shapes of half-completed fireplaces crouched here and there. Silvery
pipes protruding from the floor and walls glistened as the
vivid flashes of lightning touched them, and strands of electrical wiring threaded their way among the studs and beams of the wooden skeleton.

It was just a house, Julia told herself. It would be a
magnificent house, she thought, when it was completed.
And she didn't feel
an eeriness
from it, she simply had a
sense of strangeness inside herself that the unfinished
building seemed to echo. Like her, the house was incomplete, the bare bones of something that needed
flesh before it could become real.

Cyrus had disappeared with the horses; she had no
idea where he'd gone. She waited, the peculiar ideas still filtering through her mind. Waiting? Yes. She'd been
waiting for a long time. It had been hard, but she'd held
on. She hadn't been defeated, even though the battle
had left her too weary to feel very much except pain and
fear.

As she saw Cyrus come toward her, her feelings changed to fascination and longing that was almost
painful. She saw him look up at her as he reached the
steps, and wondered why he stopped so suddenly. He looked shocked, she thought.

Cyrus had been brooding as he'd hurried back to the house, trying to decide how to convince Julia to come to him. He didn't want to force her, but at the same time he
was absolutely determined she wouldn't spend another
night under Drummond's roof. The man wasn't only vicious, he was unstable; Cyrus had kept a close eye on
him for weeks now, and he was convinced that whatever
madness or sickness twisted inside Drummond's mind was worsening rapidly.

He was beginning to betray himself, to voice political statements and opinions so grandiose and blatantly
lacking in reason even his staunchest supporters had
begun eyeing him uncertainly. Cyrus had subtlely pushed
and prodded, gauging the response with care because he
was wary of having his efforts to expose Drummond
backfire into anything hurtful to Julia. The consuming fire inside Adrian, he'd determined quickly, was the burning of ambition, and Cyrus had worked to focus
Drummond's full attention as well as his full energy on
the political aspirations that fed that ambition.

But during the past few days Cyrus had grown more
and more uneasy. He couldn't put a name to what he was
feeling except to know it concerned Julia. And time.
Time was running out, he realized. He couldn't afford to wait until he goaded Drummond to expose himself
publicly; he had to get Julia away from her husband, and
quickly. So he had maneuvered to get Drummond out of
Richmond, and he'd gone to talk to Julia.

He was grateful, now, that the storm gave him the opportunity to be alone with her, but he still didn't know
how to convince her to leave her husband. He was
grappling with that problem when he took the first step
into the house, looked up, and saw her.

The incomplete exterior walls of the house didn't
block the wind very well; fitful gusts were tugging at her
dark skirt and white blouse so that she seemed in motion
even though she stood still. She had lost her hat
sometime during the drive to the house, and the wind
made wisps of her fiery hair flutter around her pale face.
Her wide eyes were dark and colorless except when
lightning flashed, but then they came vividly alive with
green fire.

When the truth hit him, it was like being paralyzed for
an eternal moment, as if everything inside him stopped.
Then his heart began to pound heavily in his chest and he felt dizzy.

He hadn't questioned his own feelings very deeply because there'd been so many other puzzling and disturbing questions in his life since he'd returned to Richmond. He'd known he wanted her; the desire that had grown more intense with every passing day ached inside him now almost unbearably. He had known he wanted to help her, to ease her pain and take away her fear. He had even known she was important to him
beyond those things, that she was somehow a piece of
the "puzzle" his life had become.

He hadn't known he loved her.

Now, in a moment so intense it was almost blinding, he knew. It was akin to knowing his heart was beating, a certainty that didn't have to be examined because it was so irrefutable. She was part of him, and he'd never be whole, never be complete until she knew that, and believed it, as surely as he did.

Cyrus realized he'd stopped as though he'd run into a
wall. Perhaps he had. The woman he loved was so physically and emotionally wounded, she might never be able to return his feelings even if she wanted to.
Getting her away from Drummond would be only the first step: he would have to take many more slow and careful steps before Julia healed.

Cyrus drew a breath and continued up the steps, vaguely aware of the storm building all around them with an electric tension he could actually feel. If it didn't
rain soon and drain some of the storm's fury, he thought,
the lightning would grow more dangerous, and begin to touch off fires that would be deadly.

'
He reached Julia and took her hand gently in his. "We should remain near the center of the house," he told her. "It will be safer."

She allowed him to lead her deeper among the maze of fleshless walls and gaping doorways. She wasn't so
aware of the strange thoughts with her hand lost in his,
but she was still aware of tensely waiting... for
something. She didn't know what it was, but she wanted
it, needed it, and she didn't know how much longer she could wait for it.

It was darker near the center of the house, and she felt the wind more than heard it. Only an occasional draft of hot air disturbed the stillness. Cyrus led her into what would probably be a parlor, with a rock fireplace half completed blocking most of the light from the front of the house.

"Wait just a minute," he said, squeezing her hand
gently before releasing it. "I think there's a lamp on the
mantel block." He stepped away from her and moved between several looming shapes toward the fireplace.

There
was
a brief silence, then the scrape of a match, a blue-white flare, the smell of sulphur and then the light of a kerosene lamp sent out a yellow circle.

Julia looked around. The looming shapes had become
a wheelbarrow piled high with stones to continue building the fireplace, two corded stacks of lumber, and an
open crate containing plumbing fixtures. There was also
a smaller, empty crate, upended to form a table on which sat a second kerosene lamp, and a pallet of thick quilts.

Following her gaze, Cyrus said, "I've hired a watchman to keep an eye on the place at night; it looks like he's
been doing more sleeping than watching."

"Were you worried about theft?" she asked, wonder
ing why her voice sounded so hollow. Then she realized.
The house, of course.
Voices always sounded strange in
a half-completed or empty building.
Except for his
voice.
His voice was always curiously distinct no matter
what tone he used.

"Lumber is valuable," he said with a slight shrug. He
decided not to explain yet another of his "whims," especially since he hardly understood it himself, and
since the last thing he wanted to do was add to Julia's fears. He wasn't worried about lumber being stolen. All he knew was that he felt the need to guard this house as
strongly as he'd felt the need to build it.

Julia started nervously as a crash of thunder shook the
entire house. She had the sensation they were more
alone then ever before, cut off from the rest of the world
by the angry but oddly protective force of nature itself.
She tensed when Cyrus took a step toward her.

"You don't have to be afraid of me, Julia," he said
quietly. As he had done on her previous visit, he
shrugged out of his coat and folded it, then placed it on
the smaller of the two stacks of lumber. "Come over here
and sit down, please. We're going to be here awhile; we
might as well be comfortable."

She obeyed the request, but her tension was height
ened when he joined her with no more than a few inches
between them.
Searching for something to say, she
finally asked, "Were you going somewhere?
I mean, with
the storm already so rough.
.."

"I was searching for you," he replied.

Julia turned her head quickly to stare at him.
"For
me?"

He nodded, watching her intently. "I'd gone to the
house to talk to you, and found Lissa very upset and
worried about you
. "

"You went to the house?" She was shocked, and a chill
of fear feathered up her spine. "But, Adrian—"

"He's attending a political meeting halfway across the
state, and shouldn't return before midnight," Cyrus reassured her. "I made sure of that before I took the chance."

"Even so," she said unsteadily, "the neighbors... people will wonder."

"They'll think I went to see him, if they think anything
at all. At least until—" He hesitated,
then
said, "I asked
Lissa to pack a few things for the two of you, and to be
ready to leave when we returned."

"I can't leave," she said automatically, wondering why
her mind felt so sluggish. Why couldn't she think?

"Sweetheart, you can't stay," he said softly but with
an
intensity
in his voice she'd never heard before. "It would be bad enough if Drummond
were
just a brutal bastard, but he's more than that. He's twisted. He could cross the line into insanity at any moment—if he hasn't already. Even his closest friends are beginning to wonder about him, and he's never betrayed himself to them before.
The next time he gets violent, he could kill you.
Or
Lissa.
Do you understand?"

Julia couldn't look away from Cyrus, even though she
felt terribly vulnerable. Words welled up and escaped without her volition. "He'd said he'd hurt Lissa if I left him," she whispered.
"That she'd never be safe from him.
I thought if I could just hold on until Lissa was
married, then maybe I could find a way out."

Cyrus readied over to touch her hand. "You can't wait
that long. Julia, I know you can't be sure I'm different from Drummond. I know you don't trust me, can't trust me right now, but I swear I would never do anything to
hurt you. I'll take care of you and Lissa, and I'll make
certain Drummond never touches her or hurts you
again."

"You don't know him. He—"

"Sweetheart, I'll keep him away from you if it takes a
bullet to do it."

Julia felt a shock, but a peculiar one. She didn't doubt
Cyrus was capable of killing another man if the reason
were strong enough; what surprised her was his appar
ent determination to do whatever was necessary to
protect her and Lissa.
Just because he desired her?
Could passion drive a man to such lengths? The endear
ment he'd used surprised her as well, and puzzled her a
little. Did he believe she'd expect pretty words and
phrases if she did go to him and become his mistress?

It seemed strangely out of character. From the very first he'd been blunt with her, often shockingly so. He had even once told her he wouldn't offer pretty speeches or bedroom lies, and she had decided he wouldn't find it
necessary to resort to such tactics in order to get what he
wanted. Yet he had twice called her sweetheart, his
black velvet voice sober and gentle—and she had the odd feeling he wasn't aware he'd done it.