The Husband Hunters Read online

  He demanded the best wine and the only port and claret he considered worth drinking were well beyond their means.

  Andrina pandered to him, coaxed him and performed miracles with what little money she had to spend on the housekeeping.

  It meant that she and her sisters went without new gowns or made their own out of the cheapest materials and could seldom afford even pretty ribbons with which to trim what they had made.

  It meant too that they had to take turns in riding the only horse they could now keep in the stable.

  It was an animal that also had to pull the carriage if their father wished to go driving, or the gig, which was more convenient for them to use themselves.

  The garden was sadly neglected and they were fortunate in having old Sarah, who had been with them since their childhood, to cook and do the rough work in the house.

  The rest they shared amongst themselves.

  Now it seemed to Andrina as if the gloom of those last years of her father’s life was moving away from the house like a dark cloud that had encompassed them for far too long.

  Even now she would sometimes wake in the night thinking that she heard her father’s hoarse voice calling her, demanding things she could not provide and finding fault with everything she did or tried to do for him.

  “There is only one thing,” Sharon said suddenly as they went up the stairs towards their mother’s bedroom.

  “What is that?” Andrina asked.

  “Do you not think people in London will expect us to be in mourning? We have not been wearing black because we could not afford new clothes and who is to see us living here except a few neighbours who understood our circumstances? But in London – ?”

  “I have thought of that,” Andrina answered. “Who is to know in London when Papa died? If anyone asks us, we will say that he died a year ago and you know he would be the last person to expect us to walk about looking like black crows!”

  “It is not so much a matter of what we look like,” Sharon said. “But if we were to go to balls wearing mourning, people would think it very reprehensible.”

  “Then they must not know that we are in mourning,” Andrina said. “It’s as easy as that and, Cheryl, do remember what I told you. Papa died last February, not this.”

  “I will remember,” Cheryl promised, but Andrina knew that she would have to remind her not once but a dozen times.

  It was always difficult to know what Cheryl was thinking about. She was so quiet, sweet and amenable and she seemed to live in a fantasy world of her own that had little or no contact with everyday life.

  She looked so lovely that it was hard for people, once they had met her, to realise that she made little contribution to the conversation or that nothing she said, if she did speak, was worth remembering.

  Now, as she moved across the bedroom at the front of the house, which had been their mother’s, she looked like an angel who had dropped out of Heaven by mistake.

  Andrina took a chair and standing on it put up her hand to the top of the wardrobe.

  “So that is where Mama hid the necklace!” Sharon exclaimed.

  “It was quite safe there,” Andrina answered. “Papa was not well enough during the last years of his life to climb up on a chair and Sarah is too old to dust so high.”

  She lifted down a leather box as she spoke and taking it to the window opened it so that the sunshine would glitter and shimmer on a necklace that was Indian in design.

  The filigree gold was very intricate and it was set with small rubies and a number of pearls, which ornamented it like a fringe and in the centre of the necklace there was a large emerald flanked by two smaller ones.

  “It’s very pretty,” Sharon said, “but somewhat barbaric-looking!”

  “That is why Mama never wore it,” Andrina replied. “Papa brought it back with him from India where he had served under General Wellesley, who later became the Duke of Wellington.”

  She looked at the necklace and smiled.

  “It was so like Papa to bring home something that was really quite useless. Mama told me once that she tried it with all sorts of gowns, but it looked out of place and she did not like to offend Papa by saying so.”

  “Papa liked everything that was exotic,” Sharon said and her voice did not make it sound very complimentary.

  “I think really he liked things that were spectacular and unusual,” Andrina explained. “That is what he wanted to be himself and it was very frustrating for him to have no money and to have to settle down here.”

  “Why did it have to be Cheshire?” Cheryl asked.

  Andrina smiled.

  “You must know the answer to that, Cheryl, you have heard it often enough. Papa had won this house on the turn of a card and when he gambled away his fortune, this was the only possession he had left.”

  “I had forgotten,” Cheryl replied indifferently.

  “But we have been happy here,” Andrina said in a voice that made it sound as if she was trying to convince herself. “We have all been together and it is only the last few years after Mama died that things have been so different.”

  “Because of Papa!” Sharon remarked. “I cannot pretend that I am not glad it is over.”

  “Nor can I,” Andrina agreed, “but I feel rather guilty. We ought to be mourning him and feeling unhappy.”

  “There is no point in pretending to each other,” Sharon said briskly.

  Andrina closed the lid of the jewel box.

  “Now are we agreed that I should go to London immediately, find the Duke and see what arrangement I can make with him?”

  “Of course,” Sharon agreed, “but can we not come with you?”

  “I did think at first that we should all go together,” Andrina answered. “Then I realised that would cost a great deal of money and we simply cannot afford it, at least not at the moment when we still owe for Papa’s funeral.”

  “No, I understand,” Sharon sighed.

  “I suppose I could sit outside the coach,” Andrina said doubtfully, “which only costs threepence a mile instead of fivepence. But it would be very cold and, if I arrived red-nosed and snuffling, the Duke might take a dislike to me.”

  “Oh, of course, you must sit inside,” Sharon cried. “And I believe you are expected to tip the coachman a shilling and the guard, if he is going the whole way, will want half a crown!”

  “It’s not going to be cheap,” Andrina said with a little sigh, “and I think we may have to sell something out of the house, although I don’t wish to do that until we absolutely are obliged to do so.”

  “Hugo said the other day,” Cheryl interrupted unexpectedly, “that his father would like to buy the picture of the horse in Papa’s study.”

  “Cheryl! You have not been telling Hugo how hard up we are?” Andrina asked sharply.

  Cheryl looked guilty and then her blue eyes filled with tears.

  “Of course it does not matter what you say to Hugo,” Andrina said quickly before her sister could reply. “He naturally knows of our circumstances, just as I am sure everyone in the neighbourhood realises that we are penniless.”

  She did not speak bitterly, she merely stated a fact.

  “Was it wrong of me, Andrina?” Cheryl asked.

  “No, of course not, dearest!” Andrina said putting an arm around her shoulders.

  “You are not angry?” Cheryl enquired.

  “I am never angry with you!”

  Andrina kissed her sister and then to change the subject she said,

  “Come and help me pack, girls. There is a stagecoach passing through the village tomorrow that goes direct from Chester to London in twenty-eight hours. The sooner I see the Duke the better!”

  “You are very brave!” Cheryl said admiringly. “I am glad you don’t want me to go with you.”

  “Supposing he says ‘no’?” Sharon asked.

  ‘Then I shall have to think of another plan,” Andrina answered firmly.

  Her soft mouth was for the mome
nt set in a hard line. She was more determined than she had ever been about anything in her whole life that Cheryl and Sharon should have a chance to shine in London.

  ‘Their beauty must be appreciated by people who matter,’ she told herself, ‘not just a few fox hunting Squires or some old cronies of Papa’s who come to the house from time to time.’

  She was well aware, although she had never discussed it with her sisters, that in the neighbourhood the mothers of unmarried daughters made every possible effort to exclude the Maldon girls from any parties where they wanted their offspring to shine.

  They also did not encourage their sons to visit the Manor House and the young wives clung almost feverishly to their husbands when Cheryl or Sharon appeared.

  This meant that invitations of any sort were few and far between. Andrina, smarting under the injustice of it, knew that nothing she could do or say would make any difference.

  She only hoped that Cheryl, who was so sensitive, was not aware that women looked at her apprehensively and were always ready to repulse her tentative overtures of friendliness.

  Sharon was very much tougher but she was very young.

  Only Andrina realised that, just as for her the years had passed by since she was eighteen without her having one reputable suitor, exactly the same would happen both to Cheryl and Sharon unless something was done about it.

  ‘I have to persuade the Duke,’ she told herself, but she was well aware that she was relying on her father’s gambling luck.

  It was a gamble, a wild gamble, in which she was backing an absolutely outside chance.

  There was no reason why the Duke should even remember the friend he had not seen for perhaps eighteen years, nor could he be interested in any God-daughter with whom he had never communicated.

  If he had given her a Christening cup or a bowl, there was certainly no sign of it in the very meagrely-stocked silver cupboard. And if he had given her anything else, Andrina was quite certain that her mother would have mentioned it.

  “When you are grown up, darling,” she had said once to Andrina, “I must try to find someone who will bring you out and give you a Season in London.”

  She gave a little sigh.

  “It would be so wonderful if you married somebody rich and important! Then you could find suitable husbands for the girls. I think Cheryl will grow up to be very beautiful!”

  There could be no doubt about that.

  Even at thirteen, when other girls were ungainly, either too fat or too thin, with spots on their faces or tiresome affectations, Cheryl had the same angelic countenance with which she had dazzled people as a baby.

  Sharon, who was sixteen months younger, had always been alluring.

  She was not only beautiful but also fascinating and, as they grew older, Andrina noticed that people often turned from Cheryl’s celestial beauty to the sparkling gaiety of Sharon, who always had something to say and always contrived to make anything she talked about sound amusing.

  ‘I have to be successful for their sakes!’ Andrina told herself as she packed the few clothes she possessed into a valise that she could carry herself.

  Since porters meant extra tips, she decided that for the one night, or perhaps two, that she would have to stay in London, she could manage with two or three light gowns, which could be covered when she went out with the travelling cloak of Madonna-blue wool that they all wore from time to time.

  In fact, like the Gunning sisters, they exchanged their clothes amongst themselves and Andrina finally set out for London with four gowns, two of her own, one of Cheryl’s and one of Sharon’s.

  They had pooled their clothes, stockings and bonnets so that Andrina could take the best

  Their mother’s clothes also were still in the house, but somehow Andrina had never been able to bear the thought of wearing her things, since even to think of her was to experience again the misery and unhappiness they had all felt when she died.

  For a long time it seemed as if the sunshine had gone out of their lives.

  For Andrina, who had been nearest to her mother, it was almost agony to come downstairs and not hear her mother’s voice calling her from the drawing room or to wait after she had gone to bed for her mother to come to her room and say goodnight.

  She had been no less beautiful than her daughters, but in a way that was peculiarly her own.

  It was Mrs. Maldon who accounted for Andrina’s straight little aristocratic nose, for the perfection of Cheryl’s curved lips and Sharon’s heart-shaped face.

  She had been fair, although not with the sparkling gold that made Cheryl’s hair so outstanding. Andrina was sure that when her father and mother were young it would have been difficult to find a more handsome couple in the whole length and breadth of England.

  She knew that her father had always wanted a son, but until he became ill and suffered so much pain he had been very proud of his beautiful daughters.

  “You are the ‘Three Graces’, my dears,” he would say sometimes. “If I was the fellow who had to award an apple for the most beautiful, I have not the slightest idea which of you I should choose!”

  “It would be Cheryl,” Andrina had said once.

  Her father had looked at his second daughter and then he said,

  “I would agree with you if Sharon did not make me laugh. There is something very beautiful about laughter.”

  He had then looked across the table at Andrina.

  “And you, Andrina, are the most like your mother and therefore the ideal that every man has in his heart when he seeks a wife.”

  It had been the most complimentary remark her father had ever said to her.

  After that during his illness he had seemed to resent her trying to look after him and at times she had thought that he must hate her because she would not buy him the luxuries he so desired.

  But what was the point, she thought now, of worrying about Papa?

  She had to concentrate on the two girls and she had to look after them. There was no one else to do it.

  They had gone with her to the stagecoach, Sharon carrying her valise, because as she said, she had a long way to travel and she must conserve her strength.

  They waited at dawn on the high road at the end of the village known as Bigger Stukeby, although, as Sharon had often pointed out, it was not really any larger than Little Stukeby, which was three miles away.

  It was a cold rather blustery day and Andrina was glad of her travelling cloak and the fact that she wore a warm jacket under it.

  They had had a long discussion as to what Andrina should wear to go to London and it was Cheryl who had said unexpectedly,

  “You will have to change into something smart before you meet the Duke. You cannot just arrive at his house creased from travelling and carrying your valise. Besides he might think that you had come to stay.”

  “I thought of that,” Andrina said, “and I have the names of various hotels that I heard Mama mention from time to time.”

  “Would they not be very expensive?” Sharon asked.

  “I am sure they will be,” Andrina replied, “but I shall ask them for their very cheapest room. If they cannot provide me with one, I daresay they can recommend somewhere respectable that is not so dear.”

  It had all sounded very plausible, Andrina thought, when she was talking about it to her sisters, but, when the stagecoach started off, she suddenly felt alone and rather frightened.

  She had often been to Chester and she had been to Liverpool and Crewe on several occasions, but she had never been out of her own County since early childhood and London seemed a very long way away.

  But for good or evil she had embarked on this plan to find husbands for her sisters and when the stagecoach had driven off, leaving Cheryl and Sharon waving at the halt, she had settled down and told herself that she must be calm and sensible.

  For one thing she could not afford to make mistakes.

  She had, however, been lucky in finding an inside seat although there was the
complement of seven passengers already on the outside.

  The fellow traveller sitting opposite her she saw was a middle-aged, tight-lipped, grey-faced man who looked like a Lawyer or Solicitor’s clerk.

  There was a stout farmer’s wife beside her taking up more than her fair share of the seat. She had a large basket covered with a white cloth that got in the way of everyone’s feet and opposite her was a woman with a squalling child who appeared to resent travelling and intended to express his dissatisfaction vocally.

  Andrina settled herself comfortably, although she found her valise somewhat cumbersome.

  The guard on the coach had wished to put it outside, but she had resisted this suggestion because it contained the precious necklace that had belonged to her mother.

  She was well aware that anyone who travelled by coach was always in danger of accidents especially on a long journey.

  The coach could be overturned by reckless driving or a drunken coachman. There were often reports in the newspapers of horses galloping off without drivers or of travellers who bribed them in order to race another vehicle with disastrous results.

  Andrina did not intend to be separated from her valise.

  At the same time she had thought that the coachman in a many-caped overcoat with large platter-like mother-of-pearl buttons looked a sober sensible sort of man and the four horses pulling the vehicle were in good trim.

  She had often heard criticism expressed about the iniquity of the overloading of the stagecoaches and the cruelty inflicted on the animals who pulled them.

  “I suppose you realise,” one of her father’s hunting friends had said severely a year ago, “that the average life of a horse pulling a coach at about eight miles an hour is six years while at ten miles and over a horse lasts only three!”

  “Something should be done about it!” Colonel Maldon said feebly.

  “That is what I have said for a long time,” his friend answered, “and there have been a lot of letters in The Times and The Morning Post. But what do people care so long as they reach to their destinations quickly and safely?”

  “All I hope is that I never have to ride in a stagecoach again,” Andrina’s father had said positively.