The Husband Hunters Read online

  The severity of his tone brought the colour once again into Andrina’s face and feeling utterly humiliated she turned once again towards the door.

  “You are not to leave until you tell me where you intend to spend the night,” the Duke ordered. “Surely you know someone in London?”

  “I have never been here before,” Andrina replied.

  She wanted to run away, to hide herself somewhere! But she had the uncomfortable feeling that it would be impossible for her to go until he gave her permission to do so.

  “Of all the scatter-brained, half-witted, idiotic ideas, yours is the worst!” the Duke stormed. “How could you have thought up anything so incredibly naïve, so foolish, so absurd?”

  “I thought – your father would – help me,” Andrina faltered. “I did not expect to – stay with him. I thought we could rent a house and – he would find us a – chaperone.”

  “The whole idea was mad from start to finish,” the Duke said furiously. “A chaperone indeed! Where do you think my father, or I for that matter, can find you a chaperone, especially at this time of the night?”

  “I am – going to a – hotel.”

  “And what respectable hotel would take in an unescorted woman, looking like you?” he asked.

  “There must be – somewhere – ” Andrina went on desperately.

  Now she was beginning to feel frightened.

  London was, very big, and even living in the country she had heard talk of the depravity in the City, although she had never expected to come into contact with it.

  She looked very small, very young and very pathetic as she stood halfway to the door, her eyes frantic, the colour the Duke had brought to her cheeks still vivid against the whiteness of her skin.

  He stared at her and she thought from his expression that he disliked her as much as she disliked him.

  Suddenly he put out his hand and tugged at the bell pull.

  “Come and sit down,” he demanded. “I suppose I shall have to see what I can do about this.”

  The door opened before Andrina had time to obey him.

  “Fetch Mr. Robson!” the Duke commanded.

  “Very good, Your Grace.”

  Andrina sat on the edge of the chair she had previously occupied.

  The Duke did not look at her, but stood with his back to the fire and she knew by the squareness of his chin and the tight line of his mouth that he was incensed.

  After an uncomfortable two minutes the door opened and a middle-aged man with grey hair and what Andrina thought was a worried face came into the room.

  “You wished to see me, Your Grace?”

  “Yes, Robson,” the Duke replied. “I require a chaperone for this lady!”

  “A chaperone, Your Grace?”

  “That is what I said.”

  “I am afraid I don’t understand, Your Grace.”

  “Then let me make it clear,” the Duke replied. “This is Miss Andrina Maldon, a distant cousin – very distant, but nevertheless a relative, and her father and mine were friends, if he ever had any friends!”

  Mr. Robson made a polite bow to Andrina, which she returned.

  “Miss Maldon informs me,” the Duke carried on in a lofty tone, “that since she is also my father’s God-daughter, she considers it my duty to shoulder the responsibilities that my father lamentably neglected during his lifetime and to introduce her two sisters and herself to Society.”

  Andrina gave an exclamation of sheer astonishment.

  She looked up at the Duke and felt for a moment that her heart had stopped beating.

  He had agreed! She had won!

  She could hardly believe that she had actually heard him say the words!

  “You will therefore appreciate, Robson,” the Duke continued, “that the Misses Maldon must be provided with a chaperone who is not only knowledgeable about such matters but who will also be acceptable to the great hostesses.”

  “I understand, Your Grace, but it will not be easy,” Mr. Robson replied and his expression was now even more worried than it had been before.

  “I am well aware of that,” the Duke said, “but I suppose such paragons do exist.”

  “There is Your Grace’s aunt, the Countess of Himley – ” Mr. Robson began.

  “An odious woman!” the Duke interposed, “I will have nothing to do with her. I cannot imagine how you can even mention her name!”

  “I beg Your Grace’s pardon.”

  There was silence as Mr. Robson appeared to be thinking and then suddenly he suggested tentatively,

  “What about Lady Evelyn Lindsay, Your Grace? She is Your Grace’s cousin and you will remember that her late husband was Ambassador to Brussels. She must be finding it very dull living on his pension and I am sure that she would welcome the opportunity to return to the Society world in which she once shone so brightly.”

  “I knew you would not fail me, Robson!” the Duke smiled. “Lady Evelyn will do excellently. Take a carriage and fetch her here immediately!”

  “Here, Your Grace? And immediately?”

  “Miss Maldon will be staying and she must be chaperoned.”

  “Yes, of course, Your Grace. I will leave at once. Lady Evelyn lives North of the Park in Dorset Square.”

  “Then fetch her, Robson,” the Duke commanded.

  The secretary bowed and went from the room.

  Andrina rose to her feet.

  “What can I say?” she asked. “I never thought you would – agree. I am grateful – so overwhelmingly – wholeheartedly grateful!”

  “Let me make this quite clear,” the Duke said harshly. “I am embroiling myself in your crazy senseless scheme against my better judgment, against every instinct and every inclination.”

  “But you have – agreed!” Andrina said breathlessly.

  “I have agreed, God help me!” the Duke said, “but I wish to have as little part as possible in the whole inane business!”

  “I will try not to – worry you,” Andrina promised humbly, but her heart was singing.

  Chapter Three

  Andrina felt as if she was living a dream.

  She was so used to planning everything herself, ever since her mother’s death, and organising the household and her sisters that she found it extraordinary to have everything arranged for her.

  She realised the very evening she arrived that the Duke’s life was regulated in a most meticulous manner that proved, as the days passed, a continual surprise to her.

  When she was upstairs changing for dinner and two housemaids were unpacking her valise, there was a knock on the door and an elderly woman in rustling black silk, who she realised must be the housekeeper, came into the room.

  “Mr. Robson would be very grateful, miss, if you would let him know your home address, so that the coachman can plan the journey which he is to start at dawn tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning?” Andrina asked.

  ‘That is what I understood, miss,” the housekeeper replied, “and I am to travel in the carriage so that I can look after your sisters on the return journey.”

  The housekeeper would certainly be a very respectable and reliable escort, Andrina thought with a smile, realising that the Duke was determined to protect her sisters against finding themselves in the same reprehensible situation that she had been involved in.

  Even to think, not only of the way he had behaved but also of the scathing manner in which he had spoken about it made her feel a quick surge of anger.

  At the same time she could not help being glad and excited by the thought that Cheryl and Sharon would be with her far quicker than she had anticipated.

  “I am afraid it is a long journey for you to undertake,” she said to the housekeeper.

  “His Grace is sending a groom ahead to ask if we can stay the night on the way back with Lord and Lady Drayton, who have a house not far from Market Harborough,” the housekeeper replied. “So we shall be quite comfortable, miss, and not have to put up in one of those ho
rrible Posting inns,”

  Because she could not repress her curiosity, Andrina asked,

  “I understand that His Grace sometimes stays in them.”

  “So I believe,” the housekeeper said stiffly. “But His Grace is very particular whose hospitality he accepts and Lord and Lady Drayton keep early hours and are in fact a trifle old-fashioned.”

  ‘Cheryl and Sharon will certainly have no chance of getting into any mischief!’ Andrina thought.

  She wrote down the address as the housekeeper had requested and scribbled a note to the girls, telling them that everything was even better than they had hoped and she was waiting impatiently for their arrival.

  She could imagine the excitement there would be at the Manor House when they received her note.

  In a way she was sorry that she could not be there to tell them herself, but she was to learn that there were a great many things for her to do in London.

  When she had gone down to dinner wearing an evening gown that she had fortunately brought with her, she was feeling a little nervous of meeting Lady Evelyn Lindsay.

  The Duke had arranged to dine late, as Andrina realised, so that she would be properly chaperoned.

  It had never seemed to strike him, she thought, that Lady Evelyn might, when Mr. Robson called for her, have been out or might have had other plans. He behaved, she thought resentfully, as if the whole world was just waiting to do his bidding!

  When she entered the large salon where the butler told her that His Grace was waiting, it was to find him talking to a lady whom Andrina glanced at a little apprehensively.

  She had been half-afraid that the chaperone chosen for them by the Duke would be someone strait-laced and haughty, rather like some of the Dowagers in Cheshire who disapproved of Cheryl simply because of her beauty.

  But, as she walked over the soft carpet towards the hearthrug, she heard a light laugh and when she saw Lady Evelyn much of her anxiety disappeared.

  She must have been nearly sixty, but there was a youthfulness about her slim figure and a light in her eyes that proclaimed she still enjoyed life.

  She had never been beautiful, but she was smart and fashionable in a manner that made Andrina immediately conscious of how inadequate her gown was.

  She had copied it very carefully from a design in The Ladies Journal. But she had only been able to afford the cheapest material and, although the colour became her, there was no disguising the fact, she told herself uncomfortably, that it looked home-made.

  Lady Evelyn’s gown, although, as Andrina realised later in the evening, it was certainly not new and had in fact seen a great deal of wear, proclaimed the magic word ‘Paris’ in every seam, in every ribbon and in every movement of the narrow skirt.

  Crossing the salon Andrina realised that the Duke’s eyes were on her face and because he made her feel shy she kept her own downcast until she reached his side.

  “Evelyn, may I present Andrina Maldon,” he said to the woman seated on the sofa. “She and her sisters have a connection with our family through great-great-grandmother Bentinck, so, of course, they are not only my cousins but also yours!”

  Lady Evelyn held out her hand.

  “Welcome to the family!” she said. “I can see at first glance that you are one of the more attractive assets we have had in centuries!”

  Andrina curtseyed and Lady Evelyn drew her down beside her on the sofa.

  “It’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened!” she said. “That you and your sisters should have appeared from nowhere and that Tancred should constitute himself your Guardian!”

  She gave the Duke a sly glance from out of the side of her eyes and added,

  “I cannot imagine what our relations will say, especially Louise, who has no fewer than five daughters whom you have never condescended to honour with a ball!”

  “A – ball?” Andrina asked and found it hard to say the word.

  “Of course,” Lady Evelyn replied. “How better can Tancred and I present you to the Beau Monde than at a ball? I believe the last one that took place in this house was over twenty years ago!”

  Dinner in the huge dining room, where they were waited on by half-a-dozen footmen and the pontifical butler, was not the difficult meal that Andrina had feared as she came downstairs.

  Lady Evelyn chatted gaily about friends and relations she and the Duke had in common, of what had happened in Brussels after Napoleon’s abdication in 1814 when her husband had been Ambassador there and a number of other subjects.

  “Poor Herbert! If only he had not died before we had time to enjoy the peace,” she said. “I was hoping that after Brussels we could have gone to Paris, the Mecca of all diplomats, but it was not to be.”

  There was just for a moment a wistful note in her voice and then she went on,

  “If a balloon had dropped down the chimney, I could not have been more surprised when Mr. Robson arrived and told me that you wished me to come here immediately!”

  “You can thank Robson for suggesting that you were in fact exactly the chaperone I needed to relieve me of my new responsibilities,” the Duke said.

  There was just an edge to his voice that told Andrina all too clearly that he was still annoyed at being saddled with them, but she thought hopefully it would not be for long.

  She was quite certain that Cheryl and Sharon would quickly find husbands and once they were married there would be no need to trouble the Duke any further.

  She could not help wondering what Lady Evelyn must privately have thought of the precipitate manner in which she had been brought to Broxbourne House.

  But she was left in no uncertainty about it when, after dinner was finished, the Duke bowed to his cousin and said,

  “If you will excuse me, Evelyn, I will now leave and make my apologies to His Royal Highness with whom I should have been dining tonight.”

  Lady Evelyn clasped her hands together.

  “Oh, Tancred, how terrible! Have we kept you from Carlton House? Surely the Prince Regent will be angry? He hates having his parties upset!”

  “There was a good excuse for it,” the Duke replied, “and when I tell him that he will later have the privilege of meeting three new beauties, I feel sure that he will be too intrigued to be incensed with me for long.”

  The Duke spoke as if it was of the utmost indifference to him whether the Prince Regent was annoyed or not and Andrina thought it was typical of his arrogance.

  ‘Even though I am extremely beholden to him,’ she told herself, ‘I hate him!’

  But she had to admit as the Duke left them to walk across the salon that it was difficult to imagine any man could look more distinguished or more obviously a person of consequence.

  The door closed behind him and Lady Evelyn turned to Andrina.

  “You brilliant, incredible child!” she cried. “How did you do it? You must tell me before I positively die of curiosity! How did you do it?”

  “Do what?” Andrina asked in surprise.

  “Persuade His Grace to have you here – three of you! I cannot believe it possible!”

  “But why?” Andrina asked.

  “Why?” Lady Evelyn echoed. “Because if ever there was an egotistical, self-sufficient man, it is His Grace the Duke of Broxbourne! He is exactly like his father, my uncle, who was a monster of selfishness!”

  Andrina said nothing and after a moment Lady Evelyn went on,

  “I immediately thought that he must have fallen in love for the first time in his life, but he speaks as if you were an encumbrance. If so, why is he having you here? Can you be blackmailing him by any chance?”

  Andrina could not help laughing.

  “No, indeed! As it happens, I came here hoping to see the late Duke and not knowing that he had died. He was a friend of my father’s when he was young.”

  “So Tancred told me,” Lady Evelyn said. “But the last thing His Grace would want to do would be to make amends for his father’s deficiencies – there were too many of
them for one thing!”

  “You do not seem to be very fond of your relations,” Andrina could not help saying.

  Lady Evelyn gave again the light musical laugh that was characteristic of her.

  “They are a moth-eaten lot, puffed up with nothing but pride! That is why it will be so exciting for me to produce a cousin like you. Are your sisters as lovely as you are?”

  “They are much, much lovelier!” Andrina replied. “In fact they are both quite beautiful – incredibly beautiful!”

  She drew in her breath and then said bravely,

  “Please help them, Lady Evelyn. This is the one chance they will ever have of meeting the right people and finding husbands.”

  “So that is why you have come to London!” Lady Evelyn exclaimed. “I might have guessed it!”

  “When you see Cheryl and Sharon, I’m sure you will understand,” Andrina said. “We have been living a very dull existence in Cheshire and there is nobody near us who would make a suitable husband for either of them.”

  “You have given me just the sort of task I enjoy!” Lady Evelyn smiled. “The first thing you and I must do tomorrow is to go shopping. I can see that you need clothes and so do I! As for your sisters, no one must have so much as a glimpse of them until they are properly gowned.”

  “Will that take long?” Andrina asked.

  “We have to make sure that they are equipped in the very latest fashion as soon as they set foot in London,” Lady Evelyn replied. “Besides I have planned that the ball shall take place at the end of the week!”

  “So quickly?” Andrina exclaimed.

  “The quicker the better!” Lady Evelyn said. “It is important that you should be invited to all the other balls, masques, riots and assemblies that are being given this Season. The moment it is learnt that a ball is to take place in Broxbourne House, we shall be besieged by every hostess of any consequence.”

  *

  Lady Evelyn’s words were prophetic and long before the ball Andrina found herself being carried away on a flood tide of excitement, expenditure and speculation that made her feel as if she must lose her identity.