Andrina started because she had not realised he was so close beside her.
“They are not the marriages I had hoped for,” she replied.
Then, because she felt that he might be gloating over her discomfiture, she turned and walked from the room and upstairs to her bedroom.
Her maid was waiting to help her into a very elaborate ballgown, but she shook her head.
“I shall not be going out this evening,” she said. “Will you inform Lady Evelyn that I shall stay behind with Miss Cheryl, who I am certain will not wish to go to the Russian Embassy.”
Even as she was speaking Lady Evelyn came into the room.
“I understand that you have brought Cheryl back,” she said.
“She is here,” Andrina answered, “and she is engaged to Hugo Renton – a man she has known ever since she was a child!”
“Oh, I am so glad!” Lady Evelyn exclaimed.
Andrina looked at her in surprise.
“Cheryl confided to me that there was a man she liked more than any other she had met,” Lady Evelyn explained, “and Sharon told me all about him.”
She could see the disappointment in Andrina’s eyes and she said quietly ,
“My dear, Cheryl is very beautiful but as you well know, she would never cope with the difficulties and intrigues of the Social world. She needs someone to look after her and make decisions for her. She will be perfectly happy in the country with a husband and their babies. She is not cut out for anything else.”
“She is so beautiful!” Andrina murmured.
Then she added in a sharp voice,
“Sharon is to marry the Count. Did you know that?”
“They told me when they came back from their drive,” Lady Evelyn replied. “I consider them very suitably matched.”
“He is poor and of no consequence,” Andrina protested.
“He is ambitious and very clever!” Lady Evelyn answered. “What he needs is a wife who will adore him and at the same time do everything to further his career. It will keep Sharon busy and I am quite certain that after a great deal of hard work they will achieve success.”
“I suppose you think I am very mercenary,” Andrina said.
“I think that like all match-making women you are blinded by the golden glitter of the Beau Monde and do not see the heartbreak that often lies beneath it,” Lady Evelyn answered.
She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and gave a little cry.
“We must go! The Princess will never forgive us if we are late. The Count said he would call for us and I imagine that he and Sharon are downstairs. What about you and Cheryl?”
“I am quite certain that Cheryl will want to stay here with Hugo,” Andrina replied, “and, as they must be chaperoned, I will stay with them.”
“Very well,” Lady Evelyn said, “but don’t be too arduous in your duties. A good chaperone should know when to make herself scarce!”
*
The Duke also stayed at home instead of attending the party at the Russian Embassy.
They had dinner in the large and formal dining room, but Andrina could not help thinking that it was the gayest meal she had eaten since she had been at Broxbourne House.
Cheryl was so happy that it seemed to shine from her like a light and Hugo, who Andrina had always thought was rather heavy and dull, seemed to have developed the art of conversation, which she had never noticed in the past.
Granted he talked about horses and country affairs, but the Duke was obviously knowledgeable on both subjects and Andrina found herself being much more amused by their conversation than by all the social gossip she had listened to on other nights.
When dinner was over, the Duke said that he was going to his Club and, remembering that Lady Evelyn had told her not to be too arduous a chaperone, Andrina left Cheryl and Hugo alone in the salon and went somewhat forlornly up the stairs to her bedroom.
When she reached it, the maid who was waiting to undo her gown brought her two jewel boxes.
“Miss Cheryl was going to wear these tonight at the ball, miss,” she said, “but, as she changed in a hurry, she didn’t put them on. I wonder if you’d like me to take them down to Mr. Robson?”
“I will take them,” Andrina agreed. “Will he be up at this hour of the night?”
“Oh, yes, miss, he usually works late and anyway he has his private rooms just the other side of the office.”
“I will take them to him,” Andrina said.
She went downstairs again and along the passage to Mr. Robson’s office.
She opened the door to find him sitting at his desk dealing with a number of papers.
He looked up in surprise as she entered.
“I am returning some jewellery,” Andrina explained. “My sister has not gone to the Russian Embassy and so she does not require it.”
“It’s very kind of you, Miss Andrina,” Mr. Robson said, rising to his feet, “but it could easily have waited until the morning when I hope Miss Sharon brings me back the diamond stars in safety.”
“I noticed she had them in her hair,” Andrina said.
“She told me that it was a very special evening for her,” Mr. Robson replied and he was smiling.
“I suppose it is,” Andrina agreed. “Both my sisters have become engaged!”
“Then it is indeed very very special!”
He carried the jewel boxes across the room and opened the safe door.
Andrina looked down on the desk he had been working at by the light of a candelabrum that held three candles.
She could not help seeing what was written in large letters on a folder that lay in the centre of the desk.
“Charities supported anonymously by His Grace, the Duke of Broxbourne.”
For a moment Andrina stared at the words. Then in curiosity without realising that she was prying, she opened the outside cover of the folder.
On the next page in Mr. Robson’s meticulous copperplate handwriting there was a list.
Orphanages and orphans.
Pensioners.
Reformed Criminals.
First Offenders.
Society for the Abolition of Climbing Boys.
Foster Parents for Illegitimate and Ill-treated Children.
The Blind.
The Anti-Slavery Movement.
Abolition of Children’s labour in Factories and Mines,
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Andrina read it, her eyes wide with surprise. Then she heard Mr. Robson make an exclamation as he came from the safe and realised what she had been doing.
“That is not for your eyes, Miss Andrina!”
“Why not?” Andrina enquired.
“Because,” Mr. Robson replied, “the Duke would be extremely annoyed if he knew that you had seen it.”
“But why?”
“Because His Grace does not wish anyone to know of his kindness in so many different ways.”
Andrina deliberately picked up the folder and opened it. It was very thick and, as she turned the pages, she could see dozens and dozens of names and against each one the dates on which they had received considerable sums of money.
“Why should the Duke wish to be so secretive about this?” she asked.
Mr. Robson seemed to hesitate and she added,
“I would like to know the truth. Of course I could ask him myself.”
“I hope you will not do that, Miss Andrina,” Mr. Robson said hastily. “His Grace would be extremely incensed with me if he found out that you had seen this folder. He has impressed upon me often enough that it must be kept under lock and key.”
He paused and then continued,
“You surprised me by coming here this evening and therefore as you might say I was off my guard.”
“I will keep your secret and the Duke’s,” Andrina said, “if you will explain to me why His Grace should not want anyone to know that he is so generous.”
As she spoke she sat down on Mr. Robson’s chair a
t his desk still holding the folder in her hands.
She saw that he was debating within himself whether he should trust her with the truth.
Finally he made up his mind and began,
“I suppose, as you are a relation, Miss Andrina, there will be no harm in my telling you what you want to know, even though His Grace would be very angry if he learnt about it.”
“Go on, Mr. Robson!” Andrina prompted.
“I have been in the service of the Duke and of his father before him for nearly fifty years,” Mr. Robson said, “and so I have been privileged perhaps to see more of the family even than those who are closer through a blood relationship.”
Andrina’s eyes were on his face as he went on,
“The old Duke was always a difficult man and when he lost the Duchess all that was kind and pleasant in his nature vanished overnight! He became soured and I think he hated everybody, but most of all he hated his only child!”
“The present Duke?”
“His Grace!” Mr. Robson agreed. “He was only a little boy of six when his mother died, and from that moment everything that was gentle and loving in his life was taken from him.”
“How was that?” Andrina enquired.
“As I have said, the old Duke hated the young Marquis, as he was then. He never spoke to him except unkindly, harshly, and to find fault and he took away from him everything and everybody he was fond of.”
There was a note of pain in Mr. Robson’s voice that told Andrina that he had hated to stand by and see the child suffer.
“If Master Tancred, as we called him, became fond of a Nanny or a Governess, she was dismissed,” Mr. Robson continued. “He cried bitterly when his Nanny was sent away and he cried two years later when Miss Anstruther, a nice kind woman, was told to go.”
“But why did the old Duke get rid of them?” Andrina enquired.
“I think, because he suffered himself, he wanted his son to suffer too,” Mr. Robson replied. “Anyway, it was terrible for us who cared for the little boy to see the manner in which he was being persecuted.”
He gave a deep sigh before he went on,
“When the young Marquis grew older, if he took a liking to a horse, his father sold it. He had a sporting dog once which he became very attached to and the Duke ordered it to be shot!”
“Oh, no!” Andrina cried. “I cannot bear it!”
“That is what we used to say, Miss Andrina,” Mr. Robson said, “but there was nothing we could do and we did not dare even express our sympathy to his Lordship.”
“Why not?” Andrina enquired.
“Because he was very proud. Even when he was young he had a pride that made him hide his feelings. I knew that he missed his mother desperately and after her the two women he had grown fond of. But when he lost them, he was determined not to let anyone, least of all his father, know that he cared.”
“So that was why he grew so cynical,” Andrina said almost to herself.
“That is why His Grace put up a defence between himself and the world,” Mr. Robson said. “He would not be pitied. He would not allow anyone to feel sorry for him and so he wanted them to believe that nothing they could do or say could possibly hurt him in any way.”
Andrina drew a deep breath.
Now she could understand so much that had puzzled her before. Now she could see why the Duke appeared indifferent to everyone’s feelings except his own, why he had an imperious aloofness which had made him seem to her to be autocratic and tyrannical.
“He must have been very unhappy,” she said softly at length.
“I used to lie awake at nights,” Mr. Robson said, “worrying over him, but even before His Grace went to Eton none of us dared show him how sorry we were for him.”
There was a sad note in Mr. Robson’s voice.
“I think as he grew older, knowing how unapproachable, how difficult and how feared the old Duke was, he has modelled himself on his father. But beneath it all His Grace has a kind heart and a sympathy with those who are unfortunate. It is only that he is determined not to let anyone know it!”
“So he helps all these people secretly,” Andrina said looking at the folder, which was still in her hands.
“He has threatened to dismiss me, after all these years, if I ever speak of it outside this room,” Mr. Robson said with a smile. “That is why my future is in your hands, Miss Andrina.”
“I will not betray you,” she promised. “At the same time I am glad to know the truth. I could not understand how His Grace could be so cynical and why there seemed to be nothing but hardness about him.”
“It would have been very different had the Duchess, his mother, lived,” Mr. Robson said. “She was always lovely and gentle. Everyone she knew adored her. I suppose we could all understand what the old Duke felt when she died, but it would have broken her heart to see Master Tancred made to suffer the way he did.”
Andrina put the folder down on the desk.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“And you will not give me away, Miss Andrina?” Mr. Robson asked anxiously.
“You have my word of honour on that.”
Andrina went up to her bedroom and when she was in bed she thought that she would be tired and sleepy after all she had been through that day.
Instead she found herself thinking of the Duke, but not as she knew him, raging at her for her behaviour, making her feel insignificant, embarrassed and angry.
Rather she thought of the Duke Mr. Robson had described to her!
The unhappy little boy who had lost his mother and who cried at night because she was not there, the child whose Nanny was taken away because he was too fond of her and whose Governess was dismissed for the same reason.
She could hardly bear to think how he must have suffered when his dog was destroyed by a tyrannical cruel father who must have been half-mad and yet in his own way was suffering unbearably in the loss of the woman he loved.
Andrina found that it hurt her physically to think of so much unhappiness that had turned from the solace of tears to a hardness that had become a cynicism worn as an armour and a defence against being hurt again.
‘That is the real secret,’ she thought.
The Duke had suffered so much that he would not allow himself to suffer any more. That was why he had fought against his generous impulse in taking them into his house, why he showed them no other feelings save indifference and reserve.
It was almost as if, Andrina thought, he had positively wanted her to hate him and therefore had gone out of his way to provoke, to mock her and almost to delight in finding her in the wrong.
It was all part of the aggression that had sprung from unhappiness too deep and too painful for him to contemplate it and yet which remained inside him whatever he did, however much he tried to escape it.
‘Perhaps some day he will find happiness,’ Andrina told herself.
She thought of the expression in Hugo Renton’s eyes as he looked down at Cheryl and the note in his voice when he had said that he wanted to marry her.
There was a depth and sincerity expressing an emotion that seemed to come from the very depth of his being.
And what she had seen in Hugo she had also seen in the Count. He and Sharon must have loved each other from the first moment they met.
Andrina had told the Earl of Crowhurst that love at first sight only happened in novels, but it had certainly happened to Sharon and Count Ivan! And she knew that Lady Evelyn was right when she said that they would be successful because they were so much in love.
‘I suppose,’ Andrina said to herself, ‘that is what we all want, a love that makes a woman shine with delight and a man have a depth and a wonder in his voice because of what he feels within his heart.
‘Perhaps one day,’ she went on, almost as if she was telling herself a story, ‘a little boy called Tancred, whose love has always been taken away from him, will find it again.’
It would change him, she thought, so that he woul
d no longer fight the world and everyone in it. He would no longer want people to think him selfish and egotistical, he would no longer feel afraid of his own kind impulses.
Only love, the love that he had lost when he was very small, could bring him that.
Then, as once again her thoughts shied away from the horror of what he must have felt when his dog had been destroyed, she knew how much she wanted his happiness.
She had hated him and she told herself firmly she still did – yet she wanted to make up to him for all those wasted years when in his father’s eyes he could do nothing right and he had no one to turn to.
It was strange, she thought, how thinking about his sufferings really hurt her.
It was almost as if someone had turned a knife in her heart and she wondered if, when she saw the Duke again, she would ever be able to storm and rage at him as she had done before.
She would certainly no longer be able to look at him with the same eyes, no longer see a man deliberately provoking her, insulting her and criticising her, but instead only a lonely, pathetic, unhappy little boy.
“This is ridiculous!” Andrina said aloud. “I must go to sleep. There is so much to be done tomorrow and I must think about a trousseau for Cheryl and for Sharon. Why am I lying here worrying over the Duke?”
She turned over, patted her pillow and settled herself down again and yet the pain in her heart was still there.
Strangely she felt curiously like tears – tears for something that had happened a long, long time ago.
‘Someone will make it up to him one day,’ she told herself consolingly.
Then almost as if a voice beside her spoke there was the question,
‘Why not you?’
Andrina sat bolt upright in bed.
For a moment she could hardly imagine what she was doing or thinking. Then she suddenly knew that her thoughts and her feelings had been carrying her along a path that had been there long before she had talked to Mr. Robson.
Whatever she might tell herself to the contrary, it had been fascinating to talk to the Duke, to fight him, to argue with him and even, strangely enough, to be defeated by him.
The Husband Hunters Page 14