Hunt and Roskell.”
Andrina read the letter and gave a little gasp.
“It cannot be true!”
Even as she spoke she knew it was typical of her father to have brought back from India something spectacular that had interested and intrigued him without taking the trouble to find out its true value.
“I must owe you a great deal of – money,” she gasped after a moment.
“A considerable sum!” the Duke agreed.
She felt that in his own peculiar way he was pleased at her dismay and, because her pride would not let her be downtrodden, she said,
“I will pay you back – that I promise you, but it will take a – long time.”
“A lifetime!” the Duke remarked.
“Perhaps not as – long as that,” Andrina said, “but certainly – many years.”
Even as she was speaking, she was thinking that without the girls to care for, if she was really thrifty and spent practically nothing at all on herself she might be able to repay him one hundred pounds a year out of her tiny income.
But the idea of a debt stretching on and on into the future was terrifying and made her feel as though she was entering a long tunnel and there was no light at the end of it.
She was staring blindly at the letter from the jewellers and after a moment the Duke said,
“I think by this time, Andrina, you know that I seldom give something for nothing and I expect you to make good any expenditure I have made on your behalf.”
“I will – pay you – back, in time,” Andrina murmured.
She was still calculating wildly how long it would take her and thinking that perhaps the Duke was right and that she would be dead long before she was finally clear of her debt!
“I prefer to be paid at once!”
She raised her head to look at him, her eyes wide and worried, her face very pale with the shock of what he had just said.
“At – once?” she repeated almost beneath her breath. “But that is – impossible!”
“Not if you agree to what I suggest.”
“And what is – that?”
“You marry me!”
For a moment Andrina felt she could not have heard him aright.
Then, as she put out her hand to hold onto the desk, his eyes met hers and she felt something strange and wonderful come alive within her.
They stood looking at each other and they were both very still.
It seemed to Andrina that she could no longer think and could hardly realise what was happening.
It might have been a few seconds or several hours that passed before the Duke said,
“Will you give me an answer, Andrina? I am asking you to marry me.”
“Why?”
He looked away from her and now he walked from the desk towards the mantelpiece to stand as he had done so often with his back to the fireplace.
“I need a wife,” he said after a moment and she thought that he had been feeling for words.
“Would – anyone do?”
Her voice was very low, but he heard what she said.
“No – I want you!”
“But why?”
She hardly knew what she was saying, she felt a wild excitement sweeping through her body!
The room was suddenly filled with sunlight and the angel voices she had heard in the Church were ringing in her ears.
“Must I give you an explanation?” the Duke enquired and she had the feeling that he was deliberately forcing a harsh note into his voice. “I have asked you to marry me, Andrina. Surely that is enough?”
Very slowly Andrina walked from the desk towards him.
She stood looking at him and knew as she did so that what she saw in his eyes was very different from what he said with his lips.
She did not speak and after a moment he said almost impatiently,
“I am still waiting for your answer. Surely you can see that it is essential for you to be married now that your sisters are settled. You cannot live alone in the country and therefore it is quite obvious that you need a husband.”
“It seems I have little – choice in the matter,” Andrina murmured. “No one – except Lord Crowhurst – has offered for me.”
“As it so happens,” the Duke said, “there have been, I think, two Peers, a Baronet, several other eligible bachelors and, damn his impertinence, a Frenchman!”
Andrina started and looked at him wide-eyed.
“You mean – you turned them away?”
“As your Guardian I did not consider them suitable!” the Duke said loftily.
“How dare you!” she exclaimed.
Yet she knew even as she spoke that it was her only too familiar expression where he was concerned.
Even if all the men he had prevented from approaching her were now on their knees asking for her hand, she would find them as distasteful as she had Lord Crowhurst.
There was only one man she loved, one man who filled her life to the exclusion of all else and he was asking her to marry him – but in a very strange fashion.
It was however, understandable, now that she knew the secret that Mr. Robson had entrusted to her! But which for his sake she must never betray.
Perhaps one day the Duke would tell her himself what he had suffered.
“You had – no right to keep those – gentlemen from – speaking to me,” she muttered a little weakly, knowing it was really of no importance.
“You were glad enough to be rid of Crowhurst,” the Duke replied.
‘That was – different,” Andrina said. “He was – repulsive – as you well know.”
“But a far better catch than all the others, and that, after all, was what you required in a husband. It is also unlikely from that point of view that you will do any better than to marry me.”
“You are quite – sure you wish to be – married?” Andrina queried.
“I cannot think of any other way that I can look after you,” he replied. “You cannot stay on indefinitely in my house. It would give rise to too much gossip. Besides I suppose there comes a time in every man’s life when he should take a wife and settle down.”
He paused and then added with that cynical twist of his lips that Andrina knew so well,
“I cannot find anyone better looking and you will certainly do justice to the Broxbourne jewellery!”
Andrina felt he was deliberately building up his defences against her, armouring himself against any expression of his feelings and yet she was not sure.
She loved him, she thought, so overwhelmingly that it was hard to think straight. Hard to be certain of anything except the tumultuous feelings within her breast.
She knew that the Duke was awaiting her reply, confident and sure of himself. Yet a super-sensitive perception told her that without revealing it he was tense.
“I am waiting for your answer, Andrina,” the Duke said, “and, of course, impatiently!”
There was again that cynical note, but she was no longer afraid of it.
Clasping her hands together as if they gave her the courage she needed, she looked up at him and said in a very low voice and yet every word was distinct,
“I thank Your Grace for your – offer of marriage. It is very flattering, but I must – decline the honour of being your – wife!”
She drew a deep breath.
Then with her eyes on his she said,
“But because I – love you – because I want more than – anything else in the world to make you – happy I will come to you and – belong to you as you wanted – me to do the first night we met.”
The colour rose in Andrina’s face and it was difficult to breathe, but her eyes were still on the Duke’s.
She saw the whole expression on his face change.
Then he said, and his voice was surprisingly hoarse,
“Do you understand what you are saying?”
“I – understand,” Andrina answered, “but because you would never – believe that I was not – marry
ing you for your – title rather than – for yourself – I want nothing from – you except your – love as a – man.”
Her voice broke a little on the last word.
The Duke did not move. It seemed as if he was turned to stone.
Then because she could not help herself, Andrina moved towards him and raised her face to his.
“Please – love me,” she whispered. “I – love you with – all of me!”
Very slowly, it seemed to her, the Duke’s arms went round her.
Then he looked down into her up-turned face with an expression of wonder in his eyes as if he could not believe what he saw.
Then slowly, very slowly his lips found hers.
Just for a moment Andrina felt a sudden fear in case the magic had gone, but it was there!
The forked lightning swept through her body, a half-pain – half a rapture that was beyond words, beyond expression!
It was what she had felt the first time he had kissed her and yet it was more intense, more wonderful and so incredibly glorious she felt that she was no longer herself but part of him.
The room whirled round her, the ceiling fell down on her head, the air was suffused with a golden blinding light that seemed to come from the sun itself.
Then there was only the Duke’s arms, his lips and him in the whole world –
*
Andrina sat in the big bed waiting.
As the maids had gone from the room after helping her undress, curtseying and murmuring, “goodnight, Your Grace”, she wondered if she would ever get used to being a Duchess.
She could hardly realise that she was in fact married and that the Duke was her husband and she was his wife.
It was so typical of him, she thought, that he had everything planned even down to the Marriage Licence that he had taken from a drawer in his desk.
“But I do not – intend to – marry you!” she had protested when he showed it to her.
“You will marry me!” he said fiercely. “Do you think I would risk losing you, allowing other men to approach you, not having you with me both day and night?”
“Then you had thought of – marrying me before – today?” she asked unnecessarily.
“Yes!”
“When did you first – want me as your – wife?”
He hesitated and she knew that he was finding it difficult to answer her.
“I had not finished kissing you in the inn.”
“Yet you would have been content – never to see me again?”
There was a pause before he answered reluctantly,
“Actually as soon as I reached London, I sent a servant to the coaching yard to make enquiries about you. He was naturally asking for a Miss Morgan. While he was doing so, Miss Maldon walked into my library!”
“So the kiss was – wonderful for – you too!” Andrina whispered.
The Duke did not reply and she continued,
“You seemed to despise me – and everything I did made you angry.”
Again there was silence until the Duke said gruffly,
“I was – jealous!”
“Why did you not – tell me so?”
“You were so insistent that you hated me. It did not surprise me. It was what I expected. At the same time I wanted you and I did not intend to let any other man have you if I could possibly help it! So I sent away your hordes of admirers with what is vulgarly called a flea in the ear!”
“I have a feeling that was cheating – and not quite cricket!” Andrina said.
“I pay no attention to those sort of rules,” the Duke replied loftily. “What I want I take!”
Once again he was trying to make himself out to be a worse character than he really was, Andrina thought, and she made no further protests when he took her off to the Church where he had already arranged for a Parson to be waiting for them.
Only as they reached St. George’s, having driven there almost in silence, Andrina said,
“You are quite – certain you wish to be married? I meant it in all sincerity when I said I would – stay with you without being your – wife.”
“I know you did!” the Duke said.
He put out his hand and taking her chin in his fingers turned her face up to his.
“Do you suppose you could lie to me?” he asked. “I know every expression in your eyes, every inflexion in your voice.”
He paused and added almost violently,
“I cannot live without you. That is what you want me to say and now I have said it!”
Then, as if he could not help himself, he kissed her.
It was only a quick touch of their lips because the horses were drawing to a standstill, but Andrina felt the fire that raged within him and the thrill of it made her quiver.
Theirs was a very different wedding from that of Cheryl and Sharon. There was no congregation, no choir, only the organ playing very softly.
The fragrance of the lilies scented the air and the shadows outside the circle of light cast by the candles on the altar seemed to be filled with invisible witnesses.
Andrina was sure that her mother was there, praying for her future happiness and she thought that the Duke’s mother was present too, wanting him to find the love he had lost when she died.
On her knees holding his hand very tightly, Andrina prayed that somehow she could break through the barriers that surrounded him.
It was not going to be easy. There were years of pride and of cynicism and resentment to be broken down, but somehow, with God’s help, she knew that she would manage it.
‘Help me – please help me,’ she prayed. ‘Do not let me think of myself or my feelings – but only of him. Show me how to make him happy and – keep me from making mistakes.’
*
As they drove away from the Church, the Duke kissed her fingers, but he did not put his arms around her.
It was as if the solemn sanctity of the Service they had just taken part in made it difficult for both of them for the moment to feel anything but detached from the world, and they drove back almost in silence.
There was a light meal waiting for them in a small room that had been hastily decorated with white flowers and, when it was finished, the Duke and Andrina sat for a long while talking.
Afterwards she could never remember what subjects they touched on – she only knew that there were poignant silences when their hearts seemed to be speaking to each other and there was no need for words.
Then at length she had risen from the table realising how late it was and they had both had a long day.
The Duke walked with her to the bottom of the staircase in the hall and, as she walked up the stairs alone she knew that he was watching her until she disappeared,
She was not sleeping in the bedroom she had used since she had first arrived at Broxbourne House, but in a beautifully decorated room overlooking the garden, which she was told the Duchesses of Broxbourne had used for generations.
In it was a large bed with blue silk curtains lined with muslin falling from a carved corona of gold angels.
There was a Fairytale quality about it and the lace-edged pillows at Andrina’s back were very soft.
But she sat up, her back straight, her hair in the dim light from a single candle by the bedside seeming full of mysterious shadows as it fell over her shoulders to her waist.
It seemed to her that she waited a very long time before she heard the door open and, when the Duke came into the room, he seemed larger and more overpowering than usual.
Perhaps it was his velvet robe that reached to the ground or perhaps because Andrina herself felt dwarfed by the great bed and the room, which was larger than any she had slept in before.
As he came towards her, she felt her heart beating a little apprehensively and there was a constriction in her throat that made it hard to swallow.
He stood looking at her, her eyes wide and worried in her small face and her hands clasped together in front of her on the white sheet.
“You are
very beautiful!” he said at length.
“Not as beautiful as – Cheryl or Sharon!”
“Can you really compare yourself to your lovely but nit-witted younger sister or Sharon, who will in a few years make a polished, sophisticated Ambassadress?”
“You like my face – better – than theirs?”
“I find it impossible to look at any other woman when you are in the room!”
Andrina drew in her breath.
He had never paid her a compliment before.
“But you have so much more than a beautiful face,” he said almost as if he spoke to himself.
Then he sat down facing her on the side of the bed and said in a low voice,
“I am frightened, Andrina!”
Whatever else she had expected him to say it was not this and, as her eyes questioned him, he said,
“You have said you love me. But if I frighten you or shock you, you may hate me again and that I could not bear!”
Andrina drew in her breath.
Now she understood.
This was not the autocratic, overwhelming Duke who was speaking, but the little boy, who had had everything he ever loved taken away from him and was afraid now of losing her.
This was the moment when she must pierce his defences and sweep them away.
Yet she felt helpless and inadequate.
“I have forgotten how to be gentle, if I ever knew it!” the Duke went on. “I have grown used to being harsh and indifferent to anyone’s feelings but my own.”
His eyes were on her face as he added,
“But I care about yours! I want your love, I want it desperately! Help me, Andrina, to be as you want me to be.”
Suddenly Andrina no longer felt helpless, her heart told her what to do.
She smiled and it seemed to illuminate her whole face.
Very simply she held out her arms.
“You will not frighten or shock me,” she said softly. “I love you just as you are. I love you with all my heart – my mind and my – soul! They are all yours, there is nothing else I can give you!”
The Duke made a strange sound and suddenly he bent towards her and, as she slipped backwards against the pillows, his face was hidden against her neck.
The Husband Hunters Page 16