Search For a Wife

CHAPTER ONE 1816-1

CHAPTER ONE

1816The Marquis of Milverton alighted from his very up-to-date high phaeton and walked into White’s Club, a place he knew he could always meet his friends.

At this moment he needed them badly.

White’s Club in St. James’s Street was undoubtedly the most prestigious Club in London. Its many rules of membership were extremely strict and every member was obliged to agree to obey all of them.

Anyone who was turned down by White’s kept it, if possible, a dark secret as they felt ashamed that they would not shine with the other bucks who had become of great Social significance during the reign of the Prince Regent.

Among the many illustrious Regency personalities who were members of White’s, the Prince Regent himself was the most remarkable.

The Marquis had been a member since his father had proposed him when he was old enough – and his uncle and grandfather had been members too.

To him, like a great number of his friends, it was a second home to which they went inevitably once or twice a day when they were resident in London.

On entering the Club the Marquis nodded to the porters who chorused,

“Good morning, my Lord.”

He then made his way into the smoking room and, as he expected, three of his friends were there already and he expected more would turn up later.

Harry, the Earl of Landock jumped up to greet him.

“I thought you would be here this morning, Ivor,” he began. “I am very anxious to know if you are running your horse in the race at Epsom tomorrow.”

“Of course I will be running him, Harry.”

The Marquis sat down next to the Earl and another of his good friends, Lord Dromont, and ordered a glass of champagne.

“You are starting early, Ivor,” observed the Earl.

“I need it,” he answered, “after what I went through last night.”

Two other friends who had followed the Marquis into the room sat down near Lord Dromont and asked,

“What has happened, Ivor?”

“I will tell you later. Just now I need sustenance and nothing is better for that condition than champagne!”

“We all agree with you there,” they chortled.

A Steward arrived with a large bottle of champagne and started pouring it out and as he was doing so two other elegant young gentlemen joined them.

“We missed you while you were away, Ivor,” one greeted him. “We are longing to hear what happened.”

“I thought you would be,” replied the Marquis.

He told his friends before he left for the country to join his family that his uncle was producing an attractive young girl for him.

In addition, he was told, she was an heiress and his uncle thought she would make him an excellent wife.

“What was she like?” the Earl asked breathlessly as the Steward, having filled up their glasses, walked away.

“Ghastly!” the Marquis answered.

The word made his group of friends look at him in astonishment.

“Ghastly?” one of them questioned. “But you were told she was a beauty, charming and immensely rich.”

“That was the only attribute that was true about her. She was plain, extremely stupid and I can never imagine a worse hell than being married to her!”

“So what did you do about it?”

“I ran away as soon as I could! I have decided I will never stay with my family again until they promise to stop pushing me into matrimony. In point of fact I cannot stand any more of it!”

“Do you think they will listen to you?”

There was a pause before the Marquis responded,

“I would certainly doubt it, but I have no intention of marrying anyone simply because my uncle and the rest of my tiresome relations have chosen her for me. If I do marry – and at the moment it is very doubtful – it will be to someone I really want as my wife.”

There was a murmur and then the Earl said,

“That is just what we all want, Ivor, but you know as well as I do that because we are who we are, we will continue to be pestered, pleaded with and if at all possible trapped into matrimony.”

“That is true,” chipped in Lord Dromont, who had not previously spoken.

He was a good-looking young man of twenty-six, noted for his vast estate in the Midlands as well as a Castle in Scotland – he had been labelled as ‘an important catch’ ever since he came to London.

It was only by sheer dexterity that he had managed not to be pushed up the aisle by his determined relatives or to be caught by ambitious mothers of debutantes.

In fact all the young gentlemen round the Marquis were, as they began to tell him now, continually pleaded with or bullied by their relatives.

“If I ever hear anyone say again, ‘but you have to provide an heir’, I think I will run away from London and go round the world!” one young Lord exclaimed.

“If you think you have suffered from your relatives, you should try mine,” another piped up. “They talk about some girl until I am sick of hearing her name before I have even met her, then when I do see her she is inevitably very different from all they have told me about her.”

There was laughter and another added,

“You should see the horror produced for me a week ago. She was incredibly fat and incapable of carrying on a conversation about anything except herself. My father was certain I should be happy with her especially as she would have a dowry almost as big as she was herself!”

“That, of course, was the attraction,” another Lord declared sarcastically.

“Then you will all have to be like me,” the Marquis told them, “and refuse to go home at all if there is a woman waiting to pounce on one the moment one arrives.”

The Earl laughed.

“That of course depends on the woman. Enough women have pounced on you, Ivor, to make you cynical when you meet some unfledged chit who has only just left the schoolroom.”

“That is true, Harry. At the same time how can one be certain they will turn into the attractive, witty married ladies with whom we all spend so much of our time?”

“It would certainly be very silly to spend more than ten minutes with a debutante. You would be told you had ruined her reputation and the only way to escape the wrath and fury of her father was to offer her a wedding ring.”

“That is true enough,” another voice came in. “We agree with Ivor, we will just have to stay away from home until they stop imploring us to marry some idiotic girl one would be bored stiff with before one reached the Church!”

There was silence before another comment,

“The trouble is I like going home. I am very fond of my mother and we have the best horses in Kent.”

“As you cannot marry a horse, old boy, you will have to marry the untrained fledgling chosen for you!”

There was laughter, but the sad expressions on their faces told the Marquis all too clearly they were suffering the way he was.

Because they had all been at Eton they were all much the same age, some were twenty-five, others like him were twenty-six or nearing twenty-seven.

All his friends who had married when they were younger were mostly living in the country and only visited London on special occasions.

When they did so they came to White’s and wanted to hear all the gossip they had missed and yet the Marquis had often thought they seemed to have become duller and less amusing than they had been before they married.

He looked round quizzically at his friends.

While they had been talking two others had joined them making the party up to seven and he thought they were as lucky as he to have remained single for so long.

The Steward was already filling up the glasses from another bottle when the Marquis raised his hand.

“I am going to propose a toast to bachelorhood and may all of us remain unwed for at least another three or four years!”

“I’ll drink to that,” the Earl agreed eagerly.

Then as they all raised their glasses, Lord Dromont spoke for the second time,

“It is all very well for us to feel so optimistic about this, but we have to face facts and sooner or later we will have to be married whether we like it or not.”

He put up his hand to stop any protests and added,

“It is simply because our titles and our possessions which have all been in the family for generations must be preserved. Like Ivor I am an only son. Even though I hate my relations fussing me, I know that they are right. I must produce an heir to make certain of the inheritance.”

For a moment all their faces were serious and then they realised that however much they might rebel they had a responsibility which was undeniable – and it was one to which, sooner or later, they would have to conform.

“What I want to know,” one friend asked, “is why the young women today are so unattractive? We have all lost our hearts at one time or another to the attractive ladies who must remain nameless inside this Club because they are married. Then why are the new generation of young girls so incredibly boring and to put it bluntly – plain?”

Listening to him the Marquis realised that his friend was saying something he had often thought himself, but he had, however, found no answer to this question.

Debutantes were paraded in front of him like horses at a Spring Sale and they had been not only unattractive but boring. When he had danced with them, they had been incapable of carrying on a conversation about anything of interest. They giggled, blushed and made no response if he was witty and even less if he was serious.

It was all very well, he told himself, for his family to say they would grow into the delightful charming ladies he spent a great deal of his time with.

But how could he be certain he would be so lucky? He might be tied to an incredible bore for the rest of his life!

“I know exactly what you are thinking, Ivor,” the Earl remarked, “I have often thought the same. But surely there must be girls somewhere who are really attractive?

“They would entice us in the same way as we are enticed by those gorgeous creatures who wait until their husbands are called to the country or busy in Parliament before they give us all we ask of them.”

This was plain speaking and the Earl looked up to a murmur of agreement like a roll of thunder.

“You are quite right, Harry. If one thinks it out, there must be girls somewhere we could really fall in love with.”

“Indeed there must be,” Lord Dromont thundered. “The point is that here in London we do not meet them. To put it plainly we should have to seek them out rather than have them fall into our arms like overripe peaches.”

The Marquis laughed.

“Of course you are right, Tony, but the question is – and it’s quite simple – where do we look?”

“Anywhere except in London. If you ask me the last one any of us really want to marry is one of the Social girls whose whole ambition is to be asked to Carlton House and who has been brought up to believe heaven on earth exists only in a ballroom!”

The other men stared at him.

“You have a point there,” one said. “My sister was married before her Season to a man who lived locally and who she fell in love with. And I have never seen a happier couple who live only for each other.”

Another voice came in,

“You are right. There was a girl who I met in the country and I thought seriously of asking her to marry me. But I was too slow, so my best friend stepped in in front of me and now they have two children and are the happiest couple I know.”

“What you are saying is that we are looking in the wrong place. We are all expecting to find Aphrodite the Goddess of Love in Carlton House! If she was there, His Royal Highness would have surely stepped in front of us!”

There was a burst of laughter.

If you ask me, Tony is right and we are looking in the wrong place. We are just not going to find someone beautiful, intelligent and so different in a London drawing oom and certainly not amongst the Cyprians we all find entrancing for an odd evening or two.”