The Devil's Daughter

by Marguerite Bell

  “Thank you, my lord,” she replied stiffly.

  “But it is no thanks to me,” he assured her. “Apparently my sister has been taking a feverish interest in you, and she appears to have presented you with one of her spare pearl necklaces. I hope you will take care of it—it is quite valuable, I assure you.” Harriet felt the colour creeping slowly, painfully over her face and neck. "

  “It is merely loaned to me, my lord,” she assured him. “And you may have every confidence that I shall take the greatest possible care of it,” she added, stung by that reference to the value of the necklace she was wearing.

  But the Marquis merely smiled.

  “I was simply advising you to be a little cautious, because on occasions such as this there are frequently light-fingered gentry let loose among us who might very well deprive you of anything of value if they considered you might make it easy for them. And although you say my sister has loaned it to you I’m sure she will beg your acceptance of it before very long. As Bruce’s wife you will need a few trifles like that to keep up your spirits. It is a thousand pities he is a younger son, for you would do great credit to the family jewels...”

  “I have no intention of marrying Lord Bruce, even if—even if he desired to marry me,” Harriet protested, convinced that he was goading her.

  Lord Capel continued to smile, his dark eyes more brilliant and lustrous in the subdued light of the conservatory than she had ever known them before.

  “Quite so, quite so,” he agreed amiably. “But your intention might yet change, and in case you have not already suspected it my sister Fanny is of a most resolute turn of mind. She has taken a prodigious fancy to you, and is perfectly convinced you will make us both an admirable sister-in-law. She will not allow you to escape her clutches unless you are very, very clever... and think what a devoted husband Bruce will make! The poor fellow may be handicapped by that limp of his, and by his lack of an arm, but he is an exceptionally brave and upright man with a very distinguished record. You could hardly do better than marry him, you know.”

  Harriet bit her lip.

  “I have the greatest possible admiration for Lord Bruce,” she confessed. “I think he is the—the nicest man I have ever met.”

  The Marquis shrugged.

  “Well, then? What are you waiting for? His sincere protestations that he will adore you always? I promise you you won’t have to wait long for those! And there is always the possibility that if I do not produce an heir, and someone like our friend Aintree picks me off, you will in time become the Duchess of Coltsfoot. Think of that! Little Harriet Yorke, the brave admiral’s daughter, a duchess! Surely your father would approve of that?”

  “You mock me, my lord,” Harriet said stiffly, and with the faintest perceptible quiver in her voice. “For some reason it amuses you to do so.”

  “Not at all.”

  The Marquis produced a snuff-box, an elegant affair of gold and ivory, and took a pinch of snuff. He regarded her from beneath those shapely black brows as he did so.

  “But there is one thing we must not forget,” he remarked, dusting a little of the mixture from the front of his dark blue velvet coat. “I think you have already observed me tonight with the lady who is to become my fiancée, the very beautiful and, despite her diminutive size—not unlike you, when one comes to think of it, Harriet!—surprisingly lusty arouser of the most ardent passions in my breast, Lady Rowena Harmsworth! If she does not produce sons then I will never again lay a wager at White’s. In addition to sons she will probably produce quite a few daughters as well, but that is rather like looking into the future, and I prefer not to do that at this present. I prefer to concentrate on yourself, for I feel that I owe you so much, Harriet—and I would not wish you to be under any sort of misapprehension...”

  “Please, my lord,” Harriet begged, attempting to thrust past him, “I would like to return to the ballroom.”

  But he successfully prevented her doing anything of the kind by placing himself full in her path.

  “Naturally,” he agreed, “and you shall do so when we have got this problem of your future nicely and tightly tied up. But at the moment it appears to be wandering off at a tangent, and although I am well aware that Fanny expects me to ask that child Annabel to stand up with me in the cotillion which immediately precedes the supper-dance, I cannot do so with an easy mind while you are proving so extraordinarily uncooperative. Perhaps if I talked to you a little about Bruce—what a charming small boy he was, very devoted to his grandmother and always kind to animals...”

  “Please, my lord!” Harriet insisted, wondering whether she could dart past him quickly enough to escape any retaliatory action if that clump of camellias in the painted tub was not so much in her path. Perhaps if she hesitated no longer—

  As if he read her thoughts Lord Capel’s hand came out and he placed it firmly but lightly on her bare arm, gripping it sufficiently to secure her presence but not exerting the amount of pressure that would bruise her flesh.

  “The light is poor in here,” he murmured as if the thought occasioned him satisfaction, while he studied her carefully through the gloom. “If we retreated behind that palm tree which protected you before, we would be quite unlikely to be disturbed while we continue this conversation along lines which might lead us to some mutually acceptable arrangement for your future. By which I mean how much longer you must act the part of governess to that little witch Verbena, and whether it is entirely suitable that you should remain in Hill Street...”

  “Ah, there you are!” Lord Bruce’s smooth tones proclaimed with relief as he entered the conservatory hurriedly. “I have been searching for you everywhere, Miss Yorke, and Capel said he would aid me to find you. I see he has been successful. I hope you did not imagine for one single instant that I had forgotten your lemon-water?”

  His eyes were on the Marquis’s right hand, which had not yet dropped back to his side, although Harriet was standing rigidly in his partial hold, and it was quite plain she was an unwilling prisoner. As for the Marquis, his dark eyes had a smouldering, resentful gleam in them. If he had ever in his life been really delighted to see his brother, this was plainly not such an occasion.

  “If your military laurels rested on your capacity for running to earth an evasive but perfectly logical young woman you would be hard put to it to cover yourself with even a small amount of glory,” he commented acidly. “My dear Bruce, you must remember that Miss Yorke is logical, and when she found it increasingly stuffy here in the conservatory she wandered out into the garden. I saw her with my own eyes. You should have thought of such a contingency, since it was you who actually deserted her.”

  Lord Bruce looked quite horrified by such a suggestion.

  “My dear Miss Yorke,” he protested, “I do beg you to believe that it was much against my will that I was detained. An old friend, a campaigner like myself, buttonholed me in the refreshment room, and I’m afraid we had much to talk about. I agree it was highly reprehensible of me to allow myself to be detained, but if you can see your way to forgive me...?”

  “Of course, Lord Bruce,” she said hastily; “it was nothing, I assure you.”

  “But was it not a little damp in the garden? The dew,” he explained.

  “It was quite delightful,” she assured him. “And I think others—” with a meaningful look at Lord Capel—“enjoyed it, too.”

  The Marquis released her arm and bowed to her.

  “Forgive me if I cannot ask you to stand up with me in the cotillion, Miss Yorke,” he begged her stiffly, “but I am already engaged for that long-awaited number. Perhaps if you examine your programme you might find there is a vacant space you can allot to me after the supper-dance. I’m sure Bruce will not wish to be deprived of the delight of taking you in to supper.”

  When he had left them alone in the conservatory Lord Brace looked at Harriet a little ruefully.

  “I’m afraid I earned that rebuke from my brother,” he admitted unhappily, “and
I’m sure I do not deserve the honour of taking you in to supper. But perhaps afterwards we can arrange for you to participate a little more fully in the delights of the evening, by which I mean that you must accede to the requests of several young gentlemen who are here this evening and who have been protesting to me that I have been reserving you most unfairly for myself. The fact that I have collected one or two war wounds does not entitle me to monopolise you, and Richard was right to make me feel exceedingly guilty. Now, let us return to the ballroom where we can at least watch the cotillion, and afterwards I shall insist on presenting to you some prospective partners.”

  He was as good as his word, and the rest of the evening passed for Harriet in a far more lively manner than it had done hitherto. She had been secretly yearning to take a more active part in the dance, instead of sitting in a plush-lined chair on the fringe of the floor watching others enjoy themselves. After watching Lord Capel and Lady Rowena performing gracefully in the cotillion while looking as if it was a natural and normal part of their lives—albeit Rowena, a dazzling fair-haired beauty, looked a trifle bored, as if something about the evening did not entirely please her—she was aware of a strange urgency to be actively engaged rather than sitting and pondering on the recent interview in the conservatory. Poor Lord Bruce was extremely abject every time he recollected how badly she had been deprived. Even if Lord Bruce had become a very open admirer, neither he nor Lady Fanny could protect her from the increasingly violent antagonism she sensed in Lord Capel, or his capacity for reducing her to a state of profound mental confusion.

  If he had had a grudge against her, apart from any lingering resentment her involvement in his duel might still cause him, he could not have reacted more unpleasantly than he had done tonight after he had deliberately run her to earth in his own conservatory. According to her lights she had done nothing to deserve it, and she was afraid to think of what might happen if she ever did something positive to arouse his ire.

  That he could be violent she more than suspected. That he was not entirely reliable she more than suspected, also.

  When the evening was over Annabel was the one who emerged as a completely happy participant in all the pleasures that had been provided. And as the ball had been given in her honour this was not surprising. Lady Fanny, however, ran her close second in proclaiming her entire satisfaction with the evening. As she and Harriet drove back to the diminutive domain in Hill Street in the early hours of the morning, accompanied by Lord Bruce, the Duke’s daughter’s somewhat startlingly plumaged head, with diamonds and rubies interspersed between the feathers, ceaselessly dipped and waved with every enthusiastic movement she made, while she gestured with her bejewelled hands and arms. If she had had pure French ancestry, she could not have been more addicted to Continental posturings, but Harriet was by this time fully accustomed to her. So she was not entirely deceived by Lady Fanny’s excited comments on the ravishing appearance Lady Rowena had presented, the quality of her jewels and the breathtaking beauty of her gown. She was quite convinced that her own jewels were far superior to those of anyone else she knew, and her own gown had created far more interest—even if it was slightly shocking—than any gown worn by any woman present that night in the lavishly decorated rooms of the St. James’s Square house.

  The fact that she thought it necessary to dilate so extravagantly on Lady Rowena did strike Harriet as having a particular kind of significance. As she was well aware what that significance was, she felt herself growing more and more depressed as the distance lengthened between them and the St. James’s Square house (where the Marquis was to remain for that night at least, while Lady Rowena returned to her parents’ house in Grosvenor Square), and in the chilling half-light of early dawn she found it difficult to rise above that depression and tell herself that she was being utterly absurd.

  It was her first experience of an evening spent exclusively in the company of the nobility, where a display of wealth and all its accompanying advantages was prized above everything else, and now that it was over she had to admit to herself that she had not been as impressed as she might have been. She felt as if a bubble had been pricked, and in the grey light Lady Fanny’s plumes—one of which tickled the back of her neck each time she made a violent gesture—struck her as a little tawdry, just as the tinsel roses at her own waist struck her as tawdry. In a corner of the carriage beside her Lord Bruce nodded and dozed, and finally fell completely asleep, and his sister reached in front of her and prodded him impatiently with her fan.

  How ridiculous, she declared, for him to behave as if he was quite unaccustomed to such diversions, when a man of his years should be living his life to the full. She really would have to see to it that there was an improvement in his way of life. He had been shut away at Hollowthorne for too long, far longer than his experiences in the Army had made necessary, and she really must make it her business to put an end to his yearnings for solitude. After these remarks, she gazed a little reproachfully at Harriet, and then announced that they had arrived and she simply couldn’t wait to be rid of all her tiresome finery, and if she was not allowed to sleep undisturbed for hours she would be an utter wreck.

  This prediction should have enabled her to feel a certain sympathy for her brother who, despite his war wounds, had acted as a tireless escort to Harriet during her recent exploration of London, and who (although he was several years younger than his sister), had been forced to look on at others participating more actively in the joys of the evening, so was probably even more exhausted as a result. Harriet was prepared to concede that he could have been more greatly afflicted by boredom than anything else.

  He apologised profusely for his lapse when he had handed both ladies out of the carriage, and Harriet received an exceedingly penitent smile from him,

  “I really must take myself in hand,” he murmured, squeezing her gloved fingers. “I am getting old before my time.”

  “That is just what I was observing to Miss Yorke before we succeeded in arousing you,” Lady Fanny remarked tartly. “It is a process I am determined to alter, since there is no question of your being old. Why, even Richard is a full year older than you are, and no one in their senses would consider that he is anything but at the very peak of manhood.”

  “Ah, but then I look older than Richard,” Lord Bruce replied with dry truthfulness. “And I certainly,” he added, “feel older—or I did until a very few weeks ago,” looking down with curious earnestness at Harriet.

  He lifted the small gloved fingers he still retained within his clasp to his lips and saluted them gallantly.

  “Could it be you, Miss Harriet,” he enquired softly, “who has provided me with so much incentive to enjoy life that I am actually feeling a little younger?”

  Harriet did not reply, and she did not dare encourage him by raising her eyes to his face. That, she felt, would be almost too cruel, considering the decision she had recently reached.

  She said goodnight to him hurriedly, followed Lady Fanny into the house, and climbed the stairs to her own room. By the time she reached it and stood looking out of the window at the grey roofs opposite, the sun was rising in a rosy dawn and the last star had vanished.

  She felt curiously unwilling to retire to bed. Her depression returned and she sat disconsolately beside the window to dwell upon the emptiness of her own future.

  During the following week Harriet devoted herself to Verbena, and when Lord Bruce called and expressed a particular desire to see her she sent him away without the consolation of catching so much as a glimpse of her. Lady Fanny’s maid looked distinctly curious when requested to convey a polite but regretful message to his lordship, and Lady Fanny expressed herself quite forcibly when it suddenly dawned on her that the demure governess was actually making it plain that the Duke of Coltsfoot’s younger son was not good enough for her.

  “I don’t think you quite realise how devoted Bruce has become to you,” she said bluntly. “He has never, so far as I am aware, been in the least i
nterested in any young woman before you—not seriously, that is to say; and even my papa agreed that you would make him an excellent wife. Does not the idea of becoming Lady Bruce Wendover appeal to you at all? Recollect, before you make the disclaimer which I can tell is on your lips, that a young woman in your position, without friends or fortune, is unlikely to receive such an offer again. And if she has the temerity to turn down such an offer then she is brave indeed.”

  “I think you are forgetting, ma’am, that Lord Bruce has not so far offered for me,” Harriet reminded her demurely, looking at the purse she was busily engaged in netting.

  “No, but we are both well aware that it is only a matter of time before he does so—time and opportunity, which only you can grant him.”

  Harriet set the purse aside and looked up at her gravely.

  “My lady,” she said quietly, “I think I have told you before that I admire Lord Bruce very much indeed, but nothing would induce me to marry him. Nothing!”

  “You prefer to remain a spinster?”

  “I am not in the least alarmed by the thought of remaining a spinster.”

  “It is highly unlikely that you will meet many men willing to overlook your entire absence of fortune, and the fact that you have to work for your living as a governess. They may think you pretty and engaging, and be willing to make a little light love to you when the opportunity offers, but you must accept it from me that they will not marry you. The best you can hope for is a tradesman’s son, or a farmer’s son if you are living in the country, and I cannot see you settling down to rear chickens and sell eggs as a means of providing yourself with the occasional pretty fichu and length of gingham to make a dress. So do think seriously about what I am saying before you hurt poor Bruce by sending him about his business.”