The Devil's Daughter Read online

  THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER

  Marguerite Bell

  He was determined, she was stubborn!

  Harriet Yorke might have looked demure and unworldly but her frail appearance concealed a will of iron.

  And now the dashing—and unpredictable—Marquis of Capel was up against her unyielding will. Especially when Harriet, forced to see him on an urgent matter, gained entry to his home in a most unusual way...

  The Marquis thought Harriet a busybody. She considered him completely mad.

  A clash was inevitable, but neither of them suspected how entangled their lives would become.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  St. James’s Square, in the heart of the fashionable London of 1816, was enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning. All those good people who normally attended the various places of worship provided for them in the vicinity had already made their way to these edifices, and a beneficent calm hung over everything. There were no discordant sounds, like errand boys’ voices or knife grinders’ cries; no lavender sellers offering their wares or muffin men extolling the virtues of their delicacies to the accompaniment of tinkling little hand-bells. On the Sabbath day, at least, the “ton”—those delicately nurtured and somewhat rarefied human beings accustomed on other days of the week to parading for the benefit of their neighbours in all the trappings of their high station—were protected from all intrusive sounds and, wherever possible, sights, and remained for the most part within doors.

  Certainly the occupants of the very impressive mansion belonging to the Marquis of Capel did not expect their Sunday calm to be shattered by such a rude sound as a hackney carriage drawing to a halt outside. The Marquis had retired to bed some considerable while after the first cock had started to crow, and was in no condition to be aroused even if the house was on fire.

  In such an event his butler would have taken every proper step to protect him from the consequences of the outbreak whilst remaining discreetly on the outer side of his lordship’s bedroom door. Any other course would have been unthinkable, certainly in the opinion of all those who knew the noble gentleman at all well, such as his housekeeper who had nursed him as a baby and later as a most determined toddler, and Pauncefoot, who had started life as a groom of the establishment and was now risen to be major-domo.

  Unfortunately Miss Harriet Yorke, alighting from the hackney carriage with the assistance of the elderly coachman, had no idea at all of the kind of day-to-day regime that prevailed within the Marquis’s household. She was in point of fact in a state of mild exuberance because she had at long last taken a most decisive step which she felt was almost certain to benefit before very long the charges she had left in the rural wilderness of Sussex. Why, even the Marquis’s sister, the fashionable Lady Fanny, had said that there was no other course open to her but to “beard the monster in his den”!

  And that was precisely what she was doing—or hoped to do.

  She looked up at the front of the large town house and for the first time experienced a faint cooling of her spirits. The house was so very splendid, and, compared with Lady Fanny’s cosy little establishment in Hill Street, of a kind of splendour calculated to put awe into the hearts of those rather far down the social ladder, such as the Harriet Yorkes of the world. Indeed, if she had had any proper idea of the complete insignificance of her position by comparison with that of the Marquis she would not have been arriving at his house at all—would not even have arrived in Hill Street.

  She drew a deep breath. She was, after all, the daughter of a rear-admiral, and that was not such a very humble position, even if he had died penniless.

  The coachman asked cheerfully if she wanted him to wait for her, and she looked at him with some surprise in her remarkably attractive clear green eyes.

  “Why, no, I—as a matter of fact, I hadn’t thought ... Well, yes, perhaps it would be better if you did wait. I shall not, I imagine, be a great while,”

  The coachman shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

  “’Tis Sunday, miss. I’m not likely to be very busy today. I’ll wait.”

  “Thank you.” The smile with which she rewarded his willingness was like a sudden burst of sunshine on a peculiarly dull day, and the coachman was impressed by it. She might be wearing an extremely plain bonnet and a plainer pelisse, but when she smiled like that she was a positive beauty, and there was no doubt about it, she was a lady.

  “Don’t you worry, miss,” he urged her with emphasis, “I won’t budge an inch until you come out.”

  With another radiant smile directed exclusively at him she turned away and commenced the ascent of the short flight of steps before the front door. Pauncefoot had had the door open for a full five seconds before she reached it, having observed the arrival of the hackney carriage, and he found it nearly impossible to conceal his considerable astonishment as he looked down from his very superior height into the beaming, pastel-tinted face of this most unexpected morning caller.

  “May I see Lord Capel, please?” Miss Yorke enquired with a brightness she hardly felt at the moment. “Will you please inform his lordship that I shall not detain him for long. Indeed, I will take up very little of his time, if he is at home. The name is Yorke—Miss Harriet Yorke.”

  The butler coughed, then placed one plump hand thoughtfully over his mouth and considered the position from all angles.

  “You could tell him that it is in connection with his wards,” Harriet added more urgently.

  “His wards, miss?” Pauncefoot decided that this was something very new in his experience. Other young ladies had turned up at the house from time to time, desirous to see his lordship, but not one of them had thought of such an invention as this in order to gain access to the Capel residence and the noble ear of the present incumbent.

  “Miss Verbena and Masters Robert and Ferdinand de Courcey,” the caller imparted rather more breathlessly.

  “I think perhaps you’d better come inside, miss,” Pauncefoot said ponderously, after devoting another moment to somewhat disturbed reflection, and stood aside from the doorway to enable her to enter and be suitably impressed by the magnificence of the great entrance hall. He led the way to what was known as the small anteroom, saw her disposed on a fragile chair of gilt and satin, and then withdrew, presumably to acquaint his employer of what awaited him below stairs should he feel strong enough to face it. But in actual fact it was to the housekeeper’s sitting-room that he directed his steps, and for a long time after that nothing appeared to move or stir in the house.

  For the first ten minutes or so after being left to her own devices Miss Yorke scarcely realised that she had apparently been forgotten. The room was so delightful that it quite captivated her interest, and she left her chair to examine the various ornaments and the quality of the fluted silk lining the walls. The silk she decided was Venetian, and it was of a pale water-green colour which she found entrancing. The long curtains before the windows exactly matched it, and they were caught up into great swathes looped with golden cords to which giant tassels were attached. The mirror above the marble fireplace was undoubtedly Florentine, and she was much impressed by a china vase which she suspected had emerged from a certain famous factory in Dresden.

  It was only when a grandfather clock at no great distance from her chimed the hour that the realisation smote her that she had been shut up for fully half an hour. She had no very detailed knowledge of the way servants should behave in an establishment such as this, but it did seem to her peculiar that she should have been left alone so long. Apart from the fact that her hackney coach was still waiting, it was rather inconvenient, since she had to return all the way to Paddington in time for a very early dinner with her friend Miss Marley, and she was growi
ng a little tired of the enforced inactivity. Was the butler waiting for the return of his lordship from one or other of his clubs, which must be quite near by, or had his lordship bluntly refused to see her? In which case was the butler finding it embarrassing to impart such a piece of information to her? Particularly as it concerned three such important people as the Marquis’s wards?

  She had thought that the butler looked quite taken aback when she had mentioned their names, but it could have been her imagination.

  She tiptoed to the door and opened it just a very little, but nothing was happening on the other side of the door. The marble columns soared to the ornate ceiling, and a Grecian figure upholding a flambeau at the foot of the grand staircase was as remote and uninterested as any Greek maiden long passed into oblivion might have been. A footman, in a very splendid livery, stood rigidly within a few feet of the front door and was obviously prepared to open it with alacrity should a vehicle more impressive than her hackney carriage approach the Marquis’s residence.

  She returned to her chair, which had proved not the most comfortable for a period of prolonged waiting, and sat in anticipation of someone remembering her existence for another ten minutes by the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. During that time she thought she heard movements in the hall, a rustle as of a silk or bombazine gown, and a certain amount of whispering. Then the door opened a crack, and an eye was applied to the crack and concentrated all its attention upon her.

  Miss Yorke began to feel quite outraged. She was about to rise and protest—or, at least, demand some explanation—when the door closed again, very softly and cautiously. With every hair on her head—and each one of them of the fiery hue of a copper beech tree—bristling in indignation, she remained quiescent for another five minutes, and then was about to rise and fling open the door and depart from the house with the intention of informing her coachman that he must not wait any longer, when Pauncefoot himself appeared as if conjured up by magic and bowed very stiffly and apologetically before her. She noted that he averted his eyes as he addressed her following a somewhat awkward little cough.

  “I’m very sorry, miss,” he said, the cough apparently proving very troublesome, “but I’m bound to inform you as it isn’t any use your waiting any longer.”

  “Oh!” Harriet exclaimed. There was a chilling coolness to her voice which brought a faintly perturbed look to his face. “But I’m sure you must be very well aware that I have already waited for at least an hour for someone to come and inform me of such a decision.”

  “Er, yes, miss ... I’m very sorry about that, miss,” Pauncefoot repeated, striving after his most dignified and rebuffing manner. “But the truth is—the truth is his lordship—his lordship cannot, er—see you...”

  “He is, perhaps, not at home?” Harriet suggested.

  The butler looked positively astonished.

  “At this hour, miss?”

  “You mean that he is not accustomed to early rising?”

  “Well, not precisely that, miss—”

  “Then he is indisposed?”

  Pauncefoot positively brightened.

  “Well, now, miss, you could, perhaps—you could perhaps say that—”

  “In which case you conveyed my message to him, and said that it is absolutely vital, in the interests of three people who are dependent on him, that I see him some time today, since I am returning to Sussex tomorrow? You did make all this very clear to him?” Miss Yorke demanded, advancing a few steps until she was actually in a position to lay a hand on the butler’s sleeve. The clear brilliance of her green eyes and the disconcerting directness of their gaze confused the ageing servitor in an unaccustomed way, and he looked round somewhat wildly in the direction of the door. “And yet you say his lordship absolutely refuses to see me—?”

  “I didn’t say anything of the kind, miss.” A dignified figure in black, with a chatelaine of keys dangling at her waist, stepped through the doorway, and Pauncefoot heaved a sigh of relief. “This is the housekeeper, miss. She’ll tell you it ain’t no manner o’ use trying to see his lordship today, which being a Sunday he likes to be protected from anything in the nature of a disturbance, as you might say.”

  The housekeeper paused primly in front of Miss Yorke, regarding her with the cold grey eye which had already studied her with thoughtful care through the crack in the door, and echoed the sentiments of the butler with a good deal of emphasis.

  “You could not have chosen a more unfortunate day to call upon Lord Capel, Miss Yorke,” she said, in the polite but quelling tones she reserved for young females for whom no one had vouched, and who had the temerity to call unchaperoned upon a bachelor. “It is the one day in the week when he does not receive callers.”

  “But why not?” Harriet demanded, in astonishment. “Lady Fanny Bingham, Lord Capel’s sister, whom I approached before I came here today, said that I might find it difficult to see her brother, but she did not mention his lordship’s particular absorption with religion. In fact, very much to the contrary, she did actually state that he had other preoccupations... And so much I had already heard on more than one occasion. So why cannot Lord Capel, if he is at home, see me on a Sunday when it is a matter of such very great importance?”

  Once again Pauncefoot coughed, and he and the housekeeper exchanged a long look. That mention of Lady Fanny had disturbed them both, but the situation so far as they could see it was not greatly altered. The young lady had to be convinced.

  “Perhaps you could make it convenient to call upon his lordship at some time during the next week—or within the next fortnight or three weeks, since there is every possibility that he will be paying a visit to Scotland within that time, and naturally we cannot be precise as to the exact moment of his return,” the housekeeper suggested, jingling the keys at her waist. “Or could you not,” she added, as if suddenly inspired, “write to his lordship?”

  “I have already written him several letters,” Harriet informed her, “but he has not answered one of them.”

  “Perhaps he did not receive them.”

  “Rubbish!” Harriet exclaimed, and turned away impatiently and started to pace up and down the room.

  The two custodians of Lord Capel’s Sunday peace and calm watched her with interest. She was so slightly and delicately made that there appeared to be very little of her, and yet the peculiar dominance and determination of her disposition were given away quite unmistakably by the slight prominence of her otherwise very shapely chin, and the flash in her green eyes when she sensed that she was about to be thwarted. Taken together with the violent red of her curls, and the manner in which she trod the Aubusson carpet as if it were of no greater value than a strip of perfectly ordinary and rather threadbare floor covering, Pauncefoot at least felt that the vague feeling of apprehension he sensed within his breast was not entirely irrational.

  Indeed, he began to wonder whether he ought to have overcome his nervousness of his master, well-founded though it was, and made a greater effort to acquaint his lordship with the visitor’s arrival.

  Miss Yorke ceased disdaining the Aubusson carpet and drew on her gloves, smiling with unexpected sweetness. Indeed, the housekeeper found the quality of the smile so unusual and charming that she even attempted to smile back, in rather a wintry manner.

  “Thank you, but I will not detain you any longer,” Harriet said, moving towards the door. “I realise that I have chosen a most inappropriate time to call upon his lordship.”

  Halfway to the front door, and with the footman already in position to whisk it open for her and watch her departure with admiring eyes, she paused, and turning once more to Pauncefoot enquired:

  “At what hour does his lordship normally dine?”

  The butler was happy to be able to resume his customary dignity.

  “Never before six o’clock in the evening, and sometimes even later,” he had to admit. “He is inclined to look with very much disfavour on the habit some quite distinguished families have of dinin
g between four and five o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Obviously a gentleman of high fashion,” Miss Yorke commented. “Inclined, no doubt, to despise the ways of his fathers. And on Sunday evening?”

  “He will dine, without doubt, at his club,” Pauncefoot answered immediately. “And afterwards he may visit another of his clubs, or simply walk home quietly and enjoy an early night.”

  “So the Sabbath does bestow some benefit on him after all,” Harriet murmured, and keeping her head lowered so that the brim of her bonnet should conceal the sudden brightness in her eyes she fairly ran down the steps to her hackney carriage.

  Her coachman was practically asleep on the box, but he jumped down immediately he realised she was ready to depart.

  “I shall require you this evening about seven o’clock,” Harriet told him. “Are you quite sure you can be free?”

  “Quite sure, miss,” he responded, and thought how refreshing a quiet morning nap could prove to be. He felt as good as a new man, and stretched himself luxuriously.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  With the coming of dusk, a soft April dusk, and while Lord Capel was setting forth from his mansion in St. James’s Square for his favourite club which, happening to be no more than a stone’s throw away, made it unnecessary for Pauncefoot to summon a chair for him, Harriet Yorke, having dined at the unfashionable hour of three o’clock at her friend Miss Marley’s house in Paddington, was also thinking about setting forth and behaving in an extremely unorthodox manner.

  All those people who thought of Miss Yorke as a demure young woman, grateful for occupying a position which provided her with a roof over her head in addition to her bed and her board, and fortunately for herself some congenial companionship, should have remembered that her father, during his years in the Navy, had acquired the sobriquet of Devil Yorke. On the deck of his ship, whether at sea or in some far distant harbour, he was monarch of all he surveyed, and put such a quality of fear into the hearts of the stout-hearted sailormen who made up his crew that he was often surprised himself by the curious willingness on the part of more than one of them on several separate occasions to offer up their own lives in order that his might be spared. If he led them into the jaws of death they made no bones about following. And ashore, a widower with one small daughter who looked unbelievably like him, he constantly exhorted her to remember that God made Man, Woman and the Devil, and the devil was the one to keep your eye on. If you learned how to cope with the devil, and mistrusted his activities on all possible occasions, you might acquire a little of the devil’s wiliness yourself, but at least you were never likely to be taken base advantage of. Other people might mistake your endeavours, but so long as you were clear-sighted enough you were never likely to go wrong.