Nell’s mouth fell open in shock and horror at the vile and defamatory statement.
It was bad enough that her mistress had no sympathy for Nell, or concern about a young girl who had once played with her son. But to call Hope a stupid whore, to suggest she’d choose a life like that because she was too lazy to work here in the kitchens made Nell’s blood boil. She couldn’t let that go unchallenged.
‘Well, you’d know about being a stupid whore, wouldn’t you?’ she retorted, wanting to rip the face off the woman. ‘But you had Bridie and me to cover up your indiscretion.’
Lady Harvey looked astounded, then her eyes narrowed. ‘Enough, Nell!’ She held up one hand to silence her. ‘If you want to keep your job you will stop right there.’
‘Do you think my job means more to me than Hope’s life?’ Nell snarled, too angry now to hold back. ‘Well, I’ll tell younow, your bloody ladyship. Hope is that baby I helped deliver, here in this very room, in that bed, sixteen years ago. She’s your child!’
For a moment or two Lady Harvey didn’t react. She just stared blankly at Nell, perhaps unable to process what she’d just heard. Nell stared right back at her, hands on hips, daring the woman to insist she was lying. But then her mistress’s lower lip began to quiver. ‘But my baby died. Bridie said so,’ she said in a weak, faltering voice.
The mention of Bridie’s name was a reminder to Nell of the promise she’d made all those years ago. But even as she felt a stab of guilt on breaking that promise, she was angry and wanted to punish her mistress still further for the wicked things she’d said about Hope.
‘Bridie believed she was dead because she didn’t cry,’ she said defiantly. ‘But as I carried her downstairs I found she was alive. We knew how much trouble you’d be in if it ever got out you’d had a child, so I took her home to my mother.’
Lady Harvey’s face crumpled, her hands went up to her hair and she pulled at it like a madwoman. ‘No, no! It’s not true! I can’t believe you!’ she shrieked out. ‘You are making this up to distress me!’
‘I’m distressed because I believe Hope has been murdered,’ Nell hissed at her. ‘I’m also furious that you could be so unfeeling towards her. But do you really think I would make up such a story?’
‘It can’t be true. Bridie would have told me. One of the plans we made before the baby was born, was that if it lived we would farm it out. Bridie said that would be expensive, so she would’ve asked me for money and kept coming back for more.’
‘Don’t you dare insult Bridie’s memory by suggesting she would resort to blackmail; she would have died for you,’ Nell spat at her mistress. ‘In fact she did. You worked her to death, just like you’d do to me and Rose.’ She paused, allowing that to sink in, for now she had the upper hand she was going to get some of her old grievances off her chest.
‘All Bridie wanted was to protect your reputation, because she loved you. She also thought it would be easier for you to bear if you believed the baby died. And neither I nor my mother would have stooped to ask for money from you because we came to love Hope as if she were our own. To us she was a treasure.
‘But now she’s gone and I think she may have been killed, and if you’ve got any natural feelings, then help me to get justice for her!’
Lady Harvey wept then, but Nell could feel nothing but disdain for the woman, for she knew she wasn’t crying for the child she’d lost, or even out of sympathy for Nell. She was crying only for herself.
‘What do you want of me?’ Lady Harvey sobbed. ‘I can’t bear this. I don’t even know if I can believe what you’ve told me.’
‘You can look on the parish records and you’ll see Hope’s birthday is 25 April 1832. You can also look at your Captain Pettigrew’s face and see her face looking back at you.’
At that Lady Harvey looked really startled. Her eyes widened and she clapped her hands over her mouth.
‘Bridie didn’t tell me,’ Nell said quickly. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged it from her. I saw the Captain for the first time the day you suggested Hope come here to play with Rufus. I knew he was her father the moment I set eyes on him.’
‘Has anyone else remarked on that?’ Lady Harvey asked quickly.
‘Why would they? All us Rentons are dark, and no one else knows you had another child. But I’m surprised you haven’t seen the similarity. Didn’t you ever wonder why Hope was so beautiful, when James, Ruth and me are all so plain?’
There was no response to that question.
‘You’ve never really looked at her, have you?’ Nell sneered. ‘She’s worked in this house every day for four whole years or more, yet you’ve never noticed that beauty. But then you don’t see any of us servants as people, do you?’ Nell paused just long enough to draw breath.
‘We’re not supposed to have feelings, or even a private life of our own. You don’t care if we are tired, sick or distressed, you don’t even value our loyalty. I comforted you when your mother died, but who comforted me when my parents died? Not you! All you offered was an afternoon off for the funeral. You don’t even care that Albert’s hit me, even though I’ve worked for you for twenty years. What does it take to make you care, m’lady?’
Lady Harvey turned on her side and sobbed even louder, beating at her pillow with one hand. Nell stepped forward and rescued the tea tray from the bed, afraid that it would be spilled.
‘I do care, Nell,’ her mistress said after a few moments, but her words were almost lost in the pillows. ‘I do. I do.’
She rolled back over and looked at Nell with tears running down her cheeks. ‘I’ve often said I don’t know what I’d do without you. There have been so many times when I wanted to confide in you about how I felt when I was carrying Angus’s child, and indeed about the hopelessness of my situation, then and now. But I was afraid to, not because I didn’t trust you, but because I felt if I spoke of these things they would overwhelm me. Can you understand that?’
Nell thought back to the time Lady Harvey first admitted the Captain wrote to her. ‘Can I ask that you check the post each morning?’ she asked so sweetly. ‘Of course he is only a friend, but William is being so difficult these days and he might not like Angus writing to me.’
Like a fool, Nell had felt proud that her mistress trusted her so implicitly. She’d even been glad she got some small comfort from the Captain’s letters. But maybe it would have been better if she had spoken up then and informed her that the child of her union with her friend was down in the kitchen right now, scouring saucepans, and asked if it wasn’t time she did something for that child!
‘With all due respect, m’lady,’ Nell said sharply, ‘your feelings are not that important to me now. I only want to know what Albert has done with Hope.’
Lady Harvey looked at Nell with shocked eyes. She sat up and dried her tears on the sheet. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, Nell. Rufus is here too,’ she bleated. ‘And I don’t think my husband will believe for one moment that Albert killed Hope. He has a very high opinion of him.’
‘Are you trying to tell me Sir William won’t allow us to get the police?’
Lady Harvey began twisting her fingers together in agitation. ‘I don’t know. It’s very difficult for me to talk to him these days about anything. He’s not the man I married any more.’
Nell assumed she was referring to his heavy drinking. ‘Well, catch him when he comes back in for breakfast,’ she said. ‘He’ll be feeling fine then.’
‘He’s gone out already?’
‘Yes, Baines said he went out very early.’
Lady Harvey frowned. ‘I don’t know him any more. Why does he keep going out at strange times and getting annoyed if I ask where he’s been? He used not to be like that, Nell, once we used to do everything together, we talked and laughed so much.’
Nell nodded out of politeness.
‘I expect you wondered how I could have become involved with someone else?’
‘I thought you were very lonely when Sir William was
away.’
‘It wasn’t just that,’ Lady Harvey protested. ‘You’ve been with me every day for sixteen years, Nell. You do everything for me, you know me better than anyone. Surely you’ve realized why I turned to Angus?’
Nell shrugged.
Lady Harvey sighed. ‘You don’t see it, do you? You think like everyone else, and how I thought too on my wedding day, that I was lucky to have a husband who was young, handsome and wealthy. Oh, I adored him, but I was so innocent then, Nell, I’d never even kissed a man. It was years later before I discovered passion, and it was only then that I realized there had been none of that between me and William, no urge, no spark. In truth we were like brother and sister.’
‘Are you saying he didn’t lie with you?’ Nell asked.
Lady Harvey blushed. ‘He did what was expected of him, at first. As I had no real idea what the bed side of marriage should be like, I thought it must be my fault he seemed so disinterested. Then Angus came to visit, and all at once I was getting feelings I’d never experienced before.’
She paused, looking off into the distance. ‘He called one afternoon when William was out riding, and we walked in the garden together,’ she said. ‘We sat for a while in the summerhouse and suddenly he was kissing me. It was like a madness, Nell, so sweet and thrilling.’
She went on to say how in the months following she tried to fight against the passion she felt. How she would have Bridie stay in the room if Angus called and William was out.
‘It was the same for Angus,’ she said sadly. ‘I saw everything I felt mirrored in his eyes. He didn’t call often because he was off soldiering, a whole year went by once without my seeing him, but he was on my mind constantly. Then William went to America, and sometimes I’d go out riding alone, and it was on one of those days that I ran into Angus.’
‘And you slipped up?’
Lady Harvey nodded. ‘As God is my witness, I tried very hard to resist the temptation. I did love William; we had some happy times together. But this thing I felt with Angus was very different, so strong, it swept away morality, loyalty and everything else I held dear. It was so beautiful and powerful, Nell, nothing mattered but to possess and to be possessed. If I’d had only just one tiniest bit of that with William everything would have been different. But I saw then that what William and I had in our bed was a duty; a furtive kind of fumbling that gave neither of us any pleasure, only shame. And I realized that William did not and would never desire me.’
Tears sprang into Nell’s eyes as she remembered the humiliation of her own wedding night. She had been so willing, so eager for lovemaking, but Albert had pushed her away, making her feel dirty and loathsome. ‘Maybe we have been led astray into believing all men are earthy creatures,’ she said hesitantly, tempted for a second to admit that her own marriage was even emptier. ‘But you had Rufus!’
‘The one good thing to come out of all this mess,’ Lady Harvey said with a snort. ‘When William came home from America I was so very low. I was racked with guilt and convinced that all that I had been through with my first baby was God’s judgement for my wickedness. But fortunately William came home with renewed enthusiasm for producing a son and heir, and maybe because I had more knowledge of pleasing a man, it happened.’
‘Surely that was enough for you?’
‘Our child’s birth marked the end of William’s physical duty to me.’
‘But at least you have a child,’ Nell reminded her. She thought she would gladly settle for that.
‘That isn’t enough when you have known the bliss of being in the arms of a man who does desire you,’ Lady Harvey said with a break in her voice. ‘For some years Rufus was enough for me. Angus was safely abroad, and we had parties and house guests to distract me. But now—’ She broke off as she began to cry.
‘William goes off alone, he drinks and gambles too much. He speaks to me as if he hates me,’ she sobbed. ‘Last night I asked him why he’d left me in Sussex so soon after the funeral and he said that the three days he was there with me were more than enough for him. I thought he meant the difficulties with my sisters, but he didn’t. He meant being in my company.’
Nell had to grit her teeth to stop herself from interrupting Lady Harvey as she helped her with her toilette. A torrent of words flowed from her mouth – how wonderful Angus was, how despicable she found her husband – yet almost in the same breath she said she had written to Angus while at her family home to say their relationship must cease. It was the outpouring of someone who was entirely self-obsessed. She had also clearly forgotten that Nell had come to her with a serious problem.
She even asked at one point if Nell thought it wicked of her to wish for widowhood to release her from her unhappy marriage.
‘My mother used to say, “Be careful what you wish for,”’ Nell retorted, tempted to smack that beautiful face, if only to bring her back to reality. ‘But m’lady, we must talk about what is to be done about Hope, and indeed the position I find myself in.
‘I can’t go back to the gatehouse with Albert ever again. So either you let me live here at Briargate, or I must go today and stay with Matt and his family. But either way you have to get Sir William to call in the police about Hope.’
‘I can’t do that.’ Lady Harvey shook her head irritably. ‘I know my husband and he won’t believe anything bad of Albert. Nor will he approve of you leaving your husband.’
‘Hope is your child,’ Nell said fiercely. ‘Her body may be buried in the woods or even the grounds here, and you expect me to keep quiet and continue to live with the man who killed her?’
Naked fear came into Lady Harvey’s eyes. ‘A police investigation will cause such trouble for us, Nell. Remember my son, for pity’s sake!’
Nell was bewildered by that plea. ‘Are you afraid I will betray your confidences? How can you think such a thing?’
Lady Harvey did not reply, and Nell took that as confirmation of her fears. ‘I have kept the secret about Hope’s birth for sixteen years,’ she said quietly. ‘Nothing would make me reveal it now, or anything else you have told me today, for it has no bearing on what I fear has been done to Hope.
‘I have to know what happened to her, and if Albert has killed her I want to see him hanged for it. My brothers will feel the same, and if you and Sir William won’t help me with that, then I must leave here now and go to my family.’
‘You can’t leave me!’ Lady Harvey exclaimed. ‘It’s Christmas, and I need you.’
An hour later, Nell heaved the pillowcase holding her belongings over the stile and made her way across the paddock to Lord’s Wood. Tears ran down her cheeks unchecked, for leaving Briargate was like cutting off one of her limbs, but she knew she had to.
As she reached the wood she turned to take one last look at the house and she was reminded sharply of the evening all those years ago when she took this same path with Hope in her arms.
It had been dark then, Briargate just a shape illuminated by the moon. Today it looked sullen and bleak in the cold, grey morning light, very like the expression on Lady Harvey’s face when she finally realized Nell meant what she said.
She had tried to talk Nell out of it. But the more she said, the more obvious it became how shallow and selfish she was. She cried and said that Angus had never known their union had resulted in a baby because he was called away before she even knew she was pregnant. She was terrified that any kind of investigation at Briargate would result in her meetings and correspondence with him being discovered. She also said that her father had left Rufus a sizable share of his estate in trust, bypassing her because he was afraid Sir William would just squander it. William was already very angry with her about this because he was convinced she’d engineered it, and any further trouble would push him over the edge into madness. She even accused Nell of treachery.
Baines had taken Nell into his arms when she told him she was leaving, and when he let her go his eyes were damp. She’d asked him to say goodbye to Martha and Rose for her,
because she couldn’t bear to do so herself.
Now she had to face her brothers and tell them that she suspected her own husband of murder, and in truth she didn’t know if she could bear that either. She had always been the placid, sensible one in the family to whom everyone turned for advice and comfort. But that wasn’t true; if she’d been sensible she’d have made sure Hope had no contact at all with Albert after he attacked her that time before. She should never have asked her to go down to the gatehouse to tidy up; it was like leaving a pet rabbit with a fox.
Chapter Ten
1848
‘Just wait until he goes into the room out the back where the oven is, then run in and grab it,’ Betsy suggested. ‘There’s nothing to it, you’ll be long gone by the time he gets back and finds one’s missing.’
‘I don’t think I can do it,’ Hope whimpered as she looked across Wine Street to Salter’s Pies. ‘Mother always said it was a sin to steal.’
When she woke that morning she had been absolutely determined to provide a meal for the three of them, but now she was here in Bristol’s most prestigious street, within sniffing distance of Slater’s Pies, her nerve had gone.
Normally at eleven in the morning this street was full of cabs, carts and carriages with hundreds of people thronging the pavements. But the bitterly cold weather had made the town quiet for over a fortnight, and now snow was expected later today only a few people had ventured out. Betsy said that made it an ideal opportunity for Hope to try her hand at a snatch and run.
‘It’s sinful that the rich stuff their bellies while people like us starve,’ Gussie pointed out. ‘As for Slater, he ain’t even gonna miss one when he’s got that many!’
They hadn’t eaten for three whole days and all Gussie and Betsy’s usual avenues of opportunity to get food or money seemed to be closed to them. The extremely cold weather had delayed ships, and windows and doors normally left open were now shut. All the owners of food shops and stalls around the quayside were being extra vigilant. Daily they woke to find icicles hanging inside the window of their room, and there wasn’t a scrap of wood lying around anywhere that they could burn on the fire. They couldn’t even go into an ale house to get warm without money.
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