Hope - Lesley Pearse [162]
Anne remembered odd little scenes around that time, her in her nightgown urging him to come to bed with her, and William turning his back on her, protesting he was tired.
‘If only you’d told me what was wrong,’ she said, wiping a tear away from her cheek. ‘I think I would have let you do whatever you wanted just as long as at home you were the William I married.’
‘The real problems began at home, when I took Albert on,’ he said.
Anne’s eyes shot wide open. ‘Albert! Did he find out? Was he blackmailing you?’
William pursed his lips, as though he’d just sucked a lemon. ‘No, not that. He’s like me.’
‘You mean…?’
William nodded.
‘God in heaven!’ Anne exclaimed. She didn’t think she could take any more shocks.
‘Yes, he’s a sodomist, or whatever people like to call us,’ William spat out. ‘And I, poor fool that I am, fell for him. If not for me he wouldn’t have married Nell; that was my suggestion.’
‘Oh no, William!’ Anne gasped. ‘Why did you do that?’
William shrugged. ‘Without a wife people might have guessed about him. Nell struck me as a plain, no-nonsense girl who would make a calm, steady wife. I didn’t know how cruel Albert could be then, or that he hated women. I thought he’d be able to give her a child, take care of her, and you’d keep the maid you relied on. I’d still have Albert in a place where we could be together.’
‘The gatehouse,’ Anne whispered. ‘You used to go there?’
William nodded glumly. ‘It was bad, I can see that now, but he bewitched me, Anne. I couldn’t think of anything else, nothing mattered to me but him. Can you understand?’
She couldn’t understand, not with a man as loathsome as Albert. The thought of them doing something so depraved and bestial right under her nose, so close to their son, made her want to shout at him, pummel him with her fists, say he was disgusting.
Yet at the same time she could remember only too well how be witched by Angus she had been, how she had let him take her in a field or woods, without any thought of her husband or child.
She took a deep breath. ‘Do you still feel that way about him?’ she asked.
‘No, I fear him,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘It has been over between us for a long time, but he refuses to leave here, and threatens to tell you, Rufus and everyone else what I am if I force him out. I thought it was love he felt for me, but now I know he is incapable of such an emotion.’
‘Oh, William,’ she sighed, reaching out to hold him, for now they had a common enemy. ‘He knows about me and Angus too. He has a letter to me from Angus. Nell asked Hope to hold on to any that came while I was away at my father’s funeral, and he must have found her with it. Did he kill her?’
‘No, at least not as far as I know,’ William said quickly, then fell silent, chewing on his lip.
Anne waited. She knew her husband only ever did this when he was uncertain and very afraid. But she was certain he would eventually tell her what he knew; lying didn’t come easily to him.
‘She came into the gatehouse and caught us,’ he finally blurted out, his face contorted with shame. ‘Albert told me to get out through the front door and he’d deal with her. I went down there later in the evening and she was gone. Albert showed me the note he’d got her to write; he said he’d told her never to come back or he’d hurt Nell.’
Anne exploded with rage then, calling him all the terrible names she could think of. ‘You coward!’ she raged. ‘You stood by, letting Nell think she was dead, and all the time you knew what had happened! How could you do that? It was inhuman!’
‘What else could I do?’ William whined. ‘I was terrified that Albert and I would be discovered. Albert even convinced me Hope had wanted to leave Briargate. I didn’t know how