Hope - Lesley Pearse [17]
He had removed the brown smock he usually wore and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and the sight of his muscular bare forearms and moleskin breeches tight over his buttocks made Nell feel suddenly shy.
She knew from previous years that in a couple of weeks the roses would be spectacular, but as yet there were none flowering. Had they been in bloom she could have let Hope sniff them, but without any real excuse for being there, she felt vulnerable and rather foolish.
But Hope ran straight up to Albert before Nell could prevent her.
‘Why aren’t there any flowers here?’ she asked him.
‘There will be next month,’ Albert replied, glancing round at Nell and smiling. ‘Roses like the whole bed to themselves, you see. They don’t much care for companions.’
Nell took her courage in both hands and walked over to him. By the time she got there Hope was asking why they didn’t like companions and that she liked gardens that had flowers everywhere, all different kinds.
‘I like that too,’ Albert said. ‘But this ain’t my garden, so I has to do what the master likes.’
Nell blushingly apologized for her sister. ‘She’s no trouble,’ Albert said cheerfully. ‘You bring her again once all the roses is in bloom. I bet she’ll like that.’
Hope was very taken with the marble statues in the big circular rosebed, making Nell blush yet again when she asked why the ladies had no clothes on. Albert chuckled and said it was his opinion that it was harder to carve clothes than nakedness.
They were a distance of some fourteen feet from the porch and the front door, when Nell heard the door open and Lady Harvey saying goodbye to someone.
Not wanting to be seen talking to the gardener, Nell told Hope it was time they went back. But Hope ignored her, and went skipping away in the direction of the front door, reaching it just as a gentleman stepped out of the porch.
‘Hope!’ Nell called out. But to her dismay the child just stood there, hands behind her back, smiling sweetly up at the man.
He was perhaps thirty, tall and slender, wearing a dark green riding jacket, brown breeches and long riding boots, with a rakish yellow and green cravat around his neck. He looked down at Hope and smiled. ‘Hello! Who are you?’
‘Hope Renton,’ she replied without any hesitation. ‘I came to see the roses, but there aren’t any.’
Nell rushed over and grabbed Hope’s hand. Lady Harvey had gone in and closed the door behind her. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said.
‘No need to apologize for a polite child.’ His voice was deep but it held a hint of laughter at her embarrassment.
Nell looked into his handsome smiling face and blanched. His almost black eyes and hair were identical to Hope’s and she was so shocked that she could only stare at him open-mouthed.
‘You must be a sister of the young groom who took my horse,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘You are very alike.’
Nell pulled herself together rapidly. ‘Yes, sir, that’s James. I’m Nell, Lady Harvey’s maid,’ she managed to get out. ‘I’ll tell James to bring your horse round for you.’
Nell ran off then, holding Hope securely by the hand.
After telling James to take the gentleman’s horse round to him, Nell said goodbye to the children and warned them to go straight home. She stayed at the stile by the paddock waving to them for some little while because she didn’t dare go back into the house while she was so shaken.
She hadn’t ever allowed herself to wonder about Hope’s father, just as she didn’t look for similarities between her mistress and the child. She had decided long ago that it was better never to think about such things.
There were many male visitors at Briargate; some came with wives, sisters or even mothers, and some alone if they were friends of Sir William. But Nell had never seen anyone that looked remotely like Hope, and she’d never expected to. After all, a man who had done that to her mistress wasn’t likely to be welcome here.
Yet