Hope - Lesley Pearse [193]
Hope didn’t seem to mind the lack of comforts, the dust, dirt, hot sun or poor food. She said cheerfully that she’d known worse. While she was here with him he felt he could bear it too, but once she was gone it would be a very different picture.
Chapter Twenty
‘Please say something!’ Bennett pleaded. ‘I could only tell you it the way Captain Pettigrew told me, but maybe I’ve been too blunt.’
All day the news of Nell had been burning inside him. He’d expected Hope to whoop with delight and ask a hundred questions he wouldn’t be able to answer. But he’d forced himself to hold it in until they’d got back to their tent this evening because he hadn’t wanted anyone to interrupt them. It hadn’t gone the way he expected at all; she had just sat there on the camp bed, her dark eyes fixed on his face, not saying a word.
Was it the shock of hearing her brother-in-law was a murderer?
She reached out for his hand and at last there was a glimmer of a smile. ‘It is I who should apologize, not you,’ she said. ‘I could not speak for shock; it’s almost too much to take in. I never thought Nell would leave Albert, not even in my wildest flights of fancy.’
‘You find Nell leaving him more extraordinary than him burning down Briargate and killing Sir William?’ Bennett was incredulous.
Hope giggled then, her face at last becoming animated. ‘Well, that is truly shocking, but then I always knew Albert was an evil man. But Nell! She was always so proper; she believed that marriage vows were unbreakable. I just can’t imagine her doing something so extreme.’
‘Pettigrew did say she believed he’d killed you!’
Hope’s face clouded over. ‘Poor Nell, I never imagined she’d think that, or that she’d leave Briargate. You can’t imagine what that place meant to her! She worshipped Lady Harvey, and if she walked away from her, and Albert, it must have caused so much gossip in the village.’
Bennett frowned, still puzzled as to why broken marriage vows and gossip appeared to have had so much more impact than murder and a mansion being burnt down.
Hope took his hand and kissed the tips of his fingers, looking at him with a wicked glint in her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t think anyone in the village can sleep with all this scandal going on. Just imagine what they’d be like if they knew what Albert and Sir William were to each other too? But tell me more of what Captain Pettigrew said about Nell. How on earth did she come to be his housekeeper? Is she well? Was there any other news of the rest of my family?’
Bennett smiled; this was more how he’d expected Hope to react, questions and more questions. ‘No, he didn’t tell me anything else, but he spoke with such warmth about Nell that I’m certain he’ll be very happy to talk to you about her. I too would like to hear more about all my in-laws!’
At that, Hope realized that Bennett not only fully appreciated what this news of Nell meant to her, but was also delighted to embrace her family as his own, and that touched her to the core.
But with that knowledge came guilt too. Why hadn’t she felt able to tell Bennett yesterday that she’d met Captain Pettigrew previously, and that he was the author of the letter to Lady Harvey?
‘There is another reason why I am so stunned by all this,’ she blurted out. ‘You see, I’d met Captain Pettigrew back at Briargate.’
‘Really?’ Bennett raised one eyebrow questioningly. ‘And why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s because Nell always drummed into me that I should never divulge anything that I might hear or see there. You see, Captain Pettigrew was Lady Harvey’s lover. That was what made me come over all faint when I recognized him.’
‘Good God!’ Bennett exclaimed. ‘And to think I believed it was the shock of those men attacking you and Queenie that made you so anxious to leave the cavalry camp!’
‘He made me recall things I wanted to forget,’ Hope said in her defence.
Bennett looked at her thoughtfully. ‘So how do you feel about the man now that your