Hope - Lesley Pearse [2]
Nell knew she wasn’t blessed with beauty. She took after her father’s side of the family, as all her brothers and sisters did. They were short and sturdy with black straight hair and dark brown eyes. Ned had said she had a complexion like cream, but that was probably only sweet talk. Her mouth was too small, her nose a little too big, and her eyebrows too bushy.
She didn’t get to meet Ned, so she’d never know whether he liked her for herself or because he thought a plain girl like her might be easy. Bridie dropped her bombshell mid-morning and made it quite clear Nell was not to leave the house for any reason.
Up till then Nell had believed, as all the servants did, that her mistress’s lengthy stay in her room was because she’d been hurt falling from her horse. Rose, one of the other maids, had said it was a ‘queer do’, as the previous time Lady Harvey had had a fall from her horse she was hobbling around with a walking stick within two days.
But Nell saw nothing suspicious in this extended period of bed rest. She had noted in her four years of service that ladies of quality tended to suffer from curious ailments which didn’t strike common folk.
It was her view that the mistress’s problem was melancholia: a combination of the long, bitter winter and her husband’s extended absence. Whenever Nell was sent upstairs with a tray, Lady Harvey was either still in bed or sitting by the window with her feet up, covered in a quilt. She looked as beautiful as ever, her golden hair loose on her shoulders, but she was subdued and very pale. Nell often felt Bridie ought to be firmer with her and make her take a short walk outside every day.
Just before Baines left in the carriage bound for London with the rest of the household, he had given Nell her orders. She was to cook, fetch and carry until Lady Harvey felt able to travel to London with Bridie. Then she was to stay on here alone to look after the house, and the gardener and groom would take care of everything outside.
Nell wasn’t disappointed at not going to London too. Bridie said that there was always far more work there because it was a much larger house and the Harveys entertained a great deal. She also said the London staff looked down on country yokels, and it was like working in a madhouse.
In fact Nell viewed staying at Briargate as a holiday, for she’d have virtually nothing to do. She would be able to slip home every afternoon to see her mother and younger brothers and sisters, and to wander around the grounds as much as she liked.
When Bridie told her yesterday what really ailed the mistress it was a huge shock. ‘She slipped up,’ was how Bridie put it, as if she imagined Nell didn’t know how babies were made.
Nell had been promised a sovereign just as long as she never breathed a word of what she would see and hear in the next few hours. Bridie bluntly stated that it was her hope the baby wouldn’t survive.
Yesterday that hope didn’t seem so terrible. Bridie was only being practical, just as the groom was when he drowned kittens born in the barn. Everyone knew that ladies got a wetnurse in for their babies anyway, and had very little time for their offspring until they were almost fully grown.
But once Lady Harvey went into hard labour, she wasn’t any different to any other woman Nell knew. She sweated, she cried, she even shouted crude oaths like the slatternly barmaid down at the inn. All the fine linen and lace, silver hairbrushes