Hope - Lesley Pearse [208]
He stopped abruptly, half-closing his eyes, and Hope guessed he was feeling guilty about Lady Harvey.
‘Enough of me,’ he said suddenly. ‘Tell me about the day you left Briargate.’
‘It was your letter to Lady Harvey,’ she began.
She cut the story right to the bone and merely said that she’d gone into the gatehouse to hide the letter and Albert had caught her.
Yet even as she told him how Albert had hit her and forced her to write a goodbye letter, she could feel the weakness of her story and kept hesitating.
‘He said if I didn’t go he’d take the letter to Sir William and that Lady Harvey would be disgraced, and Nell would be dismissed too for covering up,’ she said, blushing because Pettigrew was looking at her so intently. ‘He told me that if I left and never came back he would keep quiet.’
‘But if Nell had been dismissed, surely he would have had to go too?’
‘That would have been even worse,’ Hope said quietly. ‘Nell would have been alone and friendless with him.’
‘Why didn’t you go to Matt?’ he asked, his face very stern. ‘Or Ruth in Bath?’
She didn’t know why she suddenly started crying. It might have been because he knew these people she had missed for so long, or perhaps she was upset that once again Albert was forcing her to keep quiet about what she knew.
‘He told me I wasn’t to go to them, and if I did he would make Nell’s life a misery,’ she sobbed out. ‘He hit me, shoved me out in the rain without a penny, you can’t imagine what I went through.’
‘I think I can,’ he said softly. ‘Bristol is not a good place for anyone young and friendless. I talked about you to Rufus after the funeral; he said that he always knew Albert was responsible for you leaving and he hated him for it. He also felt the man had something over his father.’
‘Of course he did, he knew about you and Lady Harvey.’
‘At first I thought it was that. But Rufus was quite specific about his father and Albert. You see, he had discovered that Albert had been given a great deal of money by William over the years. Now, I have my own opinion as to what this hold might have been, but I have no proof. Although I think you do.’
Hope lifted her head, and she saw he knew the truth.
‘I would never have voiced what I suspected, ever,’ he said quietly. ‘And now he is dead, it should die with him for Rufus’s sake. He’s a fine young man, Hope, with none of his parents’ weaknesses. I know from Nell how close you were as children. That, of course, was the most compelling reason for you to obey Albert, wasn’t it? For you couldn’t go to anyone for help without revealing what you knew.’
There was no point in denying it, so she nodded. ‘I walked in on them together,’ she whispered, tears running down her cheeks. ‘But it wasn’t just Rufus; it was Lady Harvey and Nell too. They would all have been shamed.’
His hand reached out and took hers. ‘Your loyalty is a credit to you, Hope,’ he said with a break in his voice. ‘I think most people would only have thought of themselves. But don’t be afraid, I will never divulge what you’ve told me.’
‘I must go,’ she said, getting to her feet and wiping her eyes. ‘I’ve stayed too long and Bennett will be worried. But what do I tell Nell?’
‘Just about the letter, that will do fine, she’s not as suspicious or as worldly as I am. Don’t feel badly towards William for he couldn’t help the way he was made. I’ve met many men like him since I’ve been in the army, good, brave men who try so hard to suppress it. Sometimes they just can’t any more. I did my best to fight off loving Anne, but I couldn’t. In many ways that’s the same.’
‘I never felt hatred for Sir William,’ she said, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘Only for Albert, and not because of that either. But for his cruelty to Nell and for forcing us apart.’
He looked at her long and hard, then smiled. ‘You know, you are everything Nell