Hope - Lesley Pearse [237]
‘I’d better go and see Rufus soon,’ Hope replied, looking down at her large belly. ‘While I still can.’
‘On Sunday everyone’s coming here,’ Nell said excitedly. ‘Alice and Toby are coming over from Bath with Ruth, John and their family. Matt and Amy with their little ones, and Joe and Henry will be here too. We’ll have a full house then and no mistake. It’s a pity it’s too far for James to come as well.’
‘So we’ll be busy cooking for the next few days?’
‘That we will,’ Nell chuckled. ‘I just hope the weather holds; it’s easier when the children can be outside for there’s so many of them now.’
For the first two days at Willow End, Hope felt she was wrapped in a beautiful dream from which she didn’t ever want to wake. Apart from her honeymoon, she’d never had the kind of comfort and ease she was experiencing now. A spacious, pretty bedroom with a soft bed, leisurely meals, and her clothes washed and pressed for her. She could watch carriages going past the cottage, or amble down to the river at Saltford and revel in the tranquillity and beauty of the countryside.
All the anxiety about her family during the long years of separation had been wiped out the moment Nell had embraced her at Portsmouth harbour, and as a result of their talks together Hope had a clear picture of everything that had happened to all of them during these years.
It wasn’t until Sunday, when the rest of the family arrived to see her, that Hope experienced an awakening from the blissful cocoon she felt she’d been wrapped in since her arrival.
Everything began so well. It was a warm, sunny day, Nell and Dora had produced a veritable feast, and the family arrived with what seemed a flock of children. It was glorious to be enveloped by their excitement and love. She marvelled how Joe and Henry had grown into men while she’d been away; that Matt was now a replica of her father, and there was a sense of comradeship in sharing Amy’s and Ruth’s childbirth stories. Yet even as they all milled around her, faces glowing with delight at having her back in their midst, Hope found herself feeling strangely isolated and different.
She couldn’t work out why this was, for apart from Matt, Joe and Henry who still led a very similar life to the one she’d grown up in, they’d all changed. Ruth and her family were relatively well-off and living in Bath. Alice and Toby were still in service and could talk of little else but the goings-on in their household. And Nell, too, had gone up in the world. Yet changed or not, they all reacted with one another just the same as they always had. Only she was different, as if she didn’t belong.
Later, when everyone had gone home, Hope tried to talk about how she felt to Nell, but she’d just got cross and impatient. ‘Of course you belong,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this foolishness.’
Two weeks after her arrival home, Hope set off in the morning with Mr Tremble, the local carter, to see Rufus and Lady Harvey at the gatehouse. It had been something she’d wanted to do since she’d first returned, but although Nell had seemed keen for her to go at first, today she appeared to have had second thoughts about it.
Hope could quite understand Nell’s sudden change of heart. The gatehouse had bad memories for both of them, and it was terrible to think of Albert burning Briargate down and killing Sir William. But Hope knew she had to go back there; she had ghosts to put to rest.
Matt had told her how worried Rufus had been after she left, how he’d helped on the farm during his holidays, and what a fine young man he’d turned into. Hope felt she owed it to him to show she valued their childhood friendship still.
But perhaps Nell’s fears about this visit were because she was afraid her younger sister would forget her place and say something disrespectful to Lady Harvey?
That riled Hope, for she didn’t have ‘a place’ any longer. She was neither a servant nor gentry. She was just an army surgeon’s wife who knew far more about Sir William and Lady Harvey’s personal lives