Hope - Lesley Pearse [257]
‘You’re a brave girl and no mistake,’ she said, enveloping Hope in her arms. ‘You should never have had to see that beast again; he did enough to you in the past. I had a bad feeling this morning about you going up to Briargate; I didn’t want you to go. Thank God you and Betsy are safe, I couldn’t live without you two.’
She made Hope a hot toddy, and insisted that she must go to bed because she was all in. ‘We’ll talk some more about it tomorrow,’ she said as she helped Hope out of her clothes and slipped a warm nightgown over her head. ‘When Betsy wakes I’ll change her and bring her to you for her feed, but you must stay in bed.’
After she’d tucked Hope into bed, Nell went back downstairs and sat by the stove. She felt chilled to the marrow and sick at heart.
She should never have agreed to marry Albert; in her heart she’d always known it wasn’t right. He was a strange fish, everyone always said that. And here she was at thirty-nine, free of him at last, but too old now for any man to want.
Tears ran down her face. She was crying for the girl inside her who had never experienced real love and been cheated of a family of her own. When she looked back, her life had been nothing but hard work with so little joy.
But her tears were for Hope too. They said she was a fairy child, and yet she’d had the hardest life of all. And Nell loved her so much that Hope’s pain was hers too.
Hope pretended to fall asleep again when Nell took Betsy from her arms after her night feed, but she was watching Nell from beneath her eyelashes.
Everything about her was neat. Her hair was always clean, shiny and pinned up with never a stray lock escaping, her collars and cuffs were always crisp and white, she kept an apron on for most of the day but it was never dirty. Her boots were polished, her nails neatly trimmed, even her face looked as if it had just been scrubbed. She moved so neatly too, and was never clumsy or noisy. She often described herself as plain, but in fact there was beauty in her simplicity, or maybe it was her honesty and integrity which shone through, making her so special.
Hope hadn’t felt able to tell her what Lady Harvey had revealed – Albert’s death was enough for one day. A secret that had been kept for nearly twenty-four years could wait another day.
As she watched Nell tenderly rocking Betsy in her arms she thought how astounding it was that a sixteen-year-old girl could have entered into a pact with an older maid just to protect her mistress from scandal and ruin. What selflessness that had taken, such loyalty and love! And that devotion had never faltered; not to Lady Harvey, nor to her. Hope had felt Nell’s love for her right from when she had been a small child. Albert had done his best to snuff it out, but it had been too strong for that.
Yet even more astounding was that when Lady Harvey failed to support her, Nell didn’t retaliate in any way, not even telling Angus that he had a child. She was a very remarkable woman in every way.
‘I love you, Nell,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Blood-sister or not, I am the lucky one to have you.’
It wasn’t until the evening of the following day that Hope finally managed to get Nell on her own to tell her what she knew.
Dora had been bustling around cleaning in the early part of the morning. Then a police sergeant had called to question Hope about Albert’s death. Fortunately he had taken part in the manhunt for Albert following the fire at Briargate, so agreed that Hope must have acted in self-defence and congratulated her on her bravery. He’d no sooner gone than a neighbour called, and after that Betsy kept crying and it just wasn’t possible to have a serious conversation while Nell was flapping around making the supper.
But once the supper things were washed up, Betsy bathed and asleep in her crib, and they were finally sitting beside the fire in the parlour, Hope told Nell how Lady Harvey