Hope - Lesley Pearse [258]
Nell turned very pale, and she looked frightened too.
‘I’m not angry, I’m not sitting in judgment on either you or Lady Harvey,’ Hope assured her. ‘I just want to understand how it all came about. So please tell me the whole story, right from the start.’
Nell spilled it out in fits and starts, stammering with nervousness at some points, at others showing indignation that at only sixteen she was forced to be party to something she knew to be very wrong.
‘It never crossed my mind that she could be carrying a child,’ she said as she explained how Lady Harvey had stayed up in her room for several weeks. ‘It was only when the other servants had gone to London, and Bridie and I were alone in the house with her, that Bridie told me.’
It was clear to Hope that Nell had relived that scene up in her mistress’s bedroom many, many times over the years for she described it all in great detail once she got going. As she related how she was taking what she thought was a dead baby down the backstairs and it moved, she began to cry.
‘I knew Bridie didn’t want it to live, but once I looked at you and sawyour little hands moving, I was done for,’ she said.
Hope winced at the part where Nell caught Bridie about to smother her. ‘Don’t judge her!’ Nell exclaimed. ‘She was frightened, she loved Lady Harvey and she couldn’t bear what would happen if this got out. That’s when I thought of taking you home to Mother.’
‘And she took me, just like that?’ Hope asked in astonishment as Nell described how Meg took her in her arms and fed her.
‘She loved babies,’ Nell said. ‘And she couldn’t bear to think of what would happen to you if she refused. She told me some time later that Father was angry the next morning to find she’d agreed. He went off to work grumbling and complaining about how little they’d already got without another mouth to feed. But that night he came home and picked you up and kissed you. He never said another word about it.’
Hope could remember sitting on her father’s knee, how he used to tell her stories and sing to her. She hadn’t once felt inferior to the older children, if anything she received more love and affection than any of them.
‘Wasn’t anyone suspicious?’ she asked. ‘What about Matt, James and Ruth? Surely they were old enough to know Mother hadn’t given birth to me?’
‘When there’s already ten children and they’ve grown used to another one arriving every couple of years, they don’t think beyond whether that means they’d have to help feed and change it,’ Nell said with a wry smile. ‘Matt did say once after his first was born that he didn’t know how Mother managed to stay so quiet having you, because Amy screamed the place down. But he wasn’t suspicious, he didn’t remember Mother making any fuss having any of the younger ones.’
‘What was Lady Harvey like after the birth?’
‘Very sad and weepy she was. But soon after she went up to London to join Sir William, and I stayed at Briargate. She was gone for three months, and I was glad about that because I could go home most afternoons and see you. You were the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen.’
‘Oh, Nell,’ Hope sighed. ‘That was such a big burden for you!’
‘You were never a burden,’ Nell said looking fondly at Hope. ‘I suppose I was at that age when some girls become mothers themselves. I was scared stiff though that day I took you up to Briargate and you ran into the Captain. Do you remember that?’
Hope nodded. ‘You knew he was my father even then?’
‘No! That was the day I realized. I just took one look at his face and sawyou in it. Bridie was dead by then; there was no one I could ask. But I knew. I wonder you haven’t noticed it too.’
‘I didn’t have any reason to be looking for such things,’ Hope said. ‘But will we tell him now?’
‘Well, of course you can.’ Nell smiled then, as if suddenly she had something to feel good about. ‘He’ll be father and grandfather all at once, won’t he?’
‘I sort of felt something with Angus almost from the first time I met him,’ Hope said pensively. ‘But it didn’t work that way with Lady Harvey. Why