Hope - Lesley Pearse [262]
‘And I ended up with Angus,’ Nell whispered. ‘I know he can never love me the way he loved you. But I’m in his house and in his heart. Thank you for that, my lady.’
Hope and Rufus looked down at Lady Harvey and tears rolled down their cheeks. To both of them the clock had been turned back and she looked just how they remembered her from when they were children.
‘Sleep peacefully, Mother dearest,’ Rufus whispered as he bent to kiss her cheek. ‘And thank you for giving me a sister.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
‘What are you doing?’ Nell yelled from the kitchen as Hope opened the front door and a squall of icy rain blew in. ‘You can’t go out, it’s pitch dark and you’ll catch your death of cold.’
But Hope could hear nothing but the voice inside her head telling her to run.
Once out on the road she ran headlong down the hill. The driving rain was so heavy that she was soaked to the skin within seconds and she lost one of her slippers in thick mud, but all she was aware of was her own misery and the need to end it.
The day had begun with torrential rain, and Hope had a sinking feeling that such weather on the day of Lady Harvey’s funeral was a portent of worse things to come.
The cab which took her and Nell to Compton Dando had a leaky roof, and by the time they’d got to the church both she and Nell were wet through. Their umbrella blew inside out in the high wind as they got out of the cab and the church was so cold their teeth were soon chattering.
The church was full, the front few pews all taken up by gentry, some of whom Hope recognized as people who had called at Briargate in the past. Nell whispered that the rest were Dorvilles, Lady Harvey’s family from Sussex, most of whom she’d met on her trips down there.
But the bulk of the congregation were ordinary people from the surrounding villages and their wet clothes created a steamy, evil-smelling fug. Hope recognized a great many faces from her childhood. The Nicholses, the Webbs, Boxes, Pearces, and Calways, all so much older now and all looking as cold and uncomfortable as she herself felt.
Rufus, Matt, Joe and Henry carried the coffin in on their shoulders, Rufus’s blond hair standing out like a beacon against the Renton darkness. The wreath of holly and Christmas roses on the top of the coffin seemed to Hope to be too stark for Lady Harvey, who had always favoured flamboyant flowers. But she had to suppose that in December it wasn’t possible to get anything more colourful.
The Reverend Gosling seemed to have shrunk since Hope last sawhim and his voice was quavery and uncertain throughout the service. When he spoke of Lady Harvey it was as if he had no memory of when she was a young and vivacious woman, but had only met her after Briargate was burned down when she was frail and disturbed.
Even the hymns were gloomy, tuneless ones, which Hope knew Rufus would never have chosen.
Hope had not expected to be uplifted by this service, yet she had thought she’d gain some kind of comfort that her true mother’s earthly struggles were over, and that she had gone on to a better place. But there was no comfort in this cold, pitiless rite, not even a few well-chosen words spoken with some emotion by a family member.
When they moved outside for the interment, the strong wind, driving rain, and the mud underfoot made most of the village people scurry for the shelter of the Crown Inn without so much as a thought for the final words at the graveside. Hope saw Rufus’s desolate expression and she knew he felt his mother had been slighted.
Hope herself was emotionally confused for she wasn’t sure which camp she belonged in. She was aware that many of the village people had already lost a day’s wages to come and pay their last respects to Lady Harvey; to also expect them to risk their health by standing in pouring rain was perhaps asking too much. Yet she was very disappointed