Hope - Lesley Pearse [267]
‘You are Bennett?’ Nell said stupidly.
‘The very same,’ he said, glancing round. ‘I expected to greet my sister-in-law for the first time under better circumstances, but we can’t help that now.’
Nell shot off to get the brandy, too stunned to say anything further.
By the time she came back Hope’s sodden clothes were on the floor and Bennett had wrapped her in a blanket and was cradling her in his arms.
‘Come on now, my darling,’ he was saying to her. ‘Speak to me, it’s Bennett, your husband. I’m home.’
Nell handed over the brandy and watched with her hands over her mouth, hardly daring to breathe as Bennett held the glass to Hope’s lips.
‘Good girl,’ he said softly as she sipped it. ‘You’re quite safe now, it’s only me, and you’ll soon be warm again. Now, drink a little more for me?’
She lifted her head a little, sipped and then coughed. ‘That’s better,’ Bennett said. ‘Now, you are going to sit right up and drink the rest. To think I believed I was coming home to be nursed by you!’
It was as if the sound of his voice, the touch of his hands suddenly broke through to her. ‘Bennett?’ she questioned cautiously. ‘Bennett!’ she repeated. ‘Is it really you?’
A hand on Nell’s shoulder drew her back out of the room. ‘Come on, Nell,’ Angus said. ‘Let’s leave them to it.’
Bennett wound a towel round Hope’s wet hair, then lay down on the rug beside her, propping himself up on one elbow so he could look at her. It was too soon to ask why she’d been in the road on such a night, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her that he’d nearly died of fright when Angus carried her into the carriage and she didn’t know either of them.
For now it was just enough to look at her. To see those beautiful dark eyes gazing back at him, her plump lips curved into the sweetest smile, for it was all that he had dreamed of while he was so sick. He knew very well that he’d been a hair’sbreadth from death and he was sure it was only his will to see Hope and their baby that had kept him alive. None of the other men who had gone down with typhoid fever with him survived, and if Angus hadn’t come and rescued him from Scutari when he did, the chances were he’d be gone now too.
Bennett was still so weak he couldn’t have picked Hope up from the road, but now he was back with her, he felt his recovery would be speedy.
‘We have a little girl, I believe?’ he said. ‘Angus told me he had a letter from you as he was leaving Balaclava. She is well, I hope?’ He stopped, suddenly afraid that this wasn’t so and that was why Hope had been out in the rain.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Hope said, and suddenly her face lit up with a radiant smile. ‘Oh, Bennett, I was so afraid you’d never see her, that you weren’t coming back. So much has happened. Why didn’t you write?’
‘I asked a nurse to write for me when I first became ill,’ he said sadly. ‘But she had so many patients, maybe she forgot. I was so ill that for a while I hardly knew who I was, let alone being able to write myself. But I daresay the letters I wrote when I began to recover will turn up one day soon. I didn’t get any from you either, so maybe we’ll get those eventually too.’
‘Kiss me,’ she asked, wriggling her bare arms out of the blanket so she could hold him. ‘Then I’ll really believe it is you.’
This was the moment Bennett had waited for and dreamed of so often on the long voyage home. As they had sailed up the coast of Spain in a tremendous storm and he had been racked with seasickness, he’d clung on to the taste and feel of her to get him through it.
But as their lips met it was even sweeter than he had imagined. Firecrackers exploded in his head, he heard angels singing and bands playing. All of the hideousness of the Crimea and Scutari faded away. He was home, his beautiful Hope was in his arms, and all was right with the world.
Angus and Nell stayed in the kitchen while Hope and Bennett were in the parlour. Nell gave Angus some bread