Hope - Lesley Pearse [53]
‘I don’t know what’s got into you. I’ve said I’m sorry, now let that be the end of it,’ he said, and began eating his pie.
‘The end of it!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve barely begun, Albert Scott. You are unnatural, a freak of nature that you don’t like women, and I swear on all that’s holy that I will expose what you really are unless you do as I say.’
At last he looked frightened and Nell felt she now had some real power.
‘So what do you want of me?’ he asked in little more than a whisper, dropping his eyes from hers.
‘First of all, you will never hit Hope or me again.’
He nodded.
‘And you’ll make no further complaints about how I run this house. You’ll get the coal, wood and the water in like any decent husband would do. You will also welcome my family here and behave as if you like them.’
‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘You think you’ve got off lightly, don’t you?’ she laughed mirthlessly. ‘But you haven’t, because I know that it will wear you down having to be nice to me. You’ll always be afraid I might spill the beans about you and make you the laughing stock of the county. Maybe it will wear you down enough so you leave me. That will make me very happy. I’ve never considered myself a real wife anyway.’
To her amazement he covered his face with his hands. ‘I can’t help the way I am,’ he muttered as if he were crying. ‘God knows I wish I was like other men.’
Nell almost softened then. She was tempted to put her arms around him and say maybe they could learn to be friends like the way they were before they married. But she knew that if he saw her weaken he would use it to his advantage.
Instead she took his hands away from his face. There were tears in his eyes. ‘There might still be hope for you if you can shed a tear, Albert Scott,’ she said crisply. ‘Finish your supper, then let me see to that cut on your hand.’
Chapter Six
1845
Hope was walking home through Lord’s Wood after spending her afternoon off in Woolard with Matt, Amy and their children when she heard a crack of something stepping on a dry stick behind her.
She turned, but couldn’t see or hear anything. Had it been an animal, she’d have been able to hear rustling in the undergrowth, so it stood to reason it was a human who was now hidden.
She wasn’t in the least scared; it was only six in the evening and in June it didn’t get dark until at least ten o’clock. Besides, she and her brothers used to stalk people all the time when they were younger. In fact, if she hadn’t known both Joe and Henry were fishing by the bridge in Woolard, she would have thought it was one of them. But they’d been warned off coming into the wood by Mr Box, the Hunstrete gamekeeper, because he suspected them of poaching. Fortunately that day Box didn’t catch them with any fish from the lake, but he said that if he saw them in the woods again he’d turn them over to the magistrates.
Hope waited a while and when there were no further noises she thought she might have been mistaken so she walked on. But when she heard another crack, she turned just in time to see someone dart behind a tree. She knew it wasn’t an adult, for their step was too light, and she thought it was a girl for she’d seen a flash of blonde hair.
The Nicholses, who lived on the common near her old home, had two blonde daughters, and one of them, Anna, was daring enough to play this sort of game on someone. So Hope thought she’d turn the tables on her and hide behind a tree too.
She held the skirt of her brown dress in tight so it wouldn’t give her away, and waited. After about a minute she heard the sound of creeping feet. They came right up to the tree where she was hiding and then stopped so close that Hope could hear the girl’s breathing. She wanted to laugh because she could just imagine Anna’s confused expression as she wondered how Hope had managed to disappear.
Stealthily Hope crept