Hope - Lesley Pearse [62]
All the warnings she’d had from her parents and older brothers about playing by water came back to her in those long moments while she waited for James and Albert to reach her. She should have passed those warnings on to Rufus. He was younger than her, and what could he know about dangers when he had spent all his young life in a safe nursery or driving in a carriage with his mama? She’d brought him here. She was responsible for his death.
Sobbing, she still held on to him, kissing his face, begging his forgiveness for not protecting him. She barely felt the cold water or the midges biting her, she was entirely focused on his sweet young face, and all that they had become to each other.
‘Hope!’ she heard James yell from the far side of the pond. ‘Where are you?’
‘Over here,’ she shrieked back. ‘Rufus has fallen in by an old boat in the reeds. I’m holding him up.’
There was a loud splash as James plunged in, and all at once she saw him swimming through the tangle of water lilies, dark hair slicked back from his face and his eyes mirroring her own terror.
‘I think he’s already dead,’ she managed to stammer out. ‘His face was out of the water when I found him but he’s hit his head.’
James trod water as he looked at Rufus, then he began to swim away on his back, taking the boy with him, supporting him with a hand on either side of his head. ‘Hold on tightly, Hope,’ he called out. ‘I’ll be back for you.’
He disappeared from her view, but she heard Albert’s voice and further splashing as the two men got Rufus up on to the bank.
It seemed a very long time that she waited. Both men’s voices were muted, and it looked to her as though they were so distraught about Rufus that they’d forgotten her. Fear and the cold water made her teeth chatter. It wouldn’t just be her who would be blamed for this, but all the servants. Yet terrible as that was, the thought of Lady Harvey’s grief at losing her only child was worse.
She couldn’t bring herself to call out to remind James she was there and she was too frightened to try to reach shallow water by herself. But all at once James was back, reaching out for her just as he had for Rufus, telling her to lie still and not struggle or she’d pull him under.
Albert’s big hands came under her arms and she was plucked from the water and put down on the bank beside Rufus.
After the cold water, the sunshine felt very hot. ‘Is he…?’ she asked, but found herself unable to finish the question because James and Albert were looking down at her so intently.
‘He’s fine, thanks to you,’ James said. ‘The bang on the head knocked him out. But if he’d been there much longer he’d have sunk right in and drowned.’
Hope could hardly bear to turn her head to look at her friend; she was sure James was trying to spare her feelings. But as her eyes finally fell on Rufus’s bare legs and feet, and she saw one move, she felt bold enough to turn completely.
Albert was washing the wound on his forehead and she could hear Rufus whimpering.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought he was dead.’
James went round the pond and found her clothes and boots, but he had to put her dress on for her as she was shaking too much to do it herself. Albert picked Rufus up in his arms and carried him, and she and James followed on silently behind.
James’s silence on the way back was all the confirmation she needed to know that she was in serious trouble. She would surely be dismissed now, for she was to blame even if Rufus had survived. She had never needed Nell more, and although Albert had not yet laid into her, she was sure that was only because he was distracted by taking care of Rufus. Once they got back to Briargate he was certain to give her a beating.
Martha, Ruth, Baines and Rose all crowded round Rufus once they were back in the kitchen. They had wrapped him in a blanket and given him a hot drink, and Baines was telling him what a scare he’d given everyone.
‘It were Hope who found him,’ James declared