Hope - Lesley Pearse [71]
‘What’s that?’ he snarled. ‘A letter from your sweetheart? You dirty little trollop!’
He snatched it up from the floor, but when he saw who it was addressed to, he grinned wolfishly.
‘Stealing her ladyship’s letters now, are we?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she declared. ‘Lady Harvey asked me to keep it for her.’
Slamming one foot into her belly to hold her against the door and balancing on his other leg, he quickly ripped open the envelope and pulled out the letter to read it.
‘So she’s a treacherous bitch too,’ he said as his eyes scanned down the single page.
Hope could feel her face swelling, every part of her body throbbed with pain, and she wished he would kill her now and get it over with for she couldn’t take any more.
In those few moments as he read the letter, she suddenly realized that the act she’d witnessed must be the root cause of Nell’s and Lady Harvey’s unhappiness. While she was certain they didn’t know what Albert and Sir William did, it must have had an effect on their marriages. Had this been going on for weeks, months or years? Had Albert only married Nell to conceal his abnormality?
‘When did this come?’ he demanded.
‘Just this morning,’ Hope whimpered.
He lowered his foot to the floor, looking thoughtful. Hope wanted to try to run but she knew she wouldn’t make it to the front door before he caught her. So she just stood there waiting, her whole body throbbing with pain.
‘So the mistress has ensnared the loyalty of another bloody Renton,’ he said derisively. ‘How far would you go to keep her safe?’
Hope had no idea what the letter contained, and therefore she was uncertain as to what Albert meant. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
‘I could kill you now,’ he said, showing his teeth. ‘Bury your body in the woods or even in the gardens of Briargate, and no one would ever know. But I might agree to let you go if you leave this place for good and never return.’
Hope thought he was just playing with her, wanting her to beg for her life so he had even more power over her. She wasn’t going to let that happen. ‘You’d be too frightened to let me go,’ she said. ‘I could tell someone about you.’
‘You could, but I wouldn’t recommend it,’ he said, dark eyes glinting with malice. ‘You see, both Sir William and I would say it was just spiteful lies. No judge would take a foolish kitchenmaid’s word against that of a member of the aristocracy, especially when that maid was trying to hide her mistress’s adultery and we could show this letter to prove it.’
Hope might never have liked Albert, but until today she had always thought of him as totally loyal to his master and mistress. She could hardly believe that he would be prepared to drag Lady Harvey’s name through the mud when she had always been so good to him.
‘And then there’s Nell, another reason you wouldn’t want to start a scandal,’ he smirked. ‘I know she was in on this! Just imagine her life with no m’lady, and only me!’
Hope’s blood ran cold. She could imagine only too well what kind of living hell he’d put Nell through.
‘You don’t need to threaten me or hurt me,’ she pleaded. ‘There is another way. I don’t want anyone to be shamed, not you or Nell. Not the master or the mistress. I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.’
‘How dare a prissy little no-nothing bitch speak down to me!’ he snarled, striking her across the face again. ‘I love Billy and he loves me, we don’t give a fig what simple-minded people think about that.’
His calling Sir William ‘Billy’ suggested that this thing had been going on for some time. Hope could also see Albert was unbalanced and one wrong word from her might tip him over the edge.
‘What do you want me to do then?’ she asked hesitantly. She was hurting so much now that she felt faint and would agree to anything to get away from him.
‘Go right away, tonight,’ he said. ‘But don’t think you can doublecross me, I mean right away, not holed up with that dimwit farmer brother of yours down the road, or any other member of your family.