Yet Hope felt Gussie was justified in worrying that Betsy might be snatched for she attracted a great deal of male attention. She had an engaging, lively personality that lit up a bar the moment she walked in, and she moved in a sensual manner and would talk to anyone. If Gussie wasn’t with her it would be easy enough for anyone to drug her and take her away.
‘You could ask Betsy not to go out while you were at lessons,’ Hope suggested.
Gussie chuckled. ‘I know what her answer to that would be!’ he said.
Hope did too. Betsy didn’t like to be ordered around and she’d laugh at Gussie’s fears for her. ‘Well, get her to go with you then,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’d like to be able to read too.’
He shook his head ruefully. ‘She don’t like people like Miss Carpenter.’
Hope hardly slept at all that night. She wasn’t tired because she’d been indoors all day, and her mind was churning over and over about where she could go to find work. Without a character and any clean clothes she had no chance of getting back into service or any other respectable kind of work. Wood collecting was the only thing she could do. But as Gussie had pointed out, without a cart she couldn’t get enough at one time to sell.
It was still pitch dark when she got up. The room stank and Mole was snoring so loudly she couldn’t stand another minute in there. She always slept in her clothes because it was so cold at nights, and picking up her boots and her cape, which she used as a blanket, and one of the sacks she’d been lying on, she crept out, side-stepping all the sleeping bodies.
Lamb Lane was treacherous with snow on the cobbles, and as silent as the grave because it was so early, but thankfully it seemed slightly warmer than the day before. She reckoned she would need to sell five or six loads of wood a day to make a living at it. That was an awful lot of walking and a full sack was very heavy. But she could do it if she put her mind to it.
Chapter Eleven
Matt stumbled sleepily down the stairs. It was five in the morning, still dark and raining very hard. It was days like this when he wished he was anything but a farmer and could stay in bed with Amy for at least another hour.
He heard the kettle boiling even before he opened the kitchen door. Nell was sitting hunched up on a stool by the stove and had clearly been there for some time.
His heart sank as she turned to him and he saw her eyes were swollen with crying. He couldn’t cope with her misery first thing in the morning.
‘You must stop this, Nell,’ he blurted out before he could stop himself. ‘There’s no call for you to be up so early.’
‘I’ve always risen early,’ she retorted in a whining tone. ‘Amy will be busy enough with the children all day. The least I can do is get the stove going for her.’
Matt sighed and sat down at the table. When Amy complained that she felt Nell was usurping her position, he always told her that doing chores was Nell’s way of showing her appreciation they’d taken her in. Amy retorted that she was sick and tired of appreciation, what she wanted was her kitchen back.
‘I wasn’t talking about you fixing the stove or making my breakfast,’ he said wearily. ‘You’ve got to stop brooding about Hope.’
‘How can I when I know she’s been murdered and the man who did it is as free as a bird?’ Nell asked sharply. ‘And I seem to be the only person who cares.’
‘Don’t be foolish, you know that’s not true.’ Matt ran his fingers distractedly through his tousled hair. ‘We’ve all just accepted that she ran off with her lover, and you must too.’
‘I’ll never accept that,’ Nell said indignantly. ‘That’s what Albert wants us to believe. You agreed with me that her letter didn’t sound right.’
Matt groaned; it was too early in the morning for this. He’d told her his views on that letter dozens of times, but once again he repeated that Hope had been in a hurry. And that no amount of explaining herself to Nell was going to make her hurt less.
‘But she would have written again later to stop us all worrying.’ Nell’s eyes filled with tears yet again. ‘You know she would, Matt.’
As always when Matt saw the pain in Nell’s eyes, he was sorry he’d been sharp and irritated with her. He got up and put his arms around her, holding her to his shoulder and patting her back comfortingly. ‘Maybe she’s too ashamed? I know if I skipped off the way she did and caused all this trouble I’d just want to stay missing.’
Matt wished his feelings were as clear-cut as that explanation. He lurched from extreme anxiety for Hope to near hatred for what she’d done to Nell and the embarrassment to his family.
It was understandable that people were shocked by Hope running off with a soldier; after all, the Rentons had always been steady, sober and well-respected people who never caused scandals. But it would have been just a nine-day wonder if Nell hadn’t reacted so dramatically about it. Leaving her husband and Briargate had created all kinds of suspicions, and the way Nell had acted since then only added more fuel to the fire. Many people thought she had gone mad, others thought Albert or even Sir William must have ravished Hope. Hardly a day passed without Matt or Amy being cornered by someone determined to get to the bottom of what they considered a sinister mystery.
When Nell ran in here on Christmas Eve so distressed, Matt had taken her accusations of murder seriously. He’d gone rampaging up to Briargate straight away and would have killed Albert himself if he’d shown his face. But Sir William had taken him into his study and calmed him down. He pointed out that Albert had been chopping wood in the shed on the afternoon Hope disappeared; he said he’d seen him himself when he came back from a ride on Merlin. He reminded Matt too that Albert had gone straight to Baines when he found Hope’s letter at the gatehouse, and it was Baines who talked him out of informing Nell by letter because it would be too great a shock for her.
Sir William couldn’t have been more understanding. He even agreed that he would get the police to make an investigation to convince Nell no crime had been committed, in the hopes that it would persuade her to return to Briargate and Albert.
On Boxing Day, Matt helped the police comb the grounds of Briargate, the surrounding woods and even the gatehouse, but they found nothing suspicious. Yet still Nell ranted and sobbed, refusing even to speak to Albert when he came to the farm to try to persuade her to go home with him.
Matt had tried to talk her round, explaining that a woman who left her husband became an outcast, and reminding her of the vows she’d made on her wedding day. But it did no good, she said she didn’t care what people thought about her, she knew the truth about what Albert had done.
Matt had talked to Albert a couple of weeks after the police search, and he had been very reasonable. He admitted that he could have been kinder to Nell when she arrived home to find her sister gone, but explained that she had woken him up to blame him, and he could hardly get a word in edgeways. He said bluntly that their marriage hadn’t been a happy one for a long time and he thought this was because they hadn’t had a child. He said he was willing to try again, but Nell must hate him to believe he’d killed Hope.
Matt had never liked Albert, he found him cold, critical and superior, but the man was honest enough to admit he’d been hard on Hope in the past, and that perhaps he should have been more understanding with Nell. In the light of how Nell had been in the past weeks, Matt even felt a little sympathy for the man, for it had to be galling to be branded a murderer by his own wife.
A few weeks later Lady Harvey wrote to Nell. Nell didn’t divulge what was in the letter, but Matt had seen the glowing character which was enclosed with it. Yet Nell wasn’t even grateful for that kindness. She claimed, rather mysteriously, that she knew bad things about Lady Harvey and the woman had only sent the character because she was afraid Nell would start revealing them.
Matt thought it was very big of Lady Harvey to overlook that Nell had run out on her on Christmas Eve and that she’d brought the police to Briargate’s doors and thereby created gossip all over the county. If she hoped the character would get Nell a position well away from Briargate, Matt could hardly blame her, for he was at the end of his tether with Nell too. She filled the farmhouse with her misery; she upset Amy and often frightened the children.
He cursed Hope for all this, yet despite his anger, he couldn’t stop worrying about her too. She was so young and unworldly, and a man who could talk her into turning her back on her family would be able to persuade her into anything. Everyone knew the big cities were dens of iniquity and a pretty little thing like her would soon be ruined.
He watched as Nell filled the teapot with hot water. She had become thin and gaunt, her once rosy plump cheeks were pale hollows now, and the dark blue dress she was wearing hung in folds on her. She was thirty-two, but she had suddenly turned into an old lady: her voice had become shrill and whining, she muttered to herself, her dark hair had lost its shine, and she’d even taken to pulling it back so tightly that it made her face almost skeletal. Nothing distracted her from her distress, not his children, the signs of spring arriving, or even a letter from James or Ruth. She didn’t worry about Joe and Henry, who had left to seek their fortune in London. She didn’t seem the least interested in Ruth’s baby boy either. She was too obsessed with Hope to care about anyone else.
What was he going to do?
Amy wanted him to ask her to leave. She said she’d had more than enough of this. But how could he show his own sister the door, knowing she had now here else to go?
Nell put the teapot on the table and then got the cups from the dresser. ‘I’ll take the eggs into Keynsham today, and while I’m there I’ll look for work,’ she said suddenly.
Matt nodded; he didn’t trust himself to speak. He doubted she’d find any work there, but it would save him the journey to sell the eggs, and while Nell was gone it would at least give Amy some respite.
‘If I can’t get anything there, I’ll go to Bath tomorrow and see Ruth.’
‘She’ll be pleased to see you,’ Matt managed to get out.
He had ridden into Bath shortly after Hope disappeared to tell Ruth and John about it. Although Ruth was surprised and concerned, she had pointed out that any young girl would want more life than there was at Briargate. In the New Year when Matt went back to tell them about Nell’s reaction and her conviction that Albert had killed Hope, Ruth was irritated by what she saw as melodrama. ‘What would he gain by killing her?’ she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Nell will end up in the asylum if she goes on this way.’
James, Toby and Alice had all reacted much the same way too. While none of them approved of Hope running off so recklessly, and were very concerned for her safety, they all felt she had been looking for some excitement, and that Nell should accept that.
Matt was pretty certain Ruth wouldn’t have much patience with her older sister, especially now she had a baby of her own. He just hoped she wouldn’t be too sharp with Nell and make her even more distraught.
When Nell left the farm around six-thirty with the basket of eggs on her arm, it had stopped raining and the first rays of daylight were creeping into the sky. She took the footpath across the fields to Compton Dando, and came out close to her childhood home.
Gerald Box, the gamekeeper’s brother, lived there now with his wife and three children. Nell stubbornly kept her eyes averted from the cottage as she didn’t want any reminders of her parents or Hope today.
She was very aware that Matt and Amy were losing patience with her. She knew too that she wasn’t holding together very well and everyone was horrified that she’d left Albert. Sometimes it was very tempting to tell them that it had been a marriage in name only, for if nothing else it would make Albert a laughing stock. Likewise, she’d like to shame Lady Harvey by telling the story of Hope’s birth. Perhaps then people would see how unquestioningly loyal she’d been to her mistress for all these years, and be shocked that a mother took her daughter’s disappearance so lightly.
But to tell these things now when people were already convinced she was going mad would only reinforce that belief. No one would believe her and she might well be put into an asylum to shut her up.
Reluctantly she’d come to see that the only solution to everything was to find work well away from here. She was tormented by memories of Hope everywhere she looked, creating friction at Matt’s, even though she tried to make herself useful. Lady Harvey had dressed up her real feelings about her former maid in her letter. She went to great pains to avoid saying anything about Hope, she even sympathized with Nell’s difficulties with Albert, and pointed out that she’d used Nell’s maiden name on the character to help her get another position. But Nell could sense the ice beneath the honeyed phrases about how hard she would be to replace, her loyalty and caring nature. Lady Harvey’s real feelings were clearly that she hoped Nell would go as far away as possible, and that she’d shut the door tightly on the maid she once claimed was her only real friend.
By the time Nell had got to the hamlet of Chewton the sun had come out, and though the wind was cold, she noticed for the first time that there were green buds on the hedges and a few early primroses peeping through beneath them. Only last night Matt had said that lambing would be starting within a week, and she remembered how excited she used to get as a child when she saw the first newborn lamb of the season.
Ducks quacking on the river by the mill made her stop and put her basket down to look over the bridge. She had never seen so many in one place, at least twenty or more all chasing one another around on the water. The willows were coming into leaf, and there were a great many daffodils swaying in the wind on the bank. A lump came into her throat at the beauty of the scene, and she realized it was the first time since Christmas that she’d been aware of anything other than her own unhappiness.
Hearing horses’ hooves coming around the bend towards her, she stayed by the bridge railing, but turned her head to see who it was.