But the happy times ended abruptly when Prudence and Violet, aged only nine and eight, died of scarlet fever. The Reverend Gosling said they should get down on their knees and thank the Lord that Joe, Henry and Hope were spared, for it usually took the youngest. But Nell at least was convinced that the other children had been saved by her mother isolating the two sick ones in the outhouse before the younger ones could become infected.
Child deaths were all too common – one in three babies died before their first birthday – but that didn’t make it any easier for her family to come to terms with losing Prudence and Violet. That was two years ago now, but they still mourned the girls, and often when Nell went home unexpectedly she’d find her mother crying. Yet Hope, with her loving and affectionate nature, helped. Meg often said that if it wasn’t for her she couldn’t have borne it.
As Nell had predicted, no one had ever suspected that Hope was not a true Renton. Even the older children, on coming down the morning after her arrival to find a new baby in their mother’s arms, had just accepted that she was their sister, for all the other babies had arrived without any fanfare or fuss. Silas would sometimes wink at Nell when an effusive neighbour remarked how much Hope looked like him, but neither he nor her mother ever spoke of how she had come to them, not even when they were alone.
Yet Nell still worried that as Hope got older, people would note her grace, the clearness of her skin, her slender limbs and delicate features, and see her as the thoroughbred she really was.
‘We came to meet you,’ Hope said sweetly as her older sister emerged from the wood. Just as Nell had expected, she was sitting down, demurely making a daisy chain, as if she’d never contemplated removing her clothes to climb a tree.
‘Give us a kiss then!’ Nell said with a smile, putting down her basket and opening her arms for all three children to come to her for a hug.
Joe and Henry looked like a pair of scrawny ragamuffins with their wild black hair, dirty faces, bare feet and the seats out of their breeches. Aside from Joe being a couple of inches taller than Henry they were as alike as twins, and they had inherited the standard male Renton features of slightly sticking-out ears and over-large noses. But even if neither of them grew up to be considered handsome they had warm, affectionate natures, and responded with enthusiasm to Nell’s hugs and kisses.
With the children whooping and shouting, Nell walked on across the common. It was a beautiful day, unusually warm for May, the cow parsley towering over Hope’s head, and the air was full of the scent of hawthorn blossom. Nell was looking forward to being with her mother for a couple of hours and to finding out how Alice and Toby were faring.
Alice had gone into service at a big house in Bath a short while after Prudence and Violet died. The Reverend Gosling had arranged it, and six months later Toby joined the household too, as a junior footman. The little cottage seemed almost spacious with only three children left, and although her mother claimed to like it that way, Nell sensed that wasn’t strictly true.
Meg was hoeing the vegetable patch when Nell arrived, but she dropped the hoe and ran to hug her daughter.
‘The weeds can wait,’ she laughed when Nell offered to help. ‘They come up every day, but you don’t.’
Her hair had turned grey after Prudence and Violet died, and her face was becoming very lined, yet in many ways she looked younger and healthier than she did when Henry was born. Meg said it was because her body had at last recovered from childbearing, and it was true she was shapely again. But Nell thought it was more likely to be because she ate and slept better, and that she had time to herself at last. She was happy tending her vegetables, feeding the chickens and milking the cow that Nell had bought with some of the money from Bridie.
They sat down on the rough bench Silas had made by the back door, and Nell took from her basket the currant buns Cook had given her to take home, and passed them round.
The three children sat on the ground in front of Nell and Meg, their dark eyes lighting up at the sight of the large iced buns. Matt and James had been very different in character as small boys, but they had been inseparable, and Joe and Henry were the same.
Joe had paid attention during his lessons with the Reverend Gosling and he could read and write very well, but Henry was a dreamer. If he was sent out to chase the chickens into their coop, he was quite likely to forget what he’d been asked to do and wander off watching rabbits or foxes. He would rather draw an animal on his slate than write words or do sums. Joe was more reliable and conscientious, very much the brains of the duo, but he wasn’t as physically strong or daring as Henry.
‘Don’t the vale look grand today?’ Nell exclaimed. May was her favourite month, neither too hot nor too cold, and she loved the spring flowers and blossom. It was also the time when the view from the cottage garden was at its best.
The Rentons’ land sloped sharply down to the river. Here and there a hawthorn was in full flower, and so many buttercups grew amongst the grass that it was more yellow than green. The blossom on the apple and pear trees was fading now and the primroses were all but done, but down under the trees by the river bank, and in the woods on the opposite side, there was a rich haze of bluebells. Beyond the wood the ground rose sharply again, bright green with young shoots of wheat and barley, and the birds did their best to drown the sound of the thudding from the copper mill at Woolard with their singing.
Nell loved the gardens at Briargate, but she loved this more. Here she could believe life had something good in store for her, while at Briargate she was always reminded she was only a servant.
‘I caught a trout the day afore yesterday,’ Joe boasted. ‘It were as big as this.’ He held his two hands some fifteen inches apart.
‘It were me who tickled it. You only got it in the sack,’ Henry exclaimed indignantly.
Meg looked at Nell with a raised eyebrow. ‘More like six inches. And they came home late for supper covered in mud.’
At this lack of appreciation the boys ran off down towards the river to see if they could catch another one. But Hope remained, wanting to hear all Nell’s gossip from Briargate.
Hope had never been to the big house, but she’d seen Sir William and Lady Harvey at church on Sundays, and with two sisters and a brother working there, she’d heard enough about the place to be intensely interested in everything that went on.
As Nell had spent her first few weeks at Briargate feeling overwhelmed by how the gentry lived, she wanted Hope to have some preparation for when the time came for her to go into service. So she related how Ruby, the upstairs maid, had slipped on the backstairs with a full slop bucket in her hand, and that Cook had forgotten to put sugar in a rhubarb tart on a day when Lady Harvey had guests for luncheon.
Nell went on then to describe Lady Harvey’s new rose-pink silk ballgown which had been sent down from the dressmakers in London the previous day.
‘It’s got hundreds of tiny seed pearls on the bodice and along the train,’ she enthused.
‘When I’m a lady I’ll have lovely gowns,’ Hope said, getting to her feet and holding out the skirt of her worn cotton dress as if she were about to sweep into a ballroom.
‘Then we’ll have to find you a rich husband,’ Nell said affectionately. When her other sisters wished for things she knew they could never attain she’d always been quick to put a dampener on them. But for some reason she could never do that to Hope. There was something about her, the boldness in her eyes, the tilt of her head, that suggested she might find her way back to where she belonged.
‘Maybe I could marry Master Rufus,’ Hope giggled. ‘Then I could live at Briargate.’
‘Don’t be foolish, child,’ Meg said sharply. ‘The only way you’d get to live at Briargate is by working there like Nell does.’
Although Nell understood why Meg had to squash that particular idea, she felt sorry for Hope when she saw her face fall. She hadn’t been brought up in ignorance about the world beyond this village as her brothers and sisters had. She not only knew about Briargate, she had been to Bristol once on the cart with her father. For weeks she talked of nothing but the ships, the crowded streets, fancy carriages and shops full of things she’d never seen before. Was it surprising she had fanciful notions?
‘Why don’t you, Joe and Henry walk back with me to Briargate later?’ Nell suggested impulsively. ‘I’m always telling Cook about you, and she’d love to meet you. You could see Ruth and James too.’
Hope clapped her hands gleefully. Meg shot Nell a disapproving look.
‘Better for her to learn her place is only in the kitchen there,’ Nell said as Hope rushed headlong down the field to tell the boys.
Meg sighed but made no comment. That was her way.
Mrs Cole had left Briargate soon after Rufus was born, and Lady Harvey decided she didn’t need another housekeeper. As Nell had moved into Bridie’s old position as Lady Harvey’s personal maid, she had become third in line after Baines and Cook in the household hierarchy. There weren’t so many staff now – when someone left they weren’t necessarily replaced – which meant they all had a few more duties. Rose, who had been the upstairs maid, was now the parlourmaid, and Ruby the kitchenmaid had taken Rose’s old position. Cook had a new kitchenmaid called Ginny, and all the roughest work was now done by Ada, who came in daily from Woolard. Ruth as nursemaid and James, now the only groom since John Biggins retired, plus the new gardener, Albert Scott, and his assistant Willy, made up the full complement of staff.
Nell took some pleasure in knowing she had the easiest and most pleasant job of all. Lady Harvey wasn’t demanding, and Nell had only to dress her and look after her hair and clothes. If the mistress went visiting, shopping in Bath, or even just for a ride in the carriage, Nell went too. When there were visitors at Briargate, Nell filled her time with mending or pressing clothes but if she had no chores to do, the time was her own. Mostly she felt she was very fortunate.
Yet on the way back to Briargate later in the afternoon, with the children trotting along beside her, she was thoughtful. That feeling she’d had of aging ten years the night Hope was born had never really gone away. It was as though it had robbed her of her girlhood, made her too cautious and fearful.
She was twenty-two now, and nearly all the girls in the village she’d grown up with were married with children. Would that ever come to her?
It was what she wanted more than anything. Most nights she fell asleep imagining her wedding, the cottage she’d live in and even naming her children. Yet maybe she was already past her prime?
That frightened her for she didn’t want to end up like Bridie, an old woman who lived entirely for the family she served.
Nell wasn’t without admirers. She knew Baines had a soft spot for her. But he was in his early fifties and he could never make her heart race. There was Seth O’Reilly too, who brought groceries from the shop in Pensford; he got so flustered whenever he saw her that he could hardly string a sentence together. But he seemed a bit weak, she couldn’t imagine him being able to chop wood or milk a cow, and besides, he walked with a limp. She wanted a man like her father, a happy, easygoing man who wouldn’t complain after a long day’s work out in the cold or wet. The kind of man who could turn his hand to anything, wasn’t feckless with money, didn’t drink too much, but also had some passion in his soul.
Nell thought Albert Scott, the new gardener, might be that way. He’d come to work at Briargate back in March soon after Jacob, the old gardener who had been here since the house was built, died.
Since Albert’s arrival Nell had spent far more time watching for him out of the windows than she should have. He was very handsome, over six feet tall, with black curly hair, a thick dark beard and strong very brown hands, and she believed him to be about twenty-five.
Sadly, as Lady Harvey’s maid she didn’t get any opportunity to mix with gardeners or grooms as they had rooms over the stable and took their meals after the other servants. That was another reason for suggesting the children came back with her today, for if they asked to see the horses in the stables, she might get the opportunity to speak to Albert.
The children ran ahead of her through the woods, the boys balancing on fallen trees like little mountain goats, shrieking loudly to each other as Hope picked bluebells for Cook. Nell watched them fondly, reminding herself how lucky she was to have her family so near to her. Cook had left her family when she was twelve, and she’d had no contact with any of them for over twenty years.
The late-afternoon sun was still very warm as they came out of the woods and made their way across the paddock to the stile by the stables.
‘Will Cook like the bluebells?’ Hope asked excitedly. She looked as if she might burst because she was finally going to the house she’d heard so much about. ‘Will she put them in a jam jar?’
‘I’m sure she will,’ Nell said, amused at her excitement. ‘But you won’t be able to stay long because they’ll be preparing tonight’s dinner. And I have to go up and see to Lady Harvey’s bath; they’ve got guests tonight.’
‘Will James let us see Merlin?’ Henry asked.
Merlin was the master’s new stallion and James talked about him all the time.
‘I’m sure he will,’ Nell said. ‘You can see Duchess and Buttercup, her foal, and there’s the carriage horses too.’
Cook was delighted to see the children, for she’d heard as much about them as they had about her. She poured each of them a glass of her special lemonade and gave them a slice of apple tart.
Ruth came into the kitchen, neat in her striped blue and white nursemaid’s uniform. She was nineteen now, and a slightly thinner and taller replica of Nell. She let out a cry of delight to see her brothers and sister, embarrassing the boys by hugging and kissing them in front of Cook.
‘I’ll be home tomorrow on my afternoon off,’ she told them. ‘But I’ve got to go now because it’s nearly time for Master Rufus’s tea. But mind you go and see James before you leave.’