Read Online Hope by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page A

she took her first wages home and handed them over to her mother, Meg’s smile of gratitude and pride in her daughter made it all worthwhile.
    Nell couldn’t imagine Hope accepting that. She’d never once gone to bed hungry, she’d never been expected to mind babies, mend clothes or draw water from the well. She hadn’t been hardened up as the rest of them were. But if she wasn’t servant material, what else was there for her?
    ‘What do we do?’ Nell asked in a small voice.
    ‘I dunno,’ Silas said with a sigh. All three of them knew that it wasn’t wise to offend Lady Harvey by telling her they didn’t want Hope to go up to the big house any more.
    ‘Maybe we’d best just carry on then for now,’ Meg said despondently. ‘See how things go.’
    It had been Nell’s intention to tell them today about Captain Pettigrew. But she couldn’t give them anything more to worry about now. She didn’t know for absolute certainty he was Hope’s father, and whether he was or wasn’t, it was probably something she ought to keep to herself.

Chapter Three
    1840
    ‘If we got married, the master would let us have the gatehouse,’ Albert said, twisting his cap in his hands, his expression almost as tortured as the cap.
    Nell looked at him in astonishment, hardly able to believe what Albert had said. For two years now they’d been keeping company, walking to church, chatting in the stable yard in the evenings, and, as today, Albert often waited for her by Lord’s Wood to escort her back to Briargate after her afternoon off. But in all this time there had been no real courtship. He hadn’t so much as held her hand, let alone kissed her. She’d begun to think he saw her only as a friend.
    ‘Married, Albert? You’re asking me to marry you?’
    ‘That’s about the size of it,’ he mumbled, eyes downcast. ‘Are you willing?’
    It was a warm evening in June, rays of late sunshine slanting in through the canopy of leaves overhead. The cooing of wood pigeons and the sound of a stream trickling over stones in the undergrowth nearby should have made it a romantic spot for a proposal, but the lack of passion, or even warmth, from Albert spoiled it.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, you’ve said nothing to make me think you felt like that about me. It’s so sudden.’
    ‘It’s been two years,’ he retorted, as if that made it completely understandable. ‘I earn enough to keep a wife now, and we’re suited.’
    Nell would agree they were suited, in as much as they were both devoted to Briargate and the Harveys. Albert was passionate about the gardens; in the last two years he’d built rockeries, made many new flowerbeds and planted such a profusion of new shrubs and trees that it looked stunning. Nell approved of that passion, but she’d always expected that the man she would marry would show some passion for her too, and tell her he loved her before asking for her hand in marriage.
    ‘Is being “suited” enough?’ she asked, looking up at him in bewilderment.
    Never a day passed without her thinking he was handsome, strong and clever. She liked his manly beard, the wide bridge on his nose, and the way his hair curled into little corkscrews when it got wet. He knew far more than she did about what went on in the world; only a couple of weeks ago he’d told her transportation to Australia was going to end, and explained a great deal about that far-off country to her. Was it possible that a man who knew so much wouldn’t know a woman needed to be told she was loved?
    ‘I reckon so,’ he said woodenly. ‘A canary don’t mate with a thrush, does it? Like goes with like, and you and me, we’re the same.’
    ‘What about love?’ she asked archly. ‘There’s hundreds of people out there much like me, same as there is like you. But it’s love between two people that makes them special to each other.’
    ‘You’re special to me,’ he said. ‘So I guess that’s what folk call love.’
    ‘I want