Hope didn't know how to reply to that, so she said nothing.

'Well?' he said sharply. 'No sarcastic comment?'

'I'm sorry,' she murmured. 'I spoke out of turn.'

His chin was jutting out as if he was angry, and his eyes seemed to be boring right into her.

'I am in a dilemma, Hope,' he said. 'It is the circ.u.mstances of how we met which make it so very difficult. If I'd met you at a party or a dinner, I'd know exactly how to behave with you. I'd come calling, I might give you a book of poetry, I could even ask my uncle to arrange some function so we could talk and be seen enjoying each other's company. I would then invite you to the theatre or a concert, and provided you had a suitable chaperone, and you and your family didn't take an immediate dislike to me, we could then embark on a courtship.

'But I can't do any of that with you, Hope. You don't live with your family, you have no suitable person as a chaperone.'

'I don't have the right clothes or manners either,' Hope said glumly.

He made a kind of exasperated growl in his throat. 'That isn't it, Hope! Not your manners, background or anything like that. Don't you see it? I love you.'

Hope blinked in astonishment.

'I fell for you almost the first minute I sawyour beautiful face,' he went on. 'Every moment with you since then has confirmed that you are the only girl in the whole world for me. All those social niceties mean absolutely nothing to me. But I am trapped in a situation where they are important to everyone else, and if I flout them, you would be the one who would suffer.'

Hope had been sure when he was talking about chaperones, concerts and families that he was just trying to show her why she could never fit into his world. But then he'd said he loved her, and that cancelled out everything else.

'You love me?' she whispered, bubbles of delight running down her spine. 'Truly?'

He looked at her with the mournful eyes of a spaniel. 'Yes, Hope. Truly! Madly and deeply. I spend all day thinking of you, I invent excuses to see you, I can't sleep at night for imagining kissing you.'

'Oh, Bennett.' She flung herself into his arms impulsively. 'I love you too, it's just that way for me too.'

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and as her lips touched his, his arms went round her so tightly he almost took her breath away.

Hope had never kissed a man on the lips before. Over the last year or two she had often idly wondered what sort of feeling people got out of pressing their mouths together, for it seemed an unlikely source of pleasure.

But as his warm, soft lips met hers, all those strange yet delightful sensations she had when she lay in bed thinking about him came spurting up in her, twice, three times as strong and sweet.

She didn't care that they were on a river bank, that they could be seen by anyone who chanced along. It didn't matter that he was a doctor and a gentleman, while she was just a kitchenmaid turned nurse. All she could think of was that he loved her, and she loved him. Nothing else was important.

'Hope, my dear, sweet, beautiful girl,' he murmured as they broke for air. 'I have wanted to kiss you for so long.'

There were many more kisses. They would walk a few yards holding hands, then all at once they were kissing again and again, not noticing the cold wind or the mud beneath their feet. His arms went beneath her cloak, drawing her closer still, caressing her in a way that made her feel she was melting. It was only when they realized they had been out for over two hours, and their feet and hands were frozen, that they turned back to Violet's cottage.

'I don't know how I'm going to hide this from Alice and Violet,' Bennett laughed as they got nearer to the cottage. 'I'm sure it must be written on my face.'

'And I don't know how I'm going to be able to sit making polite conversation for the rest of the day when all I want to do is kiss you more,' Hope replied.

In the months that followed the visit to Mrs Charlsworth's cottage Hope was to think on that last remark to Bennett over and over again. Everything had seemed so simple then; they knew they shared the same feelings for each other, and therefore it followed that before long they would find a way to make them public. But it wasn't that simple.

As Bennett had pointed out that day, the standard route of courtship was closed to them. Hope had no family home for him to call at; Bennett couldn't invite her to Harley Place. Without mutual friends to offer chaperoned opportunities for them to be together, they were left with little more than walks, sitting in coffee shops, and hurried chats at the hospital when Bennett came in to see patients.

Over Christmas Hope didn't see him at all, for his uncle had invited guests and expected him to be there to help entertain them. As church bells rang out for the New Year of 1850, she was helping Sister Martha deliver twins, and it was two days before Bennett came into the hospital to wish her a Happy New Year.

He didn't have to point out to her that it was inadvisable at this stage for anyone to know how they felt about each other. She knew that. Dr Cunningham would almost certainly make sure she was dismissed from the hospital and he might also end his partnership with his nephew. But if they bided their time and let Dr Cunningham find out for himself that Hope had become a very good nurse, with a blameless character, he was likely to become far more receptive to her.

Hope was now nursing in the lying-in ward which she had come to love. Aside from the occasions when there was a very difficult birth, or a mother or her baby died, it was mostly a satisfying, joyous ward to be on. Like all the wards in St Peter's it was overcrowded, and the other nurses were either lazy s.l.u.ts with a fondness for drink or stern nuns who had little compa.s.sion. Yet whatever the faults of these two groups of nurses, Hope soon realized they had a wealth of experience she lacked. As the youngest in her own family she had never witnessed a birth before; her only knowledge of babies had been gleaned from Matt and Amy's brood. The only attribute she brought to the ward on her first day was the knowledge that dirt bred disease, and a conviction that if she made sure the ward was clean, more new babies would survive.

Each time she washed a newborn baby she was humbled by the miracle of birth, and it was pure instinct which guided her. Yet she was also frightened that she had been given responsibility for their well-being, when she knew little or nothing about babies, childbirth, or even anatomy and biology. She borrowed books from Bennett, and although she often worked a fourteen-hour day, she would then spend another two or three hours studying these books, desperate to solve the mysteries of how the human body worked.

Perhaps if she had been on any other ward she'd have found it easier to put Bennett out of her mind, for at least part of the day. But the very nature of the lying-in ward was a constant reminder of physical union. Most of the mothers were bawdy characters who spoke openly and graphically about their s.e.xual experiences. Sometimes she was deeply shocked, at other times she found their stories amusing, but hardly a day pa.s.sed without her learning something new.

It was at times like this that she felt a wave of grief for Betsy, for she heard so many things that she would have given anything to talk over with a friend. There were women at the hospital she liked strangely, mostly the nuns but she couldn't tell them she couldn't sleep for imagining Bennett caressing her intimately, or ask questions about how big a man's p.e.n.i.s was, and if it hurt a woman when it entered her. She couldn't even ask if she was normal to think about such things.

In quiet moments during the day her mind always turned to Bennett, reliving their kisses and the good feeling when he held her tightly and told her that one day they'd be married and have babies of their own. She would spin a little daydream of Bennett being the doctor in a village much like Compton Dando. They would have a pony and trap for him to visit his patients, and their cottage would be a pretty one with roses growing around the porch. She hoped to have at least four children, and that they'd growup as gentry, never having to go into service.

Her brothers and sisters wafted into this daydream too, bringing their children to visit. She didn't ever try to think how she and Bennett were going to overcome the problem of Albert, for it was a miracle that Bennett loved her, and therefore anything else was possible too.

But she did worry about Dr Cunningham's opinion of her. He very occasionally came to St Peter's, and she was fairly certain he asked about her, for someone always told her when he'd called. But as he never came and sought her out, it was clear that his interest in her was only because he'd been instrumental in sending her here.

On Hope's eighteenth birthday in April Bennett took her on the train to Bath for the day.

She had thought it wonderful at Christmas when he'd bought her a new dark blue wool cloak with a warm hood. She would have been thrilled if he'd only given her something small, like a handkerchief, a book or scented soap, but for him to have gone out and chosen something so personal and beautiful brought tears to her eyes. Every evening she would sit in her room hugging it round her and thinking of him. He would never know just how touched and delighted she was.

Yet in a different way the trip to Bath meant even more because he'd noted that she was dying to find out what it was like to ride on a train. While they waited to get on it at Temple Meads station she had been so excited she thought she might burst.

The station building was almost enough of an astounding sight with its huge gla.s.s-domed roof, but she was so impressed by her fellow travellers that she barely looked at it. Everyone looked so elegant: ladies in fur-trimmed cloaks and fancy hats, gentlemen in top hats and tail coats. There were little children, equally well dressed, in the charge of their nursemaids. Even the people who weren't gentry and who Bennett said would be travelling third cla.s.s, looked as if they'd polished up their appearance for the trip.

But there was so much going on elsewhere in the station too. Hope had never seen a train up close before, and the engine was so huge and so noisy that when Bennett took her closer to it to show her the furnace, she backed away in fright.

Heavily stuffed Royal Mail sacks, crates of live chickens, trunks and parcels were all on carts waiting to be put on the London train. Hope had looked into the first-cla.s.s waiting room and seen there was a roaring fire lit in there; there was a tea shop too, and porters in smart uniforms waiting to carry people's luggage.

Yet the sights at the station were nothing compared with the thrill of getting on to the train, settling down in a comfortable seat and then hearing the guard blow his whistle and wave his flag for it to start.

If she lived to be ninety-eight, Hope didn't think she would ever forget the sound of those pistons going round, the chug, chug, chug as the train gradually picked up speed, and suddenly they were racing along at a terrifying speed, the countryside flashing past the windows.

She knew it would take two or more hours to get to Bath with a carriage and four horses, and almost all day by cart. But the journey by train was completed in half an hour.

When they came out of the station, Hope wanted to stand still and just watch, as Bath was astoundingly different to Bristol. While the streets were every bit as crowded with people and horses and carriages, and there were just as many beggars, crossing sweepers and ragged urchins, it had a far more sedate and genteel pace. Exquisitely dressed gentry sauntered arm-in-arm in the spring sunshine, and even the more soberly dressed matrons looked far more well-to-do than their Bristol counterparts. But it was the city itself which impressed Hope most. The main streets were wider and the yellowy stone buildings very elegant, now here near as old and ramshackle as those at home. Even the river Avon looked cleaner here, and Hope loved the bridge which had little shops all along it.

'That's because most of it was only built in the last hundred and fifty years,' Bennett said by way of an explanation. 'Can you see how similar some of the houses are to those in Clifton? Many were designed by the same architects. But Bath doesn't have the industry of Bristol to make it so grimy; the Roman Baths are the main attraction. The rich flock here for their health, foolishly imagining a few gulps of the evil-tasting water will cure anything from gout to syphilis.'

Hope smiled to herself. Clearly Bennett didn't believe there were any magic properties in it at all, and disapproved of those who traded on the gullible.

He seemed to know exactly where he was going, for he pointed out the Pump Rooms where he said the idle rich congregated, then led her into a series of narrowlanes, finally stopping at the door of a small bow-windowed shop.

'This is where I buy your present,' he said, kissing her cheek.

'But coming to Bath was my present,' she said, glancing at the bow-windowed shop and suddenly realizing it was a jeweller's. 'You can't afford to buy anything in there!'

'I can,' he said with a grin. 'But first I have to ask you something.'

Hope looked up at him expectantly. 'Go on.'

'Will you marry me?'

She had expected that he was going to ask if she'd like a brooch to go on her cloak, or maybe even a locket. Not in even her most fanciful of daydreams had she imagined him asking her to marry him, at least not until they had resolved how to tell his uncle how they felt about one another.

'But we can't! Your uncle!'

'I didn't mean immediately.' He laughed at her shocked expression. 'I just wanted you to know my intention, and to buy you a ring as my pledge.'

It took a second or two for her to take in what he'd said. Then she threwher arms around him, giggling with delight. 'I'd love to marry you, this year, next year, anytime. Your word would have been enough for me. I don't need a ring.'

'But I need to show you all you mean to me,' he said, hugging her back. 'Even if that means you can't display it to the world right now.'

'Then I'll wear it on a chain around my neck for the time being. I love you so much, Bennett.'

Later, sitting on a bench in the park by the river, Hope held out her hand to Bennett. 'See how it sparkles,' she said.

He had bought her a gold chain to hang the ring on, but for today she was wearing it on her finger. Bennett had apologized that it was such a tiny diamond, but to Hope it was something a queen would wear.

'It doesn't sparkle as brightly as you,' he smiled, and kissed the tips of her fingers. 'You are my love and my life, and I hope you'll remember that when I tell you what I've decided.'

'That we elope tonight?' she suggested.

'No, that wouldn't be wise, not when I don't have any money to keep you. But I've got a plan to sort that out. I've decided to join the army as a doctor.'

Hope's heart plummeted. 'Oh no, Bennett,' she exclaimed. 'You can't do that. I would never see you, you might get killed.'

'Military doctors don't fight,' he said, smiling fondly at her. 'Let me explain it all. Everything is stacked against us while I am under my uncle's thumb. I haven't got the means to start my own practice, and if I was to join someone else's practice as a junior doctor, I'd be worse off than I am at present. But in the army I'd be beholden to no one.'

'But you'd have to go away,' she said, tears p.r.i.c.kling in her eyes.

'You could come with me,' he said. 'Wouldn't you find that an adventure? We might get to India!'

'But would I be allowed to go with you?' she asked.

'I'm sure you would. But the reality of it now, while there's no war on, is that we'd be stuck somewhere like Winchester for years and years, with me treating boils and suchlike. What an a.s.set you would be to me! Not many doctors have a wife who is a nurse.'

'Have you made any enquiries about this yet?' She looked sharply at him, wondering if he'd really thought it through.

'No, I wanted to see how you felt first.'

'I'm not sure,' she said doubtfully.

'Once we are married,' he said, squeezing her hand, 'you could write home. I mean, you would would be married to a soldier, so apart from apologizing for being out of touch for so long, you wouldn't need to tell them about the real reasons you left.' be married to a soldier, so apart from apologizing for being out of touch for so long, you wouldn't need to tell them about the real reasons you left.'

Hope smiled because his enthusiasm was infectious. In reality she knew that wouldn't really work, as her whole family would be furious with her for making them so worried. But she wasn't going to spoil his moment by saying so.

'We won't worry about them for the time being,' she said. 'Let's just enjoy today.'

'Right. We'll find somewhere to have some dinner first,' he said, jumping up and pulling her to her feet too. 'Then we can look at the sights of Bath!'

A few hours later in the Pump Rooms, Hope was forcing herself not to laugh. The moment they walked through the doors and Bennett sawthe elegantly dressed people congregated there, he pretended to have a terrible affliction. He stuck up one shoulder, hunched his back, grimaced and limped, and made several circuits of the room so everyone would notice him. Some looked offended by his appearance, others whispered together, perhaps in sympathy. Then, when he'd got almost everyone's attention, he hobbled up to the pump for his gla.s.s of the medicinal water.

Hope had remained close to the door, guessing what his plan was. If she'd walked round with him she would have laughed aloud and spoiled the whole thing. But he played the part far better than she had expected, and as he gingerly sipped the water she saw everyone was watching him intently.

As he sipped he made little grunts to keep all eyes on him. His left arm shot up above his head as if it had a life of its own, then he made his left leg shake.

''Tis working,' he shouted out in a broad Somerset accent. 'Aye, 'tis working. I's can feel its powers down deep in me innards!'

Hope had to put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. He was jerking, twisting, and gulping down the water so fast it was running down his chin. Everyone was transfixed: some looked scared as if they thought he was having a fit, but the rest were wide-eyed with astonishment, and the only sound apart from the groans and sighs Bennett was making were shocked whispers.

Slowly, he straightened up. He looked down at himself as if in disbelief. He held his face in his hands and walked towards a large mirror as if to check he wasn't mistaken.

'Halleluia!' he exclaimed. 'I am cured. I am cured.'

There was nothing for it but for Hope to run and embrace him. 'He's been twisted and bent since the day he was born,' she announced in an equally rustic accent. 'But I must get him home now so our mother can see this miracle too.'

There were tears rolling down her cheeks, but only from suppressing her laughter. As she swept Bennett out through the door she had to bite her lips as the sounds of 'Did you ever see the like?' and 'He was crippled and now he's cured,' and other such remarks resounded behind them.

How they managed to get around the corner without doubling up with laughter, Hope didn't know. But once hidden from viewthey almost exploded with it, clinging to each other and laughing till their sides ached.

'You are a disgrace to the medical profession,' Hope spluttered. 'They'll all drink gallons of it now and get sick with it.'

Bennett wiped tears from his eyes. 'Their faces!' he exclaimed. ''Tis a miracle. I am cured!'

'You should be ashamed of yourself,' Hope giggled. 'But can you imagine how it will be in a few hours? It will be right round Bath, everyone will be talking about the miracle.'

'There was a real miracle today,' he said, pulling her close to him and kissing her. 'You agreed to marry me.'

'That was before I discovered how silly you could be,' she said. 'Funny thing is, it's made me love you even more.'

Chapter Sixteen.

1853.

Lady Harvey stood at her bedroom window looking down the drive towards the gatehouse. Thick frost had beautified the bare fields and trees in the kind of stark winter scene she had once liked to capture in water-colours. But she was barely seeing it now, only aware of the small grey stone cottage in the distance, which until Nell left her, she'd barely noticed.

Wisps of smoke were coming out of the chimney, and she wondered what it was like in there now Albert was alone. To her shame she had never called on Nell while she was with him; she hadn't even asked if she was comfortable in the gatehouse, or if there was anything she needed to make it more homely.

Today she knew she must deal with Albert. She couldn't put it off as she might not get such a good opportunity again for months. William was in London, and Rufus had returned to school yesterday morning after the Christmas holiday, so if Albert did make a scene, there was no one to know.

It was six long years now since Nell had left, and Anne's regrets about that day grew with each pa.s.sing year. At first it was just the breakdown of comfortable order. But then, she had never before been expected to dress herself or arrange her own hair, far less do laundry, tidy rooms or mend anything, but it soon became evident that Nell's departure had caused far wider destruction than was immediately apparent.