'Bring Hope up for tea on Monday,' Lady Harvey said, getting up off the couch and smoothing her dress down. 'You can pop off to fetch her after luncheon. By the time you get back Rufus will have had his nap. I want him to learn to share his toys and mix well.'

As their mistress swept out of the nursery, Ruth looked at Nell and giggled. 'Our Hope in here! She don't know what she's letting herself in for.'

Nell was brushing Lady Harvey's hair that night when Sir William came into the bedroom.

'You make a pretty picture,' he said as he leaned against the doorpost. 'Who brushes your hair, Nell?'

Nell giggled. She could tell the master had drunk too much for his face was red and his shirt was hanging loose over his breeches. He was undeniably the most handsome man she'd ever seen, his features as perfect as the marble statues' in the rosebed, hair the colour of ripe corn and eyes of an intense blue. Cook had often said he was pretty like a girl, but Nell didn't agree; his lips might be just a bit too full, but he had a strong chin, and very shapely thighs and b.u.t.tocks from riding so much.

She knew he was in a good mood, drunk or not, for she'd heard him laughing with his wife as they came up the stairs after their dinner guests had left. 'No one but me, sir,' she replied.

He just stood there silently watching her and his wife, and Nell thought this was because he wanted to come into his wife's bed tonight. She thought it was a good job she'd already got her mistress's corsets off and helped her into her nightgown. Nell didn't think it was quite seemly for a husband to see all that.

'Have you got a sweetheart, Nell?' Sir William asked suddenly.

'No, sir,' she said, blushing furiously.

'But would you like one?' he said, moving right into the room and sitting down on the bed. 'Do you hope to get married one day?'

'William!' Lady Harvey laughingly reproved him. 'Stop quizzing poor Nell!'

'I do hope to get married one day, sir, when the right man comes along,' Nell said.

'Then I think I must look around for a suitable husband for you,' he said with a bright smile which showed perfect small white teeth.

'Well, just don't look too far away from Briargate, William,' Lady Harvey said with laughter in her voice. 'I don't want her running off and leaving me. But you can get off to bed now, Nell. I can manage everything else alone.'

Nell put the hairbrush down on the dressing table, bobbed a little curtsey and said goodnight. As she was leaving the room she turned her head just enough to see that her master had got up off the bed and was kissing his wife's neck. That pleased her, and went some way towards allaying her fears about the visitor this afternoon.

She had discovered who the gentleman caller was from James. He was Captain Angus Pettigrew of the Royal Hussars, a cousin of the Pettigrews who lived in Chelwood House about two miles away.

She couldn't of course tell her brother why she wanted to know about him, or indeed ask any further questions for fear of alerting him to her anxiety. She wasn't even sure what she wanted any information for. All she knew was that she felt threatened.

But by what? She had asked herself that question dozens of times tonight, and had found no answers. But now she'd left her master and mistress together, clearly happy, she thought maybe the Captain might only have called here while he was visiting his relatives because it would have been impolite not to.

Yet Nell was still troubled about her mistress's request for Hope to come and play with Rufus. If Bridie was here now she'd have thrown up her hands in horror. But Nell couldn't refuse, or make an excuse. She'd just have to hope that the visit wouldn't go well, that Lady Harvey would decide Hope wasn't a fit companion for her son, and that would be the end of it.

Nell's hopes that the visit would be a failure were dashed. It was raining on Monday, so the children had to stay in the day nursery. Hope was so thrilled by Rufus's toys, the like of which she'd never seen before, that she was only too happy to play with whatever he wanted. She built him castles with his building blocks and laughed when he knocked them down. They rode on his rocking-horse together, and Hope looked at Rufus's picture books with him.

Lady Harvey joined them for tea, and Hope turned on her charm shamelessly, admiring the delicate china, eating and drinking far more daintily than she usually did, even reprimanding Rufus for not eating the crusts on his bread and jam.

It was clear Rufus thought she was the best thing ever to come into his young life, and when it was time for Nell to take Hope home, he clung to her tearfully, making his mother promise she could come again the following week. As Nell walked across the paddock with Hope she could imagine Bridie shaking her fist at her and asking why she had been so stupid as to take the child there in the first place.

On Sundays as many of the Briargate staff who could be spared from ch.o.r.es and preparing luncheon were expected to go to church in Compton Dando. All those who came from the surrounding villages were also allowed one Sunday in a month to go home after church to visit their families. James and Ruth often got the same Sunday off, but because Nell had to stand in as nursemaid for Rufus when Ruth was not there, she always went home alone.

It was three weeks since Hope's first afternoon at Briargate when Nell got her next Sunday off. She was happy as she walked to church with the other servants through Lord's Wood. The ground was dry, so there would be no mud on her well-polished boots or on her best blue dress, and Lady Harvey had given her a spray of small artificial roses and a blue ribbon to trim her bonnet. Nell was looking forward to seeing her father, for on her regular afternoon off he was always working, and she was lucky if she saw him for more than a few minutes before she had to return to the house. But most of all she was delighted that Albert had joined the other servants today.

As a gardener he didn't work at all on Sundays, and up till now he'd always gone to the church in Chelwood. Nell felt he could only have decided to change churches because he wanted to get to know her. It couldn't be Rose he liked; she was a real old maid of over thirty. Ruby was only fourteen and as skinny as a rake and plain as a pikestaff. That only left Ruth, but to Nell's knowledge they'd never spoken to each other. Nell wondered if she was brave enough to invite him back to the cottage after the service. Would that seem too forward?

As if hearing her thoughts, Albert stopped, looked back at her with a smile and waited for her to catch up with him. 'How many of your family will be at home today?' he asked.

Nell thought he could pa.s.s for a country gentleman in his tweed jacket, dark green breeches and neat stockings. 'Just Hope, the two younger boys, and Matt, my oldest brother he works on the same farm as my father,' Nell replied. 'Where are your family?'

'In Penshurst, that's in Kent,' Albert said. 'Only a brother and two sisters and they are married. Our parents died a few years back.'

'James told me you used to work for the Bishop of Wells. What made you come so far from home to work?' she asked.

Albert shrugged. 'I knew I'd never get a better opportunity than working in a palace gardens.'

'So why did you leave there?'

He gave her a rather odd sideways look, and she thought perhaps she was asking too many questions.

'Because I'd be old before I got to be head gardener. I heard Sir William needed someone, and I walked all the way here on my day off to see him. Soon as I saw the grounds I knew it was the place for me, Sir William liked my suggestions for changes too.'

All the servants had noticed that the master seemed much more enthusiastic about the grounds since Albert arrived. He would go out there in all weathers, often helping with laying out new flowerbeds. Lady Harvey had said she was glad he'd found another interest apart from riding.

'Don't you get a bit lonely here though?' Nell asked. 'I mean, w.i.l.l.y's a bit simple and James is always off to the village in the evenings. You must have had lots of friends in Wells?'

Albert shrugged again. 'I'm not much of a one for company,' he said. 'If I want some I go down to the ale house in Chelwood. It weren't so different in Wells; the other men were either very old or simple like w.i.l.l.y. I like this place better.'

James had told Nell that Albert wasn't much of a conversationalist, but he was wrong. He chatted all the way to the church, and asked Nell dozens of questions about her family. He was a bit serious, he frowned more than he smiled, but Nell didn't mind, she was just happy he wanted to talk to her.

After the service Albert walked back up the hill with Nell and the rest of her family, and it was her father who invited him in for a gla.s.s of beer. Albert stayed for about half an hour admiring the vegetable garden, before excusing himself. But as he was leaving he rather pointedly asked Nell what time she would be coming back to Briargate, leaving her with the distinct impression that he intended to meet her to walk her through the wood.

Nell could see that her parents approved of Albert, though they made no comment other than that he was 'a sober young man'. Yet although she was excited that Albert appeared to be as taken with her as she was with him, a Sunday at home with her family was for now more important.

Meg had made a rabbit stew with dumplings, followed by bottled raspberries from the garden, and it was a joyful meal with a great deal of chatter and laughter. Matt had recently begun walking out with Amy Merchant, a farmer's daughter from Woolard, who had been Nell's friend when they were small and attended the Reverend Gosling's lessons in the parsonage. Meg and Silas were clearly very hopeful that this would lead to marriage, for they not only liked Amy, but her tenant farmer father was relatively prosperous, and he had only daughters. Meg teased Matt about polishing up his best boots before he walked over to her place in the evenings. That brought Silas around to telling them all how he used to walk over ten miles to court Meg, and he joked that he only asked her to marry him because he couldn't stand it in bad weather.

Matt said goodbye at four because he was going to meet Amy, and the three young children went off to play by the river, leaving Nell, Meg and Silas half-dozing under the apple tree at the back of the cottage.

It was only when Meg mentioned Hope's weekly visit to Briargate that Silas sat up.

'I dunno that we ought to let this be a regular thing,' he said. 'It can only end in trouble.'

'He's right,' Meg agreed, nodding her head. 'I know Hope loves to go, but it's turning her head. She'll be thinking she's too grand for us soon. Only the other day she asked why we didn't have pretty china cups and plates. It's Briargate this, Briargate that. Lady Harvey's got a pink dress, or Rufus is getting a pony. Where's it all going to end, Nell?'

'I'm sure I don't know.' Nell frowned. 'I told you I weren't happy about it in the first place. But how can we put a stop to it without upsetting Master Rufus?'

'How does Lady Harvey treat 'er?' Silas asked, an anxious look in his dark eyes.

'Very kindly, she really likes her. Everyone does at Briargate.'

'She's bound to like her, she's her own flesh and blood after all, and that's where the danger lies,' Silas sighed.

Nell was just about to say she couldn't see any danger in someone liking a child, but then she had a sudden picture of the way Lady Harvey laughed with Hope, smoothed her hair and touched her cheeks.

'You think she may get to like Hope too much?'

Once again she saw her parents looking at each other. 'Are you afraid she'll take Hope from you?' Nell asked incredulously. 'She wouldn't do that! She couldn't.'

'There's more than one way to take your child from you,' Meg said darkly. 'There's putting notions in her little head that she's different, there's making her want more than she'll ever get. And we can't be sure Bridie didn't tell Lady Harvey her babby lived.'

'No!' Nell shook her head. 'Bridie would never have done that.'

'Everything Bridie did was for her mistress,' Meg retorted. 'She let you bring the babby here because she thought that was best for Lady Harvey, but maybe later when the woman was still grievin' she told her the truth because she thought that was best too.'

'I don't believe that,' Nell said stoutly. 'If she had, Lady Harvey would have been asking me questions about us all, and she's never done that.'

'Gentry ain't like us,' Silas said contemptuously. 'They's born cunning. Anyways, she don't have to ask you nothing, Ruth tells her plenty.'

Nell was about to deny that, but all at once she realized her father was probably right, at least about Ruth. She had been with Rufus daily since he was born, her knowledge of caring for babies all based on watching and helping her mother with her younger brothers and sisters. What could be more natural than saying, 'Mother did this with our Henry', or 'Mother did that with our Hope'? And Ruth had no reason to be suspicious of any questions that followed.

'There in't any way this can end happy,' Silas said sadly. 'Even if Lady Harvey knows the truth, she ain't going to risk her secret getting out by giving our Hope a leg up in life. An' if she don't know, but she grows to care for our girl, she'll jest turn her little head more by makin' a fuss o' her. Either way, Hope's going to be the loser, cos she'll be neither fish nor fowl.'

Nell sighed in agreement. She and all her brothers and sisters had been brought up knowing exactly what their position was in life, just as her mother and father had before them. They were all here to serve someone, whether that was her father ploughing, haymaking or milking cows for one of the rich farmers, or twelve-year-old Nell going into service at Briargate. Even as small children they were toughened up for what lay ahead, collecting wood, hauling up water from the well, even scooping up the horse droppings out in the lane to help the vegetables grow. At harvest time the whole family had to help their father in the fields; from the age of three Nell had been pressed into picking potatoes.

Before Nell went into service she had often been hungry and cold. The darned and patched clothes she'd worn were pa.s.sed down to Ruth and then Alice; no one ever got anything new. Poor people like them could only sc.r.a.pe along, for if there was a good harvest one year, the following year it could fail. Labourers like her father could get laid off at any time, and they were never able to acc.u.mulate savings to help them through the bad times.

In the first month Nell worked at Briargate, her hands bled from continually scrubbing pots and pans, and she was so exhausted by the end of the day that she had a job to climb the stairs. But when she took her first wages home and handed them over to her mother, Meg's smile of grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion, but she'd always expected that the man she would marry would show some pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 a husband who knows he loves me,' she retorted indignantly, and began walking away from him.

Nell was very aware that the vast majority of people married for exactly the reasons Albert had stated. This was something often discussed by the staff at Briargate as they sat around the table in the servants' hall after supper. Gentry mostly married to strengthen links between two families, or to bring wealth to an ill.u.s.trious family that was struggling financially. Baines, who had worked at or visited dozens of big estates, had said once that Sir William and Lady Harvey were the only t.i.tled people he'd ever met that he would call a 'love match'. It was Baines's belief that servants would do better by selecting a husband or wife for practical reasons rather than through what he called 'love sickness'.

But Nell had been born to parents who were a love match. Meg and Silas had been married now for twenty-five years and despite all the hardships, they still billed and cooed like lovebirds. Her father had once told her he felt no need to drink ale with other men; his favourite place was home beside the fire with his Meg. And that was what Nell wanted from her marriage too.

'Don't run off, Nell,' Albert called after her. 'I'm sorry if I put it badly. Will you marry me?'

Nell stopped and turned to look at him. 'Not until you can tell me you want me as your wife because you can't live without me, and mean it.'

Hope stood watching as her mother fiddled with Nell's hair yet again. She wasn't used to someone else in the family getting all the attention, and she didn't like it much.

The church bells began to ring. 'That means it's time we left,' Silas said. 'That is, if Nell's sure Albert is the one for her.'

It was September, and Nell had finally agreed to marry Albert when, a week after his proposal in the woods, he insisted he did love her, and explained that his slowness in admitting it was only down to shyness.

'I'm sure,' Nell said resolutely.

'You look as pretty as a cherry tree in blossom,' Meg said, placing a crown of white flowers on her daughter's head. Albert had brought them down from Briargate early that morning while Nell was still asleep up in the loft. Meg had fashioned the crown with a little wire, moss and greenery, and fixed the smallest of the flowers on to it. The rest she'd made into a posy for Nell to carry.

Nell had made her pink and white dress herself with some help from Rose, the parlourmaid. It had a low neckline and puffed sleeves, and the skirt had ruffles around the hem and a bustle like a real lady would wear. With a starched lace-trimmed petticoat beneath it and dainty shoes with silver buckles pa.s.sed on to her by her ladyship, Hope thought her sister looked beautiful.

'Why haven't I got a crown?' Hope asked.

'Because Nell is the bride, and anyway, you've got a bonnet with new ribbons,' Meg said, handing the posy to Nell. 'Now, take that look off your face, Hope, and behave in church.'

Hope knew that Albert was already at the church as she'd seen him come past a little while ago with Ruth and James, who would be his best man. Joe and Henry had left then too. Hope thought Albert looked funny in a wing-collar, but then so did everyone in their best clothes.

Old Gertie Ford was waiting in the lane as they came out of the house. She lived in the cottage across the way and her legs were too bad to make it to the church.

'Good luck,' she called out, tottering on her stick. 'You make a pretty bride, Nell; make sure that handsome man of yours treats you right.'