It was when he picked up a knife to spread butter on his bread that she noticed him wince.
‘What’s wrong with your hand?’ she asked.
‘A cut,’ he said curtly.
‘Let me see,’ she said, leaning closer and reaching out for his hand.
‘Leave me be, woman,’ he spat at her. ‘I’m not a child.’
Nell had intended to wait until after he’d eaten, but the way he spoke to her riled her so much she could not contain herself any longer.
‘No, you aren’t a child. You’re a big and very strong man. Yet you’d half-strangle a young girl and try to dash her brains out.’
He flushed and began to rise from his chair as if to strike her.
She snatched up the bread knife. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered him, pointing the knife at him. ‘For once you are going to listen to me.’
‘Now look here, woman,’ he began to bluster, ‘I expected that the impudent madam would go snivelling to you, but I doubt she told you the truth. She insulted me, so I chastised her. She deserved it.’
‘She didn’t snivel to anyone. She wouldn’t even admit to Baines or me that she were attacked. But we knew! FingerMarks on her neck, the gash on her head. She couldn’t get those from falling on the drive.’
He gave a snort of derision and went to get up, but Nell lunged out warningly with the knife and he sat down again. ‘I could get you thrown off this estate,’ she hissed. ‘Thrown out without a character. Where would you be then?’
‘They couldn’t do that without throwing you out too,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I’m your husband.’
‘Husband!’ she sneered. ‘How can you be when I’m still a virgin after three long years of marriage?’
He was clearly astounded that she would dare voice such a thing. Suddenly he looked a little unsure of himself.
‘That’s my trump card,’ she said determinedly. ‘I haven’t played it yet, but I’m prepared to.’ She lowered the knife just a fraction, and leaned forward to nudge his plate nearer to him. ‘Eat up, dear Albert, you have to keep your strength up. Ruth made that for you, though if she guessed the truth about Hope’s injuries she might well have slipped some arsenic in.’
He looked down at his plate, then back at Nell. He was hesitant, wanting to eat it because he was starving, but afraid to.
‘Come on, Albert, eat,’ she said. ‘There are so many of us Rentons.’ She laughed lightly as if she were joking. ‘James in the stables with a pitchfork! Matt lying in wait somewhere with a scythe! How about Joe and Henry destroying your rosebeds?’
‘Now look here, woman!’ he said, his face darkening. ‘You can’t threaten me!’
‘Threaten you?’ Nell gasped, as if that was the last thing on her mind. ‘Surely you don’t think I was threatening you? I was only pointing out the things you
might
think could happen. But none of those things are necessary, not with my trump card.’
She paused, feeling a little more confident now. ‘It would be easy enough to go to Lady Harvey and tell her that you aren’t a real man and you take it out on Hope and me because it shames you. Do you think she’d want you as her gardener knowing that? I believe a marriage can be annulled if it hasn’t been consummated.’ She smirked at him, proud that she’d remembered the right word. ‘I could speak to Reverend Gosling about that!’
‘I never meant to hit Hope,’ Albert exclaimed, his face suddenly paler. ‘Damn it, woman, I’m sorry I did.’
‘I’m sorry you did too,’ Nell said fiercely. ‘Because it’s made me face things about you that I didn’t want to examine.’
He looked at her blankly.
‘You really don’t like women at all, do you?’ Nell asked. ‘When we got married I thought you loved me and that we’d have children. But you cheated me. You knew that you could never give me that.’
‘I take care of you,’ he said indignantly.
‘Care! You call ordering me around, pulling me up for the quilt not being straight or a speck of dirt on the floor, taking care of me?’ Nell’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘You don’t talk or laugh. There’s no joy in you. Being married to you is like a prison sentence.’
‘I don’t know what’s got into you. I’ve said I’m sorry, now let that be the end of it,’ he said, and began eating his pie.
‘The end of it!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve barely begun, Albert Scott. You are unnatural, a freak of nature that you don’t like women, and I swear on all that’s holy that I will expose what you really are unless you do as I say.’
At last he looked frightened and Nell felt she now had some real power.
‘So what do you want of me?’ he asked in little more than a whisper, dropping his eyes from hers.
‘First of all, you will never hit Hope or me again.’
He nodded.
‘And you’ll make no further complaints about how I run this house. You’ll get the coal, wood and the water in like any decent husband would do. You will also welcome my family here and behave as if you like them.’
‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘You think you’ve got off lightly, don’t you?’ she laughed mirthlessly. ‘But you haven’t, because I know that it will wear you down having to be nice to me. You’ll always be afraid I might spill the beans about you and make you the laughing stock of the county. Maybe it will wear you down enough so you leave me. That will make me very happy. I’ve never considered myself a real wife anyway.’
To her amazement he covered his face with his hands. ‘I can’t help the way I am,’ he muttered as if he were crying. ‘God knows I wish I was like other men.’
Nell almost softened then. She was tempted to put her arms around him and say maybe they could learn to be friends like the way they were before they married. But she knew that if he saw her weaken he would use it to his advantage.
Instead she took his hands away from his face. There were tears in his eyes. ‘There might still be hope for you if you can shed a tear, Albert Scott,’ she said crisply. ‘Finish your supper, then let me see to that cut on your hand.’
Chapter Six
1845
Hope was walking home through Lord’s Wood after spending her afternoon off in Woolard with Matt, Amy and their children when she heard a crack of something stepping on a dry stick behind her.
She turned, but couldn’t see or hear anything. Had it been an animal, she’d have been able to hear rustling in the undergrowth, so it stood to reason it was a human who was now hidden.
She wasn’t in the least scared; it was only six in the evening and in June it didn’t get dark until at least ten o’clock. Besides, she and her brothers used to stalk people all the time when they were younger. In fact, if she hadn’t known both Joe and Henry were fishing by the bridge in Woolard, she would have thought it was one of them. But they’d been warned off coming into the wood by Mr Box, the Hunstrete gamekeeper, because he suspected them of poaching. Fortunately that day Box didn’t catch them with any fish from the lake, but he said that if he saw them in the woods again he’d turn them over to the magistrates.
Hope waited a while and when there were no further noises she thought she might have been mistaken so she walked on. But when she heard another crack, she turned just in time to see someone dart behind a tree. She knew it wasn’t an adult, for their step was too light, and she thought it was a girl for she’d seen a flash of blonde hair.
The Nicholses, who lived on the common near her old home, had two blonde daughters, and one of them, Anna, was daring enough to play this sort of game on someone. So Hope thought she’d turn the tables on her and hide behind a tree too.
She held the skirt of her brown dress in tight so it wouldn’t give her away, and waited. After about a minute she heard the sound of creeping feet. They came right up to the tree where she was hiding and then stopped so close that Hope could hear the girl’s breathing. She wanted to laugh because she could just imagine Anna’s confused expression as she wondered how Hope had managed to disappear.
Stealthily Hope crept around the big tree and then pounced out. ‘Gotcha!’ she yelled.
But to her astonishment it wasn’t Anna Nichols at all, but Master Rufus. And he looked as startled as a rabbit.
‘I’m sorry, Master Rufus,’ Hope stammered. ‘I didn’t know it was you.’
‘Didn’t you? Well, that’s good. I mean, that’s the whole point of the game, isn’t it?’ he said with a beaming smile. ‘I’d been waiting for ever for someone to come along. I was so pleased when I saw you– I didn’t think you’d scream like I was a murderer, the way Miss Bird would.’
Hope didn’t like sour-faced Miss Bird one bit, so that made her laugh.
Rufus was ten now, and almost as tall as Hope, but he still looked as sweet and innocent as he had as a five-year-old. His blond hair almost touched his shoulders, and he had wide blue eyes and a soft plump mouth. He had Lady Harvey’s slightly upturned nose and her creamy skin, yet overall he looked like a junior replica of his father, who also had a very girlish mouth and curly hair, and Rufus wore his navy-blue sailor suit with as much style as his father wore his riding clothes.
‘Should you be out here, Master Rufus?’ Hope said archly. ‘I didn’t think you were allowed beyond the grounds of Briargate.’
‘No, I believe I’m not,’ he grinned. ‘But don’t call me Master. Just Rufus will do. Let’s have a game of hide-and-seek?’
Hope might have turned thirteen back in April but she often ached to have the kind of fun she used to have with her brothers before their parents died. Her life was all work, up at five, toiling in the kitchen day after day, often until eight in the evening and later still when there was a dinner party. The only respite was her afternoon off when she visited Matt and Amy, but Amy was as staid as Miss Bird most of the time. All she did was gossip about her neighbours, or boast how clever her children were.
Albert wouldn’t approve if she was late home; he’d give her one of his black looks and point to the clock. But she doubted he’d take it any further than that. She often wondered what Nell said to him that evening after he whacked her against the wall, because he’d been different ever since.
He wasn’t nicer, for he was just as silent and brooding, but he hadn’t hit her again, nor did he order her and Nell about the way he used to. It was rather strange really, for Hope sensed he still resented her every bit as much. He certainly wasn’t any kinder to Nell either, but he did draw the water from the well and brought in fuel for the stove. Hope remained wary of him though, and did her best not to upset him in any way.
Luckily she was hardly ever alone with Albert any more. Soon after Cook’s funeral, Martha Miles, the new cook, arrived, and Baines told Hope she was to be a proper kitchenmaid, at six pounds a year, and that meant she worked till much later in the evening. On her regular afternoon off on Wednesdays she always went to see Matt and Amy, and Baines arranged it so she and Nell could have the same Sunday afternoon off once a month.
Hope played hide-and-seek with Rufus for quite a while, and it was a bit like old times when they’d played in the garden, only a great deal more fun because now Rufus was old enough to hide properly. But eventually Nell said she’d have to go and told Rufus he must too for his mother would be getting worried about him.
He just shrugged. ‘Maybe that will make a change from worrying about Papa,’ he said.
Hope frowned, assuming Rufus was a little jealous that his father got more of Lady Harvey’s attention. ‘You should be glad they are happy together,’ she reprimanded him. ‘It would be much worse for you if they didn’t like each other.’
He looked at her strangely. ‘Happy together? They are hardly ever together. Even when he’s here at Briargate he’s out most of the time. He only comes back for meals.’
Hope had not been aware of that, but then the only time she got a glimpse of Sir William was when he went to the stables to get Merlin. She hadn’t heard it from the other servants either, for Baines was very strict about them gossiping about what the master and mistress did. Nell was the soul of discretion; she might tell Hope what Lady Harvey was wearing for dinner, or that she’d had a lie-down because she had a headache, but very little else.
She and Ruth did talk a lot about Rufus, but only in the fond way anyone would speak about a child. They took pride in that he was clever, they repeated funny things he said, and because of this Hope felt she knew him just as well now as she did when they used to play together.
‘Where does he go then?’ Hope asked.
‘Out riding, visiting friends. Mama doesn’t like it when he doesn’t come home at night.’
Hope sniggered. She thought he meant that his father got so drunk he fell down somewhere and slept it off. Her father had done that a few times and woken up in a field all wet with dew. ‘I don’t suppose he likes how he feels the next morning,’ she said.
Rufus looked puzzled and asked what she meant. Hope explained.
‘I don’t think my papa ends up in a field,’ Rufus said, looking shocked that Hope could even suggest that. ‘I think he goes to Bath. I once heard Mama ask if he’d been in a whorehouse! Do you know what that is?’
Hope did know what a whore was, she’d heard Albert say the word a couple of times, and asked Nell what it meant. Nell had said the real meaning was a woman who let a man have his way with her, for money. But she had quickly added that Albert used it for any woman who in his opinion was too lively or flirtatious.
‘It’s a house of happy women,’ Hope said, thinking she’d better not give him Nell’s definition.
‘Well, I don’t blame Papa for going to one then,’ Rufus pouted, ‘because Mama is always unhappy.’
‘How can she be unhappy?’ Hope asked. To her Lady Harvey had the best life it was possible to have.
‘She is,’ he said with a touch of indignation that she didn’t believe him. ‘She cries a lot about Papa because he doesn’t seem to care about her.’
Hope found that difficult to believe as everyone had always told her Lady Harvey and Sir William were a love match. But then people had thought Albert and Nell were too, and she knew first-hand how untrue that was, and what misery it could be finding herself between the pair of them.
‘My mother used to say that all married couples have tiffs sometimes,’ she said, trying to offer him some comfort because it clearly troubled him. ‘So don’t you fret about them. You’ll be going away to school soon anyway.’