To her astonishment it was none other than Captain Pettigrew on his piebald horse, and in her position on the bridge she couldn’t hide.
‘Why, Nell!’ he exclaimed in surprise, reining his horse in and looking down at her. ‘How are you? I was told you’d left Briargate and I rather assumed you’d gone right away from the village.’
Despite Nell’s initial feelings about this man, he had won her over when Cook was taken ill. While her puritanical streak still told her she ought to be wary of a man who had come between a husband and wife, now she knew far more about the relationship between him and her ladyship, her instinct told her that he had truly loved her, and probably still did. It was also hard not to look into that strong, handsome face, knowing that he was Hope’s father, and not be willing to trust him.
‘I ought to leave here,’ she said, blushing because he was looking at her so keenly. ‘I have nothing but sad memories here now my sister has gone.’
‘I was told about that,’ he said, dismounting and moving closer to her, still holding his horse by the reins. ‘Rather a rum do! I understand you don’t believe she ran off with a soldier?’
‘No, sir, I don’t,’ Nell looked him square in the face. ‘For one thing no one had seen a soldier around here, and just before I left with Lady Harvey when her father was sick, Hope told me quite sadly that she had no chance of ever having a sweetheart because she never had the opportunity to meet anyone.’
‘She could have made opportunities while you were gone,’ the Captain said with a wry smile.
‘She only had a half day off each week and she spent those with our brother at his farm.’
‘Forgive me being so blunt, Nell, but as I understand it you believed your husband, the gardener, killed her. Is that so, or just foolish gossip?’
‘I did believe it, and I still do,’ Nell said defiantly. ‘Now I am being scorned because I deserted him, but how could I stay with such an evil man?’
‘Strong words, Nell,’ he said shaking his head thoughtfully. ‘But I think you are very brave to stand by what you believe. Lady Harvey must be missing you a great deal; I know how fond she was of you.’
‘Lady Harvey cares for no one but herself,’ Nell blurted out before she could stop herself.
The Captain raised one dark eyebrow.
‘Apart from you,’ Nell added, and blushed furiously because she shouldn’t have said that either.
‘Oh, Nell,’ the Captain sighed. ‘I know Lady Harvey had no secrets from you, and therefore I feel I can speak frankly. We are both victims of a very rigid society; Lady Harvey and I could have no future together without disgrace. She probably told you that I asked her a year ago to face that disgrace and come away with me?’
Nell was surprised and shocked to hear that. ‘No, she didn’t tell me that, sir. Only that she wrote while we were in Sussex and told you it was all over.’
‘That sounds like Anne.’ He gave a humourless chuckle. ‘She’s a great one for only telling half a story! But maybe that is why she was so hard on you, because you were brave enough to leave Albert!’
‘Lady Harvey’s situation and mine were very different,’ Nell said. Even after all she’d been through she still could not bring herself to be spiteful about her old mistress. ‘Albert left me no alternative but to desert him.’
The Captain put one finger under her chin and lifted her face up. ‘You look thin and deeply troubled, Nell. I am told that Lady Harvey looks the same. I think you two fell out about far more than Albert?’
Nell’s stomach lurched. ‘If she is thin and troubled too, then it will only be because she’s finding it hard to cope with all the things I used to do for her,’ she said tartly.
He half-smiled. ‘Another man might believe that to be the reason, but not me. However, I do admire your loyalty,’ he said. ‘So where are you off to with those eggs?’
‘To sell them to a shop in Keynsham, then I shall look for work.’
‘I shouldn’t imagine there’s much call for a lady’s maid there.’
Nell shrugged. ‘I’ll take anything, I can cook and clean. Beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll even work in an ale house if they give me a bed and food.’
He looked at her appraisingly for so long it made Nell nervous.
‘Would you consider being my housekeeper?’ he said eventually.
Nell’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘But you don’t have a house, sir,’ she exclaimed.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I acquired it a year or two back. Nothing grand, you understand, just a place to spend my leave and retire to when I get too old for soldiering. I had been thinking of getting someone for some time, but there is so much that needs doing there before I could expect a stranger to cope with the inconvenience. However, it might suit you just now, and you’d certainly suit me.’
Nell’s first thought was that he saw her as a way back towards Lady Harvey. But whether that was his reason or not, it was an offer she was in no position to refuse. ‘Well, thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m very grateful for your kindness.’
After giving her directions to the village of Saltford on the Bath road and suggesting she called after selling her eggs, the Captain rode off. Nell picked up her basket and walked on with a much lighter heart. She didn’t really care what his house was like, or that she’d be the only servant. He was a gentleman, he cared enough about her plight to help her, and it felt as though she’d been offered a lamp on a dark night.
Nell stood outside Willow End, the Captain’s house, for some little while before she opened the gate and walked up to the front door, a little puzzled as to why he’d chosen it. She would have expected a military gentleman to find a residence in either Bristol or Bath, not half-way between the two cities. While it was bigger than a cottage, with a stable and other outhouses, it was the kind of house a shopkeeper or a schoolmaster would live in.
It was one of a few houses straggling along the road into Bath, outside the village of Saltford, around half a mile before the crossroads of the lanes that led to the villages of Corston and Lewton St Loe. It was a pleasant enough spot, overlooking the fields which ran down to the river Avon, but the Great Western railway to London ran through those too.
Captain Pettigrew was right in saying it needed a lot doing to it. The roof and windows were sagging and the garden hadn’t been tended in years. She expected that the inside would be no better. But it would be a good place for her to work, far enough away from Albert and yet close enough to both Matt and Ruth to feel safe. She relished the amount of hard work she’d have to do; she didn’t want time on her hands.
‘So what do you think, Nell?’ the Captain asked as they returned to his drawing room after he’d taken her on a tour of his house. ‘Could you live here and look after me?’
Nell smiled; it was difficult not to do so for he had shown her round with boyish enthusiasm, vividly describing what he intended to do with each of the rooms. For a single gentleman he had a great many possessions – hundreds of books, many of them still in packing cases, some fine pieces of furniture, clocks, rugs and china – but most of them were still piled up in the downstairs rooms as the roof leaked.
The parlour was the only room that had a semblance of order. It was cold without the fire lit, but he had armchairs, a rug and a table and chairs arranged, even a couple of pictures on the walls. His bedroom offered less comfort than a prison cell, with no rugs on the floor and just a bed, curtains and his clothes hanging from hooks behind the door.
‘I would be happy to live here and look after you,’ Nell said with sincerity. ‘But you must get the roof mended quickly before the rainwater seeps down here too.’
‘I have that in hand,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘Work starts tomorrow. But could you cook in that terrible kitchen?’
Nell laughed then, and it struck her that it was the first time she’d had anything to laugh about in months. It wasn’t a terrible kitchen to her; it was filthy, but it was a good size and there was plenty of light, and after a good scrub it would be just fine. ‘I learned to cook on an open fire,’ she reminded him. ‘The stove will work well enough once I get the chimney swept, and it’s got a good cold pantry.’
‘I brought some friends here to see it and they shuddered,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘You see, I was looking at its potential. It has a good bit of land, the stables and outhouses, and I thought it had a good feel to it. But my friends said I’d taken leave of my senses and it made me think they might be right.’
‘Then we’ll have to show them they were wrong, sir,’ she said.
He poured some sherry wine into two glasses and handed one to her. ‘To the future, Nell,’ he said, raising his glass, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘And to you for coming along in my hour of need.’
Nell sipped the sherry cautiously, for she had a long walk back to Matt’s and she hadn’t eaten anything more than a slice of bread. ‘I can be here first thing in the morning,’ she said. ‘That is, if you want me then?’
‘The sooner the better,’ he said. ‘But I shall come and get you in the gig, and we can pick up whatever provisions and other things you’ll need on the way. I won’t have you creeping away from your brother’s farm like a thief in the night.’
‘You are very kind, sir,’ she said, dropping her eyes in a moment of embarrassment.
‘I can imagine what you’ve been through in these past weeks,’ he said softly. ‘People can be very cruel, even those who claim to love you. But tell me, Nell, and I want the truth now. Was Hope your daughter?’
‘No, sir,’ Nell retorted, her chin coming up in defiance. She could see why he might have made that assumption: many a servant girl who had a child out of wedlock might, with a willing mother, pass their offspring off as a sibling. ‘She felt like she was sometimes, me being sixteen when she was born, and then our parents dying so sudden. But she was not born to me.’
It was so tempting to tell him then who Hope’s real parents were, but a small voice inside her head told her that it was too soon to reveal that secret.
He looked at her long and hard and she stared back into his eyes without faltering. ‘If it’s any consolation at all, I don’t believe Albert killed her,’ he said. ‘But I do suspect he found some way of driving her away.’
‘But what would stop her writing to me, or her brother or sister, telling us that?’ Nell asked, her voice shaking because she sensed he knew something.
‘Maybe he threatened to hurt you,’ he said, putting one hand on her shoulder, ‘or Lady Harvey, or even Rufus. I command men, Nell; I am used to assessing their characters. I have always seen something in Albert that worried me. Perhaps when we get to know each other better you’ll feel able to tell me more about your life with him?’
Tears prickled the back of Nell’s eyes, for not one person, not even Matt who had always disliked Albert, had offered her such understanding.
‘Perhaps,’ she said in a small voice. ‘But it is difficult to tell a man personal things.’
‘I know,’ he said, lightly touching her cheek with the palm of his hand. ‘It is a sad state of affairs that both men and women feel the opposite sex is so very different. We are indoctrinated from birth to believe this, we are encouraged to hide our true feelings from one another, and so often pushed into loveless marriages. It is no wonder that we cannot communicate freely.’
‘You are a very kind man,’ she blurted out. ‘It will be my pleasure to housekeep for you.’
‘I hope we can become friends too,’ he said. ‘We have more in common than you realize, Nell, both of us out on a limb, victims of circumstance. But I see our meeting today as fortuitous, and I hope you share that view.’
As Nell cut across the fields to home she felt like singing. Not just because she’d got work and a new home, but more because she felt her pain had been acknowledged. Whether that was enough to get her to pull herself together she didn’t know. But she felt optimistic, for if the Captain didn’t believe Hope was dead, maybe she could start to believe it too.
‘I’m glad for you,’ Matt said as he bent to kiss his older sister goodbye the next morning. ‘It’s not what I would’ve chosen for you, mind! Him being a bachelor an’ all.’
Nell managed a wry smile. She knew Matt’s first thoughts were that she wouldn’t be safe alone with any man. But then he didn’t know that in the six years she’d slept in the same bed as Albert, he’d never wanted to lay a finger on her. A gentleman was even less likely to want her.
‘Half the people round here think I’ve gone mad, the other half think I’m half-way to hell already,’ she laughed. ‘A bit more scandal won’t bother me. But the Captain will be away a great deal of the time. You can come and check up on me at any time. I like him, he’s a good man. Don’t fret about me.’
‘There’s talk about him,’ Matt blurted out. ‘He’s got a way with women.’
‘You have a way with women too,’ Nell said indignantly. ‘I’ve seen those Nichol girls giving you the glad eye at church. Some men are just born that way; it doesn’t mean they can’t be trusted. Now let me go, we can’t leave the Captain sitting out there any longer.’
As Nell climbed up into the gig beside the Captain, Amy came out of the dairy. She was all smiles, hastily shouting out how much she’d miss her. But Nell wasn’t fooled any more than she had been on the previous night when Amy had taken her side against Matt’s disapproval. She just wanted Nell out of her house; she wouldn’t have concerned herself if it was to work in a bordello.
It was close to midnight when Nell finally undressed and got into bed. The only room upstairs that was dry enough to sleep in was the Captain’s, so until the roof was fixed she had a truckle bed in the small store room adjoining the kitchen. But the men had begun work on the roof that morning, and when they’d finished they were going to repair all the ceilings, so then she’d have a bedroom of her own.
Nell was exhausted. She had scoured every inch of the kitchen and pantry, the walls and floor, repapered the shelves and cupboards, and unpacked at least a dozen boxes of china, glass and pots and pans. She was a little mystified that a bachelor soldier should have all these household things, but she hadn’t liked to ask him about it.
Tired and aching as she was, she felt more like her old self, and she’d even been hungry enough to eat some of the mutton stew she’d made for the Captain. He said it was the best meal he’d had in weeks, and laughed when she said they’d have to get part of the garden clear to grow some vegetables. She didn’t think he really believed she knew all about that too.