Sal came back with the breeches, her eyes downcast as if expecting Bennett to order her out too.
‘I take it any money in those pockets is still intact?’ Bennett asked her, his tone and expression very stern.
‘Yes, sir,’ she muttered, handing them over.
The man pulled the breeches on – he didn’t appear to have any boots – and slunk towards the door. Bennett unlocked it, handed him his knife back and let him out.
Once the door was locked again Bennett turned to Sal. ‘If I even suspect you’ve taken anyone’s property again, Sal, I shall have you put in the Bridewell,’ he said, his eyes burning into her. ‘But for the grace of God we could all go down with this terrible disease, but while we are healthy it is our duty to treat the sick with kindness. To rob them is a terrible sin.’
‘I’m sorry, doctor,’ she said, eyes downcast, surprisingly not even attempting to deny that was what she intended.
Bennett stepped nearer to the old woman and put one finger under her chin to lift her face up. ‘Go and make yourself a cup of tea now,’ he said gently. ‘I’m sure he frightened you very badly. And in future we must all be vigilant when new patients are brought in, especially when they stink of drink.’
Some of the other patients had become agitated after the frightening episode, and it took some time to calm them down. As Bennett washed his hands before he left, he smiled at Hope. ‘I think it’s time you got out of this place for a few hours,’ he said. ‘Alice keeps suggesting I bring you back to Harley Place for some dinner. Why don’t you come tomorrow? My uncle has gone to Bath for a few days, so we can be at ease with Alice in the kitchen.’
‘I can’t leave here. It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ Hope said.
He shrugged. ‘Saturday, Sunday or any day it’s much the same here,’ he said. ‘And it will be the same when you get back. Even Sister Martha said you should be allowed to have a day off, she thought you looked pale and tired.’
‘But…’
Bennett put a finger to his lips as if to silence her protest. ‘Spending a day with your cousin is perfectly acceptable.’
Chapter Fifteen
Hope arrived at Harley Place at noon the following day. The front door was opened by a beaming Alice. ‘It’s so good to see you again,’ she said, ‘I’ve been that worried about you!’
She led Hope down to the kitchen in the basement, explaining that Bennett had popped out to see a patient but would be back soon. Between asking if Hope would like a cool drink and grumbling about the continuing hot weather and lack of rain, she also volunteered that she didn’t think St Peter’s was any place for a young girl.
Hope smilingly told the housekeeper that she liked working at the hospital and that the work wasn’t so hard now she was used to it. Although that wasn’t strictly true, hearing Alice’s anxiety had given her the same warm feeling inside that she used to get when Nell fussed around her.
Alice was rather like Nell in many ways. She was older, perhaps forty-five or thereabouts, taller, and her hair was grey, but she had a similar neat, well-scrubbed appearance and motherly nature. Bennett had told her his uncle had met Alice when her husband became ill. She was still a young woman then, and when her husband died, Dr Cunningham had offered her the position as his housekeeper. Bennett had said that he used to hope they might marry eventually for they were well suited and fond of each other, but he said they were both too stubborn and stuck in their ways even to consider the idea.
Here in Alice’s bright, gleaming kitchen, which smelled heavenly like roasting meat, all at once the hospital, cholera, dirt and misery seemed like nothing more than a nasty but only half-remembered dream. Hope was wearing the blue dress Alice had given her, with well-polished boots, her newly washed hair gleaming, and she couldn’t wait to see Bennett.
Despite all the bad things at St Peter’s, there were two bathrooms at the hospital, which she’d discovered on the first floor a few days after she arrived. They were the first she’d ever seen with piped water. Sister Martha told her they had been put in the previous year because a cold bath had a calming effect on the insane. There was only hot water in the winter when the boiler was lit and Sister said it was so erratic she preferred to use the small hip-bath down in the kitchen, but if Hope didn’t mind cold water she was welcome to use one of the bathrooms.
Hope had rushed up there eagerly the minute she left the ward yesterday. She was so hot and sticky that the cold water almost took her breath away at first, but within minutes she felt she had been transported back to the pond in Leigh Woods, luxuriating in the bliss of washing the hospital stink and grime from her body and hair.
As she lay back in the water, her hair floating around her, her heart seemed to be pumping faster with the excitement of going to Harley Place the following day. Or maybe it was the anticipation of spending a whole day with Bennett.
The incident of the man with the knife had given her even more respect for him; she hadn’t expected that he was capable of standing up to a thug. The way he disarmed the man was marvellous, almost as if he’d spent some time on the streets too. Yet his toughness was tinged with compassion, both for the man and Sal. Hope’s mother always used to say that was the mark of a real man.
If Betsy had been alive she would have been able to ask her if this feeling she had for the doctor was something more than mere admiration. Back in her village, people always used the expression that he or she was ‘sweet on’ someone. Was that what this was?
It felt sweet. A glimpse of Bennett was like the sun coming through clouds, or the perfume of a rose as you passed through a garden. Was that what Matt felt for Amy? Was it love?
‘I hope you like roast beef, Hope?’
At Alice’s question Hope was startled out of her reverie. ‘I love it,’ she said hurriedly, wondering if she’d missed something important by drifting away in her own thoughts. ‘But I haven’t had it for a very long time.’
‘I don’t think you’ve had anything much to eat for a very long time,’ Alice retorted. ‘It’s a wonder you look so well.’
‘That was just the best dinner ever,’ Hope sighed as she scraped up the last morsel of roast beef and vegetables from her plate. She beamed happily at Alice. ‘But it’s going to put me off the food at St Peter’s.’
‘I hope you’ve still got room for pudding,’ Alice smiled. ‘I’ve made a syllabub.’
‘I’ll make room,’ Hope said.
‘It’s good to see you eating so heartily,’ Bennett said.
He didn’t have to add that it proved she was still healthy, Hope had noticed him studying her when he got back from visiting his patients.
‘It looks as if it’s going to rain at last,’ Hope remarked, for the patch of sky she could see through the kitchen window was darkening. ‘Will the cholera disappear when it turns colder?’
‘That has been the usual pattern,’ Bennett replied. ‘I certainly hope so. None of us can cope with much more of it.’
‘What will I do when it does stop?’ Hope asked. ‘Will I be put on another ward?’
‘You certainly will,’ he grinned impishly. ‘In fact, I think you might almost be able to choose which one yourself because Sister Martha is full of praise for you. Though I would suggest you had a couple of days’ rest before that.’
‘Perhaps you could go and see your family?’ Alice suggested.
Hope blushed. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Albert ordered you to stay away?’ Bennett asked gently.
Hope nodded glumly.
Alice began to ask what right he had to stop her coming home, but Bennett interrupted, asking about the pudding.
When the meal was over, Alice wouldn’t hear of Hope helping with the washing up and suggested she went into the garden with Bennett. ‘It might be the last chance you have in a while for sitting out in the fresh air,’ she said, looking up at the dark sky.
The garden was quite small, but walled and very pretty with many Michaelmas daisies coming into flower. Bennett led her down to a bench seat at the bottom, and for a little while made idle chit-chat about the flowers, the dinner and the possibility of rain.
‘Come on now, tell me what really happened with Albert,’ he said suddenly. ‘Until you air it, it’s always going to hurt.’
‘I told you, I fell out with him, he was a bully, that’s all.’
Bennett shook his head. ‘I thought we were friends, Hope. So why can’t you trust me with this?’
Hope kept her eyes on her hands clasped in her lap. ‘I suppose it’s because I’m afraid of how you will react,’ she said.
‘Do you mean I might think less of you?’
‘No.’ Her head jerked up. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘But Albert did?’
She nodded.
‘To you?’
Hope sighed, guessing that Bennett suspected Albert had raped her, for Betsy had thought that too. ‘No, not to me, but I caught him doing something bad and he hit me and said I was to leave his house and never return. I daren’t return, Bennett, Nell will suffer and other people I care about.’
‘A mere gardener couldn’t be powerful enough for that. Surely if he was the one who had done something wrong, then no one could suffer but him?’
‘He found a letter,’ she said reluctantly. ‘He knows something which he will tell.’
‘So he’s a blackmailer?’
Betsy and Gussie had quizzed her endlessly about Albert when she first met them, but she had been resolute that she couldn’t tell them the whole story because of Rufus. Salacious tales about the nobility spread like wildfire, and even though she didn’t care that much about Sir William and Lady Harvey’s feelings she did still care very much about their son.
Yet she had always longed to unburden herself to someone, and she liked Bennett so much that she wanted him to understand just why she had to leave Briargate and her family. She also knew he would persist in questioning her anyway, and that he could be trusted to keep a secret to himself.
‘If I tell you, will you promise you will never interfere and try to go behind my back and sort it out for me?’ she asked. ‘And of course never tell anyone else?’
‘I promise,’ he said. ‘I only want to understand. That’s all.’ She told him then.
She began quite well, explaining about Nell and Lady Harvey being away and why she had to hide the letter from her Ladyship’s lover. But when she got to the point where she’d thought the upstairs window was banging and walked into the bedroom, she faltered.
‘Albert was in there? With whom?’ Bennett prompted. ‘Was it another of your sisters?’
She was embarrassed and shamed. Once again she could see the two men in the bed together and the sight horrified her again as much as it had on that terrible day.
‘No, it was Sir William,’ she finally blurted out.
‘Oh God,’ he exclaimed, and put his head in his hands. ‘I didn’t expect that.’
Having told him the very worst part, the rest was easier. The words tumbled out quickly as she wanted to get it over and done with.
‘I fainted by Bristol Bridge and Gussie and Betsy helped me and took me home with them,’ she finished up.
Bennett let out a low whistle. ‘I understand now why you would be so afraid of Albert,’ he sighed. ‘As for my promise I wouldn’t interfere, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t even know how to begin dealing with it. But do you think Nell knew what Albert was?’
‘I know she didn’t,’ Hope said. ‘He was always cold with her; but how could she ever think something like that of him? I doubt she even knew such a thing existed. She might be sixteen years older than me, but I think I am more worldly now than she will ever be.’
‘My heart goes out to you,’ Bennett said, his voice deep with real emotion. ‘No young girl should have to learn of such things in that way. Albert deserves to be horsewhipped, not for his leanings, I’m sure he can’t help those, but for his brutality to you, his deceit to your sister and the wretched blackmail.’
‘So do you understand why I can’t go back there?’ Hope asked.
‘Only too well,’ Bennett sighed. ‘He’s got you over a barrel. Only the truth would satisfy your brothers and sisters that you didn’t leave willingly. But if you
do
tell them what really happened they’ll want to attack Albert, and he’ll retaliate and hurt anyone he can.’
While it was good to know that Bennett saw the whole picture as it really was, Hope felt disappointed too. She supposed that at the back of her mind there had been a glimmer of belief that a clever man like him might come up with some kind of scheme where Albert got what he deserved, and everyone else remained safe from harm. But then, if there had been such a scheme, she would have thought of it herself by now.
‘So what am I to do?’ she asked.
Bennett took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I think you have to do what your heart tells you. Weigh up whether the need to see your family is greater than the fear of what Albert can do to Nell and the others you care about.’
Hope thought this over for a moment or two. ‘Sir William would claim I’d made the whole thing up, Lady Harvey would back him up to spare herself any disgrace, and Rufus would hate me for saying such things about his parents. As for Nell, she’d still be stuck with Albert, and it would be even worse for her then.’
‘It might make her leave him!’
‘She isn’t the kind to do that; she always believed marriage was for ever. And she’d lose her position at Briargate.’
‘You could bring her into Bristol with you. I could find her work somewhere.’
Hope shook her head sadly. ‘She’d be like a fish out of water in a city.’
‘Then it sounds as if you must leave well alone and make a newlife for yourself.’
That was the conclusion Hope had come to months ago, but having talked it through with Bennett and realized that he could see no workable alternative, she suddenly felt desolate and began to cry.
He put his arms around her and drew her to his shoulder, rocking her to and fro. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s like the Judgment of Solomon, isn’t it? I feel for you, my dear, for Albert is a wicked, wicked man and by all that’s right he deserves punishment. But I think he’ll get it one day. I also believe you will get your family back in the fullness of time. Perhaps you must keep that as your goal and make sure, when you are finally reunited, they will be proud of you for what you’ve achieved.’