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Many people the worse for drink, both men and women, lay slumped in doorways of dilapidated hovels.
    Then in 1835 Lady Harvey gave birth to Rufus, the long-awaited son and heir.
    Nell was not present at the birth, this time an experienced midwife and a doctor from Bath were in attendance. Rufus was small but robust with a fine pair of lungs, and as blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned as both his parents.
    No wetnurse was brought in – Lady Harvey fed him herself, and her joy and Sir William’s affected the entire household. Nell was happy for them too, but at the same time she couldn’t help but consider the differences between the life Hope would have and that of her younger half-brother. But when Lady Harvey asked Ruth, Nell’s younger sister, to be Rufus’s nursemaid, she felt a kind of smug satisfaction that at least both children were being brought up by the Renton family.
    For the first four years of Hope’s life, fortune had smiled on Nell’s family. With mild winters, good harvests, and the older children and their father in regular work, it was a time of relative plenty. There were no more babies and Meg often said she thought she was now too old for childbearing. Although the cottage seemed even more cramped when everyone was home for a visit, it rang with laughter and joy.
    But the happy times ended abruptly when Prudence and Violet, aged only nine and eight, died of scarlet fever. The Reverend Gosling said they should get down on their knees and thank the Lord that Joe, Henry and Hope were spared, for it usually took the youngest. But Nell at least was convinced that the other children had been saved by her mother isolating the two sick ones in the outhouse before the younger ones could become infected.
    Child deaths were all too common – one in three babies died before their first birthday – but that didn’t make it any easier for her family to come to terms with losing Prudence and Violet. That was two years ago now, but they still mourned the girls, and often when Nell went home unexpectedly she’d find her mother crying. Yet Hope, with her loving and affectionate nature, helped. Meg often said that if it wasn’t for her she couldn’t have borne it.
    As Nell had predicted, no one had ever suspected that Hope was not a true Renton. Even the older children, on coming down the morning after her arrival to find a new baby in their mother’s arms, had just accepted that she was their sister, for all the other babies had arrived without any fanfare or fuss. Silas would sometimes wink at Nell when an effusive neighbour remarked how much Hope looked like him, but neither he nor her mother ever spoke of how she had come to them, not even when they were alone.
    Yet Nell still worried that as Hope got older, people would note her grace, the clearness of her skin, her slender limbs and delicate features, and see her as the thoroughbred she really was.
    ‘We came to meet you,’ Hope said sweetly as her older sister emerged from the wood. Just as Nell had expected, she was sitting down, demurely making a daisy chain, as if she’d never contemplated removing her clothes to climb a tree.
    ‘Give us a kiss then!’ Nell said with a smile, putting down her basket and opening her arms for all three children to come to her for a hug.
    Joe and Henry looked like a pair of scrawny ragamuffins with their wild black hair, dirty faces, bare feet and the seats out of their breeches. Aside from Joe being a couple of inches taller than Henry they were as alike as twins, and they had inherited the standard male Renton features of slightly sticking-out ears and over-large noses. But even if neither of them grew up to be considered handsome they had warm, affectionate natures, and responded with enthusiasm to Nell’s hugs and kisses.
    With the children whooping and shouting, Nell walked on across the common. It was a beautiful day, unusually warm for May, the cow parsley towering over Hope’s head, and the air was full of