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the scent of hawthorn blossom. Nell was looking forward to being with her mother for a couple of hours and to finding out how Alice and Toby were faring.
    Alice had gone into service at a big house in Bath a short while after Prudence and Violet died. The Reverend Gosling had arranged it, and six months later Toby joined the household too, as a junior footman. The little cottage seemed almost spacious with only three children left, and although her mother claimed to like it that way, Nell sensed that wasn’t strictly true.
    Meg was hoeing the vegetable patch when Nell arrived, but she dropped the hoe and ran to hug her daughter.
    ‘The weeds can wait,’ she laughed when Nell offered to help. ‘They come up every day, but you don’t.’
    Her hair had turned grey after Prudence and Violet died, and her face was becoming very lined, yet in many ways she looked younger and healthier than she did when Henry was born. Meg said it was because her body had at last recovered from childbearing, and it was true she was shapely again. But Nell thought it was more likely to be because she ate and slept better, and that she had time to herself at last. She was happy tending her vegetables, feeding the chickens and milking the cow that Nell had bought with some of the money from Bridie.
    They sat down on the rough bench Silas had made by the back door, and Nell took from her basket the currant buns Cook had given her to take home, and passed them round.
    The three children sat on the ground in front of Nell and Meg, their dark eyes lighting up at the sight of the large iced buns. Matt and James had been very different in character as small boys, but they had been inseparable, and Joe and Henry were the same.
    Joe had paid attention during his lessons with the Reverend Gosling and he could read and write very well, but Henry was a dreamer. If he was sent out to chase the chickens into their coop, he was quite likely to forget what he’d been asked to do and wander off watching rabbits or foxes. He would rather draw an animal on his slate than write words or do sums. Joe was more reliable and conscientious, very much the brains of the duo, but he wasn’t as physically strong or daring as Henry.
    ‘Don’t the vale look grand today?’ Nell exclaimed. May was her favourite month, neither too hot nor too cold, and she loved the spring flowers and blossom. It was also the time when the view from the cottage garden was at its best.
    The Rentons’ land sloped sharply down to the river. Here and there a hawthorn was in full flower, and so many buttercups grew amongst the grass that it was more yellow than green. The blossom on the apple and pear trees was fading now and the primroses were all but done, but down under the trees by the river bank, and in the woods on the opposite side, there was a rich haze of bluebells. Beyond the wood the ground rose sharply again, bright green with young shoots of wheat and barley, and the birds did their best to drown the sound of the thudding from the copper mill at Woolard with their singing.
    Nell loved the gardens at Briargate, but she loved this more. Here she could believe life had something good in store for her, while at Briargate she was always reminded she was only a servant.
    ‘I caught a trout the day afore yesterday,’ Joe boasted. ‘It were as big as this.’ He held his two hands some fifteen inches apart.
    ‘It were me who tickled it. You only got it in the sack,’ Henry exclaimed indignantly.
    Meg looked at Nell with a raised eyebrow. ‘More like six inches. And they came home late for supper covered in mud.’
    At this lack of appreciation the boys ran off down towards the river to see if they could catch another one. But Hope remained, wanting to hear all Nell’s gossip from Briargate.
    Hope had never been to the big house, but she’d seen Sir William and Lady Harvey at church on Sundays, and with two sisters and a brother working there, she’d heard enough about the place to