annoyed, and then almost immediately recovered her sense of purpose and returned to the attack with renewed determination. “You know perfectly well that what I meant when I said I could look after you was that I could do so in your flat if we are married. Naturally; while we are still only engaged I can only visit you in a nursing-home – or here so long as you remain here. But I feel quite strongly that you have made yourself a nuisance to Miss Woodford long enough.”
Once more Tremarth put back his head and looked upwards quizzically at Charlotte.
“And you agree with that, Charlotte?” he asked her again. “If you are honest, I mean?” “No.” She shook her head quite firmly. “I’d like you to remain here for as long as you choose to remain here, and I’m sure Dr, Mackay is of the opinion that you are already benefiting by the sea air. After all,” as if she was defending a secret urge to keep him there, and which she was quite sure Claire suspected her of being capable of attempting to do for some reason that was not yet quite clear – not shatteringly clear, that is – to Charlotte herself, “you haven’t been ill very long, and you haven’t given yourself a chance to feel steady on your feet, let alone regain your memory after such a frightful accident. Hannah and I both feel that you should take things a bit slowly for a time.”
“By which, of course, you mean that you wouldn’t recommend matrimony as yet? Not until I’m steady enough on my feet to take my bride in my arms and lift her over the threshold of my somewhat uninspiring London flat?”
Charlotte flushed brilliantly – far more brilliantly than Claire had flushed a moment ago as she hastily denied any such imputation.
“I think you’re steady enough on your feet… or you will be in a very short while if you continue to maintain improvement at your present rate; but not knowing very much about yourself – ”
“Or about my bride-to-be, if it comes to that!”
But Claire refused to look embarrassed by this reminder.
“You might be better off if you – if you stay where you are for another week or so, and allow us – Hannah and me – to look after you.”
Claire’s remarkable blue eyes developed a sparkle of pure malice as she put forward the suggestion:
“We could of course get married at once and honeymoon here! If Miss Woodford has no objection! If we did that I could help her and Nurse Cootes to take the very best possible care of you. Between us you’d be bound to make a remarkable and complete recovery in the shortest possible space of time! ”
But Charlotte, without realising it herself, looked so appalled by the prospect that Richard himself decided to end the discussion. And he did so in a suddenly curt and decisive manner.
“For goodness’ sake, Claire,” he begged her sharply, “stop talking about me as if I presented a problem, and do please get it into your head that I’m not exchanging my estate of bachelorhood at the present time for anyone – anyone, do you understand? And when I do get married I hope I’ll do so in a sufficiently fit condition to require neither nursing nor consultations about my state of health. Now, is that a tanker out there? It seems to be fairly close in shore, or making for the shore. Let’s hope it’s not planning to pile up on the rocks. This is a nasty part of the coast! ”
He placed a telescope, with which Charlotte had provided him, to a somewhat irritable eye, and the two girls glanced at one another for a moment, and then assumed an interest in the aspect of marine life that was temporarily engaging all his interest. Charlotte had the feeling that Claire was subduing a keen sense of frustration, and as for her… She only knew that she was conscious of a sense of respite. She was going to keep her patient for a little longer, and he certainly didn’t strike her as in any condition to get married, even had the girl he was contemplating marrying seemed somehow more suitable.
That night she took him a soothing milk drink before Hannah took over with his sleeping tablets, and somewhat to her embarrassment he returned to the subject they had been discussing that morning on the terrace.
“The whole point of my present situation is that I’ve got to recover my memory before I take any decisive steps,” he said to her. He was once more frowning and looking worried. “It seems absurd that I can’t even be absolutely certain that I did once propose to Claire,” he added.
“She would hardly say that you had done so if you hadn’t,” she replied, smoothing his top sheet as an excuse to keep her hands occupied.
“You don’t think she would?” and he stared hard at her.
“Would any woman as attractive as Miss Brown? There must be a lot of men in the world who would like to marry her.”
“You think she’s as attractive as all that?” “You said yourself only a few days ago that she’s almost unbelievably attractive.”
“So I did and so she is.” He lay back against his pillows and smiled at her – not as if he had anything very much to smile about, but as if he was suddenly rather drily amused. “I suppose I ought to consider myself an exceptionally fortunate man because she’s consented to become my wife! ”
“Well, don’t you?”
He smiled more widely, and even more drily.
“I don’t know. I feel like someone groping a perpetual fog, and although all that I see of Claire is very easy on the eye I simply can’t manage to recollect her… as I should be able to do if she’d ever made a very great impression on me.”
“When I first saw you at the Three Sailors you were very anxious to buy Tremarth. Was it because you were planning to get married, do you think, and you wanted somewhere familial where you could set up a home with Miss Brown?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know.” His eyes twinkled. “But I do know this house affects me in a most extraordinary way. I know that I’ve been here before, often – and I know that I always wanted to return to this place.”
“You can’t remember visiting here when you were a schoolboy?”
Another shake of the head answered her.
“You can’t remember my aunt? You were a little afraid of her, I believe, but in a way I suspect you were fond of her, too. She was quite a personality.
“And you? You tell me that you were often here during my visits?”
“On more than one of your visits. I treated you abominably, but you were always very kind to me – quite exceptionally kind considering I was such a little beast.” She looked concerned by the memory of her own beastliness, and the little she had done to repay him for his determined cherishing of her. “Even Aunt Jane thought I treated you rather shabbily.”
“And yet you refused to sell your house to me when I asked you to do so! ”
Startled, she looked at him.
“You – you remember that?”
His eyes avoided hers. He stared out of the window at the moonlit sea.
“I didn’t say so. I think you must have told me so yourself.” He frowned at the shimmering pathway that was lying like a golden sword-thrust across the gently heaving indigo bosom of the restless Atlantic. There are occasions when, I suppose, you could say that I do remember some things… Not very relevant, perhaps.” “What sort of things?” she asked, with a queer sort of breathlessness.
He looked up and directly into her eyes.
“I remember a little girl with red hair.”
“Me?”
“Since your hair is very red now it must have been as remarkably red when you were a child! ”
“Then your amnesia must be getting better. You are recovering! ”
He shrugged against his pillows as if he was not prepared to agree with her entirely.
“You can say that if you wish, but it is when people are growing older that they remember in detail the things that happened to them when they were a child. I can remember nothing at all that has happened to me in recent years – not even your refusal to sell to me this house.” She felt a trifle perplexed by the slight perverseness of his attitude.
“But perhaps if you tried a little harder_”
“Do you think I’m not constantly trying to penetrate the fog that is all I’ve got left of a memory?” he demanded, with such a spurt of irritation that she practically recoiled noticeably. “Especially when it seems that short of a miracle happening I’m doomed to become a married man within a matter of a few weeks, possibly less.”
