drawn to one another, and in a matter of weeks or months they might have cemented their present friendship by becoming engaged – or married! Doctors needed wives, and Hannah would make a wonderful doctor’s wife… and Charlotte was reasonably certain that if Dr. Mackay asked her to become his wife she would say ‘yes’!
Looked at in a very dispassionate light she would be very silly if she did not.
Then, with or without a medical certificate from Mackay, Richard Tremarth would almost certainly be marrying the lovely golden-headed Claire Brown in a very short space of time from now. He might have memories of a small redheaded sprite of a girl who had plagued him once, but he would marry the young woman who had hastened all the way from London to sit at his bedside as soon as she learned that he had been involved in an accident.
Charlotte began to shiver in the middle of the lawn, and she turned to retrace her steps towards the house. As always, when she was confronted with it – even under cover of soft and silken darkness – she lifted her eyes to it. She supposed she had loved it always, right from those early days when she had stayed in it with her aunt… And now more than ever she felt an almost passionate attachment to it.
If Richard asked her again to sell it she would refuse. She would go on refusing and refusing!
As she stepped through the lighted French window of the drawing-room she recoiled for a moment in alarm, for instead of being empty, as she had left it, a man was reclining at full length on one of the brocade-covered settees… the one in front of the television set, in fact.
Richard Tremarth was wearing his dressing- gown, and a silk scarf with polka-dots tucked in at the neck. His hair was beautifully brushed and gleaming, he had shaved very well that morning, and his chin was still smooth. He wore red morocco slippers, pale violet pyjamas, and a solid gold wrist-watch which he was consulting as she walked into the room.
“It’s too late for you to be wandering about alone out of doors in this remote spot,” he told her severely. “Not only are your shoes too thin and the grass almost certain to be heavy with dew, and therefore you’re risking a chill by getting your feet wet, but I don’t like the idea of you wandering about out there alone.”
“Was that why you got up and decided to come down here and keep me company?” she asked.
“It was one of my reasons,” he admitted. “Fortunately that box over there is switched off, and we can talk. And I have several things I want to say to you.”
“Yes?” she said, sitting down opposite him. “Nurse Cootes and the doc won’t be back yet… very likely not for some considerable while. That is if they’re sensible, and follow their inclinations. And that gives us quite a lot of time to make some plans.”
“Plans?”
“Yes; plans.” And he smiled at her as if he realised that for the moment he must humour her, as if he was humouring a child.
CHAPTER VIII
A WEEK went by and Richard Tremarth, in the old home of the Tremarth family, recovered his strength and regained most of his old vigour, without apparently managing at the same time to recover his memory. He seemed almost to luxuriate in this particular phase of his convalescence, delighting, apparently, in doing nothing, and finding the amenities – or lack of amenities at Tremarth – by no means a hindrance to his increasing well-being.
And the one thing that quite obviously did not trouble him was his failure to remember who he was. He accepted it that he was Richard Tremarth, that the old house of Tremarth had once belonged to his relatives, and as a house he admired it enormously. But he did not repeat his offer to purchase it from his present hostess, who was not a Tremarth but seemed to fit into the house and background very well.
He entered with a kind of amiable quiescence into Claire Brown’s plans to marry him. He was obviously in no hurry to marry, but he seemed quite willing to listen when she discussed the various arrangements she was making with him. It was very obvious, also, that he admired her… Sometimes Charlotte, who seemed to watch him very carefully these days, thought he admired her very much indeed. And in all honesty, and without attempting to undervalue Miss Brown in any way, she could not think of any reason why he should not admire her. Feel, indeed, a great urge to become her husband.
She was so enchantingly pretty, was never seen with a hair out of place, or a shine on her nose, or lips that required an application of lipstick. And her clothes must have cost her a great deal of money, for they were always beautifully made and charmingly designed, and were undoubtedly ‘couture’ clothes. And if she had been a top model she would have made a fortune for herself.
Charlotte sometimes suspected, from the way she moved, and her air of somewhat consciously desiring people to admire her, that there had been a time in her life when she had modelled clothes. She found it quite impossible to imagine her undertaking secretarial duties… and wondered why she still stuck to the pretence that she had once acted as Richard’s own private secretary.
He had a secretary in London who contacted them sometimes, but Richard was not allowed to enter into any business conversations with her. For one thing, he was not yet in a fit condition to enter into business transactions, and he appeared to have not the smallest desire to do anything of the kind. He was quite content to laze away the days at Tremarth, sitting on the terrace or one of the green swathes of lawn and watching the sea as if he could never tire of its endless, restless movement, or walking slowly about the gardens, admiring the flower borders and the wonderful Tremarth roses. He took to detaching rose buds from their stems and attaching them to the front of his jacket, and inhaling their perfume with a quiet air of appreciation and satisfaction. Sometimes he stood for long periods in front of Aunt Jane’s portrait above the fireplace in the hall, and on one occasion Charlotte caught him addressing Aunt Jane.
“I wish I could remember you,” he said to her. “You must have been a most excellent and worthy woman.”
He bent to inhale the perfume of the rose in his lapel, and then he looked up at her again.
“And you have a somewhat unusual niece,” he added.
Charlotte went away thoughtfully to the kitchen, and she remained thoughtful as she prepared the vegetables for lunch. That afternoon Claire arrived with a list of guests she intended inviting for the wedding, and she asked Richard whether there was anyone whose name he wished added to the list. Richard gave the matter his attention in the obliging way that was rather significant of his attitude to life these days, and then confessed that there was no one he could think of at the moment. Claire regarded him somewhat uncertainly, and whether or not it suddenly struck her that she was doing a strange thing arranging to marry at no very distant date a man who seemed quite unable to recollect that he ever had friends and acquaintances, and was quite unable to remember the name of one of them who might enjoy being invited to throw rice at him when he exchanged his state of bachelorhood for the married state.
She even began to look worried and reflective after a time – when the peculiarity of her position had time to sink in; and a short while later, while they were strolling on the terrace, she slipped a hand inside his arm and asked him whether he was really beginning to feel much more like himself.
“Oh, yes.” He gazed down at her with an unrevealing expression on his face, and then stared out across the sun-bathed lawn at the line of blue sea. “I’m feeling quite fit.”
“But you still don’t know who you are,… Or do you?” lifting harebell blue eyes to his face and trying to conceal the suspicion of doubt in her eyes, and the rather more alert, probing look.
“Do I – what?”
The bland blankness in the depths of his grey eyes baffled her. She began to feel vaguely frustrated.
“Know who you are? I mean, of course, you know who you are, because we’ve been able to offer you proof that you’re Richard Tremarth, with a flat in London and quite a comfortable income, and – and all the rest. You’ve business interests, too, but at the moment everything is being taken care of for you, and you don’t have to bother your head about that. I was having a word with your partner the other day, and he’s coming down to see you before the wedding, and of course he will be at the wedding. Your bank manager, too… As a matter of fact he’s also my bank manager. There are certain papers you’ll have to sign in the course of the next week, but there’s nothing complicated there, and your signature is all that is required.”
“Splendid,” Richard murmured lazily and contentedly. “You’re almost as useful as a business manager yourself, my sweet, and I consider myself fortunate to be marrying such a capable young woman. I hope it occurred to you,
