coldness of his smile she realised he was capable of doing just that. “And besides…”
Charlotte had just emerged from the house on to the terrace, and he extended a hand to her.
“Charlotte, come here!”
She came-as meekly as if she always did his bidding without a moment of hesitation.
“Charlotte, tell Miss Brown the true situation… tell her about your prior claim, and about that tricky memory of mine! We’ve known one another for years, haven’t we? And it was always agreed that we would marry! Why otherwise was I wasting my time in Cornwall when I might have been making money in Town?”
Although it affected her with extraordinary and conflicting sensations she allowed him to take her hand and hold it tightly, and with her eyes fixed steadily on the charming but distorted countenance of Claire Brown she solemnly echoed that what Richard Tremarth had just said was the truth.
They had known one another for years, and they were engaged to be married! Unfortunately, immediately following his accident he did lose his memory, and Miss Brown arrived on the scene while he was temporarily unsure both of who he was and his commitments. It had been a dreadful time for her, Charlotte… But she was sure now that she knew Miss Brown would recognise her prior claim. They couldn’t both marry him and become Mrs. Richard
Tremarth, and owing to that unfortunate amnesia the law would uphold the claim of the first fiancee.
Not that there was any question, of course, of taking the matter as far as that.
“Isn’t there?” Claire gnashed her teeth, and possibly for the first time in her life she looked almost ugly. “That’s what you think, you unconvincing conspirators. Do you think I don’t know when people are speaking the truth and when they’ve hatched a story which has no foundation whatever in fact?”
Richard glanced with a quizzical gleam in his eyes at Charlotte.
“Would you say our lifelong attachment had no foundation whatever in fact?” he asked her.
She continued to rise nobly to the occasion, although her newly discovered powers of deception and inventiveness amazed her.
“Hardly,” she answered. “I think I was about six years old when you first announced your intention of marrying me, and after that it was more or less a yearly affair. And of course when my aunt left me Tremarth we decided immediately that this was where we would live together as soon as a small formality like a marriage ceremony had been entered into. We had actually got around to discussing the date of the wedding when you had your accident. You were on your way to have dinner with Hannah and I when the crash occurred It was pretty obvious,” smiling at him sideways, “that you couldn’t get here fast enough.”
“I gathered from the landlord of the Three Sailors that you and Miss Cootes dined at the inn that night, and Richard’s dinner was being kept hot for him in the kitchen because he was late,” Claire retorted with a stony face. “And in any case he was travelling in the direction of the inn when the crash occurred.”
Charlotte shrugged her shoulders.
“You can’t blame me if my memory is a bit faulty after all the anxiety of the past few days,” she extricated herself from a slight mistake with the air of dismissing a trifle.
“All the same, I say that you are making the whole thing up… except that I believe you when you say you knew one another as children. That much can be verified locally. But I’d like to see the court that would uphold an engagement contracted when you were neither of you adults.”
Richard looked once again at Charlotte.
“Tell her,” he said.
“According to the terms of my Aunt Jane’s will,” she responded, licking her lips because the outrageousness of this lie appalled her even while she uttered it, “unless I marry Richard I can’t keep Tremarth. And if he declines to marry me he will forfeit a very considerable legacy-”
Claire looked triumphant.
“Well, that’s all right,” she declared. “Richard has plenty of money of his own… enough to keep us both in the condition of comfort and luxury to which I’m accustomed. You see, my father had a lot of money, but he speculated unwisely… and recently I’ve had to draw in my horns.” She smiled sweetly at Richard. “Shall we stop this and discuss our own plans?” she suggested.
His whole face hardened.
“How much?” he asked.
“To buy me off?”
“What else?”
A cold look of frustration crossed her face, and then she seemed to relax.
“All right, I know when I’m beaten… But your tactics are hardly gentlemanly. I hope our little Charlotte here will not regret it when she finds herself married to you.” She named a sum that caused Charlotte to open her mouth and gasp openly, and then added another condition. “No case against Tom Armitage. And not even a whisper of criticism of his behaviour as a result of this little episode.”
Richard appeared to hesitate for a moment, and then agreed to her terms. But his tone was withering and his voice like ice.
“I don’t care two pence, now that the danger is over, about your somewhat naive attempt to inveigle me into matrimony, but I would like to deal more satisfactorily with Armitage. However, if it means that I’m to be rid of the two of you-”
“One stroke of the pen – and a complete safeguard for yourself,” Claire told him. Then she, too, smiled a little wryly. “This is the very first time I’ve known my charms to fail so absolutely,” she confessed. “Usually I can twist men – most men, that is! – round my little finger. Apparently you’ve a very resistant little finger, Richard! ”
And then she gathered up her white straw hat, her gloves and her handbag from the lap of one of the comfortable terrace chairs, and turned on her heel.
“I’ll see you at the inn, Richard,” she said. “Or if you don’t feel strong enough yet to visit it you can send your cheque to me there.”
Charlotte stood beside Richard on the terrace and watched her go, and she couldn’t deny a certain uneasiness of mind because it seemed to her that they had conspired to bring about the humiliation of an exceptionally graceful and elegant young woman. With such advantages, such sun-bright hair and slender legs, such poise, distinction and cream and gold loveliness Claire Brown should live by right in such a gracious setting as that provided by the sweeping lawns of Tremarth, the mellow bricks of the old house, and the blaze of blue sea at the foot of the cliffs.
But unfortunately there was another side to her, and Charlotte had to admit to herself that it was a peculiarly nasty side – an acquisitive side, an unscrupulous side. And Richard had been perfectly right to be offended by her method of making use of him.
And what man likes to be made use of? Certainly not when the girl is very pretty! ”
“If – if she had not so readily fallen into your trap If she had refused to be bought off with the right amount of dignity, would you – would you have forgiven her?” Charlotte asked, when Claire was out of sight round a bend in the drive.
“Certainly not! I thought all along she was after something, and I more than suspected she was involved with Tom Armitage. At the back of my mind, even while my memory was still playing me tricks, I knew there was some connection between her and Armitage.”
“The thing I’m not at all certain about,” Charlotte confessed, as they stood there with the sunshine falling all about them, and the blueness and sparkle of the sea dazzling their eyes immediately in front of them, “is when exactly you recovered your memory. Was it suddenly coinciding with the arrival of Claire? Or were you beginning to remember things even before that?”
He turned to her smilingly.
“I’d recollected everything I’d ever known about you before Claire arrived, but I’m afraid I took rather a base advantage of you. I didn’t want you to know how completely I’d recovered my memory because it was rather nice living in a vacuum, and being ministered to by you was very novel and rather delightful. You’d been so careful to conceal your softer side from me that I hardly suspected that it existed, and when I discovered that it did exist… Well! ” “Well what?” she asked, looking at him rather dubiously.
“It was quite a wonderful experience! After being treated in such a hostile fashion when I asked you to sell me Tremarth… And I understood perfectly, once I’d made the discovery that you had a softer side, why it was that you’d always held me in a kind of thrall! You were a dream-maiden, someone one didn’t for- get.”
