“Rubbish! ” she said, as if she felt uncomfortable. “Red hair and freckles don’t go with dream maidens… and you always knew I had a temper. I’m sorry now I refused to sell you Tremarth, but you can have it any time if you want it.”
“I’ll let you know when I want it,” he replied, in rather a curious, non-committal way.
She made a restless movement as if she was about to leave him.
“I’m afraid we deceived Miss Brown outrageously… All that about Aunt Jane stipulating I should marry you in her will, and you losing a legacy if you refused to marry me. I know we’d agreed upon it all in advance, but it couldn’t have sounded very convincing… although Claire was apparently taken in! Do you think you’ll be in any danger when she finds out that none of it is true?”
He answered in a detached way:
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so… And in any case, before I hand over that cheque to her I’ll get her to sign a slip of paper that will provide me with a safeguard for the future.” He lighted a cigarette in an abstracted way, cast it from him a moment later and ground it out beneath the heel of his shoe. “All the same, thanks for being so extremely co-operative… And while we’re on the subject of thanks, thank you for everything you’ve done for me here! ”
“It – it was nothing.” But she coloured almost painfully, and looked down at her slim, bare arms, that were stained with fruit juice, for she had been picking raspberries before she joined him on the terrace. “I – I’ll have to go and get on with my jam-making. I left some bubbling on the stove I hope Hannah has the sense to give it a stir.”
“I hope so, too,” he said quietly.
“I – expect you’ll be going back to London very soon now,” she suggested, horribly afraid they were running out of conversation, and that jam-making was to be her lot in future. “As I said just now, if you really want Tremarth, of course I’ll sell it to you! I’ll even let it go for
– for a very reasonable price! I feel you should have it. You’re a Tremarth, and the house is still full of the portraits of your ancestors, and – ”
“Charlotte, stop babbling!” He reached out, and suddenly she was pulled up against him, and the grey eyes that had once struck her as hard and flinty but were now bright with laughter and warm with tenderness provided her with the thrill of her life as they came within an inch or so of her own. He rubbed his cheek against hers, and his eyes looked deliberately into hers. He put a slim brown hand beneath her chin and tilted it. “Stop talking a lot of nonsense when you know perfectly well that it’s nonsense. You and I have been engaged to marry one another – even although it was not official – since we were children. I adored you then, and I adore you now… Rather more so, perhaps, since I’ve discovered what an excellent nurse you are, and if you think I entered into all that tomfoolery with Claire just because I found her fascinating and irresistible then the sooner you get the notion out of your head the better! I knew perfectly well what I was doing when I allowed her to announce our engagement, and if it made you jealous and unhappy then that was the end result I set out to achieve. Before I met with my accident it seemed to me you were as hard as Cornish granite… and just because I was suddenly laid low and you had to help nurse me was no real indication that you had in any way changed. I had to find out!”
“Oh, Richard,” she exclaimed, with a sigh of unutterable happiness, as she looked up at him with the most revealing pair of big brown eyes he had ever seen, or ever hoped to see, “is that absolutely true?”
“It’s so true that I marvel now that it’s all over that I had the endurance to go through with it! You see, I’m one of those admittedly very few and far between types on whom the devastating effect of a blonde is completely lost, for I don’t trust them… and Claire is very blonde, as you will admit. And apart from this disadvantage redheads have charmed me all my life! ”
She thrust him away from her for a few seconds in order to make absolutely certain he was completely serious, and then overcome by shyness buried her face in the front of his jacket. She asked him a very pertinent question.
“What made you think that your accident had changed my-my attitude towards you?”
“Every time I saw you looking at Claire I felt my heart bound! You’re too basically nice to be hostile, but I felt she was slightly more than you could stomach… and you fell in with my little scheme for getting rid of her with such transparent eagerness. Altogether, in the past week or so, I’ve found you very transparent.
“Ever since we brought you here and I was so terribly afraid you might be badly injured?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember waking up on the settee and finding Hannah and I bending over you? We’d been talking about turning Tremarth into a nursing-home, and it looked as if you were to be our first patient.”
“Which I was. As a matter of fact, still am – until that Mackay fellow says I’m fit enough to leave! ”
He put a hand under her chin and forced her face out into the open. He smoothed her soft cheek with his long index finger.
“There’s something else I remember about the night of the accident. I remember coming to my senses on a cold cliff-top, and finding that by some miracle I was lying almost at your feet. Remember?”
Her face worked a little as she nodded.
“It was a miracle… One moment I was certain you were dead – burned to death in the blazing wreck of your car! ” and she shuddered and clutched at him – “and the next there you were, talking almost rationally, saying something about being thrown clear, and not fastening your seat-belt. I don’t think I’ve ever been so profoundly grateful for anything in my life! ” His sound arm crushed her to him. He spoke huskily into her hair.
“I’m glad I ended up at your feet. It was highly suitable.”
“But horribly cold and wet on the grass of the cliff-top-”
“Never mind the cliff-top. I was referring to the fact that fate always seemed to intend you to walk over me, although on that highly fortunate
– for me – occasion you were plainly too shocked to do anything of the kind. I shall never forget your face when I opened my eyes in the drawing-room here at Tremarth and saw that every scrap of colour had left your face, and your eyes were so big and horror-stricken they actually worried me. Shortly after that I was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that you were also conscience-stricken. You proved that when you turned your own bedroom over to me, and actually allowed me to crawl into the warmth and comfort of your bed! I shall never forget how sublimely comfortable it felt after the horror of that drawing room sofa! I liked the smell of your sheets, too – ” He wrinkled his nose. “I wished I could have prevented you changing them the next day! ”
'She put back her head and studied him with the faintest hint of suspicion.
“That night… when you said you didn’t remember who you were, or anything about the accident… did you really think I was a complete and absolute stranger bending over you?”
For one instant his eyes avoided hers, and then he smiled slightly and inhaled the perfume of her hair-a curl of which was brushing against his cheek.
“Shall we say that for twenty-four hours I was genuinely confused about a good many things? But when Claire arrived with all those flowers I was so badly startled because it looked as if she was about to take possession of me that my memory began, most conveniently, to bestir itself. And when I understood perfectly that she had the coldblooded intention of trading on what she believed to be a far more serious condition than it actually was I became both wary and alert. I realised it was somewhat dangerous allowing her to believe my mind was a blank, but as I have already explained it seemed a good opportunity to find out what she was up to… and there was the added inducement of making you jealous! I wonder whether you realise that from the moment you caught sight of all those flowers in my room your expression gave away your determination to remove them as speedily as possible? You’d bought quite a lot of things for me in Truro that afternoon, and to find me reclining in a bower of flowers, with a lovely lady seated at my bedside, was plainly almost too much for you! ”
Charlotte laughed… But the recollection of her annoyance on that particular afternoon, and the instantaneous dislike she had taken to Claire Brown, very quickly sobered her.
“I hated her,” she admitted, and once more buried her face in his shoulder.
Richard made a faint sound which could have been a mildly amused laugh… and then she felt his fingers stroking her hair, he spoke huskily, in a way that was new to her, and it actually seemed to her that his whole body was trembling.
“There was no need for you to hate her,” he said softly, practically inaudibly, into her hair. “There was never any need for you to dislike her. In all my life, I’ve loved and desired only one woman, and that is you! ”
She reached up and caught at his hands, and dragged one of them up against her.
“Is that true, Richard?” she asked.
