by Susan Barrie
“How comforting,” Richard remarked. He lifted his eyes to the clear blue of the sky, and as the sunlight poured over his naturally dark skin and the clear-cut outline of his features it seemed to her that they grew rather hard, and in fact the line of his lips grew so thin that the attractive shapeliness of his mouth disappeared for a moment, and there was nothing but a taut, cold line… a bleak and forbidding line.
“What’s wrong, Richard?” she asked, sensing that something was very wrong.
“Quite a lot.” Very deliberately he removed her hand from his arm, and then fastidiously dusted his sleeve with the tips of the fingers of his free hand. “Your reassurances are a trifle hollow, for you appear to have neglected to do your homework. There is no junior partner in my firm of solicitors, only two very senior men, neither of whom is out of the country at the moment. I received a highly concerned letter from one of them a couple of days ago. Tom Armitage, who used to be my partner
– we agreed to dissolve our partnership just before I came down here to Cornwall, and if he has not already vacated his desk and my premises and ceased to meddle in my affairs I shall have to go into the matter without delay – is in no position to send me documents. I’m afraid, if you think he has; then you’ve both been barking up the wrong tree. And as for that marriage settlement you’ve been dwelling upon so fondly… well, I hate to have to tell you this, but there isn’t going to be any marriage settlement, for the very excellent reason that I don’t think you and I are going to marry one another after all! ”
She gasped, and found it impossible to conceal a profound and almost ludicrous feeling of dismay.
“You’ve got your memory back!” she exclaimed.
He turned towards her and his bleak lips smiled coolly.
“I’m thankful to say I have,” he admitted. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been remembering things very nicely for days… ever since you came down here to overwhelm me with your attentiveness. But I wanted to find out how clever you were, and to what extent you were prepared to take advantage of my supposed amnesia. You and I have been quite friendly for some time – that is true. But we were never even on the doorstep of becoming engaged. It was Tom you fancied all along, wasn’t it? And Tom you proposed to marry, when and if you could between you pull off a worthwhile deal that would set me back a few thousands, and provide the two of you with a little nest-egg. I know all about Tom’s schemes, and the advantage that would be his if I was unwise enough to sign one of his precious documents. But I’m an awfully hard-headed man, my dear Claire, even when I’m suffering from amnesia! ”
She stood quite still in the very middle of a handsome slab of Cornish granite, and suddenly stamped her foot in sheer fury and vexation.
“You’re a… I despise you for being quite so despicable! ” she told him, her fair skin mottled with rage. “To pretend that you couldn’t remember anything… and to know so much! ” “Too much for your comfort and convenience?” He smiled at her almost lazily this time.
She bit her lower lip so hard that it bled.
“I’ve devoted a lot of time to you…”
“And spent a lot of money on grapes and things! But I enjoyed them,” he assured her, and showed her his excellent white teeth in a broader smile.
She glared at him for several seconds longer, and then abruptly her expression altered. She began to look vaguely triumphant.
“But we are engaged to be married!” she reminded him.
“You may consider yourself engaged to me, but I have no hesitation in informing you that I never intended to marry you. It was you who made all the running for reasons that seemed quite excellent to you, and I simply agreed to be lured into an engagement for reasons that seemed just as excellent to me.”
“You’re beastly and cold-blooded.”
“But most fortunately free.”
“Oh, no!” She smiled triumphantly. “We announced our engagement publicly, and Miss Woodford and Nurse Cootes are well aware that we plan to be married. Whether or not you were still suffering from amnesia when you agreed to marry me is of little or no importance. The important thing is that you did ask me to marry you! ”
“If my memory serves me correctly it was you who made the suggestion, and I agreed as you said just now.”
“It doesn’t matter… We are officially engaged!”
“Oh, no… Not if I have to take you into court and accuse you and Armitage of conspiracy.” And from the icy 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.
&nbs
p; “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.”
“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 accide
nt 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?”