He is simply affected at the moment with a loss of memory, but Dr. Mackay says he may recover it at any moment…”
“Dr. Mackay!” Claire exclaimed, as if she had very little faith in him. “He’s the local G.P., isn’t he? And he’s probably had very little experience. I’m not at all sure Richard should be left to his tender mercies in any case.”
“I’m sure Dr. Mackay is perfectly competent to deal with this case,” Charlotte defended the local practitioner with a good deal of stiffness.
Richard put his head back – and it was such a shapely sleek, dark head in the sunlight and smiled at her.
“Oh, Mackay’s a very good chap,” he agreed. “I quite look forward to his visits… And as for Nurse Hannah, she’s wonderful. I’m surprised that she ever thought of giving up nursing.”
“And what about Miss Woodford?” Claire enquired, a trifle arctically. “Do you think it’s fair that she should have to devote so much of her time to looking after you and cooking for you? After all, there is no reason why she should do anything of the kind! ”
“True.” But Richard was still smiling lazily up at Charlotte, and to her slight confusion there was almost a caressing look in his eyes. “Do you mind very much, Charlotte?” he asked suddenly. “Looking after me, I mean? And making all those junkets, and things?”
“Of course not,” Charlotte asserted sturdily. Richard spread his shapely hands in a Continental gesture.
“Well, there you are! ” he exclaimed. “Charlotte doesn’t mind.” “Miss Woodford is far too polite to admit that she minds,” Claire declared with a good deal of emphasis – and particularly on the „Miss Woodford’. “So far as I have been able to gather she inherited this house and its contents from her aunt, and came down here to enjoy life and take advantage of living beside the sea. But all she has been permitted to do since your arrival has been climb the stairs many unnecessary times a day and fetch and carry for you. And that on top of having to literally dig you out of the wreckage of your car and bring you here.”
“Did you dig me out of the wreckage of my car?” Richard asked Charlotte, still smiling in a provocative and mildly quizzical manner. “Or is the story that I bounced out of it myself and landed quite literally at your feet rather more truthful and exact than the other version?”
“I certainly didn’t go anywhere near your car,” Charlotte assured him quietly. “For one thing, it was blazing like an inferno! ”
Miss Brown shuddered.
“How horrible!” she exclaimed. Then she looked at Richard as if for the first time she marvelled that he was alive. She bent forward and laid a hand caressingly on his knee. “Poor Richard,” she said very softly. “What a frightful thing to happen to you! ”
“I am alive,” Richard said shortly, and moved his rug-covered knee very slightly, so that her shapely white hand fell away. “I personally am extremely grateful for that – and grateful to Miss Woodford and Nurse Cootes for their care and succour.”
Miss Brown started to frown again – and the frown bit into her very white forehead like a cleft.
“There is still this question of your memory,” she pursued the subject unrelentingly. “It’s no use listening to people like Dr. Mackay and waiting for the moment when you remember who you are and everything else that is connected with you____________________ I do honestly think it would be best if we removed you to a nursing- home in London, and then I can go ahead with the arrangements for our marriage. It would, probably solve all sorts of problems if we got married immediately, and then I can devote myself to the task of looking after you.”
“Inside a nursing-home?” He lay back in his chair and regarded her queerly, with a cold, half humorous smile curving the comers of his mouth, and a rather unkind gleam of interest in his eyes. “Are you suggesting, Claire my dear, that we get married and spend our honeymoon in a nursing-home of your choice? Because I’m not at all sure what the rules and regulations are concerning that sort of thing! ” “Don’t be silly, darling.” She flushed and looked 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.