The Captain's Mysterious Lady. Mary Nichols

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      He opened the door and stepped into the room. The invalid lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.

      ‘Madam,’ he said, moving over to stand beside her. She looked small and frail in the big bed.

      She turned towards him. ‘Captain Drymore. That is right, is it not? I have remembered your name correctly?’

      ‘Yes, that is my name. Can you tell me yours?’

      A tear found its way down her cheek. ‘I must have had a really bad bang on the head, for I cannot remember it. I have been lying here, racking my brain, and it just will not come.’

      He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Do not distress yourself. When you are with your relations again and in familiar surroundings, everything will come back to you.’

      ‘I expect you are right. But I must thank you for what you have done for me. The landlady has told me and it seems I am in your debt.’

      ‘Not at all. I did nothing.’ He stood up. ‘I came to say goodbye and to wish you well. I am leaving very early in the morning to continue my journey. Mrs Sadler has assured me I can safely leave you in her care until your relatives come for you.’

      ‘Then goodbye, sir. And again my gratitude.’

      He gave her a small bow and left the room. He did not like leaving her, but Sam was right, he could do nothing more for her. They were strangers who had passed a few hours in each other’s company, that was all. But she was a courageous little thing and he hoped she would make a full recovery. One day, perhaps, after he had seen justice done for Carrie, he might call at Blackfen Manor and enquire after her.

       Chapter Two

      Amy was walking across the fields surrounding Blackfen Manor, stopping every now and again to watch a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, or a skylark soaring, or gazing into the water of the river at her own reflection. It was like looking at a stranger. The image gazing back at her was unknown to her. She saw a woman in a plain unpadded gown, with fair hair tied back with a ribbon, a pale face and worried-looking eyes. It was the same when she looked in the mirror in her bedchamber, a stranger’s blue eyes looked back at her. ‘Who are you?’ she would whisper. Teasing her woolly brain about it only brought on a headache.

      ‘Do not fret, it will come to you, my dear,’ Aunt Matilda had said. She was the rounder and softer of the two ladies who had come to the King’s Arms to fetch her after the accident. The other, Aunt Harriet, was taller and thinner, more practical and down to earth. Both wore gowns with false hips, though nothing like as wide as those worn in London, and white powdered wigs. They were, so they told her, her mother’s sisters and their surname was Hardwick, none of which she could remember. She didn’t remember her own name, let alone that of anyone else.

      ‘You are Amy,’ Aunt Harriet had told her, when Matilda could not speak for tears. ‘And once we have you home, you will soon recover your memory. It is the shock of the accident that has taken it from you. You will be chirpy as a cricket tomorrow and then you can tell us what happened.’

      ‘I am glad I have found someone who knows who I am,’ she had told them. Lying in bed in the inn with no recollection of who she was, or how she had got there, had been frightening.

      ‘Of course we know who you are. Did we not bring you up from a child? You were coming to visit us, no doubt of it, though why you did not send in advance to say you were coming, we cannot think.’

      They had brought her to Blackfen Manor in their gig, put her to bed and sent for their physician. He had said she had no broken bones and her many bruises would fade in time. And he confidently predicted her memory would return once she was up and about surrounded by familiar things and people she loved and trusted. She had to believe him or she would have sunk into the depths of despair.

      But after two months, she could remember nothing of her life before that coach overturned, and very little of the immediate aftermath of that. Her aunts were kind to her, fed her with beef broth, roast chicken, sweetbreads and fruit tarts, saying she was far too thin, and provided her with clothes, having assumed her baggage had been stolen from the overturned coach. They fetched things to show her in an effort to jog her memory, saying, ‘Amy, do you remember this?’ Or ‘Look at this picture of us and your mama our papa had painted just before she married Sir John Charron.’

      ‘Amy Charron,’ she murmured.

      ‘No, not Amy Charron, not any more,’ Matilda had told her. ‘You are wed to Duncan Macdonald, have been these last five years.’

      ‘Married?’ This had surprised her, though why it should she did not know.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Where is he? Why was he not with me?’

      ‘We have no idea, though if he knew you were coming to visit us, he would not worry, would he? When he learns what has befallen you, he will come post haste.’

      ‘Did I deal well with him? Were we happy together?’

      ‘Only you can know that,’ Harriet said. ‘You never complained of his treatment of you, so one must suppose you were.’

      ‘Do we have children?’

      ‘No, not yet. But there is time, you are still very young.’

      ‘How old am I?’

      ‘Five and twenty.’

      Twenty-five years gone and all of them a mystery!

      She had written to Duncan to tell him what had happened, which had been difficult since she knew nothing about him except what her aunts were able to tell her, did not even know the address to write to until they told her. He was an artist, they had said, though how successful he was they did not know. He was of middling height and build, was careful of his appearance and always wore a bag wig tied with a large black bow, which did not tell her much. In any case, she had had no reply.

      It was all very frustrating. She could not remember her husband. What did he look like? Did she love him? She supposed she must have done or she would not have married him, but if he turned up would she know him? How could you love someone you could not remember? Why had she left him behind when she made the journey? Why had he allowed her to travel alone? But she hadn’t been alone, had she? By all accounts there had been a man with her and he had died of a broken neck. Who was he? She wasn’t running away with him, was she? Oh, that would be a despicable thing to do! But how could she know whether she was a wicked person or a good one? When she asked the aunts, they were adamant that she had the sweetest temperament and would not hurt a fly. ‘Goodness, have we not brought you up to be a good, law-abiding Christian?’ they demanded. ‘If anyone is wicked, it is certainly not you.’

      ‘Why did you bring me up?’

      ‘Because your mama is an opera singer and is always travelling about from one theatre to another and that was not a good life for a young child, so we offered to rear you,’ Aunt Matilda said. ‘We wrote immediately to tell her you are here safe and sound. I am sure she would have come to see you if she were not in the middle of a season of opera at Drury Lane.’

      ‘And my father?’

      ‘He lives abroad.’

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