The Captain's Mysterious Lady. Mary Nichols

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.’

      ‘Why?’

      They had shrugged. ‘Heaven knows.’ But she thought they did know.

      ‘Did I love him?’

      ‘Of course you did,’ Harriet said. ‘You were especially close and very downpin when he went away.’ They had showed her a portrait of him, a cheerfullooking man with grey-green eyes and a pointed beard, but it did nothing to help her recall the man himself.

      She stopped walking to turn back and look at the Manor. It was a solid Tudor residence, with a moat about it and a drawbridge with twin turrets on either side of the gate, which led to an enclosed courtyard. She found it difficult to believe she had spent most of her childhood there. In the last two months she had explored every inch of its many nooks and crannies, but nothing reminded her of anything. It was like being born, she supposed, with no history behind you and everything new.

      She had strolled about the gardens both within and outside the moat and climbed the tower on the edge of the estate that had been built as a look-out and from which she could see the countryside for miles around: the river, the road, the village with its church and inn, all things she had known and loved in her childhood, according to her aunts. The people she met in the village would speak to her, ask how she did, address her sometimes as Mrs Macdonald, but more frequently as Miss Amy, and she would reply, hiding the fact she could not remember their names.

      She could not even remember Susan, much to that good woman’s sorrow. Susan was in her middle thirties and had been with the family since she was twelve, moving up the hierarchy of the servants from kitchenmaid to chambermaid and from there to lady’s maid. But she was more than that, she was a valued companion to both old ladies and had known Amy since childhood, had watched her grow up and helped her dress, scolded her when she was naughty and praised her when she was good. Susan had added her efforts to get her to remember, all to no avail.

      Her aunts were worried, she knew that. They had tried everything they could think of to jog her into remembering, but nothing seemed to work. ‘I fear something dreadful occurred before the accident that occasioned your loss of memory,’ Matilda had said only the day before.

      ‘Something so dreadful I have blotted it from my mind, you mean?’

      ‘Perhaps. If only Duncan would come, I am sure the sight of him would effect a cure.’

      ‘Then why has he not answered my letter?’

      ‘We cannot tell,’ Harriet put in. ‘Unless something has happened to him, too. I have written to ask your mother to make enquiries.’ Her mother, so she was told, had an apartment near the theatre, not far from Henrietta Street where Amy and her husband had their home. That was another thing Amy could not remember. Racking her brains produced nothing. By day she was calm, though worried, but her nights were beset by violent dreams in which she was running, running for all she was worth, knowing there was something evil behind her.

      Only the week before, her mother had written to say she had not seen Duncan and their house was unoccupied. Lord Trentham had come to see the opera and had taken her out to supper afterwards and she had asked him to help uncover the mystery. Lord Trentham, Aunt Harriet had explained to Amy, was a lifelong friend of the family and a man of influence. Whether he would succeed Amy was not at all sure, but he seemed her only