The man who came back

by Pamela Kent

  The Man

  Who Came Back

  by PAMELA KENT

  Philip Drew was a stranger in the village. As far as anyone knew, he was there only temporarily to help out the local doctor.

  Yet in Falaise, the manor house, was a portrait of a Regency rake who was Philip's exact double.

  Just who was Philip Drew? What connection could he possibly have with Falaise.

  The wonder of being in love,renewed by millions of women as they read the twelve newromantic novels published

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  PRINTED IN U.S.A.0

  The Man

  Who Came Back

  by PAMELA KENT

  VarleqimfBooks

  TORONTO . LONDON � NEW YORK � AMSTERDAM � SYDNEY

  Original hardcover edition published in 1967 by Mills & Boon Limited

  ISBN 0-373-01134-2

  Harlequin edition published August 1967

  Second printing October J 967 Third printing December 1970 Fourth printing April 1972 Fifth printing September 1975 Sixth printing June 1977

  Copyright � 1967 by Pamela Kent. All rights reserved.

  Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work inwhole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopyingand recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher. All the characters in this book" have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have norelation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. Theyare not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the

  author, and" all the incidents are pure invention. The Harlequin; trademark, consisting of the word HARLEQUIN and theportrayal of a Harlequin, is registered in the United States Patent Officeand in the Canada Trade Marks Office.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  CHAPTER I

  HARRIET put away her knitting and walked to the window. The light was good ... the rain had ceased. She could either go for a walk in the remains of a stormy sunset or go upstairs to her room and tidy her.drawers.

  They didn't really need tidying, for she was orderly by instinct, but it would be something to do. She needed something to do.

  She looked across at her half-sister, who was reclining on a striped Regency couch, and keeping up the pretence that both her physical health and her nerves were in a somewhat precarious state. If this was really so it would not have been surprising, for she had had a nasty shock recently, and become in addition to everything else a widow. She had been holidaying in Italy, at the villa of her husband's aunt, and her husband had been taken ill quite suddenly and died before it was possible to diagnose what was really the matter with him.

  Gay�who was normally very gay, by nature �had returned to England stunned and shocked, and everybody had exclaimed at the change in her. She looked white-faced and frightened, and instead of the old independence there was utter

  5

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  dependence on anyone who was willing to pro

  vide her with a shoulder to both lean and cry on.

  Harriet's was the obvious shoulder, for she was

  Gay's only really close relative, and she had met her at the airport and made all the soothing and comforting noises she could think of, and Gay had responded by clinging to her like a lost and bewildered little girl who had nothing any longer

  to live for.

  Despite the short amount of time, and the fact that she had been rendered prostrate by her loss, Gay had provided herself with the most intense form of mourning... black coat and gloves, shoes, hat, handbag. She seemed to be shrouded in darkness, and it suited her so well that Harriet was not surprised she had aroused so much sympathy amongst her fellow passengers in the aircraft that not one of them was really anxious to leave her. They crowded round her with advice and offers of help and every form of assistance �one lady even offered to place her London flat at her disposal if she didn't feel like travelling -north immediately�and the men in particular were most affected.

  Gay gazed at them with shadowed violet eyes, and smiled a smile that shook everyone to their foundations... particularly the men. With a black-gloved hand she tucked an end of fine gold hair out of sight under her chic little hat, and thanked them all in a quavering voice.

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  7

  v

  She would be perfectly all right, she said, once her sister Harriet had joined her.

  Harriet joined her in time to see a prosperouslooking business man with steel-grey hair and a steel-grey Rolls waiting for him outside the airport buildings bending above her hand and kissing it almost reverently. Harriet would almost have been prepared to swear there were tears in his eyes as he reminded her of his. telephone number. And another man was just as visibly affected. Only in this case he was a younger man, and Gay asked Harriet to remember his telephone number.

  In order that she could express her gratitude for his solicitude more properly when she felt more like it, as she was careful to point out.

  The journey north was undertaken under a similar protective canopy of well-wishers and sympathisers. Bruce Eamshaw, Gay's husband, had inherited a large estate and a very generous addition to his income very shortly before he died, and there was no absence of money to make travelling difficult.

  They travelled first-class, and had a sleeper to themselves. A long, chauffeur-driven car met them at the termination of the rail journey, and the rest of the way to Falaise was cushioned and comfortable. Falaise, in the quiet mists of an autumn afternoon, looked exceptionally peaceful and exceptionally beautiful; and Harriet, at least, spared it a warmly appreciative look.

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  Gay was assisted up the stairs by the house

  keeper, and she did not appear again that night.

  She did not, in fact, appear downstairs again for several days, and Dr. Philip Drew, the local

  doctor, expressed the opinion that she was badly

  shocked and needed quiet and rest.

  Harriet, if she had been consulted, would not have been inclined to endorse the 'absolute quiet and rest.' Rest, perhaps ... but in her opinion Gay was as much frightened by the suddenness of it all as anything else, and what she badly needed was diversion.

  She needed to stop thinking, to stop dwelling on what had happened to her in Italy. She had never pretended to be madly in love with her husband, and only recently they had considered separating, by mutual agreement. So there was no question of Gay being shattered by grief. There was not even any question of her being grief-stricken at all.

  But Gay managed to convince everybody, apart from her half-sister Harriet, that she was shattered. Her world was in ruins about her feet, and her future held nothing that could comfort or console her. Dr. Drew�who was a newcomer to the little village of Falaise, that nestled outside the gates of the big house�looked at her long and thoughtfully when he was first summoned to administer a sedadve, and then expressed the opinion that she ought not to be left for any length of time alone.

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  9

  For the time being it would be advisable if she was not allowed to sleep alone, and the willing Harriet moved into the dressing-room adjoining Gay's dove-grey and rose-coloured room, and the door between the two rooms was left standing open at night.

  Harriet was the one who slept badly. Gay, under the influence of an opiate, slept with remarkable peacefulness, and did not make so

  much as a sound until morning dawned. Then the housekeeper arrived with her breakfast tray


  containing grapefruit and black coffee and dry

  toast, and the day began for the bereaved widow.

  Harriet, who had always had a healthy appetite, consumed porriage, bacon and eggs and sometimes kidneys and bacon or mushrooms and scrambled eggs, followed by toast and marmalade, in the room that was known as the breakfast parlour, and afterwards joined her sister while she was making up her face in a halfhearted fashion in order to face what was left of a long, interminable day.

  The doctor made Falaise his first call after surgery, and his long, sleek car would appear in the drive while Gay was making up her mind about an outfit in which to receive him.

  She had so many clothes that Harriet sometimes wondered whether she had worn all of them; and for some reason she liked to be dressed when Dr. Drew was announced. He was

  10 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK certainly rather unusual for a remote village doctor, and Harriet found out that he wasn't really the village doctor at all, but was merely 'standing in' for the genuine incumbent, who had been forced to make a visit abroad. Dr. Drew was an elegant man, somewhere in his late thirties, and his car alone betrayed the fact that he did not need to hold morning and evening surgeries, or obey summonses in the middle of the night which sometimes took him right out on to the lonely moorland which surrounded the tucked-away village of Falaise. Harriet and he took a kind of dislike to one another at sight... or she took a dislike to him. He asked her to wait outside the room while he had his first consultation with Gay, and afterwards he did not apologise for dislodging her. The housekeeper, who had not been asked to leave the room�indeed, was actually pressed to remain�looked complacent and gratified, once the doctor had departed, and explained that although he did not know her very well he obviously thought she was a responsible person to be trusted and depended on, and that was why she was allowed to remain. Harriet, who met the doctor in the hall on his way out, looked at him with a light of antagonism in her eyes, and demanded to know what he thought of her sister's condition. He seemed surprised and elevated his eyebrows. "What do you mean?" he asked.

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK II

  "I mean, what do you think of her?"

  "Well, it's fairly obvious she's suffering frpm shock... and a woman deprived of a husfiawl so suddenly would naturally be somewhat cast

  down, to say the least," with a dryne^s tSbiat caused Harriet, in her turn, to look distinct Sur

  prised. "Even in this day and age available statistics prove that the majority of peopjfe ^jiry once, and once only, in their lifetime. Thgisefore Mrs. Eamshaw is reacting very normally/''

  Harriet spoke stiffly. "I was enquiring about the state of her health," she said. "And I answered your enquiry. I think you

  for some considerable time, perhaps. Sits will have to be watched, in case symptoms d||p?l6p that will threaten her health still furthey

  ingness to participate in a normal way ofJ|fe,..

  can expect a condition of depression and i||wil[l

  "You mean she may develop melancholic symptoms?" "It's quite possible, if she was very much attached to her husband." Harriet surveyed him a trifle furtively... or the impression he received was that th^re was something furtive in -her manner. She agffi^^d to wish to say something, and then dIV^ed against it. He cast a glance about the hall, admNng the

  panelling and the sweep of the staircase �ay

  had introduced touches of colour and midnight

  12 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  blue carpet flowed up the stairs into the gallery, and there were one or two jewel-bright rugs scattered about the shining oasis of the floor.

  There were no flowers, because the house

  keeper had considered they were a trifle frivolous and Mrs. Eamshaw would not wish to be welcomed by them on her return, but the portraits in the gallery added a further note of rich

  ness; and so did the giant Satsuma vases that normally received the flowers.

  "I was thinking that this place is rather sombre for someone who has been bereaved," Harriet said rather jerkily. "London might have provided her with more distractions."

  His dark eyes studied her, and they were such infinitely dark eyes that they filled her with a kind of surprise. For a man they were ridiculously thickly lashed, and his skin was tanned as if he had spent a good deal of has life abroad... and, indeed, there was something about him that suggested that one at least of his forebears had known the benefit of a southern clime.

  Yet his name was very English: Philip Drew.

  What could be more English than that? She answered defensively. "Well, in London one can do things. Even

  shopping takes one out of oneself." "You yourself have a lot of friends in London?" He shot the question at her.

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 13

  "I've quite a large number of friends, yes.

  And I work there."

  "What kind of work?"

  "I'm an artist." She was quite sure he received that with scepticism. "I'm having ah exhibition of some of my work in a fortnight's time, and naturally I would have liked to have been there

  to see how it went. However, I don't intend to

  desert Gay if you think I oueht to stay with

  her...."

  "That is most self-sacrificing of you." There was a note in his voice that filled her full of resentment, and at the same time she realised that his dark glance was dismissing her as someone with pronounced egoistic tendencies. "But I'm. afraid I can't sanction Mrs. Eamshaw's accompanying you to London at this juncture. You'll just have to hope that people will be femd, and one or two of your pictures, at least, will bring you rich rewards."

  He passed on with a bare nod of the head, and the elderly butler held the door open for him. As sooa as his ear had disappeared down the drive Harries spefee to the butler. "Is this fhe ^�t time Dr. Drew has taken over the practice m Falaise ?"

  The butler answered that it was.

  "But he's already very popular round about, miss. Very consorentious and kind, and the children like him,*1' he amplified. "I gather he was ill himself before he came here ... but I don't

  14 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  know what it was that was the matter with him. Of course, anyone can tell that he's experienced. A proper London type of doctor, I call him."

  Harriet regarded him thoughtfully.

  "The children like him, you say," she murmured thoughtfully. "Well," she added, a distinct gleam in her eye, "you surprise me!"

  CHAPTER II

  THAT was a week ago, and since then Gay had emerged sufficiently from her grief to receive one or two callers, and to spend the better part of each day downstairs in the drawing-room, where she relaxed on a couch.

  She had a surprisingly good appetite, and she was in touch with a London couturier who was creating a wardrobe for her, a new wardrobe in keeping with her new status as a widow with a very large income who could indulge most of her own whims and did not need to deny herself if she particularly wished for something.

  Her sister Harriet, for instance, she had decided must live with her. There could be no question of her returning to her London flat, which was in any case much too poky for a young woman with a near relative who could book her a suite at a London hotel if she wished.

  "Any time you want to go to London, of course you must go," she said self-sacrificingly, as she curled up like a kitten on her couch and re-did her nails a smoky pearl colour, which went better with mourning than even a natural tint, or so she had decided. For the same reason she wore smoky pearl ear-clips and matching

  15

  l6 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  bracelets, and had sent her rubies and her emeralds to the bank for safe custody until her period of mourning was over.

  "I don't wish you to feel that you're tied to me, darling," she said, with great, mournful eyes, "but I simply couldn't face life without you. Even as a child you were so good to me!"

  She reached out and clasped her slim fingers about Harriet's wrist. It was perfect
ly true. Harriet, six years older than her half-sister Gay, had welcomed the arrival of the golden-haired charmer with the enthusiasm of one who had occupied a lonely nursery until then. She could never do enough for Gay, never ceased thinking how utterly enchanting she was to look at... and had received the biggest shock of her life when she made the discovery that Gay was far from enchanting at heart. She was demanding, poor-spirited, mean, spiteful, and could even be downright cruel on occasion. She had been responsible for the drowning of a favourite puppy of Harriet's, and had been instrumental in getting her locked in her room for the whole of one day and the night that followed. Worse, she had interfered with orders to the cook, and seen that she had nothing to eat... and then cried her eyes. out when Harriet was sent away to school.

  When Harriet became engaged to be married at the age of twenty-one she had worked systematically until the engagement was broken. Then

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 1'J

  she had had a brief, whirlwind affair with the

  released suitor, who had afterwards gone off to a

  lonely farm in Rhodesia, and had not been

  heard of since. Harriet's second promising affair had been nipped in the bud at the outset, and

  Gay had developed typhoid fever and refused

  to have anyone near her except Harriet. Harriet had interrupted her art training to be near her,

  and she had sat beside her for hours at a time

  and was the only one who could induce her to

  take nourishment, and therefore had preserved

  her life for her.

  It seemed that the present occasion was to be a kind of repeat performance, except that Gay was not really ill, and there was nothing wrong either with her intention of living or her appe

  tite. In fact, she had even got as far as the stage when she was planning her future... in secret, that is, and only for the ears of Harriet. It was a strange, secret, shut-in kind of a future, involving Harriet and Gay alone.

  "We'll do everything together, darling, and where I am there'll you'll be, too!" More feverishly she gripped Harriet's wrist, penetrating her skin with the smoky-pearl fingertips. "Of course you must go on painting your pictures, and we'll fix you up with a studio here, and you'll simply love it because I don't mind which room in the house you choose, and of course you can have it completely refurnished if you wish. Anything you want, darling. Just say whatever you