Free This Merry Bond by Sara Seale Page A

him, her back to the fire and he was reminded of the first evening he had dined at Nye.
    “The trouble is,” she said very quickly, “that we can’t pay up on the date you stipulated.”
    He said nothing, but waited for her to go on.
    “After all you didn’t give us much time, did you?” she said gracefully.
    “It was a date you agreed to at the time,” Simon said in an expressionless voice.
    “Yes, but—have a heart! Charles just hasn’t been able to raise it. He’ll get a break on the market one of these days. You don’t have to worry.”
    She was trying to dismiss the affair airily, as she had done so many times before, but under Simon’s disconcerting gaze it wasn’t as easy as she expected.
    “I see. And if he’s unsuccessful in his speculations?” he said, and the mildness of his voice quite misled her.
    She shrugged—Charles’s own expressive gesture.
    “I’m afraid, in that case, you’ll have to have patience like everyone else,” she said.
    He regarded her speculatively, then he said very quietly:
    “You aren’t forgetting, are you, that I have my security?”

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    “What do you mean?” Nicky asked uneasily
    O ne of the dogs stirred in its sleep, and a log fell into the fire, sending up a small shower of sparks.
    He leaned forward in his chair.
    “When you signed that agreement a couple of months ago, Nicky, you offered me certain security, which, if you remember, I accepted,” he said still in that quiet, expressionless voice. “I fulfilled my side of the bargain. Is it unreasonable to expect that you will fulfill yours?”
    Nicky stood staring at him and went a little white.
    “But—but you’d never hold me to that,” she said at last.
    “Why not?”
    “Because—because I was driven to it in the first place. I had nothing else to offer. No decent man would take such an offer seriously.”
    He got to his feet slowly and stood looking down at her, and his eyes were suddenly hard and angry.
    “Now I’m going to say to you what I’ve been itching to say before on many occasions,” he said, and his voice had entirely altered. “You and your father seem to think that your accident of birth gives you the right to your codes of honor and standards of living. You borrow and owe money as if it was yours by right so that you can go on keeping up appearances. Do you think that’s honest? Do you really believe that a Bredon is entitled to every privilege simply because he is a Bredon? Your conceit is colossal! Why, compared to your standards, my father is a thoroughly honorable man, and yet you look down on us and snub us because we have worked for our independence while you just live on other people. You’ve got away with this sort of thing too long, my dear. This time you’re going to know what it’s like to pay up for a change.”
    Nicky began to tremble. She felt suddenly sick and instinctively moved away from the fire and from Simon. His attack had been so unexpected that she could think of nothing to say to him. On the last few occasions they had met, he had seemed so friendly and kindly that she had not been prepared to come up against that hard unyielding streak he had inherited from his father. Her poor little attempts at carrying off such a situation seemed to her almost laughable now and, indeed, a little insulting. Babbling to Mouse about suitable wine as though he were a susceptible creditor likely to be placated by a good dinner and a few soft speeches.
    She met his look squarely. “All right, if that’s how you feel. Though how you imagine you’ll enjoy yourself if that’s what you think of us, I don’t quite know. When shall we go?” she said with an effort at flippancy, and added bitterly: “I suppose you knew Charles would never pay up when you lent us the money.”
    “If I’d wanted you in. that way, Nicky, I wouldn’t have chosen such a roundabout method of getting you,” he said very coldly.
    “Oh, well, it doesn’t much matter.