This Merry Bond (17 page)

She stared at him in silence, and an odd translucent look came into her face.

“Did
you love me?” she asked him, almost in a whisper.

In a moment his face softened.

“I loved you so much that I made one fatal mistake after another,” he said. “Nicky, the other night you told me you were willing to start again. I thought then you were in love with Michael, and I wasn’t prepared to accept a burnt offering under any circumstances. But you don’t love Michael, and you’re coming back, with me tonight.” He straightened his back, and stood looking down at her, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. “We’re going to live very differently, my dear. I’ll take you away—abroad—anywhere you like—until you’re fit and strong again, but after that I’m going back into my father’s business, which will mean living in the north again. My worst mistake of all was taking over Nye. I wasn’t your husband. I was just the man who paid the bills. No doubt you all thought me a mug. You made a fool of me in more ways than one, Nicky, and I asked for it.”

“You never once showed me that you cared at all,” Nicky said, half to herself. “Not once we were married.”

“You didn’t make it very easy,” he said sadly.

The pain in his voice reached her at last and her eyes grew bright with tears.

“There was Stella,” she said.

“Stella?”

“She told me—she told me that if it hadn’t been for me you would have married her,” Nicky said not daring to raise her eyes for fear of what she might read in his face.

He moved then and came around the little table and stood close to her.

“Look at me, Nicky,” he said, and when at last she raised her eyes, he saw her lashes were wet and heavy as she stood blinking back the tears. “There has only been you all my life,” he said very gently. “I’ve been clumsy and often stupidly blind. I haven’t got that easy way with the small things of life, but I love you, Nicky, and the waiting has been very lonely.”

“But I’m no use to you,” she cried with anguish. “I can’t even have children...”

“
I
know,” he said, and held out both hands to her.

She saw them tremble. Quite suddenly she could fight no longer, and she was in his arms sobbing out the story of that pitiful adventure.

“It’s you I love!” she cried. “It’s you I’ve loved all the time!”

As he held her, trembling, she felt a surge of love, of desire. And she knew she had come home.

It seemed a long time later that there came a banging on the door and Michael’s voice called:

“I’m going out to the car, Nick. I’ll give you five minutes.”

They went out together into the bright sunlight where Michael sat at the wheel of his car.

“You’ll have to take my luggage out again,” Nicky said.

“I never put it in,” he said and gave her his sudden grin. The car began to move.

She watched the car growing smaller and smaller in the distance and for a moment the old vagrant spirit caught her. She had an instant’s vision of the ghost of herself rollicking over the world with Charles and Michael into a nameless future, and she flung up one hand in a last salute.

A wagon-load of hay lumbered slowly by, the sweating horses steaming in the summer heat, and the last small cloud of dust was hidden from her sight.