Page 47 of A Debt Inherited

Kerr sat. Wickham’s every movement looked easy. His accent carried a trace of the north smoothed at the edges; his manner all the polish of gentility but not of the surroundings.

“You know my employer’s terms,” Kerr said. “He expects settlement—or promise of it—by the month’s end.”

“Of course,” said Wickham, pouring two glasses of wine. “I have no quarrel with obligation, only with circumstance. Do you take claret?”

“It’s not my habit to drink on business.”

“Then consider this a courtesy between gentlemen,” Wickham replied, handing him a glass. “You strike me as a man who understands the difference.”

Kerr accepted.

“You know, Mr Kerr, we are not so unlike. The world teaches men like us gratitude for breeding, then withholds the rewards of it. A man learns to take credit where respect is denied him.”

Kerr looked at him over the rim of the glass. “That is bitterness talking, not wisdom.”

“No,” Wickham said, “it is reality.” He lifted his own glass. “To gentlemen who know the value of a name—and the cost of keeping one.”

Kerr let the rim touch his mouth, then drank. The wine was thin. The appeal was not.

Wickham set down his glass. “There is Scotland in your voice.”

Kerr said nothing.

“And not poverty,” Wickham continued. “Not by birth, at least.”

Kerr’s fingers tightened once upon the stem of his glass. Wickham saw it; his smile did not move.

“I was born on the wrong side of an inheritance,” Kerr said.

Wickham’s eyes brightened. “Then you know the injury.”

Kerr lowered the glass. “I know accounts. Yours is overdue.”

“Ah.” Wickham touched two fingers to his breast. “Then we must not let sentiment interfere with commerce.”

“No.”

“And yet commerce has a narrow imagination. It asks only what a man has in his purse.” Wickham glanced round the room. “A poor question, in my case. A foolish one, too.”

Kerr waited.

“I have no money today,” Wickham said. “If I had, I should give it you with every appearance of regret. But I have expectations.”

“Men in debt generally do.”

Wickham smiled. “Mine have names.”

Kerr set the glass upon the table. Not too quickly. Wickham would have taken haste for alarm.

“You collect for Roark,” Wickham continued. “Very proper. Very necessary. But a commission upon a poor man’s debt cannot be large.”

“Large enough.”

“For supper, perhaps. For a future?” Wickham shook his head softly. “No, Mr Kerr. A man wronged by inheritance should not spend his life fetching coin for another man’s ledger.”

Kerr’s hand remained upon the glass a moment too long. Then he let it go.

“You speak freely for a debtor,” he said.