Read Online Babe by Joan Smith - Free Book Online

Prison?” she asked, unimpressed with these few efforts at gallantry.
    “In a few days, yes.”
    “Do you mean it? Clivedon, this is not a trick, like your arranging those odious outings to museums? Oh, I wish I could see your face, then I’d know if you’re serious. It’s so demmed dark in here.”
    “Very dark,” he emended.
    “You didn’t used to be so stuffy a few years ago. You weren’t forever pinching at me then.”
    “I was not your guardian then. In my new position, I feel a moral duty to—”
    “Fiddlesticks! It is not immoral to say prads, or demmed. I wonder what can account for these angelic heights your propriety is reaching.”
    “You accredit the improvement to the wrong source.”
    “It is no credit at all. I consider it a distinct liability. You are becoming a governess as well as a guardian. How very boring for you.”
    “You are too hard on yourself. You are a wretched nuisance; you were never a bore.”
    “It is very odd I’m not, for I am so often bored myself.”
    “When can you possibly find time to be bored?” he asked.
    “It hits me at odd moments, right in the middle of balls or routs even. Like tonight, when Camfreys started telling me about his demmed—very superior hunter, which is a spavin-backed old jade, as everyone knows. I so wished to sneak out for a cigar.”
    “Did you do it?” he asked warily.
    “No, I didn’t think my governess would like it.”
    “But you have done so, in the past?”
    “A few times, with Gentz.”
    “You shouldn’t,” he said, more mildly than she expected. “Bad ton. If anyone should see you . . .”
    “Don’t take me for a greenhead. I’d never get caught.”
    There was a longish and uncomfortable silence. “I don’t sneak out for any other reason, and I know perfectly well that’s what you’re wondering, sitting there silent as a mouse, isn’t it?” she asked angrily.
    “It occurred to me.”
    “I knew, when you started to puff up like that—”
    “I am not puffing up, and if I were,” he said, unpuffing his chest, “you couldn’t see it in the dark.”
    “I can feel it from here. You always used to take a big breath and hold it. Well, maybe I imagined it, but I was right.”
    “I don’t recall holding my breath in the past.”
    “You nearly turned purple the time . . .” She stopped suddenly. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. That is all in the past.”
    “Which time was that?”
    “The time I was having a champagne-drinking contest with Lord Cherney. Gracious, and we only had one bottle between us. I could hold more than three glasses then, and a good deal more than that now.”
    “You have a good memory, Barbara. Odd you have forgotten Richmond Park.”
    She could see nothing in the dark, and was grateful she too was not on view, for she had a strong impression she was blushing.
    “My good memory has not forgotten one thing. Am I to get my team back tomorrow?”
    “Oh no. It is a truce, not total surrender. You will have to try more tact than bragging about your drinking. And smoking,” he added in an ironic voice.
     
    Chapter Seven
     
    Lady Barbara got her team the next day, by the quite simple expedient of asking Lady Graham if she objected to having them in her stable, as Clivedon thought she would.
    “I have no objection in the least. Where did he get such a notion? Mind, you must not drive out alone, Barbara. I shall send a groom with you, for I am too old to sit up on a high seat, and Mabel would certainly fall off. She has no balance or coordination. She never could walk across the street without bumping into someone. I used to drive a gig myself when I was young. Exercise would do you a world of good. Certainly you must have your rig sent around.”
    When Lady Withers received the note from Lady Graham, she complied at once, without a thought that Clivedon would dislike it. That same afternoon the blue phaeton was dashing into town, with a groom in ancient gray livery sitting behind to lend the