Babe by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

use the blunt.”
    “Money is the more common and ladylike term for the commodity.”
    “I wouldn’t like to be common,” she answered, assuming a prissy face and placing her fingertips daintily on his arm.
    “Or ladylike,” he added.
    “Now be fair! Has any lady this evening taken your arm so elegantly as I do, as though I can hardly bear to touch you? You have had a full half hour of ladylike attention from your other companion. Variety is the spice of life, Clivedon. Let me spice up your evening with some of my indecorous chit-chat. Balfour has just slipped out the door with Mrs. Harkness, and I am dying to see whether they left or sneaked upstairs. He does, you know. Fannie tells me he was caught practically in the act at Brockley Hall last month.”
    “Barbara! I wish you would think before you speak!” he said loudly, with a fearful glance around to see if she had been overheard.
    “I did think. I was going to say caught with his pants down, but was afraid you might not like it, it is so graphically accurate. A little ambiguity in such cases is more delicate. Old York is well into his cups tonight,” she added, with a careless glance across the room.
    “The music is better than usual,” he said, trying to divert her mind.
    “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
    “You said you liked lively music.”
    “I usually do, but I was standing up with young Ellingwood, you know, and he has three or four left feet, poor boy. I had to concentrate on outmaneuvering them all.”
    “He is five-and-twenty years old. Hardly a boy. Now, he is the sort I wouldn’t mind to see calling on you. A nice, decent fellow. Well to grass, too.”
    She peered up at him from the corner of her eyes, to see if he was smiling. He wasn’t, though he watched her with interest to read her reaction to his suggestion. What he noticed instead was how dark a blue her eyes were, and how long the sweep of her lashes. Soon he noticed a slow smile peep out on her lips, tilting them up at the corners, and without realizing it, a smile alit on his own lips.
    “I knew you were teasing me,” she said, in her low drawling accents.
    “I was not! Twenty-five is plenty old enough for you, old lady, so long as the man is good and sensible.”
    “If he is too good and sensible, the age is irrelevant. He will not do.”
    His plans for her reformation were to lead the way to propriety by avoiding her old haunts and old friends and seeing her marry a gentleman who would continue the job. This would require a man of strong character and resolution. He came to see that the man must have as well a heart of stone, or she’d only deprave him. The expression on her face was a combination of mischief and laughter that struck him as very wicked and very French.
    “Clivedon, let’s sneak out into the garden and blow a cloud,” she said, in a low, conspiratorial whisper.
    “I beg your pardon?” he asked, stunned.
    “I said let’s sneak into the garden and blow a cloud. Smoke a cigar.”
    “You’re a lady!” he exclaimed, in horror. “Do you mean to say you smoke, on top of everything else?”
    “On top of what else? Good gracious, I don’t duel or box or visit the men’s clubs. One would take me for a hoyden.”
    “You are a hoyden!” he told her, in a louder voice than he intended using.
    “Shh—you don’t have to announce it so loudly. I didn’t ask you to slip off to an hotel for the night, after all,” she added, deciding to be offended with him.
    To his infinite relief, the music began, and to his equally infinite dismay, it was a country dance, which romps he found sadly lacking in dignity. There was little dignity in either the dance or conversation that ensued for the next while, but there was much laughter and high spirits. At its end, Barbara was handed over to Sir Lyle Covington by Clivedon, with a worried glance after them to see they didn’t go out to the garden to smoke a cigar.
    He returned to Lady Angela. “You look worried,