Babe (4 page)

As Clivedon showed definite signs of displeasure at this allusion to his age, Barbara was not tardy to make the desired change, and use it at every chance. But the chief mandarin had soon taken control of the conversation again. “One would be sure of a good time at Oak Bay. The Haddons are not such loose-livers as most one meets. They would not be keeping you up till all hours, and expecting you to dance and gamble. I am very happy to see you settling down with Lady Angela, Clivedon. Bring her to call on me one day.”

He inclined his head in obedience, without the least intention of obliging the lady, then turned hack to Barbara.

“I hope you enjoyed the museum?”

“Fascinating.”

“There were a great many bucks lurking about,” Lady Graham told him. “I am not at all sure we ought to have gone unaccompanied, but no harm came of it. I gave them a hard stare, and they didn’t pester Barbara. I kept Mabel on one side of her and myself on the other. The concert was more to our taste.”

“To your taste as well, Lady Barbara?” he inquired solicitously.

“Delightful,” she answered, in a pinched voice. “I quite look forward to the trip to Burlington House to see the marbles tomorrow as well. Do you come with us, Lord Clivedon?” There was a menacing spark glowing deep in her eyes. “There is a matter I most particularly wish to discuss with you.”

“What matter is that?”

With a quick look towards the ladies she answered, “Financial. It is rather important. May I expect to see you tomorrow?”

“Ho, Clivedon will keep a sharp eye on your money, miss. Don’t worry your head about that. He handles all my investments for me. An excellent manager.”

“Thank you,” Clivedon said modestly. “I would be delighted to see the marbles again, but unfortunately I am otherwise engaged in the afternoon. I could come in the morning for an hour. Shall we say eleven, to allow you time to get your rest? That does not conflict with your plans, Lady Graham?” he asked politely.

“We had certainly not planned two outings in one day. We shall be here in the morning.”

“Eleven is fine with me. I look forward to it,” Barbara told him, with a level eye and a certain intonation in her voice that caused him to smile.

“So do I look forward to it. I really must go now. Pray forgive the late call. Ladies.” With a bow, he was off, and as the clock had struck nine during his visit, there was no delay in getting the two lamps extinguished and getting up the stairs to bed, with the aid of one candle between the three of them.

A second early night was not so easily lulled into sleep as a first. At ten, Barbara was still awake, and at eleven she was aware that she would not close an eye for several hours. She had ample time to work herself into a temper. Some traces of it were still with her when Clivedon called the next morning at eleven. But till she was in his curricle she uttered not a word the mandarins could object to.

Before she said a thing, Clivedon turned to her with a rallying smile. “Do you know, you amaze me,” he said simply. “I couldn’t believe my eyes, to see you sitting with a book on your knees, and not throwing it at that woman’s head. I was sure I would find the bird had flown the coop when I stopped last night. I had already changed my team preparatory to dashing off to find you. When you didn’t even point out that Mecklenberg Square is not en route from Kent to Grosvenor Square, I was afraid they had broken your spirit. What possessed you to knuckle under so easily?”

She hardly knew what to make of this speech. “You realize full well you have placed me in an intolerable situation, in other words, and I should like to know why you have done it, Lord Clivedon.”

“Lord me no lords, if you please. I will be happy to explain. When a young lady has managed to tarnish her reputation, it requires some outstanding show of virtue to recover its luster. I hope a Season with Lady Graham may prove effective, with, of course, Mabel to guard your sinister side. Sinister in the heraldic sense, that is. Your left side is all I meant. In any case, this will be either the makings or ruin of you. If you mean to abandon yourself to a life of dissipation, you might as well do it quickly and have done. While you live in limbo, your relatives all worry about you. If, on the other hand, you reform, then we shall all rejoice and trot out the fatted calf, in the usual way of greeting a reformed profligate son—or daughter. Which is it to be, Lady Barbara?”

“I am not a profligate, thank you very much for the description. Neither am I an eighty-year-old relict, to be consigned to Mecklenberg Square and Bible readings three times a day. I have borne it for forty-eight hours, which is about forty-seven and a half more than you could do, and my patience is at an end. I want you to send me somewhere else. Anywhere else. This is too much.”

“I confess I chose the most upstanding of my relatives to test you. You did better than I had any reason to expect. Consider it an ordeal by fire—endure it a little longer and I shall let you go to Lady Withers. It is the measles after all, confirmed beyond a doubt now. Before too long it will be safe for you to go there. Agreed?”

“You cannot have been listening, Clivedon. I said my patience is at an end now. I will not eat another soft pudding or another crust to curl my hair; I will not be chided like a schoolgirl, and I will not go to bed at nine o’clock. Don’t think you’re going to make a Miss Mabel Mouse out of
me
!”

“Dear girl, no one tries to make dross from gold.”

“Compliments are cheap, and ineffective. I will not stay another day. It is up to you whether you wish to be saddled with a female of undoubtedly tarnished reputation, as opposed to the ambiguous patina I seem to wear at the moment. Don’t think I mean to back down. I don’t. I hold cards of invitation to a ball at Farrow’s tonight and a rout at Lady Sefton’s the next. I have been invited to a picnic at Richmond Park—”

“You are apt to miss that date. Richmond Park, if I recall aright, is easily forgotten by you.”

“I can’t imagine what you are talking about,” she answered, glancing off to the left to wave at a passing acquaintance, to conceal the flush she felt creeping up her neck. Two years, and he still remembered!

She waited to hear what he would say about it, but the subject was dropped like a hot coal. “As it happens, I plan to attend Sefton’s rout and the Farrows’ ball myself. I shall take you.”

This was the sort of time she had envisioned, and her lips turned up softly at the corners. “Will Lady Angela permit it?” she asked boldly.

“I am hardly in a position to ask her permission for anything, I trust she will not object to your coming along with us.”

“I shan’t mind having her along either, to keep me nice and proper. Lady Graham has a high opinion of her, I can tell you. If ever you wish to trim her into line after the wedding, send her to Lady Graham. They will deal famously.”

“We do not speak of a wedding yet, and it is in any case unlikely in the extreme she would ever require trimming into line.”

“No, waking up is more like it.”

He got astride his high horse at this remark and asked, “What was it about your money you wished to discuss?”

“I want you to arrange funds for me. I owe Mademoiselle Celeste twenty guineas for bonnets, and as I mean to buy a new one this week as well, I ought to pay her something on my account.”

“Don’t worry about your accounts. I have taken care of all that. As to a new bonnet, however, that will be impossible. I have already told you I have cut off your accounts. There is nothing wrong with the bonnet you are wearing. You don’t require a new one.”

“Do you intend overseeing my wardrobe as well as my accounts? Next you will be selecting my gowns.”

“Censoring, not selecting. I had Agnes go through your trunks before they were sent to Lady Graham’s place. Those we disapprove of are not amongst your things. You didn’t miss the half-dozen we considered unbecoming to an unmarried lady?”

“You went through my personal effects! Rummaged through my trunks! Upon my word—”

“No, no, you misunderstand the matter. Agnes did the rummaging, and selected for my perusal those gowns she thought too low-cut. Only the things you will be wearing in public. If you wish to outfit yourself in black lace in your boudoir, I haven’t a word to say about it.”

“My peignoirs are none of your business!”

“Yes, I have just said so.”

“You shouldn’t have been looking at them, then.”

“I had no intention of doing so, but my sister considered it such an odd thing to find that she brought it with the gowns to show me. Hardly an object one would think to see in a maiden’s closet, but in that of a lightskirt.”

“You would know more about that than I. It happens the peignoir was a gift.”

His hands tensed on the reins, causing the horses to jolt. “If you are accepting such gifts as that from men . . .’ he said, in an awful voice, and seemed unable to go on.

“Frenchmen have very different ideas on what is suitable to give a niece for a gift. My great-uncle Montaigne, who is seventy-five, gave it to me in Paris.”

“You would do well to be rid of it,” he said, in a somewhat mollified tone.

“Perhaps Lady Graham would like it,” she answered blithely. “May I know what gowns . . . Clivedon, if you have taken my new green Italian silk!”

“It was the first to go. Green never did suit those blue eyes, Barbara. And it wouldn’t make a jacket for Lady Graham either.”

“I mean to wear it to Sefton’s rout!”

“Did you? Might I suggest the blue jaconet instead. For a rout party, a muslin will do, and it is highly garnished and low-cut enough to be obviously not an afternoon gown, despite its having been worn for one.”

“Where are my gowns? What have you done with them? If you’ve burned them, I’ll – I’ll get an edict against you.”

“You mean a warrant for my arrest, I expect. The gowns are not burned. They will do well enough for a married lady, or a confirmed profligate, as the case may be,” he told her. “Where would you like to go for this drive, by the way? Bond Street? – No, it will only call to mind your lack of funds, and I am already bored with that subject. Let’s make it Hyde Park.”

“I don’t care where you take me, so long as it isn’t Burlington House.”

“I wouldn’t dream of stealing the thunder from Lady Graham’s treat.”

“You are
hateful!
You’ve dreamed up the dullest possible things for me to do, while you—”

“No waltzing or gambling at Oak Bay,” he reminded her, with a fleeting smile. “Don’t overestimate my week-end’s gaiety.”

“I bet Lady Angela gave you a hand with my timetable.”

“I take the entire credit for myself. No, to be fair, the concert of ancient music was not my idea. I had suggested the lecture of the Philosophical Society, but your hostess felt there would be unsavory literary types lurking there. Never mind, you will have a chance to waltz tonight and complain to all your beaux what a tyrant I am.”

It was all that kept her from doing something utterly foolish. She looked forward to going to parties with Clivedon—it would set her higher than she had recently been perching, and she was curious too to see how he behaved with Lady Angela.

“Getting over your sulks?” he asked. “Come, this is your last chance till tonight for any decent conversation or show of temper. Better take advantage of me. It is what I meant to say.”

“It’s impossible to talk to you.”

“How do you know? You never tried. Oh, you’ve flirted with me in the past and lectured me in the present, but we have never talked. Now, as your guardian, I should like to know a little more about you. What is it you enjoy to do? What sort of people and music and books do you like?”

“I like to waltz, to go to parties and be gay. I like amusing, lively people and music and books. Who does not?”

“I see.” His answer was light, like her own, almost offhand, but she sensed she had wasted an opportunity to know him better. It was not often she was invited to partake of rational conversation. She was angry with herself suddenly, to have been so flippant. She didn’t like those things she mentioned, not to any great extent. She liked the country better than the city, liked riding better than dancing, she preferred good conversation to gossip, too. Most of all, she would like to feel she belonged somewhere, that there was a spot in the world where she was more than a bothersome guest. She wanted someone to love, and to love her, but she could hardly say so to a near-stranger, and a hateful, heartless stranger at that.

“You enjoy travel, I think,” he mentioned, but in a half-hearted, make-talk sort of way.

“I do not much like it,” some perversity caused her to say.

“You do a fair bit of it.”

“When the people you are staying with travel, you have to either go with them or cause a great bother, trying to find someone else to billet yourself on. There is no saying either that you won’t end up at Mecklenberg Square,” she added tartly.

“Where would you prefer to end up?”

“At home. At Drumbeig. But it is too far away, and there is no one to take me.”

“Did Fannie never take you home?”

“No, not once,” she answered, feeling very sorry for herself, and letting some trace of it creep into her voice.

“What is it like, Drumbeig?” he asked, with enough interest that she answered in considerable detail.

“It’s beautiful – away north in the Cotswold Hills, in Oxfordshire. Excellent riding of course, rough and rugged terrain.” She spoke on at length, mentioning her friends there, and as he posed a few thoughtful questions, she was soon relating to him episodes from her very childhood.

“I have a hunting box not too far away from your place,” he mentioned. “It is beautiful countryside. Was there no one you might have stayed at home with after your father’s death?”

“It was nearly time for me to be presented – everyone said I should be, and as father was – was seeing rather a lot of Fannie at the time, he left me in her charge.”

“How old were you when you went to Fannie?”

“Seventeen. I was presented at seventeen. Fannie thought it old enough. I was at Devonshire House a year before that, when my father was still alive, but ill. He had to be near the best physicians. Dr. Ward had him in his private sanatorium, and he wanted me to be close enough to visit him often. I stayed half a year there after his death, and half a year with Fannie before I made my come-out. She said it would help me forget him, going to parties and balls.”