Free Venetia by Georgette Heyer Page B

“Yes, I was going to ask you that,” she admitted. “I beg your pardon! The thing is, you see, that I so seldom talk to anyone but Aubrey that I forget to take care what I say when I go into company.”
    “Don’t set a guard on your tongue on my account!” he said, ushering her into the dining-room. “I like your frankness—and detest damsels who blush and bridle!”
    She took the chair Imber was holding for her. “Well, I don’t think I did that, even in my salad days.”
    “A long time ago!” he said, quizzing her. “Well, it is, for I’m five-and-twenty, you know.”
    “I must take your word for that, but do enlighten me! Do you hold my sex in dislike, or have you taken a vow of celibacy?”
    “I wish you won’t make me laugh just as I am drinking soup! You nearly made me choke! Of course not!”
    “What a set of slow-tops the Yorkshire bucks must be! This soup seems to be made “entirely of onions. I don’t wonder at your choking. And as far as I can see,” he said, levelling his quizzing-glass at the various dishes set out on the table, “there is worse to come. What the devil is that mess, Imber?”
    “Veal, my lord, with a sauce Bechermell—Mrs. Imber not being prepared for company,” replied Imber apologetically. “But there is the raised mutton pie, and a brace of partridges for the second course, with French beans and mushrooms, and—and a dish of fruit, which Mrs. Imber hopes you will pardon, miss, for his lordship not being partial to sweetmeats she hadn’t a cream nor a jelly ready to serve, and, as you know, miss, such things take time.”
    “I am astonished poor Mrs. Imber should have been able to dress half as many dishes,” instantly responded Venetia. “With such an upset in the house she can’t have had a moment to spare! Pray tell her that I am particularly partial to veal, and quite detest jellies!”
    Damerel was regarding her with a smile in his eyes. He said, as Imber bore off the empty soup-plates: “Everything handsome about you!—your face, your name, and your manners! Tell me about your life! Why did I never see you before? Do you never come to London?”
    She shook her head. “No, though perhaps I shall when Aubrey goes to Cambridge next year. As for telling you about my life—why, there’s only one answer to that, and it’s A blank, my lord !
    “Am I to understand that you pine in thought? I hope you don’t mean to tell me you have a green and yellow melancholy, for that I’ll swear you have not!”
    “Good gracious, no! Only that I have no history! I have passed all my life at Undershaw, and done nothing worth the telling. I wish you will tell me some of the things you have done!”
    He looked up quickly from the dish he was serving, his eyes hardening. She met that searching stare with a little enquiring lift to her brows, and saw his lips curl into the sneer which had made her liken him to the Corsair. “I think not,” he said dryly.
    “I said some of the things you have done!” she exclaimed indignantly. “You can’t have spent your whole life getting into idiotish scrapes!”
    The ugly look vanished as he burst out laughing. “Most of it, I assure you! What is it you wish to know?”
    “I should like to know about the places you have been to. You have travelled a great deal, haven’t you?”
    “Oh, yes!”
    “I envy you that. It is a thing I always longed to do. I daresay I never shall, because single females are so horridly restricted, but I still indulge myself with planning tours to all the strange places I’ve only read about.”
    “No, no, don’t do it!” he begged. “Such dreams, believe me, are the seeds from which the eccentric springs! You would end, like that ramshackle Stanhope woman, queening it over hordes of evil-smelling Bedouins!”
    “I promise you I should not! It sounds very disagreeable— and quite as boring as the life I’ve known! You refer, I collect, to Lady Hester: did you ever meet her?”
    “Yes, at