Free Babe by Joan Smith Page B

doing anything but listening and staring, their faces full of greedy curiosity.
    Barbara began to perceive she had misread the seeming indifference that had greeted her earlier. She was struck with a sudden fear that even a duel was possible, for she had never seen Clivedon so quietly furious. His anger in the park was nothing to this. He looked exactly like the tigers at the Exchange, ready to pounce. “Clivedon!” she said in alarm, “it was not Theo’s fault. It was my idea to come.”
    “Later!” he said, in a voice so charged with fury that it had an electrical quality to it.
    “Indeed it is not his fault!” she repeated, more loudly, and more frightened.
    “There is no fault in it,” Theo said hastily.
    Angela fixed her face into a proper pose and spoke up. “When a lady disobeys her guardian, most people would consider it a grave fault,” she informed Colonel Gentz. Looking to Clivedon for approval of her championship, she was stunned to see the way he looked at her. “Well, certainly she should do as you say, unless . . .” But she could find in neither heart nor head any excuse for Babe.
    “Lord Clivedon recognizes that I have some influence with the lady as well,” Gentz said, and knew he had erred, though he was in fact trying to smooth the matter over. “That is . . . as . . .” There was a dreadful hush, while he stumbled to a halt.
    “Oh, do be quiet, Theo,” Barbara said, then laughed nervously.
    “You were saying?” Clivedon asked him.
    “As Babe’s fiancé my wishes are to be considered as well,” Theo answered back.
    “Fiancé! I knew it!” Angela declared.
    “A joke,” Clivedon told her, but neither his face nor tone was at all facetious. “You have not forgotten Lady Withers’ party after the play, Lady Barbara? I shall take you,” he added.
    Never was anyone so happy to hear the box boys announce the return to the play as Lord Clivedon was that night, unless lit should be Barbara.
    She turned and walked away, her knees like jelly. “Theo, what possessed you to say such a thing!”
    “I know when I see murder in a man’s eyes. He plans to kill me. He can hardly call out his own charge’s fiancé. We are engaged, milady, at least until I get safely out of London. I’m off to Burrells’ tonight.”
    “You can’t abandon me! Oh, Theo, he will kill me instead! I know he will. I'm sorry I ever came.”
    “I wanted to go to the Pantheon instead. You are the one insisted we come here. I’ll be lucky to get home in one piece. Don’t tell him you don’t plan to marry me till I am out of here.”
    “The thing to do is to leave at once and go to Burrells’, both of us.”
    “Suit yourself. I wouldn’t mind leaving now, but I'll take you home . You are very lovely, ma mie , but you are not worth my life.”
    They had reached their box, but instead of entering, they went around the corner towards the stairs, to see Clivedon standing at the top with his arms folded, and a look on his face that invited trouble.
    “Leaving, Colonel Gentz?” he asked. “What an excellent idea. I would do the same if I were in your boots, and I wouldn’t stop running till I got out of town. Won’t you join my party, Lady Barbara? There are six seats, and only four of us attended, so you won’t have the pleasure of sitting on anyone’s knee or the edge of the balcony railing, but with luck you will find some other means of making a show of yourself.”
    Gentz nipped off down the stairs, while Clivedon took Lady Barbara’s elbow in a grip that left two bruises, as he led her to his box. “Can you behave yourself for thirty minutes, or is that beyond you?” he asked in a voice of mock solicitude.
    “Clivedon . . .”
    “Does Lady Graham know you are gone?”
    “No, I sneaked out.”
    “Go into my box. I’ll join you as soon as I have sent her a message. And you had better be there when I return.”
    As he wrote his note outside the door and dispatched it with a page, she hadn’t