A Matter of Class (14 page)

“Ah,” he said. “I was a slowtop, then. I fell in love with you when I kissed you, Anna. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was then that I realized I loved you. And almost simultaneously I realized how impossible it all was. I have never been one to invite unnecessary pain into my life. I left as fast as my feet would carry me on the assumption that I was doing it soon enough to leave all pain behind me.”

“And
did
you?” Her voice was abnormally high-pitched.

He shook his head and pursed his lips.

“Memory can be the most damnable thing at times,” he said.

“You could not forget?” she asked.

He shook his head again.

She took a step forward and set her forehead against his chest. He lowered his face to her head, encountered the straw of her bonnet, and fumbled beneath her chin
until he had pulled loose the ribbons and tossed the bonnet to the ground behind her. He drew the pins from her hair, twined his fingers in it as it cascaded down over her shoulders, and rested his forehead against the top of her head.

She wrapped her arms about his waist and said no more for some time.

He had loved her without ceasing for three years. She had loved him for nine. And the chance for a happy outcome to their love was the same now as it had ever been. Nil, in other words. None whatsoever. Nonexistent.

When she tipped back her face to gaze into his eyes, he lowered his mouth to hers.

Before passion and desire took hold of him, body and mind, he marveled at the feeling of homecoming, of rightness. He was where he belonged. So was she.
They
were where they belonged.

Together. In each other's arms.

At last.

H
e loved her.
He loved her.
The thought pulsed through Annabelle's brain like lifeblood.

She pressed her mouth to his, touched his tongue with her own, tightened her arms about him.

He was
here
. He was
here now,
in the circle of her arms.

But thoughts of wonder and joy were soon replaced with a desire so intense that all else was swallowed up in it.

“Anna.”

He was kissing her face, her neck, her throat. His hands were moving over her breasts, down over her waist to her hips and then behind her to cup her buttocks and lift her against him. She pressed her palms hard over his muscled chest and across his broad shoulders. She reveled in the unfamiliar contours of his man's body. She could feel his desire, his need for her pressed hard to her abdomen.

“Reggie.”

She sought his mouth with her own again, and all became raw, pulsing need.

But then he was gasping against her mouth and stiffening defensively.

“I must not,” he said. “I cannot. It is impossible.”

“No,” she moaned as she twined her arms about his neck. “It is
not
impossible. Nothing is. Reggie, don't stop. Don't let me go. Please don't stop.”

Her mind was not working properly, of course. What she was begging for was shocking under any circumstances. But he was right. It
was
impossible. She could not let him go, though, when he was here at last and his arms were about her and hers about him and nothing else in the world mattered except the two of them.

She preferred not to explore the confusion of her own thoughts. She preferred not to think at all. Not now. Not yet.

“Reggie,” she whispered against his mouth, “I love you. I love you.”

Perhaps his mind was not working properly either, though he
had
made a valiant effort to be rational. He stopped her whisperings with his mouth, urgent now and abandoned to passion.

And then somehow they were on the grass together, just out of range of the tree roots, ravaging each other's mouth while their hands roamed and explored with fevered intensity. He pulled up her skirts, and she could feel him fumbling with the buttons at the waist of his pantaloons.

And then, as he moved over her, he looked into her eyes, and they both paused. Not to stop entirely. They were too deep into passion for that. But to still the worst
of the frenzy, to know what it was they were about to do, to know each other.

She smiled at him, and he smiled back, a moment of peace at the heart of the storm. His dark eyes had depths she had never seen in them before. His hair was ruffled.

“Anna, my love,” he said.

She lifted her hand and cupped it about one of his cheeks.

“Reggie,” she murmured back to him.

And he came over her, his legs coming between hers and pressing them wide, his hands pushing her skirts up to her waist and then sliding beneath her to lift and tilt her. She bent her legs to set her feet flat against the ground. And she could feel him hard and unfamiliar against her.

She shut her eyes tightly at the shock of his invasion. He was hard, and he was pressing into her, stretching her wide. And then there was the near-panic of knowing there was no more room and the searing pain as he found more. And the final knowledge that she was filled.

She opened her eyes. He had raised himself onto his elbows and was gazing down at her.

“I am sorry,” he whispered. “I am so sorry.”

He was apologizing for the pain. But it was pain that was also pleasure. And desire.

“Don't be,” she was whispering too. “Oh, don't be.”

He kissed her mouth and her jaw, and he drew almost out of her and pressed back in and so set up a slow and steady rhythm. Annabelle closed her eyes again. It was still painful. She was dreadfully sore. It was also the most exquisitely wonderful feeling in the world.

They were making love. He was inside her body.
Reggie
was. She closed inner muscles about him.

She could smell his cologne, feel his heat, hear the wetness of their coupling. And finally, as his rhythm quickened and deepened, pain became indistinguishable from a pleasure that washed over her and engulfed her.

And then he pressed deep and held there, tense against her until she felt a gush of heat deep inside. She sighed with contentment as her toes curled up inside her shoes.

It was done.

And she was not sorry.

Her love was not unrequited, and it was not unfulfilled.

She was entirely happy. The future did not touch her.
Now
was all that mattered.

He lay heavily on her for several moments before lifting his head and gazing into her eyes and kissing her with warm, drowsy lips. Then he sighed, drew free of her body, and rolled off her to lie beside her. With one hand he lowered her skirts, and then he set his own clothing to rights and sat up. He draped his arms over his knees.

Annabelle gazed at him for a while. She loved him, and he loved her. They belonged to each other. There was no lovelier feeling in the world. She spread one hand across his back.

He sighed again.

“Oh, Anna,” he said, “I am
so
sorry. And how inadequate an apology
that
is.”

Her hand slid to the ground.

“Because it is all so impossible?” she asked. She was not ready to consider the possibility of the impossible.

He raked the fingers of one hand through his hair.

“We cannot marry,” he said. “You know that.”

“Would you marry me if you could?” she asked.

He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her, and she held her breath.

“In a heartbeat,” he said.

She let go of her breath and smiled.

“We are both of age,” she said. “No one can stop us marrying.”

He continued to look at her.

“How would your father react,” he said, “if you were to announce that you were going to marry me no matter what?”

She stared back at him, and he turned his head away again and stared off across the river.

“Precisely,” he said, just as if she had answered him in words. “He would never speak to you again. He would not allow your
mother
to speak to you or anyone else in your family. He would force the beau monde to shun you. You would not be able to bear it.”

“I would,” she began. But her protest trailed away. She might be able to cope with social ostracism. But estrangement from her mother and father? She closed her eyes. “How would
your
father react?”

“He has always insisted that he hates your father,” he said, “and that he does not care a tupenny toss—
his
words—for his good opinion. But he does care. He would be humiliated if I did something to cause your father to despise him even more than he already does.”

She lay still and he sat still for what seemed a long while in silence. There seemed to be nothing else to say. They could not marry. But how could they
not
? Especially now.

“Papa wants me to marry someone wealthy,” she said at last. “
You
are wealthy.”

It was grasping at straws.

He turned his head away so that she could not see even his profile. “The money is black with coal,” he said bitterly. “It would soil his hands.”

“He has been having expensive renovations done on the house this year,” she said. “And he has been losing money he invested a few years ago. A fortune, in fact.”

She felt guilty for divulging information that was supposed to be their own ghastly secret. But people would soon find out. They always did.

He said nothing.

“He has been willing to let me enjoy myself for the last few years,” she said, “but he is beginning to pressure me to marry the Marquess of Illingsworth, who has fancied himself my suitor since he danced with me at my come-out ball.”

“His father is one of the richest men in England,” Reggie said.

“Yes.”

She heard him inhaling and exhaling slowly.

“The pressure will really be on next spring during the Season,” she said.

He got to his feet abruptly and went to stand on the bank of the river.

“Havercroft would never accept my suit, Anna,” he said, “even if he knows that my father is as wealthy as the duke. And I daresay he
does
know it. It is pointless to dream.”

She lay where she was for a while, gazing upward through leaves that were half green, half yellow to the cloudless blue of the sky beyond. She felt the heavy pull of despair.

“What is left,” she asked him, “if there are no dreams?”

But he did not answer.

She got to her feet after a while, brushed her hands over her skirts, and turned to walk away in the direction of home. But she had not walked far before she stopped. The leaves were even more yellow above her head here. It was undeniably autumn. Soon all the leaves would
be down and it would be winter. But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.

She had left her book and her bonnet and parasol and a whole arsenal of hair pins at the river bank. And something infinitely more precious than any of them. Than anything else in her life, in fact.

She had left her dreams on the river bank.

A
nnabelle was alone with her mother, her maid having settled her flower-trimmed straw bonnet over her elaborate coiffure to her own satisfaction and left the dressing room. It was almost time to leave for church. And it was bound to be full. Almost all of Annabelle's relatives, even those who had not been in town for the Season, had come for the occasion. Large numbers of the Mason family and Mrs. Mason's family, the Cleggs, had come. And almost everyone else who had been invited had returned a card of acceptance.

One could be forgiven, it seemed, for eloping with one's father's coachman, provided one was stopped soon
enough. And provided one returned almost immedi - ately to the fold by marrying someone who was almost respectable. And a man as wealthy as Mr. Mason
was
almost respectable, especially when his son, the bride-groom, was quite indistinguishable in speech, education, appearance, and manners from any other gentleman.

People would come out of curiosity, if nothing else. And for the same reason they would keep an eye on the couple for the next year or two, accepting any of their invitations, inviting them to their own entertainments. Eventually Mr. Reginald Mason would be more or less accepted as one of their own, and the scandal surrounding his wife would fade into obscurity.

“I did advise that you wear white,” the countess said, “but I am glad you chose the green after all. It is a lovely spring-like color. A
hopeful
color.”

Annabelle turned away from the looking glass and hugged her rather tightly, risking creases to both their dresses.