A Matter of Class (15 page)

“You have reason to hope, Mama,” she said. “I am hopeful myself. I have come to rather like Mr. Mason, and I think he rather likes me. I believe an affection will grow between us.”

“And his parents?” her mama asked.

“I adore them,” Annabelle smiled warmly.

“Oh,” her mother said, sounding vastly relieved. “And so do I. I always have. I always wished I could speak to them at church and invite them to our parties and go to assemblies they were attending. Now I will be able to do all those things. It would be peculiar if I did not. I believe I can actually make a
friend
of Mrs. Mason.”

“Oh, Mama,” Annabelle squeezed her hands. “You are not still so dreadfully angry with me, then?”

“Just answer me one question,” her mother said. “Did you run away with Thomas Till only so that you would not have to marry the Marquess of Illingsworth? Did you pay him to take you? And did you make sure that you blazed an obvious enough trail so that you would be overtaken very quickly?”

Annabelle squeezed her hands more tightly.

“You do not need to answer,” her mother said hurriedly. “It was all my fault. If I had asserted myself, as I really ought to do far more often than I do, I could have seen to it that your father found someone else for you than the marquess. I cannot think a man in any way attractive when he has bad teeth.”

They both snorted with unexpected laughter and ended up with tears in their eyes.

“You
will
be happy with Mr. Mason?” the countess asked. “I have found him surprisingly charming and witty.”

But Annabelle had no chance to answer. The door of her dressing room opened again, and her father stood there, looking elegant and austere and unhappy.

“We will be late for church,” he said.

He gazed broodingly at his daughter and then said something so very unexpected that both women could only gape at him.

“
If
you want to go, that is, Annabelle,” he said. “If you do not, we will take ourselves off to Oakridge before the day is out, and the Masons and the
ton
can go hang for all I care.”

It was the most extraordinary declaration of love Annabelle had ever heard from him. The consequences to her father of such behavior would be astronomical in every imaginable way. And catastrophic. And yet he was prepared to do it for
her
?

“Oh, Papa,” she said. “I
love
Reginald Mason. Or I will when I know him better, I am sure. I am already falling
in
love with him, and I think he is with me. I really
want
to marry him, reluctant as I was at first. This
marriage will
not
be a disaster. You must not feel guilty. None of us must. Oh,
please
let us not feel guilty.”

And she closed the short distance between them and flung her arms about his neck.

“But thank you,” she said. “
Thank
you, Papa. I do love you and Mama.”

He cleared his throat. He had always been uncomfortable with female emotions, the foolish, dear man.

“We are going to be late,” he said, and he stepped back clear of the doorway and offered an arm to each of them.

Annabelle inhaled slowly and deeply. It was her wedding day.

At last.

A
n hour or so earlier Reggie too had been in his dressing room. It was crowded to capacity with uncles and male cousins. All of them, even the unmarried ones, had advice for the coming years, and particularly for the coming night. Most of the latter was ribaldry they would not have offered if any female ears had been within fifty feet of them.

And then Reggie's mother spoiled it all by coming to see if his cravat and neckcloth were straight. One by one the other men faded away.

“Ma,” Reggie said, “if you move my cravat even one millimeter my valet will resign. And I would hate that.”

She contented herself with patting him on the chest.

“You would have finished sowing your wild oats soon enough even without all this,” she said. “You are a good boy, Reginald. You always have been. A good
man
, I mean. Your father did not have to worry so much. He could afford to pay off your debts.”

“Ma.” He took one of her hands in his and raised it to his lips. “I am not unhappy. Indeed, I do believe I am actually
happy
. I like Lady Annabelle. I may even be falling in love with her. I am sure I am, in fact. And she seems not entirely indifferent to me.”

“Oh,” she said with a sigh. “That is exactly what
I
have thought, Reginald. But I fear that perhaps she is a shallow young lady. I
do
hope I am wrong. But how can she be falling in love with you when just a month or so ago she went running off with that coachman?”

“Havercroft was pressing her into a marriage with the Marquess of Illingsworth,” he said. “Do you know
him, Ma? If you do, you can perhaps understand why she would take such drastic action as making off with the coachman while at the same time making sure that the whole world knew about it.”

Her eyes widened.

“It was
staged
?” she said. “She would risk
ruin
rather than marry that marquess, whom I do not know though I am sure I would dislike him intensely if I did.”

“My guess is that it was staged,” he said. “And if it was, then she was extraordinarily brave and very determined, and I like her the better for it.”

“And so do I,” she said firmly. “I have
so
wanted to love her without reservation, Reginald, and now I can. And I like her mother too. I do hope the earl will allow us to nod and smile at each other in church, perhaps even to exchange a word or two. And if I were ever to invite her to tea, Reginald, do you suppose she would come?”

“How foolish she would be,” he said, kissing her cheek, “if she did not. Ma, don't be unhappy today. Not even a tiny little bit. I fought this betrothal, but now I know it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I am going to do my best to live happily ever after with Lady Annabelle.”

She sighed and beamed with contentment, and they both turned to the door as it opened to admit Reggie's father.

“Well, lad,” he said, looking his son over from head to toe as he rubbed his hands together. “You look as fine as fivepence. How are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” Reggie admitted. “I am terrified that I will drop the ring at the last moment.”

“Then you will simply bend down and pick it up,” his father said.

They stood and stared at each other, father and son.

“I am sorry, Da,” Reggie said, “for all the disappointment I caused you over the winter and spring—as well as all the
money
I cost you. It will not happen again. I promise you.”

“This wedding cannot be called off now,” his father said, looking unusually somber. “But I am sorry too, Reginald, for having forced it on you. Sometimes I get blinded by ambition and forget that you and your ma are all that really matter in my life. I would
not
have cut you off without a penny, but it is too late to tell you that now.”

Reggie closed the distance between them and held out his right hand.

“Let's forgive each other, shall we?” he said. “And be done with our guilt? And both agree that all has ended well after all? I have just been confessing to Ma that I am quite in love with Lady Annabelle and that I believe she is falling in love with me too. I intend to make a happy marriage of this, Da. And if you are doubtful, then keep watching.”

His father did not take his offered hand. Instead, he pulled him into a rough bear hug.

“I will, lad,” he said. “I will. And now, if we are not to keep your bride waiting and give the
ton
food for gossip for the next month, we had better be on our way to church. St. George's on Hanover Square, Reginald. Who would have thought I could rise so high in my lifetime as to have a son getting married
there
?”

Reggie offered his arm to his mother. She took it and then linked her free arm through her husband's.

It was his wedding day, Reggie thought, and everyone seemed to be happy about it—at least on his side.

His stomach muscles suddenly contracted uncomfortably. What if he really
did
drop the ring?

B
y the time the wedding breakfast at Havercroft House had been consumed and most of the wedding guests had taken their leave and the rest had lingered on in the drawing room until evening, the baggage of every Mason relative had been removed from the house on Portman Square and taken to Grillons Hotel. Bags for Reggie's parents had been taken there too. The house had been left empty, apart from servants, for the use of the bride and groom during their wedding night.

The house seemed remarkably quiet, Reggie thought
when they arrived there. And strangely unfamiliar, even though it was the same place it had been this morning.

The housekeeper met them very formally in the hall and informed Lady Annabelle that her maid awaited her in the best guest room. She escorted her up there, and Reggie was left to kick his heels and exchange a blank stare with the butler.

He had one drink in the library and took another up with him to his room, where his valet was waiting for him.

Half an hour later, clad in a nightshirt, something he never wore, and a monstrosity of a brocaded blue dressing gown, he tapped on the door of the guest room and opened it when someone murmured something from within.

A branch of candles burned on the dressing table. The bed had been turned down for the night, the drapes pulled back from around it.

His bride was standing over by the window. She wore a white nightgown that was all silk and lace and clung to her perfect curves in a most intriguing fashion. Her very blond hair lay in thick waves down her back.

He closed the door behind his back.

“Anna,” he murmured softly.

“Reggie.”

“We did it,” he said.

“We did,” she agreed. “And if you suggest anything remotely like it
ever
again, I will personally clobber you over the head with something very hard.”

He struck a thoughtful pose and was silent for a few moments.

“My memory may be defective,” he said, “but I do believe it was
you
who suggested when you returned to the river bank that we needed a plan and then rejected the perfectly splendid one I put forward and then dreamed this one up all on your own. I
told
you it was hare-brained. I
told
you that once you launched it into motion you would be as helpless as a newborn. And I
told
you I would be bored silly behaving like a spendthrift and a particularly inept gambler. But would you listen to me?”

It was a rhetorical question. He did not expect her to answer it.

“Oh, Reggie,” she said. “Your plan was perfectly
stupid
. Who would have believed that you had dived into the river and hit your head on the bottom and I had dived in to haul you to safety and then took off your wet
clothes and warmed you in my arms and held you there until someone finally came along to discover us in such a compromising situation and insist that we marry?”

“Well,” he said, “there was no point in suggesting that
you
be the one to hit your head while
I
dived to your rescue, was there? You never would be the damsel in distress, Anna, confess it. And I still think it would have worked splendidly. You would have had to take off your clothes too, though. They would have been wet, remember, when you had dived in after me.”

She stared speechlessly at him for a few moments.

“It was
utterly
stupid,” she said. “Everyone must know that you swim like a fish while I do not swim at all.”

“You don't?” he said, distracted. “So all that business about not getting your hair wet was to save you from having to admit that you would have sunk like a stone if you had dived in?”

“It was no plan at all,” she said, avoiding the question.

“And yours
was
?” he said, “even though I had to play the part of a dashed dandy all winter? And then orchestrate matters so that my father reached the end of his tether precisely at the moment when you committed your great indiscretion?”

“Precisely at the moment?
” she said her voice rising
half an octave. “I languished in my room for
two whole days
before your papa came calling on mine. All I had for company was a
Bible
.”

He grinned.

“
Where
,” she demanded of him, “did you discover that absolutely
mad
Thomas Till?”