A Matter of Class (3 page)

She felt like the worst sort of criminal.

Two days of incarceration had felt like two weeks or two months. Each hour had seemed a day long. Perhaps, Annabelle thought all too frequently, she had made the biggest mistake of her life when she fled with Thomas.

And sometimes she thought there was no
perhaps
about it.

The window of her bedchamber overlooked a small kitchen garden and a maze of stables and coach houses behind it. There was very little to look out upon and no way at all of knowing who—if anyone—rode into the square at the front of the house and maybe even stopped outside their door.

Perhaps no one did.

Perhaps no one ever would.

The bottom threatened to fall out of her stomach. Oh, how she
hated
this helplessness. She had never been helpless. Quite the contrary.

And then she heard the distant sound of the door knocker banging against the front door.

It might be anyone, of course.

Indeed, it almost undoubtedly was
someone
. Annabelle shocked herself by giggling aloud at the sad joke. She clapped one hand over her mouth.

It was best not to hope. But how could one
not
hope? What else was there to live for?

More than half an hour went by before the key scraped in the lock of her door and the door swung inward to reveal her father on the threshold, frowning sternly as usual, and her mother behind his right shoulder, smiling encouragement at her, tears in her eyes, her face pale and wan.

Annabelle stood and clasped her hands at her waist.

She felt slightly sick to the stomach. Guilt was a horrible feeling, and she was staring it in the face when she glanced at her mother. Apprehension was just as bad. What now? Was the carriage ready at the door to bear her off into outer darkness?

“Well, miss,” her father said, stepping inside the room and seeming to half fill it with his tall, imposing figure. When he frowned, his great hooked nose made him look even more like a bird of prey than usual. “You are to have better than you deserve.”

Her mother nodded and dabbed at a spilled-over tear with one index finger.

Annabelle said nothing.

“I have been persuaded to lower my standards in order to restore at least a modicum of respectability to my family,” he said, “though it will be a long time before I will forgive you for forcing it upon me, Annabelle. My only consolation is that you will suffer more than your mother and I, and that you will deserve exactly what you get.”

His lips stretched into a grimace that might have been intended as a smile. Not a smile of pleasure or amusement or affection, however.

Gracious heaven, Annabelle thought, darting a glance at her mother, who was swiping at another tear, whatever did he
mean
? The Marquess of Illingsworth had not offered for her after all, had he? Had Papa never been close enough to him to smell his
breath
? Or to see
his
teeth
? Had her bold bid for freedom really failed so utterly and so miserably?

But Papa had
lowered his standards
?

“I have just had a visit from Mason,” he said, clasping his hands at his back.

Annabelle's eyes widened. There was a sudden coldness in her head that threatened a fainting fit. It took a conscious physical effort to draw a breath into her lungs.

“Mr.
Mason
?” she asked foolishly as though her father had spoken too quietly to be heard clearly.

Mr. Mason was their neighbor at Oakridge. He was enormously wealthy and enormously . . . well, large. He was also, if her father was to be believed, enormously vulgar, uncouth, and any number of other unsavory, low things. In other words, he was not one of
them
. He was not a gentleman. He had made his fortune in coal and still had coal dust encrusted beneath his fingernails—according to Papa. And he had had the unmitigated gall to purchase the estate adjoining Papa's when it was for sale many years ago. He had pulled down the old house and built an expensively vulgar mansion in its place and had set out to be
amiable,
to be accepted as an equal by no less a person than the Earl of Havercroft.

He was an upstart—a dreadful thing to be if one's family happened to have been of the nobility for countless generations back. Probably as far back as the Conquest.

Mr. Mason had been Papa's mortal enemy for as long as Annabelle could recall. She and Mama had not been allowed to acknowledge him or Mrs. Mason even when they were occasionally at church together. They had not been allowed even so much as to
look
at the Masons or to recognize that they existed. It would puff them up to unbearable proportions, Papa had always said, and encourage further impudence.

Now Mr. Mason had come
calling
?

“Did you admit him, Papa?” Annabelle asked.

“I had him shown into Palmer's office, not the visitors' parlor,” he said. “But he would not state his business to anyone but me.”

Mr. Palmer was Papa's secretary.

“I was obliged to see him,” her father said.

Yes, of course he was. Mr. Mason was
rich
. And Papa was really quite frighteningly poor after losing all that money recently and spending so lavishly last summer.

“He came to offer you marriage,” her father added.

“Mr.
Mason
did?” she asked, her voice a distressed squeak.

“Oh, Annabelle,” her mother said, speaking for the first time. “
Mrs.
Mason is still alive. It is Mr.
Reginald
Mason to whom you are to be married. Their son.”

Annabelle went very still. If there was any more blood to drain out of her head, it did so at that moment. There was a slight ringing in her ears. The air in her nostrils felt cold. She clenched her hands, digging her fingernails painfully into her tingling palms, willing herself not to collapse in an insensible heap at their feet.

“You think to marry me to Mr.
Reginald
Mason?” she asked, staring at her father.

Because he was rich. Or his father was, anyway. There could be no other possible reason. Papa's hatred of Mr. Mason was almost an obsession.

Her father's smile was grim.

“A coalminer's son,” he said. “Expensively educated but with coal dust clogging his veins. A wild young rogue, with a reputation for unbridled extravagance and vicious depravity. And a mother and father who are vulgarity personified. Mason's one consuming ambition is to wiggle his way into the ranks of the beau monde. And while he has not been able to accomplish that goal on his own account even after thirty years or more of trying, now at last he has seen an opportunity for his
son and has not hesitated to seize it. You may be ruined, Annabelle, but you are still the daughter of the Earl of Havercroft. You are still
Lady
Annabelle Ashton. You are still a prize worth having to someone of Mason's ilk. And he is prepared to pay very dearly indeed for such a soiled trophy.”

Annabelle gathered her aristocratic dignity about her and raised disdainful eyebrows—as well as her nose and her chin. She even managed a hollow laugh.

“I hope,” she said, “you sent him on his way faster than he came, Papa.”

Her mother sniffled.

Her father fixed her with a stony stare.

“What I
did
,” he said, “was accept the offer. I had no choice.
You
took away my choices. Mason will be coming again tomorrow with his son for the offer to be formally made—and accepted.
By you.
”

The ringing in Annabelle's ears was turning fuzzy. “I'll not do it,” she whispered. “I'll not do it. You cannot make me. I l-love Thomas.”

Her father's voice was like thunder.

“You will never mention that name in this house again,” he bellowed. “But you are quite right about one thing. I cannot force you. I
can,
however, send you to
Meadow Hall tomorrow and have you earn your keep as a chambermaid. I cannot afford your keep there, heaven help me,
and
pay a chambermaid. You surely cannot believe that I am rejoicing over this humiliation, Annabelle. To have young Mason as my son-in-law? To have Mason as your
father-in-law
? To be beholden to him for saving me from my difficulties and you from ruin? To know that my peers will forever laugh behind their hands at me? You will listen to young Mason's proposal tomorrow—and you will accept it.”

“Oh, Annabelle,” her mother said, taking a step toward her. “He is a handsome young man. And only twenty-five. I daresay he is just sowing his wild oats, as young men do. I daresay he will—”

Her voice trailed off. Her husband had turned on her.

“And how, Ellen,” he asked coldly, “do you know what young Mason
looks
like?”

It was an absurd question. Young Mr. Mason had sat within feet of them at church every Sunday when both families were at home in the country. He always leered when Annabelle glanced his way or raised an ironical eyebrow or pursed his lips in a suggestion of a kiss. He was, as her mother had just said, very handsome.

“I will not marry him,” Annabelle said quickly. “I do not care how young or handsome he is or how respectable he may become at some time in the future. And I do not care how much his father is prepared to pay. I will not do it.”

She could hear her voice shaking.

“They are to come at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon,” the earl said. “You have until then to change your mind, Annabelle. The alternative is a life of drudgery at Meadow Hall, provided I do not lose it. If you do not like the idea of marrying young Mason, you have only yourself to blame that it has become not only a possibility but a necessity.”

Yes, she did have only herself to blame, Annabelle admitted to herself as he gestured her mother out of the room, followed her without another word, and closed the door behind them. She had made the plan and she had set it in motion, and—well, and here she was. She was to marry Reginald Mason instead of the Marquess of Illingsworth, if her father had his way.

From the frying pan into the fire.

She sank down onto a stool that was conveniently at hand and lowered her forehead to her knees.

It was Reginald Mason instead of the Marquess of Illingsworth or her father's utter ruin.

Gracious heaven, it might have been anyone calling at the house an hour ago. It might even have been the marquess calling to forgive her and make her an offer after all. Instead it had been Mr. Mason, come to purchase her for his son.

T
here were always strict rules.

The child never doubted that she was loved even though her parents were often away in London for the Season or at a house party on the country estate of one of their numerous friends. She knew they loved her anyway, as did her elderly nurse, who had been Mama's nurse once upon a time in the dim distant past. She was a happy, secure child.

But of course there were rules, all of which were for her own good and intended to keep her from harm. She
must never wander alone farther from the house than the kitchen gardens behind it, for example, or the parterre gardens before it. That particular rule was not terribly irksome since she could occupy herself smelling the flowers or talking to the gardeners or skipping along the graveled walks of the parterres or pretending she was in a maze and hopelessly lost and being stalked by a lion or a bear.

It was a
somewhat
irksome rule, though, for she was an inquisitive as well as an imaginative child, and she often found herself standing still among the flowers or on a graveled walk wondering what lay beyond her little world apart from the driveway that led into the village. She really did not know the answer since Mama did not enjoy the outdoors—at least, not to take
exercise
in—and Nurse had elderly legs that no longer worked well enough to allow her to go exploring.

Nurse also had an elderly tendency to nod off during the afternoons and to stay nodded off for a good, long time. The child had timed her once, watching the big hand on the clock in the nursery. It moved once completely around the face and almost halfway around again before Nurse awoke with a start and a snort and remarked that she must have dozed off for a moment.

When she was five, the child started to use those hours of Nurse's sleep for her great disobedience. She began to explore the land surrounding her house. It was not a
very
great disobedience, she told herself, since she never went beyond the boundary of the park. But those stolen hours were always magical. There was something very enticing about breaking the rules and enjoying a sense of freedom and adventure.

One afternoon while she was thus employed, she discovered a co-conspirator. At least, she assumed that was what he was since surely
all
children were governed by strict rules and there was no sign of either a parent or a nurse with him.

As she was approaching the river that formed the eastern border of the park—a favorite destination of hers because she could lie on her stomach on the bank and watch the fish dart by—she heard a mighty splash and rushed forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of a giant fish leaping in the air.

It was not a fish, however, but a boy, who was climbing out of the water by the time she arrived on the scene, wearing only his drawers. He was white and skinny. He had lots of dark hair, which was plastered to his head
and forehead, and eyes that looked black, though they were probably only dark brown.

She recognized him. He was the boy she was strictly forbidden even to look at in church. He was vulgar. But this was not church.

“Oh, dear,” she said, coming to an abrupt halt several feet from the bank and him. “Did you fall in?”