A Matter of Class (5 page)

“Oh, I
wish
, Reginald,” his mother said, “you would not call your father
sir
, just like a gentleman with no warmth of family affection in his heart.”

“I am sorry, Ma,” Reggie said, smiling apologetically at her. “I'll call him Da as if I were still an infant, then, shall I?”

“You will always be my little boy,” she said sadly. “I shall weep if you ever start calling me
ma'am
.”

Reggie vaulted out of the carriage and offered his hand to help her down. Then he hugged her tightly.

“Ma,” he said, “why would I do that? If I ever do, you may clip me about the head, not weep.”

She took his father's arm and looked apprehensively toward the house. She appeared to have shrunk to half her size since they left home, whereas his father seemed to have expanded to twice his. All of his thunderous ill-humor of two days ago had fled without a trace. Reggie took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. This was it, then. A liveried footman, complete with white wig rolled crisply at the sides, was holding open the door of the mansion where Reggie's doom was to be sealed.

They were soon in pursuit of the stiff back of the Havercroft butler, who led them up a broad, impressive
staircase to the drawing room. This, Reggie thought as the butler announced them and stood aside, must be the very depth of degradation for Havercroft. The
drawing
room, no less, for his enemy the coal merchant and his family!

There were three people in the room, all of them on their feet or in the process of rising. The earl stood before the cold marble fireplace, his feet slightly apart, his hands clasped at his back, his thin face looking haughty and aristocratic and beaked. He looked as if it might have taken wild horses to drag him there, though he was immaculately turned out, as always. The countess was slender and handsome and smiling. It was a
gracious
smile rather than a warm one, it was true, and therefore perhaps a little condescending, but it was a smile nonetheless.

And then there was Lady Annabelle, who was tricked out for the occasion in white muslin, which almost exactly matched her complexion. Her very blond hair, arranged in elaborate curls about her head and wispy ringlets over her ears, looked almost colorful in comparison. If she had said
boo
, she might have been mistaken for a ghost and they might all have run screaming from the room. Her face wore no smile, gracious
or otherwise. Nor any other expression. She gazed straight ahead at nothing in particular.

Dash it all, she looked as if she had been
suffering
. As no doubt she had.

The sound of Reggie's father rubbing his large hands together was loud in the room for a moment after the butler had finished saying his piece and had closed the door behind the visitors. And then the countess moved gracefully in their direction, both her hands extended toward them—or rather, toward his mother, at whom her smile was directed.

“Mrs. Mason,” she said, “I am delighted you have come too. Mothers are excluded all too often from such happy events as this, and really we ought not to be, ought we, since we are the ones who bore and nurtured our children.”

“Exactly what I always say,” Reggie's mother said, beaming happily as she set her hands in those of the countess and visibly relaxed. “It is even worse when the child is a son, Lady Havercroft. A man always thinks a son is
his
, just as if he appeared from nowhere one day and a woman just happened to be hovering in the next room waiting to provide milk and be called
Ma
and otherwise be ignored. I insisted on coming today. ‘Bernie,' I said
when I knew he and Reginald were coming, ‘I am going too and there is no point in trying to stop me.'”

She sounded breathless by the time she had finished.

“Women!” Reggie's father said genially, looking for confirmation of his good-natured complaint from the earl.

Havercroft offered no such confirmation, and Reggie's father set about rubbing his hands together again.

“Do have a seat,” the countess said. “We are pleased to see you, Mr. Mason. And you too, Mr. Reginald Mason.”

Lady Annabelle Ashton sank back into the seat from which she had risen on their arrival. It was as close to one of the windows as it could be without actually falling out of it to the ground below.

Reggie sat some distance from her. He would have lifted one hand to loosen the knot of his neckcloth, but such a gesture would suggest that he did not feel entirely comfortable, and he did not want to give anyone the satisfaction of suspecting that that was true.

“Mr. Mason,” the countess said, her eyes on him, “have you met my daughter? Annabelle, make your curtsy to Mr. Reginald Mason, if you please.”

Reggie jumped back to his feet as Lady Annabelle got to hers.

“Lady Annabelle,” he said, making her a bow.

“Mr. Mason,” she said, curtsying.

All of which was utterly absurd. They had lived less than two miles from each other most of their lives, both of them under strict orders to ignore the very existence of the other. Now they were finally being introduced and expected to
marry
.

Her eyes did not quite meet his as she resumed her seat and he felt permitted to resume his. Her jaw was set in a hard line. He wondered what was going through her mind.

His father was openly looking about the room, doubtless pricing out every item down to the last penny and concluding with great satisfaction that the Havercroft drawing room, for all its brocaded walls and gilded frieze and landscape originals in their heavy gold frames, was no more expensive than their own.

Lady Havercroft began a polite conversation about the weather and the health of the king and the hot air balloon that had ascended from Hyde Park last week. Reggie's mother hoped the weather would stay warm for
the summer in the country, though they needed some rain, of course, to keep the grass green and grow the crops, and anyway it was greedy to ask for too much good weather. And pointless too since the weather did what it pleased no matter what they wished. Which was a good thing since everyone wanted different weather for different reasons and might end up fighting wars over it if they were able to control it. As if there were not enough things already to fight wars over. His father pronounced flat out that the king was mad, which was a pity since the Prince Regent was even more of an idiot, and that if men had been meant to fly, the good Lord would surely have given them wings. And some men were filled with enough hot air without there being more beneath their feet—an observation that was followed by a hearty and unilateral bellow of laughter.

The shadow of a smile flitted across Lady Annabelle's ghost-pale lips.

It was many months since Reggie had seen his father so brimful of good humor.

“Well,” his father said at last, breaking a short silence that threatened to become awkward, “I have brought Reginald to make his offer to your daughter, Havercroft,
according to our agreement yesterday. Shall we hear him do it so that the whole business can be sealed up right and tight?”

The earl turned steely gray eyes upon Reginald. He might have regarded a worm beneath his boot with more respect and less dislike.

“I could hardly have phrased it better myself,” he said, his tone quiet and aristocratic and withering.

Reggie's father did not wither. He rubbed his hands and beamed.

“Get to it, then, lad,” he said.

Right! A public offer it was to be, then, both sets of parents watching and listening and judging. How utterly delightful!

Should he stand? Sit?
Kneel?
Move closer? Farther away? All the way out onto the landing? Should he smile? Frown? Look contrite? Amorous? Grateful? Humble? Dignified? Triumphant? Defeated? Defiant? Compliant? Supercilious?

Good Lord, his mind was babbling, and he was missing what the Countess of Havercroft was saying. She had risen to her feet to say it, and Reggie scrambled to his again.

“Mr. Mason, William,” she said, looking from Reggie's father to Havercroft, “how can you possibly expect the young people to come to any sort of amicable agreement unless they are given the chance to speak privately with each other? We will leave them alone. Mrs. Mason, do come into the music room. I will have tea fetched there.”

And she swept across the room and opened a door that led to a connecting room—the music room, obviously. Reggie glimpsed a large pianoforte in there and his mother exclaimed over its size. The two older men followed, one behind the other. The earl was the last through the door. Reggie waited for it to shut.

He waited in vain. It closed, but only halfway.

Privacy, it seemed, was to be illusory.

There was no sound of conversation from beyond the door. They had probably all pulled up chairs to listen. And also to watch? It was impossible to tell.

He turned his head to look at Lady Annabelle. She was also looking at the door—and then at him. Their eyes locked and held.

He raised his eyebrows. She raised hers. She was far better at it than he. Her eyebrows had been born ar istocratic.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” she replied.

M
r. Bernard Mason was huge. His head was as round as a large ball and almost as bald. It had glistened in the sunlight that was streaming through the drawing room windows. He had an amiable, almost jovial face. He spoke with a broad north country accent.

Mrs. Mason was plump and pretty. She seemed placid and good-natured. She spoke with the same accent.

Both were talkative. Both were absolutely appalling in her father's eyes. Annabelle had been able to see that. The fact that he was beholden to them, that he must marry her, his only daughter, to their son, must be the stuff of nightmares to him.

But he was not the one who was going to have to marry Mr. Reginald Mason.

Annabelle liked his parents. She always had. Not that she had been allowed to have any dealings whatsoever with them, but she had not been able to help hearing Mr. Mason's booming voice when he talked with the vicar after church, or his loud laugh when he
exchanged pleasantries with fellow parishioners. And once, when she and her mama had taken a basket of food to a sick villager, sitting in their carriage until their coachman had delivered the offering and the woman of the house had come out to make her curtsy and shower them with thanks, the woman had remarked that Mrs. Mason had called earlier and had sat talking with the sick person for all of half an hour. Annabelle had wished that
they
had done that. It sounded like fun. It sounded compassionate.

Their son was a different matter altogether. Although he bore a faint resemblance to his mother, it was really so faint as to be virtually nonexistent. He was dark-haired and tall and slender, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist and hips, and long, well-muscled legs. He was immaculately tailored and elegant. He spoke with the refined accent of a gentleman. And his face, faultlessly handsome, was set in an expression that seemed halfway between amusement and contempt.

How dare he!

“It would seem,” he said when it became obvious to both of them that the door between the drawing room and the music room was not going to be shut, “that our
fathers between them have arranged our marriage, Lady Annabelle.”

He did not bother to lower his voice or disguise the fact that the idea had not been his.

“Yes,” she said, gazing at him disdainfully. If he was going to look at her
that
way, then she was going to look back at him
this
way.

“And yet,” he said, “only a week ago you were so determined to marry someone else that you ran off with him. Your father's coachman, I understand.”

She pressed her lips together and glared at him. Her eyes narrowed. Oh, he was going to play games with her, was he?

“What was his name?” he asked.

“Thomas Till,” she said. “I would guess it still
is
his name.”

“Till?”
His mouth quirked at one corner. “You would have enjoyed being Mrs. Annabelle
Till
?”

“Far more than I will enjoy being Mrs. Annabelle
Mason,
I daresay,” she retorted, forgetting for a moment that they had an audience beyond the music room doors.

He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of the hit, and his eyes dared to laugh.

“You lament his departure from your life, then?” he asked her.

She glanced toward the half-open door, remembering. “My decision to elope was a mistake,” she said disdainfully. “It was rash and impulsive.”

“You are impulsive by nature, then?” he asked her. “And rash? And fickle?”

Oh.