A Matter of Class (8 page)

“Oh,
thank
you, Reggie,” she said as she took it and settled it somehow on her curls. “
Someone
would have noticed. You are my knight in shining armor.”

And off she rode again.

A knight in shining armor indeed! Cliché. Child's stuff.

But he felt absurdly pleased.

R
eggie and his parents were not invited to dine at Havercroft House on the evening of the engagement ball, though there was a dinner for a number of Havercroft's relatives and inner circle of friends. One of Reggie's acquaintances had told him of it.

Reggie was not surprised that they had been excluded. What if his mother slurped her soup, after all, or his father tucked his napkin into the top of his cravat? What if
he
should use his dessert spoon for the fish course or the butter knife to hack at his beef?

Instead they were to attend only the ball, and Havercroft was to propose a toast to his daughter and her
betrothed during supper. They were to stand in the receiving line too, something Havercroft must deplore but could hardly avoid without raising eyebrows throughout the
ton
.

Reggie had been to a few
ton
balls, though to none given by any of the most fashionable hostesses, it was true. He had been educated as a gentleman, after all, and most of his friends were of the upper classes.

His parents, however, were about to attend their first such ball. His father was as puffed up about it as that balloon had been with hot air when it lifted off from Hyde Park last week. His mother, by contrast, was so consumed by the jitters that she scarcely ate or sat down or stopped talking for two days before it. She probably did not sleep either. Reggie's father had borne her off to the modiste with the highest prices and thickest French accent on Bond Street to be decked out in a purple splendor of a gown that was all wrong for her coloring and then on to other exclusive establishments for the trappings of silver slippers, silver hair plumes, silver gloves and fan and reticule, silver chains for her neck and wrists, and silver earrings.

“Ma,” Reggie said when he saw her on the evening
of the ball, “every other lady ought to be warned to stay at home this evening. You will severely outshine and outclass them all.”

He bowed over her gloved hand and raised it to his lips.

“Just what I said, lad,” his father said, beaming with genial pride and holding his head very still and very erect so that his high starched shirt points would not pierce his eyeballs. “Your mother gets lovelier with every passing year.”

“How silly of you both,” she said, jangling metallically as she laughed. “I daresay no one will even notice me among all the fine ladies. I just hope I will not disgrace you, Reginald.”

“Disgrace me?” He possessed himself of her other hand and squeezed both tightly. The laughter faded from his eyes. “You could never
ever
do that, Ma, even if you tried. I hope
I
have not disgraced
you
.”

Guilt, he was finding, was a troublesome commodity. He had hurt his mother with his extravagances, and he had made her anxious now when she feared he might be making an unhappy marriage—even when she denied such anxiety.

“Well, Reginald,” she said, “I
was
a little disappointed when it seemed that you were turning into a frivolous young man, because you have never before been like that. But I know that I am about to get my son back again the way he used to be. I know this is going to be a good marriage. Lady Annabelle is a lovely young lady, and you make a handsome couple. Don't they, Bernie?”

Ah, the eternal optimism of mothers! He had been wild and extravagant to a fault, surely putting a noticeable dent in even his father's enormous fortune. And his betrothed had run off with another man less than two weeks ago and would, as far as anyone knew, have continued to run all the way to Scotland with him if they had not been pursued so soon and he had not taken fright and leapt through a window, abandoning her to her fate.

This
fate, in fact. She was affianced to him.

He kissed the back of one of his mother's plump hands again.

“They do that, Sadie,” his father agreed, though he surely must believe otherwise. “It is time to go.”

Reggie saw the renewed fright in his mother's eyes and smiled at her before tucking her hand through his arm.

“You will be the belle of the ball, Ma,” he said.

His father followed them out to the carriage. He had recovered his usual good spirits since the betrothal and treated his son with all the old affection, as though it was Reggie who had been responsible for his great good fortune—as, in a sense, he was. For though it was probably costing a king's ransom to secure Lady Annabelle Ashton as Reggie's bride, the reward of being connected at last to the
ton
—and specifically to the Earl of Havercroft's corner of the
ton
—must seem worth the sacrifice of every last guinea.

This ball really ought to be a total disaster, Reggie thought. It should be shunned by simply everyone on the guest list. And, incidentally, he and his parents had not been invited to add any names to that list. But of course it would
not
be a disaster, but rather one of the grandest squeezes of the Season. Scandal was something upon which the
ton
thrived. It drew them like a powerful magnet.

And there was nothing more scandalous—during this particular month, anyway—than the newly betrothed couple. The prospective bride, an earl's only daughter, had eloped with her father's own coachman and had been seen by half the world as she made her
escape. And the prospective groom was the idle and extravagant son of a man who had made his fortune in coal and a woman whose father had owned a butcher's shop in some obscure northern town of which no one had ever heard.

The very proud Earl of Havercroft had been brought low indeed—and everyone knew why. His financial woes had been common knowledge. The coal merchant, by contrast, had been raised to lofty heights indeed. So had his son, who was as handsome as Lady Annabelle was beautiful. Everyone must be agog to discover how they would behave toward each other on this occasion.

Oh, everyone would come to the ball right enough. How could anyone possibly resist? Everyone loved an unhappy couple, especially one who was being forced into marriage. How could they
not
be unhappy under the circumstances?

His task tonight, Reggie thought as he handed his mother into the carriage, making sure that she did not snap off her plumes on the top of the doorframe or tread on the heavy brocade of her skirt as she climbed the steps, was to oblige the ball guests and give them the show they had come to see. And to give his father and Havercroft what
they
expected. And to give his mother
and Lady Annabelle's as little pain as he possibly could. And to treat his betrothed with just enough civility to avoid censure as a gentleman but not enough ardor to be accused of hypocrisy.

Fortunately, he had been a member of a drama group at university. He was going to need all his acting skills tonight. He was going to be on public display to an alarming degree.

He wondered if his betrothed had retained some of the color he had goaded into her complexion by annoying her the afternoon he proposed to her. If someone had held a stick of chalk up to her cheek before he did so on that occasion it would have faded into invisibility. He hoped that at least she had the good sense to wear something other than white this evening.

He wondered if she was nervous.
He
was, dash it all. Good lord, he was an engaged man. He was going to be married within the month.

It was actually happening.

A
nnabelle was standing in a receiving line that seemed as if it would never end, with her betrothed at
her side. Reginald Mason. She doubted that even a single one of the invitations had been sent in vain.
Everyone
had come, and everyone looked with avid curiosity at the two of them as they passed. His arm was almost brushing her shoulder, though they had scarcely glanced at each other since his arrival with his parents. When she
did
steal a glance, it was to see that he was smiling with all his considerable charm at all and sundry. But then she was smiling too.

They were behaving, as expected, like a happily betrothed couple.

Mrs. Mason was beside her on the other side, her husband beyond her. They were both shaking hands with everyone when a curtsy and a bow would have sufficed, and they both seemed to feel it necessary to chat with everyone and so hold up the progress of the line. It must surely stretch all the way down the stairs and across the hall to the front doors. Maybe even outside the doors. That would cause problems for some footmen and coachmen.

She did not doubt that Papa was severely annoyed by the delay. He was probably feeling horribly humiliated too. Mama was being her usual gracious self. Annabelle suspected that her mother rather liked Mrs. Mason, though she had not said so.

Finally the line came to an end and Mr. Mason stood rubbing his hands together and gazing about genially while his son inclined his head to Annabelle and offered her his arm. He was still smiling and at last he was smiling directly at her. With unreadable eyes.

They were to lead off the dancing.

Annabelle felt so exposed when they stepped onto the empty dance floor that she even glanced down to make sure that she really had remembered to put on her gown. Candles flickered brightly from every holder in the candelabra above and from every wall sconce. Banks of white roses and carnations and green ferns had turned the ballroom into a fragrant garden. Guests were crammed three and four deep about the perimeter of the room, a kaleidoscope of color, rich jewels twinkling and sparkling to rival the candles.

Her betrothed settled her a short distance from him and gazed steadily at her as other couples began to form lines beside them. He was no longer smiling. Annabelle frowned slightly at him. Was it not enough that every other eye in the room was on her? Must his be too—as if he would see right through to the back of her mind? She felt a childish urge to poke her tongue out at him, and she was alarmed lest she actually do it.

“You ought not to have done it,” he said, and for a moment she thought that perhaps she really
had
...

But he explained what he meant.

“Worn white, that is,” he said.

She hated wearing white, but it was what most unmarried young ladies wore, and for a while longer she was an unmarried young lady.

“Mama thought it important that I look... well,
innocent
,” she said.

“Virginal?” He raised his eyebrows. “One might as well call a spade a spade, Lady Annabelle. It was probably misguided advice. The less attention you draw to your possibly virginal state the better, would you not agree?”

Her jaw might have dropped if she had not been so aware of all the watching eyes. She glared at him instead. Her nostrils flared.

“There is surely no need to be
offensive
,” she said.

“Are you, ah,
virginal
?” he asked.

She felt suddenly as if two candles must have dropped from the candelabrum above their heads and set her cheeks on fire.

“Oh, how dare you?” she said, her bosom heaving. “How dare you!”

His lips drew up at the corners.

“That is better,” he said. “Now you have some color about you. You need not answer my question, by the way. It was purely rhetorical. And purely cosmetic.”

She felt a horrifying urge to laugh. He had done it again—brought color to her cheeks, that is. And it had apparently been deliberate both times. But she was not going to take such treatment meekly.

“Are
you
?” she asked him. “
Virginal,
that is?”

He pursed his lips and gazed at her with half-closed eyes. Equally as horrifying as the urge to laugh a moment ago was the frisson of heated awareness she felt now. She had just asked him in front of half the
ton
, all of which was watching them . . .

“If you are asking whether you may expect fumbling ineptness on our wedding night, Lady Annabelle,” he said, “I will simply advise you to wait and see.”

The rush of aching awareness settled unmistakably between her inner thighs.

He was behaving very badly.

So was she, but she had been provoked.

It was a good thing that so many dancers were now on the floor that their nearest neighbors had to shuffle close enough to be within earshot. Their conversation must become more decorous.

“Lady Annabelle,” he said, raising his voice slightly —it acquired a bored cadence, “may I compliment you on your appearance tonight? You put to shame the delicate beauty of all the roses and other flowers in the room.”