A Matter of Class

by Mary Balogh

  “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.

  ~~~

  An 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?

  10

  After the Wedding

  By 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?”

  “Tillman?” he said. “Did you like him? We were once members of the same drama group at Oxford. His father ran out of funds, and he took to the stage in earnest. He told me after escaping from your elopement that he called himself Till ‘til he could get back to auditioning for less dangerous roles.”

  “You have seen him?” she said.

  “You would not recognize him,” he assured her. “Nor would anyone else. The blond tresses, his most handsome feature, were a wig. He is more than half bald. And he has the gift of all true actors of somehow making himself look completely different with every role he plays even without the use of masks and cosmetics and other tricks. Most of the time he is the most ordinary looking of mortals. He once explained to me that one has to think one’s way into a part, to become the person one is playing. He became your father’s dashing coachman and your secret suitor for a while. I hope he was always respectful?”

  “I might have known he was an actor,” she said. “Whenever we had a few minutes alone together, he spouted bombastic love poetry at me—in Latin. At least he said it was love poetry*. It was probably extracts from Caesar’s Gallic wars.”

  “Probably,” he agreed. “You were marvelously brave, love. But I always did say you had pluck, didn’t I?”

  “It was the first compliment you paid me,” she said.

  “When I was five. I think I fell in love with you at that moment. I am an easy prey to flatterers, you see.”

  “And to those who sincerely admire you?” he asked her.

  “And to them too.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Reggie,” she said, “did we do the right thing? It felt perfectly dreadful all the time it was happening—not at all daring and adventurous and exhilarating and fun. I had no idea I would be so consumed by guilt.”

  He crossed the room to her in a few quick strides and caught her up in his arms. And Lord, her nightgown felt virtually nonexistent, and she had been using some wondrously fragrant soap. And she was his bride and this was his wedding night.

  She was his wife.

  The reality of it all swept over him like a tidal wave, as though the rest of the day had been a dream.

  “Do the ends ever justify the means?” he said into her hair. “Maybe not. I have felt horribly guilty too, Anna, not least because I consented to let you carry through with a plan in which you had to do the most dangerous parts. But how else could we have done it when you were afraid to dive into the river to rescue me from drowning? Short of eloping and alienating our families and society for all time, that is. Our fathers, yours in particular, would never have consented to let us marry if we had simply asked them and used as a reason that we had been friends most of our lives and lovers for one glorious afternoon last autumn.”

  She wrapped her arms tightly about him and inhaled audibly.

  “Oh, Reggie,” she said. “You smell wonderful. Do you know what Papa said this morning before we left for church? He said that, if I wished, we need not go, but could run off to Oakridge instead and thumb our noses at the ton. He does love me.”

  “I would have looked like a pretty idiot, stranded before the altar at St. George’s awaiting a bride who never came,” he said. “It would have been the stuff of legends. Were you tempted?”

  She tipped back her head and smiled slowly at him.

  “I am almost tempted to say yes,” she said, “just to see the look on your face.”

  “But you are not going to give in to temptation?” he asked her. She shook her head.

  “I have wanted you since I was twelve years old, Reggie Mason,” she said. “Ten long years. Perhaps even longer. I was certainly not going to let you out of my grasp when I had you there.”

  He rubbed his nose across hers and kissed her softly on the lips.

  “Did you say anything to your mother?” he asked her.

  “I almost blurted it all out this morning,” she said. “And indeed, I think she may guess part of it. She certainly knows that my elopement with Thomas Till was fake. But you and I agreed that we would not confess the whole of it and risk humiliating any of our parents with the knowledge of how we deceived them. I told her only that I was falling in love with you and that I was almost sure you were falling in love with me.”

  “I think,” he said, “our deceit may have results more positive than just our marriage. I think our mothers will now be able to be friends. I think they have always secretly wanted to be.”

  She smiled.

  “Will we always feel a little bit guilty?” she asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “Think of the alternative, love,” he said.

  Her eyes brightened with unshed tears, and she tightened her arms about him.

  “They were ten wretched years in many ways,” she said. “I despaired of ever stopping loving you, even though I tried.”

  “And now,” he said, “you don’t have to. And I don’t have to pretend to myself that all I feel for you is lust, as I did for three years.”

  She looked arrested.

  “You felt lust for me?” she asked him.

  “Not at all,” he said, grinning and waggling his eyebrows at her. “When I look at you, Anna, I have the same feelings I would have if I were looking at a door.”

  She laughed, her lovely silvery, amused laughter. “Are you feeling lust now?” she asked him.

  His brow creased in thought.

  “I think I might be,” he said, and he set one hand behind her and drew her closer until they were pressed to each other in all the strategic places.

  “Oh, Reggie,” she sighed and melted against him. “I think you are. Oh, I do love you.”

  “Anna.” He found her mouth with his and kissed h
er deeply. “My love. I hope you had plenty of sleep last night. You will not get much tonight. I am going to make love to you over and over until you get as much pleasure from it as I do—and as you did not quite get last autumn. And then, when you do share the pleasure, I am going to keep on making love just to prove that it was no freakish accident.”

  “Words, words, words,” she said against his mouth. “When are you going to show me action, boaster?”

  She laughed softly and then half shrieked as he growled and swung her up into his arms. He strode to the bed with her and tossed her onto it.

  “Right, if it is action you want, it is action you will get,” he said, divesting himself of the cumbersome dressing gown and nightshirt before joining her there. “My love,” he added.

  About the Author

  Mary Balogh, New York Times bestselling author of numerous Regency-era novels, grew up in Wales and moved to Canada to teach. She stayed to marry and raise a family—and fulfill her lifelong dream of being a writer. See her web site at www.marybalogh.com.

  Copyright © 2010 by Mary Balogh

  Published by Vanguard Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Balogh, Mary.

  A matter of class / Mary Balogh.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-786-75221-8

  I. Title.

  PR6052.A465M38 2009

  823’.914—dc22 2009032580

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