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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.

5
    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.
    â€œMa,” 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.
    â€œJust 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.”
    â€œHow 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.”
    â€œDisgrace 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.

    â€œWell, 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,