Read Online A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online Page B

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.
    â€œThey 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.

    â€œYou 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,