by Mary Balogh
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 fathers 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 nor 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.
~~~
Annabelle 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 brigh
tly 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.”
“Thank you, sir.” She inclined her head in gracious acknowledgment of the compliment.
And the music began.
If the ton had expected him to clump about the ballroom with vulgar ungainliness, they were to be disappointed. He danced gracefully and was light on his feet. He knew all the steps and intricate figures without making one false move. His fingers were warm and sure about Annabelle’s when the dance required them to join hands and steady on her waist when he twirled her down the set between the row of ladies on one side and gentlemen on the other.
He had, of course, attended balls before tonight, though most of the ton had probably not noticed him. Annabelle had seen him more than once. She had never danced with him, though—until now.
Oh, she could have enjoyed it under different circumstances. But these were not different circumstances.
He gazed steadily at her throughout the almost half hour of the set. He made no attempt to converse, and he did not once smile.
It was most disconcerting. It was, she guessed, meant to be.
She smiled—dazzlingly—at him the whole while.
He spoke again as the music drew to an end.
“Walk out on the balcony with me,” he said. “It is as hot as hell in here.”
“Perhaps you do not understand,” she said, “that two people do not monopolize each other’s company for two sets in a row or for more than two in a whole evening.”
“Coal thickening the blood makes one slow of understanding,” he said—in his father’s thick north country accent.
Lord Huey and Miss Coolidge were beside them and must have heard the exchange. They would be falling all over their feet to return to the sidelines to repeat it, Annabelle thought.
“Come anyway,” Mr. Mason said. “This is my engagement ball, and if that does not entitle me to take my betrothed onto the balcony when I choose, then what use is a betrothal?”
“An interesting question,” she said, “to which I have no definitive answer. Lead the way, sir.”
And she laid her hand on his sleeve and half-trotted beside him as he strode in the direction of the French windows without glancing to left or to right.
Was he being deliberately… uncouth? But of course he was!
“They expect it of me,” he said as they stepped out onto the balcony, as though he had read her thoughts.
“And you always give people what they expect?” she asked.
“Oh, always,” he said with a weary sigh, “when it suits me.”
He took her to stand by the rail across from the ballroom and stood with his back to it—in full view of anyone inside who cared to glance their way.
“One would not wish to sully your reputation, after all,” he said by way of explanation, “by skulking in the shadow’s.”
“I am overwhelmed by your consideration for my reputation,” she told him.
He looked at her and pursed his lips.
“This has all been very7 hard on you, has it not?” he said.
She smiled and fanned her cheeks.
“But not at all on you,” she said.
It was not a question.
He raised his eyebrows.
~~~
Despite her white gown, she looked breathtakingly lovely. There were silver threads in the fine fabric, and they shimmered in the candlelight. The garment, what little there was of it, had probably cost a king’s ransom. It was cut low at the bosom, which was lifted enticingly by her stays, and clung in soft folds to her slender, shapely form. It left little to the imagination, but in her case reality surpassed even the most salacious of imaginations. She was not particularly tall, but her legs, outlined beneath the flimsy fabric, were long and slim.
Her very blond hair was piled high in intricate curls, with wavy tendrils left to trail artfully along her neck and over her temples. Her eyebrows arched over thick-lashed blue eyes. A straight little nose drew attention downward to a mouth that was graced with soft, very kissable lips.
She was a rare beauty.
It was a pity she had eloped with a coachman. She might have married a prince. Or Illingswrorth, who would be a duke one day and had been besotted with her until she disgraced herself. And very rich, of course.
It was a pity she was now doomed to marry a coal merchant’s son.
Reggie, well aware that he was on public display even if they were outside the ballroom, looked her over coolly—even insolently—while he stood with his back to the balcony rail and she stood a few feet distant, half turned toward him, half toward the ballroom as if she would flee for safety at any moment if he gave her mortal offence.
She had just given him mortal offense. Did she believe all this business had caused her more suffering than it had him? That she had
some sort of exclusive ownership of the suffering business?
Guests strolled by arm-in-arm inside the ballroom, waiting for the next set to begin. A few couples came out onto the balcony and strolled farther along. All, without being at all obvious about it, were observing the two of them, hoping for… what?
“What, do you suppose,” he asked, “are they all expecting?”
“Of us?” She turned her head to look fully at him. All evening, even when she had been smiling, she had looked cool and aristocratic. The ice maiden. Except, of course, when he had provoked a blush in her pale cheeks and a flash of indignation in her eyes with his question about virginity. He enjoyed discomposing her. “A cool civility, I suppose.”
“And is that what we are going to give them?” he asked her. “How tedious!”
“You would prefer,” she said, “that I walk away and ignore you for the rest of the evening?”
“That would be even more tedious,” he said.
She raised the fan that was dangling from her wrist, opened it, and wafted it before her face despite the fact that it was rather cool out on the balcony.
“You do not intend, surely, to keep me at your side all evening?” she asked. “People might begin to think that we welcome this situation in which we find ourselves.”
“On the other hand,” he said, “they might think me blind and daft if I do not show some sign of appreciation for the beauty my fathers fortune has bought me. You made a bold move choosing that particular gown to wear this evening, even if it is a virginal white. It is also rather… provocative, is it not?”
Her fan closed with a snap.
“You would have me dress in a black shroud, then?” she asked him. “Or in sackcloth and ashes?”
“It might be itchy,” he said. “The sackcloth, I mean. And ashes might make me cough when I dance with you. And black? No, I think not. You will note that I have not complained of your choice of attire. I would have to have nothing but tar running in my veins not to appreciate it.”
“You are being deliberately…” She made circles in the air with her fan, but could not seem to draw from the air the word she wanted.