A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh

said. “We have a houseful of guests, and I have been truant for long enough. Besides, Miriam Sewell is coming over some time today, and Jamie is going to bring her.”
    He grinned once more, turned away, and strode off back in the direction of the stepping stones without another word or a backward glance.
    Annabelle fought tears. There was no point in even trying to fight the empty, bereft feeling within.
    That had not really been a kiss, just a demonstration. It had meant nothing whatsoever to him.

    And everything in the world to her.
    She pushed away from the old oak and strode off back in among the trees. It would not do for him to see her standing there looking dazed and forlorn when he got to the other side.
    Reggie.
    Ah, Reggie.

7
    F or three weeks Annabelle saw very little of her betrothed, and even when she did, it was always in company with other people. They drove in Hyde Park in an open barouche one afternoon, their mothers seated opposite them. Those two ladies, strangely enough, appeared to get along well with each other. Annabelle was glad about that.
    There was a visit to the theater one evening, one to a private concert, another to a ball at which they danced twice together, and there was a dinner at Havercroft House, to which Reginald Mason was invited but not his parents. It was a deliberate snub, Annabelle
guessed. The other male guests were all peers of the realm, and the conversation centered almost exclusively about the business of the Upper House, of which they were all members. It seemed to Annabelle that her father deliberately steered it that way. It was a breach of good manners unusual for him, for it precluded the ladies from participating. It also precluded her betrothed, and that, she suspected, was the whole point.
    She was made to feel humiliated on his account—and that, surely, was part of the point too.
    Her father, who had always indulged her and loved her, had been hurt, and he was not going to forgive her in a hurry.
    And now, less than a week before the nuptials, they—Annabelle and her parents—had been invited to take tea with the Masons and a few members of their family who had come to town for the wedding.
    Annabelle’s father was determined not to go. But Mama put her foot down, something she rarely did, though it was almost always effective when she did.
    â€œMr. Mason’s money is good enough for you, William,” she was saying sharply on the day the invitation arrived, as Annabelle set her hand on the drawing room door to join them, “and his son is good enough for your daughter,
even if only as a punishment. It behooves you, then, to accept a civil invitation to tea when it is offered.”
    â€œMason will boast of it for a decade,” Papa complained as Annabelle stayed where she was on the other side of the door for a moment longer.
    â€œAnd you will grumble about it for twice as long,” Mama retorted. “Enough, William! Mr. Mason is just a man, when all is said and done.”
    â€œPrecisely,” he said. “He is a man, not a gentle man.”
    Annabelle pushed the door open, and no more was said on the subject except that Mr. and Mrs. Mason had invited them to tea and they were going.
    â€œAnd no sulking when you are there, miss,” her father told her. “You will mind your manners.”
    Mama merely looked at him, her eyebrows arched up onto her forehead.
    All three of them presented themselves for tea at the Mason house on Portman Square on the appointed af ternoon.
    Annabelle felt her mother stiffen and her father freeze when the butler threw back the drawing room doors to announce them. The room was large and square—and it was almost bursting at the seams with people. It was also all but pulsing with the sound of loud,
hearty conversation and laughter, most of the former conducted in broad north country accents.
    And then silence fell, almost as if every conversation in the room had been sliced