A Matter of Class Read Free Page A

her to a table for refreshments, one of those touches had been with his lips in an extravagantly courtly gesture for all to see.
    Wearing his coachman’s livery, no less.

    Annabelle was disgraced. Ruined. For all time. Forever and ever, amen. There was no hope for her, short of a miracle. Her confidence, which she had always possessed in no small measure, had been shaken to the core.
    She would dwindle into a shriveled old maid—though spinster was the word her father had used, avoiding the whole concept of maidenhood. She would spend the rest of her life in sequestered obscurity, unwanted and unlamented.
    Untouchable.
    No man would ever have her now.
    Just last week, half the gentlemen of the ton would gladly have had her—the ones who were single, anyway. She was reputed to be a rare beauty.
    That was what she had been. Past tense.
    Now the whole of the male world of ton would turn their backs on her if she should be foolish enough to appear before them. The female world would do worse. They would sweep from the room, their skirts held close to their persons lest they brush inadvertently against air that had also brushed against her, their noses all but scraping the ceiling as they went.
    She was a pariah.

    And she had brought it all on herself. She had stepped quite deliberately over the brink, confident that her life would unfold as she had planned it to unfold.
    Now she could only feel a wave of panic clutching her stomach. She could no longer direct the course of her life. For the present at least she was totally at the mercy of outside forces, most notably her father.
    It was the most wretched feeling she could possibly imagine.
    She was not going to be sent back to Oakridge Park, the country home in Wiltshire where she had been brought up, her father’s principal seat. Even there she might contaminate the neighbors, who so respected her father. Instead she was to be sent into the outer darkness of Meadow Hall close to the Scottish border, a minor property of her father’s, which did not in any way live up to its name. Or so she had heard. She had never been there to see for herself. But that was about to change. It was where she was destined to spend the rest of her mortal days.
    Barring a miracle.
    She no longer believed in plans, no matter how carefully made. She was afraid to believe. She had been a fool.

    Her mother was not going to be allowed to go with her, even though she had wept and pleaded and cajoled and even lost her temper—a rare occurrence that had filled Annabelle with a terrible guilt. Mama ought not to be made to suffer. But of course she was suffering.
    At this precise moment, Annabelle was still in London, where she had been enjoying the entertainments of the Season before dashing off with Thomas Till. Though enjoying was not quite the right word. How could she enjoy herself when the man she loved could not similarly enjoy the same events and she could see him only rarely and under very clandestine circumstances? And how could she enjoy herself when she had been given strict orders to encourage the attentions of a man she loathed simply because he was rich enough to pay off Papa’s debts in exchange for her hand in marriage?
    Her father had been diligently courting the Marquess of Illingsworth for her all Season and had been confident of success. The marquess was only fourteen years older than she and only half a head shorter and only half bald. And he was besotted with her. She had nothing whatsoever to complain of—at least that’s what Papa had always said whenever she had complained.

    She was shut up in her room, from which all books—except the Bible—and embroidery and painting and writing supplies had been ostentatiously removed lest she find some way of amusing herself and forgetting her plight. And the door had been locked from the outside so that she could be in no doubt that she was a prisoner at her father’s pleasure.
    She felt like