Fuming over her cool reception from the viscount’s wife, Annabelle went to Lillian and Daisy, to rant about the accumulation of snubs and set-downs she had received. They were both amused and sympathetic as they listened to her passionate complaints. “You should have seen her parlor!” Annabelle said, striding back and forth before the sisters, who were occupying the settee in their receiving room. “Everything was dusty and threadbare, and there were wine stains all over the carpet, and all she could do was look down her nose at me and pity me for having married down. Down, she said, when everyone knows that her husband is a foolish sodden drunkard who throws every last shilling onto the hazard table! He may be a viscount, but he isn’t fit to lick Simon’s boots, and I had the greatest difficulty in refraining from telling her so.”

“Why did you refrain?” Lillian inquired idly. “I would have told her exactly what I thought of her silly snobbery.”

“Because one gains nothing by trying to argue with such people.” Annabelle scowled. “If Simon saved a dozen people from drowning, he would never be regarded with the same admiration as some fat old peer who sat by and watched without lifting a finger to help.”

Daisy raised her brows slightly. “Are you sorry that you didn’t marry a peer?”

“No,” Annabelle said instantly, and ducked her head in sudden shame. “But I suppose…I suppose there are moments that I can’t help wishing that Simon was a peer.”

Lillian regarded her with a touch of concern. “If you could go back and change things, would you choose Lord Kendall over Mr. Hunt?”

“Good Lord, no.” Sighing, Annabelle sank down onto a needlepoint stool, the skirts of her silk dress, green with tiny printed flowers, billowing around her. “I don’t regret my choice. But I do regret not being able to go to the Wymarks’ ball. Or the soiree at Gilbreath House. Or any of the other events that people of good society attend. Instead, Mr. Hunt and I most often go to parties given by a far different crowd.”

“What sort of crowd?” Daisy asked.

As Annabelle hesitated, Lillian answered in a voice laden with wry amusement. “I would guess that Annabelle is referring to the climbers. All the people with new money and lower-class values and vulgar manners. In other words, our sort.”

“No,” Annabelle said instantly, and both sisters laughed.

“Yes,” Lillian said gently. “You’ve married into our world, dear, and you don’t belong there any more than we will belong in the peerage, if we ever manage to get titled husbands. The truth is, I couldn’t care less about mingling with the Wymarks or the Gilbreaths, who are all deadly dull and intolerably full of themselves.”

Annabelle regarded her with a thoughtful frown, suddenly seeing her situation from a new vantage point. “I’ve never questioned whether they were dull,” she murmured. “I suppose I’ve always wanted to ascend to the top of the ladder without ever wondering if I would like the view. But now the question is immaterial, of course. And I must find a way to adapt to a different life than the one I thought I wanted.” Resting her elbows on her knees, Annabelle propped her chin on her hands and added ruefully, “I’ll know that I’ve succeeded when it no longer hurts to be snubbed by some whey-faced wife of a viscount.”

Ironically, the Hunts were invited that same week to a ball given by Lord Hardcastle, who was privately indebted to Simon for advising him on how to restructure the family’s dwindling balance of investments and assets. It was a large and well-attended event, and despite Annabelle’s new resolution not to care about going to balls given by the upper class, she couldn’t help but be excited. Dressed in a lemon-ice satin ball gown, her hair dressed in ringlets caught up with yellow silk cording, Annabelle entered the ballroom on Simon’s arm. The ballroom, lined with white marble columns, was bathed in the sparkling glow of eight chandeliers, the air perfumed from the massive arrangements of roses and peonies. Accepting a glass of iced champagne, Annabelle eagerly mixed with friends and acquaintances, and basked in the serene elegance of the affair. These were the people she had always understood and tried to emulate—civilized, beautifully mannered, knowledgeable about music and art and literature. These gentlemen would never dream of discussing politics or business matters in front of a lady, and any of them would have chosen to be shot rather than mention the cost of things or speculate openly about what someone else was worth.

She danced often, with Simon and with other men, laughing and chatting in a relaxed manner and skillfully deflecting the compliments that were showered on her. Midway through the evening, she spied Simon across the room as he stood conversing with friends, and she experienced a sudden urge to go to him. Managing to detach herself from a pair of persistent young men, she skirted the side of the ballroom, where the space behind the columns provided a shadowy corridor. Between the columns, settees and small groupings of chairs provided spaces for guests to relax and talk. She passed behind a group of dowagers…then a group of disconsolate wallflowers, who provoked a sympathetic smile from her. As she crossed in back of a pair of women, however, a few overheard words caused her to pause, while her presence was screened by a heavy cluster of palms.

“…don’t know why they had to be invited tonight,” one of them was saying angrily. Annabelle recognized the voice as one belonging to a former friend, now Lady Wells-Troughton, who had spoken to her only a few minutes earlier with brittle congeniality. “How smug she is, flaunting that vulgar diamond on her finger and that ill-bred husband, with no trace of shame whatsoever!”