Ruin Me by Midnight Sneak Peak

Yorkshire, UK
April, 1902

A much-underappreciated milestone in a young woman’s life is the first moment she contemplates sending her knee into a man’s bollocks, but reconsiders.

“You’ll forgive me, I hope,” Lord Pennington sneered as his hand retreated from the side of Violet’s breast to its proper location between her shoulder blades. His eyebrows bobbed as though they strained to reach his receding hairline, expressing little remorse for his pitifully transparent stumble. “A harmless faux pas, you see.”

Violet ground her teeth and stifled her desire to send the man’s gonads somewhere into his lower intestines, remembering that she was, in fact, in the middle of a waltz at the lone social event she’d been invited to in the past year, and she would behave. “Of course, my lord. It’s rather hard to focus on dancing steps when you’re ogling my—”

“Pardon me, Pennington. I need to speak to my friend for a moment.” Lord Trembly’s arm was around her shoulder and steered her away from Pennington. “Come along, Miss Waverly.”

They navigated through the guests packed into the ballroom at Claremont Abbey. A sprawling medieval structure tucked in the rolling hills an hour’s ride north of the city of York, the Abbey dated back to the days of William the Conqueror, but the current inhabitant, the Earl of Valebrook, had updated the building with electric lights and indoor plumbing. Instead of a bleak and inaccessible monument to aristocratic excess, Violet knew the Abbey to be a home full of warmth and love. The earl, a longtime friend of her father, served as her godfather, and Valebrook’s second wife, the eccentric but delightful Bridget, had gleefully stepped in as an unofficial godmother upon their marriage. The palatial estate had been a home to Violet growing up, having spent summers exploring every nook and cranny with her four sisters.

But the last three years had been difficult for the Waverly family. Social invitations of any kind had dried to dust, and Violet’s name remained at the tip of everyone’s tongue. She needed a rest, a respite from the demands of staying out of the salacious spotlight.

But apparently tonight would not be the reprieve Violet desired.

Timothy snagged a glass of champagne from a passing footman as he directed her towards the hallway, where she shrugged off his hold with a grunt.

“And to think I considered allowing him to court me,” she ground out, taking a long drink of the champagne.

“That was years ago, and your standards have evolved. Besides, Pennington is a twat and has groped the bodices of nearly every woman present, lest you start to feel special.”

She forced her lungs to fill with cleansing air, then exhaled through pursed lips. “That is one solidly for the murder category.”

Trembly snickered and withdrew an imaginary pen from his pocket before miming writing a name in the air. “Duly added. Any for the marry list?”

Timothy, the Marquess of Trembly, had been a friend since their shared childhoods, his sprawling property bordering her family’s modest estate of Boar’s Hill in Oxfordshire. Timothy would be a perfect husband, Violet thought with a pang, if only his preference for bed partners included the fairer sex.

While Timothy was seeking a wife—if only to stop his mother’s nagging—Violet would never volunteer herself for the role. True, marriage to a marquess would shield her from questions about her reputation, and his knack for investments would bolster her family’s rapidly dwindling coffers.
But Violet was, at heart, a romantic. If she couldn’t have a grand romance with her husband, she’d have to discover it elsewhere. “I’d rather find some candidates for… you know.”

“You naughty minx.” His chiding lacked heat, but Violet blushed regardless.

“You are aware I’m joking,” she said as they returned to stand watch on the edge of the ballroom. “My mother has already settled on my marriage to Sir Belmont.”
Timothy’s jaw tightened. Even he could barely find room for levity when the baron’s name was invoked. “If only you’d found a husband sooner.”

She lifted her now-empty glass of champagne in a mock toast. “How simple! If I had only thought of that, oh, nine years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t be in this predicament!”

Nearing spinsterhood, her mother, the Honorable Viscountess Redbourne, had said, as though Violet should begin writing her own eulogy. As though she’d forgotten she was aging swiftly, or that she’d come perilously close to the altar before, only to have her dreams of a white wedding dashed in the cruelest manner possible.

A girl could recover from a broken engagement, even if happened a week before the nuptials would have taken place. I’ve fallen in love, he’d said as she sobbed. She’s my perfect match.

Hugh was kind enough to leave the words unlike you unsaid.

The memory of her behavior still haunted Violet’s dreams, the sick humiliation climbing up her throat, the tears staining her cheeks. How she’d begged and pleaded for Hugh to marry her and save her from disgrace, and the pitying expression on his face when he left.

As dreadful as that night had been, the ensuing weeks were worse. The looks of curiosity and barely veiled whispers as she passed people she had once considered friends, the silence that would fall when she entered a room, how the gentlemen who had eagerly sought her hand prior to her engagement now avoided meeting her eye. All speculated over what was so wrong with the perfect Miss Violet Waverly that her own fiancé could cast her aside without a care.

And a year later, when Mr. Gregory Townsend took her in his arms and called her beautiful, Violet had been so eager to find a safe shore in the scandal that she fell headfirst into another tempest, one so much worse it made Hugh laughably unimportant.

But she survived, although battered as much physically as mentally, only to face the daunting opponent common to so many women of her station: marriage to a horrible man.

If—when—her parents forced her to marry the widower baronet who’d been haunting their parlor, she would at least have pleasurable memories to keep her warm at night.

However, as much as she enjoyed thinking of herself as a woman who would engage in a meaningless shag at a house party, she doubted she possessed the fortitude to follow through with it.

Timothy hummed with approval at her side. “Lord Amberly is here.”

Violet eyed the blond viscount, known for his reputation as an utter rake, with a discerning eye. “Your rating?”

“Most certainly a shag. You?”

She couldn’t bring herself to be quite as troublesome as Timothy wished her to be. “Marry, perhaps?”

“Marry?” He scoffed. “He’d never be faithful. You’d get the pox!”

“Fine, murder it is! Who else?”

Sir Belmont expects an answer by the end of the month, her father, the increasingly less-Honorable Viscount Redbourne had said while she loaded herself into her Great Aunt Margaret’s carriage, stuffed to the gills with every accoutrement a young woman needs to catch a husband at a house party. He has been more than patient—

She squeezed her eyes shut for the briefest moment before blinking in fast succession. What had started as a jest with Timothy—to find Violet a lover during the party—suddenly felt impossible. With only the next two weeks before her fate with Sir Belmont was sealed, she would need to be less persnickety if she wanted someone to warm her bed.

“Ugh, the Lordlings.” Timothy shuddered, pulling her from her ruminations. “Can we add a Toss them into the Thames rating?”

She winced as the young men, all privileged first sons dreading the day their sires passed, sent up a garrulous laugh. A staple of the scandal sheets, they spent their days sleeping and betting on horses, their nights gambling and bedding opera singers.

But even lordlings would need to marry. “I suppose one might be a decent husband—”

“Stop, Vi.” He made a retching sound. “You wound me just by saying that. And you’re too old for them.”

“I’m only twenty-seven!” she hissed. “They can’t be much younger.”

“I know, darling, but you’re not a spring chicken anymore.”

“More an autumnal hen?”

He gave her a pitying look. “We can do better.” Timothy cleared the distaste from his expression while he continued scanning the guests. “All right, Suffolk is here.”

Violet eyed the duke—a rare sighting, these days—and sighed. “Would it count as murder if he died while we were dancing?”

“He must be at least one hundred. I’m fairly certain he courted my grandmother.” He narrowed his gaze at Violet. “Please say murder and not shag.”

“Marry, obviously.” Not obviously. Her mother would be turning cartwheels down the hallway to have a duchess as a daughter, and she could hope the duke’s failing eyesight would keep him from finding her in their cavernous estate. While her mother and father clung to hopes of a society marriage, Violet was cynical about the value of such an arrangement. Her older sisters had married well in the judgment of society, but they were miserable. Her younger sisters, twins, married working men and now lived blissfully in America. While Violet would never claim to be the smartest of her sisters, she didn’t have to be a genius to see the pattern.

Timothy whined like a put-out child. “Vi, there has to be one man at this party you’d be willing—just willing—to shag. Even if you don’t go through with it, make my scandal-loving heart happy and find someone who would leave you begging for—”

“Him!” Violet dropped her hand when she realized she was pointing, heat rushing to her cheeks.

“Mmmm, excellent choice.” Timothy squinted at the man entering the ballroom, and Violet took a moment to carry out a more careful perusal of the newcomer.

Despite having attended the house party for the past several years, she didn’t recognize the man, as she assuredly would have recalled making his acquaintance. Tall enough with dark hair and a build that suggested his tailor didn’t labor to hide a bulging belly or weak shoulders. As he spoke with their host, Lord Valebrook, he smiled, his warmth and authenticity visible even from a distance.

“I second your opinion on that one, Vi,” Timothy murmured, pulling her out of her thoughts. “A top contender in the shag category.”

“Perhaps.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say shag in polite company, even if only Timothy could hear her. “Maybe even a mar—”

“Don’t say it,” Timothy hissed as he lifted a finger. “You and I both know it would take an act of God to find a suitable husband here, and you are not fortune’s friend.”

He didn’t need to remind her. Violet had remarkably bad luck in finding appropriate gentlemen to pursue. Even before her failed engagement to Hugh and the debacle with Gregory Townsend, she’d always set her sights on men who struggled with fidelity, carried staggering gambling debts, or, in one horrifying incident, spent his time crafting elaborate hats for his cats.

“He doesn’t look too odd,” she insisted.

“No one looks odd at first blush, but you never know. He may still need his mother to read him a story before bed, or insist that his valet smack him in the arse before he goes to breakfast, or—”

“Stop, please. If I think of all that, I’ll never work up the nerve to speak to him.”

He bent down to meet her eye, planting his hand on his knee, and she scowled. Yes, Timothy may be tall, but she didn’t need the reminder of her height. Petite was the term her mother used, but short was far more appropriate. With wide-set eyes, round dimpled cheeks, and chestnut hair that naturally fell in shining ringlets, she resembled a doll more than an adult woman. The only signs of her maturity were her full hips and bottom, the plague of all the modistes who were compelled to trim the busts and let out the waistlines of her gowns.

“Violet,” he said in the tone of a scolding tutor. “Marry, shag, or murder?”

She huffed out a breath. “Are those my only options?”

“Yes. Now, which will it be? And I don’t have a wedding suit with me, nor do I feel like burying a body in this weather.”

Could she be the girl who would carry on a temporary affair with a handsome man? Everyone in society thought her capable of it. Her virginity wasn’t an issue anymore, thanks to Mr. Townsend, nor was finding an acceptable alternative for her impending engagement. If her fate—marriage to the lamentable Sir Belmont—was sealed, why not experience some pleasure? For once, could she do something fun, something bold? She wrinkled her nose and exhaled sharply, squaring her shoulders. “I’ve made my decision.”

Timothy raised a tawny brow. “And?”

“Shag.”