Prologue
May 1812
Lady Violet Grey, eighteen years old, fair of face and figure, with a respectable fortune and unimpeachable bloodline, had every advantage a young lady of good society could possibly desire—except, according to her mother, one tragically absent trait: a suitably ladylike sense of meekness.
“Curiosity, my dear, will take you nowhere,” Lady Worthington had admonished her daughter more than once over the course of Violet’s interminable years of adolescence. “Curiosity will lead you to balconies! And Ruin!”
Ruin.
While Violet had no objection to the word in the context of, say, the Parthenon in Greece—a place that she would have loved to visit, had she not been an English girl of good family and fortune—she had come to loathe it beyond all reason when it was employed in the context of young ladies such as herself. So frequently did her mother use the word to warn against Violet’s unsuitable behavior that she had come to imagine it always with a capital R. One visited ruins; one was Ruined.
And if Lady Worthington’s constant admonitions were anything to judge by, Violet was at particular risk of succumbing to this most undesirable state. When Lady Worthington discovered a book of scandalous poetry Violet had secreted from the family library, she warned of Ruin. When she discovered Violet writing a letter to the editor of the Arts and Sciences Review with a question regarding the discovery of a comet in France, she warned of Ruin. (“But I was going to send it under a gentleman’s pseudonym!” Violet protested as her mother tore the letter into shreds.) All in all, it would seem—according to Lady Worthington—that Ruin was lurking around every corner.
It was, in short, alarming.
Or at least it would have been alarming to anyone but Violet.
For Violet, however, these constant admonitions, which only increased in frequency during the months leading up to her presentation at court and her first London Season, made her curious about what, precisely, Ruin entailed. Her mother, usually irritatingly verbose on the subject, became oddly closemouthed about the specifics when Violet pressed her on the matter. Violet had asked her two closest friends, Diana Bourne and Lady Emily Turner, but they seemed similarly uninformed. She began a slow search of the library at Worth Hall, the Worthingtons’ country estate, but was whisked away to London for dress fittings before she had made much headway.
It was, therefore, with a frustrating lack of knowledge that Violet began her first Season. And it was rather disappointing when, a few weeks into the Season, she found herself on that most forbidden of edifices—a balcony—in the process of most likely being Ruined, and she realized that it wasn’t quite as exciting as she’d imagined.
The gentleman who was attempting the Ruining, Jeremy Overington, Marquess of Willingham and notorious rakehell, was not entirely unknown to her, given that he was the closest friend of the elder brother of Violet’s own best friend, Diana. In fact, Violet had vivid memories of Penvale regaling herself, Diana, and Emily with tales of Lord Willingham’s exploits upon his visits home from Eton. Violet had not, however, seen Lord Willingham in several years, until this very month, when she had made her debut in London society.
Willingham was handsome to be sure, if one found golden hair, blue eyes, and perfectly fitted breeches appealing (which Violet, like any proper English girl, naturally did). He was rather witty, too, if one found verbal sparring enjoyable (which Violet, unlike many proper English girls, also did). And, this very evening at the Montgomery ball, Violet had learned that he was quick to turn a waltz with a young lady into an opportunity to waltz said young lady straight out onto a darkened balcony.
Violet was rather surprised by this turn of events—moments before, they had been chatting idly of her impressions of London, whirling around beneath the chandeliers, bathed in romantic candlelight, and now here they were, alone but for each other, the orchestra music muffled by the French doors that led back into the ballroom. From here, events progressed quickly. She couldn’t quite say how it had happened, but one moment Jeremy was asking her, laughter in his voice, if this was the first time she’d been lured onto a balcony, and the next his mouth was covering hers.
Which brought her to her present condition of being Ruined. And yet—and yet. Violet had always been given the impression—by many books she had clandestinely read, certainly not by her mother—that Ruination was a rather enjoyable experience. Why else would a lady risk everything for a few fleeting moments? And yet, Violet could not, in perfect honesty, say that she found her own Ruin to be as enjoyable as she might have hoped.
To be sure, Lord Willingham’s arms were strong as they clasped her to his chest, which itself was reassuringly firm as it pressed against her. And yes, he smelled pleasantly of bergamot, and his mouth moved over hers with an ease that spoke of years of experience, and yet.
And yet.
Violet found herself feeling curiously detached—while one part of her concentrated on the immediate activity at hand, lifting one hand to curl cautiously behind Willingham’s neck, her eyes shut tight, some corner of her mind couldn’t help being distracted by the chill in the evening air, the slight discomfort in her neck that came from keeping her face tilted relentlessly upward, and the possibility that she heard footsteps approaching them on the terrace.
A moment later, she realized with horror that she did in fact hear footsteps, and that they were accompanied by a decidedly masculine voice.
“Jeremy, you’re losing your touch,” the man said, causing Willingham to whip around, attempting to shield Violet from view. “I thought you at least knew to find a darker corner of a balcony for your liaisons.”
The owner of the voice stepped into a shaft of light, and Violet’s first impression was that he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. She always thought girls in books were idiotic when they made that declaration—how was it possible, after all, that in a split second of staring at one man’s face, a lady should decide that said face was more appealing than that of every member of the male sex she’d ever encountered in her years upon the earth? It was utterly illogical. Absurd.
And yet, in that moment, Violet apparently became absurd herself, for nothing could shake her certainty of that impression. The stranger was tall and broad-shouldered and appeared no older than Lord Willingham, who Violet knew had been down from Oxford for only a couple of Seasons. His hair, even darker than Violet’s own, appeared black in the dim light. His eyes were a vivid, startling green, and as his gaze met Violet’s over Lord Willingham’s shoulder, she felt a thrill course through her—an awareness of his physical proximity, and of the appreciation in his eyes as he took her in. He moved with a compact, athletic grace, and she had a sudden thought that she would love to see this man on the back of a horse. She had a vivid mental image of her own mother’s face if she could have heard this thought—somehow Lady Worthington would find it indecent, though she wasn’t precisely certain why—and had to clap a hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh, unnaturally loud in the relative quiet of the balcony.
At this noise, the newcomer’s gaze focused more sharply upon her, and his eyes widened. Violet was gripped with a wild, fleeting hope that he was as struck by her own beauty as she was by his. Even her mother, after all, was occasionally forced to temper her criticism with a grudging admission that Violet was “pretty enough to let the rest be overlooked, we hope”—“the rest” being all the aspects of Violet’s character that made her herself, of course.