“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 Phineas 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 womanneeds 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 Phineas 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 aToss them into the Thamesrating?”
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 past noon then 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-five!” 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 bellyor 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 sayshagin polite company, even if only Timothy could hear her. “Maybe even a mar—”
“Don’tsay 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.Petitewas the term her mother used, butshortwas far more appropriate. With wide-set eyes, round dimpledcheeks, 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?”
