All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue (The Debutante Files #2)

All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue (The Debutante Files #2)

Sophie Jordan



Prologue

Aurelia fell in love with Maxim Alexander Chandler, the fourth Viscount of Camden—Max to his familiars—instantly. This portentous event occurred on the seventh day of April, one week before her ninth birthday. The moment the fire was lit, the flame burned bright and fierce in her young heart.

She recalled the actual date only because she recorded it in her journal that very night. Whenever she pulled forth that journal in later years, she stroked her fingertips to the aged parchment and marveled at the girl she had once been. Now those youthful scribblings made her cringe. Granted, she had been young, but he had owned her heart wholly and utterly.

Her brother had been home from Eton that April afternoon. Will had brought Lord Camden with him. She had been in the stables, playing with Nessie’s new puppies, selecting her favorite and crafting arguments in her mind to present to Mama in the desperate hope that they could bring a puppy into the house to live with them.

She was bending over, her hair falling loose around her—it never stayed within her plaits. Breathless and huffing, she tugged a particularly feisty puppy by the hind legs in an attempt to stop him from fleeing the stall, when she heard voices.

“What have you there, Aurelia?” Will called out.

She released the puppy and shot straight up, shoving hanks of hair behind her ears as Will and his companion entered the stall.

The puppy made a mad dash right between the stranger’s boot-clad legs. She gawked as the newcomer quickly whirled around and caught the squirming little beast in his hands. “Oh! Isn’t he a cute fellow?” he said cheerfully, lifting the puppy up to his face so he could examine it. The puppy licked his chin and the boy laughed. Aurelia felt that sound to her core.

She drank in the sight of him, the strikingly handsome man he was to become fully seeded in his strong jaw and brilliant blue eyes. He wore his hair long. It fell low over his brow, and he tossed his head in an effort to force it back.

He was all lean lines and a good head taller than her brother.

One might say a girl of such tender years could not know real love—could not feel its truth, and perhaps that is the circumstance with most girls. But Aurelia was not like most girls. The longing and infatuation borne in that moment for Max, who was to become a regular addition to their family in the ensuing years, consumed her.

She wrote odes to the young viscount in the secret journal she hid in the loose floorboard of her bedchamber. She reveled in his kind attentions. When Will and her cousin, Declan, treated her to barbs and insults, commanding her to cease following them whenever they roamed the countryside, Max was tolerant, even affectionate, insisting that they let her tag along with them.

It was love.

Until her fifteenth year. Until the greenhouse. When the fire burning in her heart was forever banked.

The day the fantasy had shattered dawned with all the promise of the spring morning pressing against the windowpanes of her bedchamber. Warm and bright with only the slightest nip in the air, she hadn’t even donned her cloak as she skipped outside to her mother’s greenhouse.

Max was to arrive that very day for Mama’s annual garden party to herald in the Easter holiday. She wanted to surprise him with fresh flowers in his bedchamber . . . and alongside the flowers she intended to leave the sketch of him she had labored over since his last visit

Smiling widely to herself, she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she made her way to the greenhouse. Her fingers roamed over the rest of her hair, pinned atop her head. The heavy mass swept up off her shoulders was a new sensation. She had been waiting for this day forever. Six years. Ever since she first met Max.

Mama had agreed she was old enough to leave the plaits behind and wear her hair as a lady did. Aurelia could not wait to see the viscount . . . to show him that she had grown up since his last visit. Mama even agreed that she could attend the garden party this afternoon. A victory of epic proportions. She might not be permitted to attend balls and soirees yet, but this afternoon would be hers. Her moment to shine. The first time to see Camden in a year, and the first step in him seeing her as a woman.

She squared her shoulders, wondering if he would notice that she had grown nearly three inches in the last year. And that wasn’t the only thing that had grown.

She glanced down at her bosom on display in her prim bodice. In the last year she had developed, gaining breasts that felt as cumbersome as melons strapped to her chest. And that was not all she had gained. She had grown curves, too. A surfeit of curves. Her hips, her derriere . . . all were embarrassingly present. She tried not to resent these changes. She had an older brother and cousin. She was not blind to the fact that men preferred such things in a female.

Finally. She was no longer a little girl, and she hoped Camden would notice.

He’d always been kindly attentive, but she hoped today would be different. Today, she hoped he would see her as more than a child. More than a friend. More than Will’s little sister. She was, after all, a woman of fifteen.

Once in the greenhouse, she crouched before her mother’s roses, carefully snipping the stalks and nestling them gently inside her basket, careful with the delicate yellow petals and mindful not to prick herself on the thorns.

The sound of soft laughter startled her. She had been so lost in her musings, cocooned in the silence of the greenhouse and her happy thoughts of seeing Max again, she had assumed herself alone amid the flowers and lush greenery.