Ruin in the Garden

The chandelier above the ballroom at Pembroke House threw light like shattered crystal across two hundred sweating bodies, and Lady Claire Roberts stood beneath it wondering how many of these people she could fleece at cards before midnight.

She adjusted her bodice — again — and watched the room move. The Dowager Marchioness of Something-or-Other was holding court near the pianoforte. Three young men with more chin than brain were circling the refreshment table like hungry dogs. And somewhere in the crush, Lady Sienna Battersea was no doubt scanning the crowd for the evening's first scandal.

Claire didn't have to wonder for long.

"Stop pulling at your dress," Sienna said, materializing at her elbow with the unnerving precision of a woman who never spilled wine, never smudged kohl, and never said anything she hadn't meant to say. Her blonde hair was swept up in a configuration that probably required three maids and an architect. "You look like you're trying to escape it."

"I am trying to escape it. The seamstress lied about my measurements."

"The seamstress didn't lie. You simply have the sort of figure that refuses to behave."

Claire smiled. She liked Sienna. The woman was eleven years her senior, unshockable, and owned the kind of dry wit that could flay a man at thirty paces. She also happened to be one of London's most accomplished hostesses, which meant she knew everything about everyone and dispensed that knowledge with the strategic care of a general moving battalions.

"Speaking of figures that refuse to behave," Sienna continued, her gaze cutting toward the far side of the ballroom. "Do you see that man? Tall. Dark hair. The one who looks like he's deciding which of us to eat for supper."

Claire followed her gaze and found him immediately.

He stood near the French doors that opened onto the garden, a glass of something amber in one hand, his posture the particular kind of lazy that suggested a man who could move very fast when he wanted to. Midnight blue eyes. Nearly black hair pushed back from a tanned face that had no business being that color in a London winter. He wore his evening clothes like they'd been poured onto him.

"Lord David Argyle," Sienna said, and the name landed with the weight of a verdict. "Stay away from him."

"Why?"

"Because he's a rake of the first order, and I don't mean that in the romantic sense. He has ruined at least four women that I know of, and I know of everything. He would take what he wants from you and never think of you again."

Claire took a glass of champagne from a passing footman. "That's rather dramatic."

"It's rather accurate. I've seen him work. He finds the one woman in the room who thinks she's clever enough to handle him, and he proves her wrong." Sienna's grey eyes were sharp. "And you, my dear, have 'I can handle him' written across your face in very large letters."

Claire sipped her champagne. The bubbles bit her tongue. "I can handle him."

Sienna exhaled through her nose. "I said the same thing once. Caroline said the same thing. Every woman in this room who's ever ended up on her back in his garden said the same thing."

Claire blinked. "Caroline? Your sister Caroline?"

"I'm not discussing Caroline. I'm telling you to stay away from David Argyle. He is not a challenge to be met. He is a disaster to be avoided."

But Claire had already stopped listening, because the man in question had turned his head and was looking directly at her. Not glancing. Looking. Those blue eyes moved from her face to her throat to the expanse of chestnut curls that tumbled past her shoulders, and then down — slowly, unapologetically — to the bodice she'd been fighting all evening.

He smiled. It was not a nice smile.

Claire felt something tighten low in her stomach.

"I see," Sienna said flatly. "You're going to do exactly what I told you not to do."

"I'm going to talk to him. That's not the same thing as ruining myself."

"With Argyle, talking is the same thing. The man could seduce a nun through a brick wall."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not a nun."

Claire handed her empty glass to Sienna and walked across the ballroom.

She was aware of the distance closing between them — fifteen feet, ten, five — and aware that he watched her approach the way a cat watches a bird that has helpfully decided to land. His expression didn't change. He simply waited, and the waiting itself was a kind of provocation.

"Lady Claire Roberts," she said, stopping in front of him. "We haven't been introduced, but I find I don't care."

"Lord David Argyle." His voice was lower than she expected. A rougher edge beneath the polish. "And I find I don't care either."

"You've been staring at me for the better part of ten minutes."

"Have I? I was trying to decide whether your dress is trying to contain you or escape you. I think it's a bit of both."

Claire laughed before she could stop herself. "Lady Sienna tells me you're dangerous."

"Lady Sienna tells everyone I'm dangerous. She's usually right." He tilted his head. "Does that concern you?"

"It should. It doesn't."

"Because you can handle me?"

She held his gaze. "Because I'm not easily handled either."

Something shifted behind his eyes — a flicker of genuine interest, as if she'd said something he hadn't heard before. He stepped closer, and she caught the scent of him: sandalwood, leather, and something warm underneath that had nothing to do with cologne.

"Then let's find out," he said.

He offered his arm. She took it.

They walked through the French doors onto the terrace, where the night air hit her bare shoulders like cold water. The garden beyond was a sprawl of sculpted hedgerows and gravel paths, lit by lanterns that cast pools of gold on the ground. The noise of the ballroom faded behind them, replaced by the sound of gravel crunching and her own pulse in her ears.

"You're taking me into the garden," Claire observed. "How original."

"You expected originality from a rake? I thought we'd established I'm a disaster."

"A disaster with a plan, apparently."

He stopped walking. They were between two hedgerows now, shielded from the terrace on two sides but still within view of the ballroom's glow. He turned to face her, and the lantern light caught the sharp line of his jaw, the way his collar fell open at the throat.

"I don't have a plan," he said. "I have an instinct. And my instinct is telling me you didn't come out here to talk about the weather."

Claire's mouth was dry. She swallowed. "My instinct is telling me the same thing, which is inconvenient, because Lady Sienna was very specific about what a bad idea this is."

"Sienna's right. This is a terrible idea." He reached out and touched a curl that had escaped her coiffure, winding it once around his finger. "Do you want to go back inside?"

"No."

"Good."

He kissed her.

It wasn't gentle. His mouth came down on hers with the kind of certainty that left no room for deliberation, and she felt his hand slide to the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair, pulling her head back so he could take the kiss deeper. His tongue slid against hers, hot and deliberate, and she tasted the whiskey on his breath and felt the heat of him through every layer of wool and silk between them.

Claire kissed him back. Her hands found the lapels of his jacket and gripped them, and she pulled him closer because the alternative was stepping back, and stepping back was not something she did.

His other hand went to her waist, then lower — settling on her hip, then sliding around to the small of her back, pressing her against him. She could feel him through his trousers. Hard. Already. The length of him pressed against her belly, and the tightness in her stomach became a pull, a heaviness between her legs that made her want to press her thighs together.

"You're trouble," he murmured against her mouth.

"You're obvious."

He laughed, a low sound that vibrated through her chest. Then his mouth moved to her throat, and she stopped being clever.

His lips traced the line of her neck, tongue pressing against the pulse point beneath her jaw, and Claire's head fell back on its own. She felt his teeth — a scrape, not a bite — along her collarbone, and her fingers tightened on his jacket until her knuckles ached.

"David," she breathed, and the name came out rougher than she intended.

"Claire." He said it like he was tasting it. His hands went to her shoulders, then to the neckline of her gown. "This dress is a problem."

"It's a perfectly respectable dress."

"It's a lie. It's pretending to cover you, and it's failing." His fingers hooked the fabric and pulled. The bodice came down — not gently, not with care — and her breasts spilled free into the cool night air. The shock of it made her gasp, the cold tightening her skin, and then his mouth was on her.

He bent his head and took one nipple between his lips, and Claire's hand flew to his hair. She gripped the dark strands and held on. His tongue circled the tight peak, then he sucked — hard, pulling her into his mouth — and a sound came out of her that she didn't recognize. Something raw and unguarded that belonged to a woman alone in a bedroom, not standing in a garden where anyone could see.

But anyone could see. That thought should have stopped her. It didn't.

He moved to her other breast, and this time he used his teeth. A sharp nip at the underside, then his tongue soothing the sting, and Claire looked down and saw the red mark blooming on her skin. He sucked again, harder, leaving a second mark — deliberate, possessive, a brand that would be visible for days.

"You're marking me," she said, and her voice shook.

"I'm marking you." He looked up at her, his blue eyes nearly black in the lantern light, her nipple still between his teeth. "Because you're mine tonight."

"Sienna was right about you."

"Sienna's always right about me. You came out here anyway."

He kissed her again, and his hands went to her skirts. He gathered the fabric in his fists, pulling it up inch by inch, his palms dragging along her stockings, past her garters, until his fingers found bare skin above the silk. Claire trembled. His hand slid between her thighs, and she felt one long finger press against her cunny through the damp cotton of her drawers.

"You're wet," he said, and the words were almost conversational. "You've been wet since the ballroom."

"Don't —"

"Don't what? Don't say it? You're soaking through your underclothes in this garden, and I'm supposed to pretend I don't notice?"

He pushed the fabric aside. His fingers slid against bare flesh, and Claire's hips jerked forward on instinct. She was slick — embarrassingly, obviously slick — and his fingers glided through the wetness, spreading it, finding the swollen bud at the top of her sex and pressing against it with a precision that made her vision blur.

"Fuck," she whispered.

"That's the idea." He circled her clit with two fingers, slow, maddening circles that sent electricity down her thighs. She was shaking now, her hands gripping his shoulders, her breasts bare and marked and glistening in the lantern light where his mouth had been.

Then he slipped a finger inside her.

Claire's breath caught. She was tight — she hadn't been touched like this ever before in her virginal life and her body resisted, then yielded, he pushed deeper. A second finger joined the first, and he curled them upward, pressing against the front wall of her cunny, and the pleasure was so specific and so acute that she made a sound like she'd been struck.

"God — David —"

"Right here." His thumb found her clit while his fingers worked inside her, and the combination was devastating. He fucked her slowly with his hand, each thrust of his fingers deliberate, each withdrawal dragging against the spot that made her knees buckle. She could hear it — the wet, obscene sound of his fingers sliding in and out of her — and she should have been mortified, but she was too close to something enormous to care.

"You're going to come on my hand," he said, and it wasn't a question.

"I — yes —"

"Look at me."

She opened eyes she didn't remember closing. His face was inches from hers, those midnight blue eyes fixed on her with an intensity that felt like a hand around her throat. His fingers drove deeper. His thumb pressed harder. She could feel it building — a tightening, a coiling, a wave gathering offshore.

And then she heard voices.

Laughter. The crunch of gravel. A cluster of people rounding the hedgerow — three men in evening clothes, two women with fans, all of them mid-conversation and completely oblivious to what they were about to walk into.

Claire froze. David didn't.

His fingers kept moving inside her, slower now but still moving, and he shifted his body to shield hers from view — but only partially. Her breasts were still bare, still marked with his teeth. Her skirts were still bunched at her waist. And the angle of the lanterns meant that anyone who looked their direction would see exactly what was happening.

"David," she hissed. "There are people —"

"I know." His breath was hot against her ear. "I arranged it."

The words didn't register. The group was fifteen feet away now, and one of the men was turning his head, his gaze sweeping the hedgerow, and Claire felt the orgasm hit her at the exact moment she understood what David Argyle had done.

It crashed through her like a wave breaking — her cunny clenching around his fingers, her body shaking, a cry escaping her lips that she couldn't contain. The man from the group stared. The woman beside him raised her hand to her mouth. And Claire came on David Argyle's hand in front of half of London society, her back arched, her breasts bare and bruised, her wild chestnut curls falling around her face.

She slumped against him, shaking, and his arms went around her.

"What have you done," she whispered.

"What I had to." He pulled her bodice up with efficient hands, covering her — though the marks on her chest were already visible above the neckline. His voice was quiet, almost tender. "You wouldn't have married me otherwise."

The group was staring. Someone was whispering. A woman tugged her companion's sleeve and they retreated toward the terrace, but the damage was already done. In a ballroom of two hundred people, this would be known by midnight. Claire Roberts, compromised by Lord David Argyle in the garden of Pembroke House. No decent family would receive her now.

"You planned this," she said. "The whole thing. The garden, the timing, the people."

"I've wanted you since the Hartley dinner in March. You spent the entire evening ignoring me while you cleaned out the Duke of Ashworth at piquet. I knew then that no woman who could fleece a duke at cards would ever agree to a conventional courtship."

"So you ruined me."

"I gave you a reason not to say no." He looked down at her. His expression was steady, certain, and beneath the ruthlessness there was something else — something that looked, absurdly, like devotion. "Marry me, Claire. I'll be your disaster, and you can be mine."

She stared at him. Her body was still trembling. Her thighs were wet. Her chest bore his marks, and her reputation lay in pieces on the gravel. And the infuriating thing — the truly maddening thing — was that he was right. She wouldn't have said yes. Not to a conventional courtship, not to a respectable man, not to anyone who asked politely.

She needed someone who would match her. Someone who would play as dirty as she did.

"You're a bastard," she said.

"You say that like it's news."

Behind them, the group had retreated entirely, and she could see Sienna standing on the terrace, her arms folded, her expression caught between fury and something that looked suspiciously like resignation. Sienna had warned her. Sienna had been right. And Sienna was going to say "I told you so" for the next forty years.

Claire straightened her skirts. She tucked her hair back. She looked at David Argyle — this reckless, calculating, beautiful man who had just burned down her life so he could build one with her in the ashes.

"I want the wedding at St. James's," she said.

His smile was slow and unrepentant. "Naturally."

"And you're buying me a new wardrobe. This dress is ruined."

"I'll buy you a hundred dresses. You'll take them all off anyway."

She almost smiled. Almost. "You're insufferable."

"And you're going to marry me anyway."

She was. God help her, she was. Because beneath the outrage and the shock and the lingering pulse of pleasure between her thighs, she felt something she hadn't expected: the reckless, dizzying thrill of being wanted by someone who wanted her badly enough to break every rule to get her.

She took his arm.

"Take me home, Lord Argyle. Before I change my mind."

"You won't."

"I know."

They walked back through the garden, past the hedgerow where the lanterns still burned, toward the terrace where Sienna waited with the expression of a woman who had seen this exact disaster before and would see it again. The ballroom glittered behind her. London glittered beyond it. And somewhere in the chaos of the evening, Claire Roberts — who had never been wife material and would never pretend to be — found the one man who hadn't wanted her to be.