Книга - Christmas At The Castle: Tarnished Rose of the Court / The Laird’s Captive Wife

Christmas At The Castle: Tarnished Rose of the Court / The Laird's Captive Wife
Amanda McCabe

Joanna Fulford


Tarnished Rose of the CourtAs a naïve girl Celia Sutton fell in love withJohn Brandon, who seduced her…then vanished. Now, sent on a dangerous mission by Elizabeth I, Celia is astonished to encounter him again.But, while John is as dashing as ever, Celia is notthe innocent rose he remembers…The Laird’s Captive WifeImprisoned by Norman invaders, Lady Ashlynn is rescued by fierce Scottish warlord Iain – who then holds her as his own prisoner! Disarmed by her attraction to her brooding captor, Ashlynn hopes to escape…until a royal decree commands Iain to make her his wife!



















Amanda McCabe






Joanna Fulford





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Contents


Cover (#u217a6226-9ab9-550d-a6e2-b7f487ce500c)

Title Page (#ue750d727-b36c-50bc-82f4-37be680bc774)

Tarnished Rose of the Court (#uba319639-1a05-5d73-bfe1-a64cbc4391ad)

About the Author (#udb9864ab-652b-5eaa-8e38-130f96ffa7df)

Dedication (#u30da1b2c-7e6a-54ca-ba33-b51ce6c3255e)

Chapter One (#u6cad5c00-fb19-55fc-9f9e-7a4128b90a14)

Chapter Two (#u5fc6ab02-0679-5185-9278-644bacfce8e6)

Chapter Three (#u155f125a-ca12-540e-959e-fdfae7bbdd7f)

Chapter Four (#uecd075ff-31f0-5980-8c9a-0d95b1c630d7)

Chapter Five (#u4797e205-b737-5041-878a-85e0539af1b4)

Chapter Six (#ue7629a5c-7ed2-5fac-b48f-f28219efe7b3)

Chapter Seven (#u7e7940e1-38bf-5284-a902-5c8cd82caaa2)

Chapter Eight (#ub0fd16ba-9114-54f0-9b01-bd6865ccee0e)

Chapter Nine (#uab2889a1-08dc-5c2c-b0c4-852130312d4a)

Chapter Ten (#u4a162408-ca0f-56e8-afa4-1b4999b762d4)

Chapter Eleven (#uee4bd86a-4578-51c1-8cdf-524aea319f3c)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

The Laird’s Captive Wife (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Endpage (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)






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AMANDA MCCABE wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She's never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA


, RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, one dog and one cat.


To the Martini Club—Alicia Dean, Christy Gronlund, Kathy Wheeler!

Thanks for the inspiration, and for always keeping Friday nights fun…




Chapter One (#ulink_d78dc105-a845-53db-8fc2-a72d93d3215b)


Whitehall Palace, December 1564

It was him.

Suddenly dizzy, Celia Sutton reached out to steady herself against the panelled wall of Queen Elizabeth’s presence chamber. The thick crowd had pressed in around her again, obscuring her view with a sea of jewelled velvet and embroidered satin. The nervous laughter and high-pitched chatter as they waited anxiously to petition the Queen sounded like a flock of birds in her ears, buzzing and formless.

She rubbed her hand over her eyes and looked again, standing on tiptoe to try and peer over the crowd. She could no longer see him. Not even that tiny glimpse of his tall figure by the door. The flash of his careless grin. He was gone.

Or maybe he had never been there at all. Maybe it had just been her imagination playing tricks on her. She had not been sleeping well—had spent too many late nights here at Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas revels. She had too many worries, and it was wearing on her. That was all.

And yet—he had looked so real.

“It was not him,” she whispered. John Brandon was gone. She had not seen him for over three years—three very long, hard years—and she would never see him again. What was more, she did not want to see him. It would only remind her of the foolish girl she’d once been, of her old weakness for his handsome face, and right now she needed all her strength.

She pushed herself away from the wall and took a deep breath, trying to stand perfectly still, to keep herself calm. The Queen would call for her soon, and she had to have all her wits about her when they met. Her entire life depended on it. She should look only to the future now, not to the past. Not to John Brandon.

But still that fleeting image lingered in her mind, that glimpse of his lean, muscled figure through the crowd and the pounding of her heart at the sight. Despite the roaring fire in the stone grates, the close press of the crowd, and her own fur-trimmed black and purple velvet gown, she shivered.

All around her were desperate faces—people who saw their last chance in catching the Queen’s attention. Did she look like them? She feared it was so. What would John say if he could see her now? Would he even recognise her?

The door to the Queen’s privy chamber opened and everyone’s attention turned towards it in the hope their name would now be called. Hope sank down again when they saw it was only Anton Gustavson and Lord Langley, the last parties to be called to consult with Queen Elizabeth. The nervous chatter fluttered anew.

Celia froze when her gaze met Anton’s. He was her long-lost Swedish cousin, recently arrived in England to lay his claim to their grandfather’s estate at Briony Manor. That estate was Celia’s last hope for a comfortable, independent life in which she did not have to answer to the whims of a cruel man any longer. But as she had watched Anton charm the Queen, and every other lady at Court, her hopes had slipped away. He would have the estate, and she would be thrown back to the dubious mercy of her late husband’s family.

Anton gave her a wary nod, and she curtsied in answer. He was the only family she had left, yet she did not know him and could not trust him. That was one of the hard lessons John Brandon had once taught her—never to trust in appearances or emotions. Always to be cautious.

Anton’s latest flirtation, the beautiful golden-blonde Rosamund Ramsay, came to his side and gently touched his arm. He smiled down at her, and they gazed into each other’s eyes as if the crowded chamber, the whole world, had vanished but for the two of them.

A cold sadness washed over Celia at the sight. She had once looked at John like that, sure that he felt that incandescent connection too. But it had been false in the end.

She turned away from the sight of Anton and Rosamund and pretended to study the tapestry on the wall. But the vivid greens and reds of the silken threads blurred in her vision, and she saw only that long-ago summer day. The sun so bright and warm in a cloudless azure sky, the cool shadows under the ancient oak tree where she’d waited for him. Imagining his kisses, the embrace of his strong body …

But he had not come, even after he’d hinted at a future with her. The warm sun had melted away and there had been only the shadows.

It was not him, she told herself fiercely. He was not here. Not now.

The door swung open again, and this time it was the Queen’s major-domo. A tense hush fell over the crowd.

Celia turned around to face him, wiping fiercely at her eyes. She hadn’t cried in three years. She could not start now.

“Mistress Celia Sutton, Her Grace will see you now,” the man announced.

Bitterly envious looks spun towards Celia, but she ignored them and slowly made her way forward. This was her chance. She couldn’t let the memory of John Brandon distract her for even an instant. He had taken too much from her already.

Just inside the door a small looking glass hung on the wall, and she glimpsed her reflection there—the black cap on her smooth, tightly pinned dark hair, the high fur collar of her gown, the jet earrings in her ears. In mourning for a husband she could not truly mourn.

Her face looked chalk-white with worry, just like everyone else’s in that room outside, but red streaked her cheekbones as if in memory of that long-ago summer’s day. Her grey eyes glowed with unshed tears.

She forced them away, clasping her hands tightly before her waist as she followed the major-domo into the inner sanctum of the privy chamber. It was also crowded there, but the atmosphere was lighter, the conversation free of the strained quality outside. Ladies-in-waiting in their pale silks sat on cushions and low stools scattered over the floor and around the marble fireplace, whispering and laughing over their embroidery. Handsome young courtiers played cards in the corner, casting flirtatious glances at the ladies.

But the Queen’s most favourite of all, Robert Dudley, was nowhere to be seen. Everyone said that after the alarming events of the Christmas season, the attempts on the Queen’s life, he worked day and night to ensure the security of the palace. Nor was the Queen’s chief secretary, Lord Burghley, who so rarely left her side, in evidence.

Queen Elizabeth sat by herself next to the window, a table covered with the scrolls of petitions beside her. The pale grey sunlight filtered through the thick glass, turning her red-gold hair into a fiery halo and making her fair ivory skin glow. She wore a splendourous robe of crimson velvet trimmed with white fur over a gold silk gown, rubies on her fingers and in her ears, and a band of pearls holding back her hair.

She looked every inch the young Sun Queen, but her dark eyes were shadowed and the set of her mouth was grim, as if the events of the last few days had taken their toll on her.

Celia had heard that those strange occurrences were not the Queen’s only worries. Parties from Austria and Sweden were at Whitehall to press their marriage suits. Spain and France were constant threats. And the Queen’s cousin to the north, Mary Queen of Scots, was always a thorn in Elizabeth’s side.

It was almost enough to make Celia feel her own troubles were tiny in comparison! No one was trying to kill her or marry her.

“Mistress Sutton,” Queen Elizabeth said. “You have had a long wait, I fear.”

Celia curtsied low and made her way to the Queen’s desk. Elizabeth tapped her long pale fingers on the papers, her rings sparkling. “I’m just grateful Your Grace has the time to meet with me.”

Elizabeth waved her words away. “You may not be so grateful when you hear what I have to say, Mistress Sutton. Please sit.”

A footman leaped forward with a stool, and Celia sank onto it gratefully. She had a terrible feeling this interview would not go as she so fervently wished. “Briony Manor, Your Grace?”

“Aye.” Elizabeth held up a scroll. “It seems clear to us that your grandfather’s wish was for the estate to go to Master Gustavson’s mother and then to him. We feel we cannot go against this.”

Celia felt that chill wash over her again—the cold of disappointment, of an anger she had to suppress. If she could not go to Briony, where could she go? What would be her home? “Yes, Your Grace.”

“I am sorry,” Elizabeth said, and there was a tinge of true regret in her voice. She even used “I” instead of the official “we”. “When I was a girl, I had no true place of my own. No place where I could be assured of my own security. Everything I had was dependent on others—my father, my brother, my sister. Even my life depended on their whims.”

Celia glanced at the Queen in surprise. Elizabeth so seldom spoke of the difficult past. Why would she now, and to Celia of all people? “Your Grace?”

“I know how you must feel, Mistress Sutton. We are alike in some ways, I think. And that is why I sense that I can ask a great favour of you.”

Ask? Or demand? “I will do anything I can to serve Your Grace, of course.”

Elizabeth tapped at the papers again. “You have heard the recent rumours surrounding my cousin Queen Mary, I am sure. She always seems of such acute interest to my courtiers.”

“I—well, aye, Your Grace. I sometimes hear tales of Queen Mary. Is there a specific rumour you refer to?”

Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, yes, there are many. But I refer to the fact that she intends to marry again. They say she has hopes of a union equal to her first with the King of France. I hear she has her sights set on Don Carlos of Spain—King Phillip’s son.”

“I have heard such rumours as well, Your Grace,” Celia said. She had also heard Don Carlos was a violent lunatic, but even a reputed great beauty like Queen Mary seemed willing to overlook that for the chance to be Queen of Spain.

Elizabeth suddenly slammed her fist down on the desk, sending an inkwell clattering to the floor. “That cannot be! My cousin cannot make such a powerful alliance. She is menace enough as it is. I have suggested she should marry an English nobleman. I must have someone I can trust in her Court.”

“Your Grace?” Celia said in confusion. How could she assist in such a task?

Elizabeth lowered her voice to a whisper. “I have a plan, you see, Mistress Sutton. But I will need help to see it carried off.”

“How can I help, Your Grace? I know of no candidates for Queen Mary’s hand.”

“Oh, I will take care of that, Mistress Sutton. I have the perfect candidate in mind—someone I can trust completely. I cannot say who just yet, but I promise you will know all you need to soon.” The Queen sat back in her chair and reached for one of the papers on her desk. “In the meantime my cousin, the Countess of Lennox, who is Mary’s cousin as well, petitions for her son Lord Darnley to be given a passport to visit his father who is now resident in Edinburgh.”

Celia nodded. She knew well of the Countess’s petition, as Lady Lennox had made certain indiscreet confidences to her in the last few days. Lady Lennox hoped that once Queen Mary met Lord Darnley, who was tall, blond and angelically handsome, she would marry him and make him King of Scotland. His own royal lineage would strengthen Mary’s claim to be Elizabeth’s heir.

Celia was not so sure such a plan could work, hinging as it did on Lord Darnley. Even she could see, from her brief time at Court, that he was a drunken braggart under his pretty exterior, and rather too fond of men.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said.

“It appears Lady Lennox has made a friend of you in these last few days.”

“Lady Lennox has been welcoming to me. But she tells me little except that she misses her husband.”

“I have been reluctant to let Lord Darnley travel north,” Elizabeth said. “He seems the sort it is best to keep an eye on. But Lord Burghley counsels, and I concur, that we should allow him this passport now. He will depart for Scotland in a week’s time.”

“So soon, Your Grace?” Celia was surprised anyone could travel now. It was the coldest winter anyone could remember, with the Thames frozen through. Sensible people stayed home by their fires.

“I think time is imperative in this matter,” the Queen said. “And Lord Darnley seems eager to go. I wish for you, Mistress Sutton, to be one of the travel party.”

Celia tried not to gape at the Queen like a country lackwit. She had no idea what to say or even how to calm her jumbled thoughts. She—go to Scotland? “I fear I do not quite understand how I could help you in Edinburgh, Your Grace.”

Elizabeth gave an impatient sigh. “You will serve Queen Mary as a lady-in-waiting—a gift from me. I need a lady’s close eye on matters there, Mistress Sutton. Men are all very well for certain things, of course, and Burghley will have his spies in the party. But a woman sees things men are blind to—especially when it comes to other women. I need to know Mary’s true thoughts concerning her possible marriage. And I need to know if she is … persuadable in that regard.”

“And you believe I can do that?” Celia said carefully.

Elizabeth laughed. “I am sure you can. I have been watching you these last few days, Mistress Sutton, and I see how you notice everything around you. How you observe and listen. I need someone like that. Not a preening Court peacock who sees nothing but the cut of their own coat. It is vital that I know everything my cousin does right now. The security of our northern borders depends on her marital choice.”

Celia nodded. She knew how unpredictable the Scottish Queen could be. Everyone knew that. And Celia did watch and listen; it was the only way for a woman alone to survive. She also knew how limited her own choices were. With no money or estate of her own, and no husband or family to lean on, she was dependent on the Queen’s favour.

Better that than the cold charity of her in-laws.

“You would be rewarded for your efforts, of course,” the Queen said. “As soon as Queen Mary’s marriage is settled satisfactorily and you have returned to our Court you shall have a marriage of your own. The finest I can arrange, I promise you, Mistress Sutton. And then you will be settled for life.”

Celia would rather have an estate of her own than another husband. In her experience husbands were useless things. But for now she would take what the Queen offered—and renegotiate later.

“What would be a—a satisfactory settlement?” she asked.

Elizabeth smiled and slid a folded letter from under the ledger on her desk to give to Celia. “This will tell you all you need to know, Mistress Sutton. I intend to propose my own marital candidate to Mary. When you have messages to send to me, you may give them to my own trusted contact and he will see they reach me quickly.”

Celia tucked the letter into her velvet sleeve. “Contact, Your Grace?”

“Aye. You can meet him now.” Elizabeth gestured to the major-domo, who bowed and disappeared through a door tucked into the panelling. He returned in only a moment, followed by a tall, lean man clad in fashionable black and tawny velvet and satin.

John Brandon. It was him she had seen before. He was no illusion. Celia half rose at the sight of him, and then fell back onto her stool. She felt cold all over again.

His eyes—those bright sky-blue eyes she had once loved so much—widened when they glimpsed her. For a fleeting instant she saw a flare of emotion in their depths. A hint of a smile touched his lips. But a veil quickly fell over those eyes, and she could read nothing there but fashionable boredom. He gave no signs of recognising her at all.

“Ah, Sir John, there you are,” Queen Elizabeth said. She waved him forward, holding out her hand for him to bow over. He gave her an elaborate salute and a flirtatious grin that made her laugh.

“Your Grace outshines the sun itself,” he said. “Even in the midst of the winter you send us warmth and light.”

“Flatterer,” the Queen said, laughing even harder.

Celia remembered that smile all too well, and how it also had made her laugh and blush whenever he turned it in her direction. Back then it had been half hidden in a close-cropped beard. Now he was clean-shaven, the sharp, elegant angles of his chiselled face revealed and the full force of that smile unleashed.

From the corner of her eye Celia saw some of the young ladies-in-waiting sigh and giggle. Yes, she remembered very well that feeling—that sense of melting under the heat of his smile. But that had been long ago, and she had learned the painful consequences of falling under John Brandon’s spell.

“Sir John, this is Mistress Celia Sutton, who will also be journeying to Scotland,” Queen Elizabeth said. She lowered her voice to whisper confidentially, “She will give you any messages to be dispatched directly to me. You must see that she stays safe in Edinburgh.”

A frown flickered over John’s face, as if he was not happy with the task. But he could not be any less happy than Celia. Her heart sank in appalled confusion. She would have to travel with him? Confide in him?

She had the wild impulse to leap from her seat, cry out that she refused the Queen’s task and run from the room. But she forced herself to stay where she was, biting her lip until she tasted blood to keep from shouting. She could not refuse the Queen. There was nowhere for her to run.

John’s frown vanished as quickly as Celia had glimpsed it. He bowed again and said, “I am Your Grace’s servant in all things,” he said.

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair with a smug little cat’s smile. “Come now, Sir John. This is surely far from the most onerous task I have asked of you. Mistress Sutton is quite pretty, is she not? I’m sure spending time with her will not be so difficult on your long journey.”

Celia froze at the Queen’s teasing words. John’s glance flickered over her with not much interest. “I fear that when Your Grace is near I can see nothing else,” he said.

Elizabeth laughed. “Nevertheless, I expect the two of you will work together very well. Your mother was Scottish, was she not, Sir John?”

A muscle tightened along John’s jaw. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“She even lived at the Court of Queen Mary’s mother, when Marie of Guise was Regent, I believe?” Elizabeth said carelessly, as if those years when the English and Scottish armies under Queen Marie de Guise had been at bitter war was a mere trifle. “So you should be able to assist Mistress Sutton in learning the ways of the Scottish Court. Perhaps you will even rediscover your own family there.”

“I have no family but that of England, Your Grace,” he said tightly.

Elizabeth waved this away and said, “You may both leave us now. You will have a great many tasks to prepare for your journey, and I must finish these petitions before tonight’s banquet.”

Celia rose slowly from her stool and curtsied, her legs trembling and unsteady. She still could not quite believe all that happened in this strange short meeting. Her worries of having no home or income had been whisked away, only to be replaced by the sudden reappearance of John Brandon and a journey to Scotland to spy on Queen Mary. Her head spun with it all.

She would have laughed if it was not so coldly serious.

John bowed to the Queen, and the major-domo came forward again to lead them away. He took them not to the crowded presence chamber but through a hidden door into a small, dimly lit closet. After the brightness of the privy chamber Celia could see nothing but the shadow of heavy tapestries on dark wood walls.

She rubbed her hand over her eyes and took a deep breath. When she looked again the servant was gone—and she was alone with John.

He watched her closely, his lean, muscled shoulders tense and his handsome face wiped of all expression.

“Hello, Celia,” he said quietly. “It has been a long time, has it not?”




Chapter Two (#ulink_27b63791-7bc2-5888-b2ec-e37dbfb6e63a)


Celia stared up at John in the shadows of the closet. The faint, hazy bars of light fell over his face, and she saw that the years had changed him just as they had her. He was leaner, harder, his eyes a wintry, icy blue as they studied her warily.

Once she had thought those eyes as warm as a summer sky, melting her heart, piercing all her defences. But now her heart was a stone, a heavy weight within her that was numb to all feeling. It was better this way. Feelings were deceptive, treacherous. Never to be trusted.

Especially when it came to this man.

Celia stepped back until she felt the hard wood panelling of the wall against her shoulders. He didn’t move, yet his eyes never wavered from her face and it felt as if he followed her. It felt as if he pressed up against her in that dim, quiet light, his hard, hot body touching her as it once had. Demanding a response from her.

She twisted her hands into her skirts, struggling not to look away from him. Not to show her weakness.

“Aye, it has been a long while,” she said, once she finally found her voice again.

The last time she’d seen him he had been kissing her beneath that tree, their secret meeting place. His body had held her against the rough wood of the trunk, just as she braced herself to the wall now. He had kissed her, his mouth and tongue claiming hers, demanding she give him all her response as he dragged her skirt up, baring her to his touch. There had been such a wild desperation between them that day, a need such as she had never known. He had made her dream of a romantic, glorious future with him.

And the next day he was gone. Vanished without a word.

“Yet not nearly long enough,” she said coldly. “I thought never to see you again.”

His glance swept down over her again, taking in her austere gown, her ringless fingers, the tight, smooth twist of her hair. For an instant another image flashed in her mind. John taking her hair down, freeing it from its pins and running his hands through its heavy length. Calling it a fairy queen’s hair as he buried his face in it …

Those all-seeing blue eyes focused on her face again, narrowing as he watched her closely, as if seeking her thoughts. Once she had gifted him with all she was, given herself to him in every way.

She hoped she was no longer such a fool. She looked back at him with a steady, cool daring. Let him try to read her, play her again. The besotted, silly, giddy Celia he’d once known was gone. John had killed her—with the able assistance of her wretched husband and foolish brother.

“I’ve thought of you, Celia,” he said.

She quickly scrambled to cover her surprise at his words. He had thought of her? Surely not. Unless it had been to chuckle at her naivety. The country girl who had fallen so easily for his charm, his dalliance to pass the time of rural exile.

Celia laughed. “I would have thought Court life would be far too busy for any idle nostalgia, John. So many tournaments to win, ladies to woo. I’m sure every moment is filled for a man of your … assets.”

She let her gaze drift down over his body—the long, lean line of his legs in his tall leather boots, the snake-like hips and powerful shoulders. The years had not softened him one bit.

Her stare slid over the bulge in his breeches and she had to turn away. She remembered that part of him all too well … hot velvet over steel, sliding against her, inside of her.

“Aye,” she said tightly. “You must be busy indeed.”

Something seemed to crack in his iron control then. As fast as the strike of a hawk diving for its prey he seized her arms in his hard hands and held her against the wall. Those blue eyes she had thought so icy burned down at her in a white-hot blaze.

Celia could feel her own carefully built walls slipping and she struggled to hold onto them. Nay, this could not be happening! Five minutes in John’s presence could not be destroying all she had built up to protect herself. She twisted away from him but he wouldn’t let her go.

“Let me go!” she cried. His hands just tightened, holding her between the wall and his body. The heat of him, the vital, fiery life that had always been a part of him, wrapped around her like velvety unbreakable bonds. She remembered the tenderness, the need she had once felt with him.

“What has happened to you, Celia?” he said roughly.

“What do you mean?” she gasped.

She went very still and stared at the hard angle of his jaw above the high collar of his doublet. A muscle flexed there and his lips were pressed in an angry line. She imagined twisting her hands in that collar, tighter and tighter, until he let her go. Until she could hurt him as he had once hurt her.

“You look like the Celia I remember,” he said. One hand slid slowly down her arm, rubbing her velvet sleeve over her skin until he touched her bare wrist. Something flared in his eyes as he felt the leap of her pulse, and he twined his fingers with hers.

Celia was too frozen to pull away. She felt like the hawk’s prey in truth, mesmerised as he swooped closer and closer.

“You’re even more beautiful than you were then,” he said, his voice softer and deeper. “But your eyes are hard.”

Celia jerked in his arms. “You mean I am not a foolish, gullible girl who can be lured by a man’s pretty words? I have learned my lesson well since we last met, John, and I’m grateful for it.”

He raised the hand he held to study her fingers. The pale skin and neat buffed nails. His thumb brushed over her bare ring finger. Celia tried to twist out of his caress, but despite his deceptive gentleness he held her fast.

“You aren’t married?” he asked.

“Not any longer,” she answered with a bitter laugh. “Thanks to God’s mercy. And I intend never to be again.”

He raised her hand, and to her shock pressed his mouth to the hollow of her palm. His lips were parted, and she could feel the moist heat of him moving slowly over her skin. It made her legs tremble, her whole treacherous body go weak, and she braced herself tighter against the wall.

That weakness, that rush of need she had thought she was finished with, made her angry. She made herself go stiff and unyielding, building her defensive walls up again stone by hard-won stone.

“I may have changed, John, but you certainly have not,” she said coldly. “You still take what you want with no thought for anyone else. A conquering warrior who discards whatever no longer amuses you.”

His mouth froze on her skin. Slowly he raised his head and his stare met hers. She almost gasped at the raw, elemental fury she saw in those depths. The blue had turned almost black, like the power of a summer storm.

“You know nothing of me,” he whispered, and it was all the more forceful for its softness. “Nothing of what I have had to do in my life.”

I know you left me! her mind cried out. Left her to the cruel hands of her husband, to a life where she had nowhere to turn for sanctuary. She bit down on her lip to keep from shouting the words aloud.

“I know I do not want to work with you on the Queen’s business,” she said.

“No more than I want to work with you,” he answered. With one more hard glance down her body, he abruptly let her go and spun away from her. His back and shoulders were rigid as he raked his hands through his hair. “But the Queen has commanded it. Would you go against her orders?”

Celia braced her palms against the wall, trying to still the primitive urge to smooth the light brown waves of his hair where he had tousled them. “Of course I would not go against the Queen.”

“Then to Edinburgh we go,” he said.

He heaved in a deep breath, and Celia could practically see his armour lowered back into place. He shot her a humourless smile over his shoulder.

“I shall see you at the ball tonight, Celia.”

She watched him leave the small closet, the door clicking shut behind him. She was surrounded by heavy silence, pressing in on her from every corner until she nearly screamed from it.

She let herself slide down the wall until she sat in the puddle of her skirts. Her head was pounding, and she let it drop down into her hands as she struggled to hold back the tears.

She had thought her life could become no worse, no more complicated. But she had been wrong. Sir John Brandon was the greatest, most terrible complication of all.

God’s blood. Celia Sutton.

John shoved the pile of documents away so violently that many of them fluttered to the floor, and slumped back in his chair. It was of vital importance that he read all of them, that he knew exactly what he would be up against in Scotland, yet all he could see, all he could think about, was Celia.

Celia. Celia.

He raked his fingers hard through his hair, but she wouldn’t be dislodged from his mind. Those cool grey eyes watching him in the shadows of that closet, sliding down his body as if she was remembering exactly what he was remembering himself.

The hot touch of bare skin to bare skin, mouths and hands exploring, tasting.

Her keening cries as he entered her, joined with her more deeply and truly than he ever had with anyone before. Or since.

But then her regard had changed in an instant, becoming hard and distant, cold as the frozen Thames outside his window. His Celia—the woman whose secret memory had sustained him for so long, despite everything—was gone.

Or maybe she was just hidden, buried behind those crossed swords he’d seen in this new, hard Celia’s eyes. It was clear she had walled herself away from something, that her soul had been deeply wounded, and no matter what they had once been to each other she wouldn’t let him reach her now. And she was quite right. One of those wounds on her soul had been placed there by him.

Once he had wanted her more than anything else in the world. She had awakened things in him he had thought he could never feel. He had even dared to dream of a future with her for one brief, bright moment. That connection was still there, after all these years. When he’d touched her it had been as if he could sense her thoughts, her fury, her passion. Hatred so close to lust he’d almost tasted it, because it had called out to the yearnings he felt just as strongly.

It had taken every ounce of his iron control not to push her to the floor, shove her skirts above her waist, raise her hips in his hands and drive his tongue into her. Taste her, feel her, until her walls fell and his Celia was with him again. The girl who had once made him smile.

He groaned as he felt the tightness in his codpiece, half-hard ever since he’d first touched her, lengthen. Just the memory of how she tasted, like summer honey, the way she would drive her fingers into his hair and pull him closer between her legs, had him aroused.

But if the murderous look in her eyes was any indication, memories were as close as he would ever get to that part of her again.

John pushed himself up from his chair and strode over to the window of his small chamber. He opened the casement to let the freezing wind rush over him, despite the fact that he had discarded his doublet and wore only a thin linen shirt. He needed the cold to remind him of his task, his duty. He had never failed in his service to the Queen. He couldn’t fail now, no matter how much Celia distracted him.

He could see the river, a frozen silver ribbon as grey and icy as Celia’s eyes. This Christmas season had been the coldest anyone could remember, so frigid the Thames had frozen solid and a frost fair was set up on the surface. It had warmed a bit in the quiet days after the Christmas revels, but chunks of ice still floated along the water and the people who dared to go outside were muffled in cloaks and scarves.

And he would have to travel to Scotland in the cold—and take Celia with him. Long days huddled together for heat, nights in secluded inns, bound together in danger and service to Queen Elizabeth. Surely there she would open to him? Surely there he could destroy all her shields, one by one, until his Celia was revealed to him again?

Nay! John cracked his palm down hard on the windowsill, splintering the cold brittle wood. This journey was meant to neutralise the constant threat of Queen Mary and her possible marriage alliances, not to be a chance for him to lose himself in Celia all over again. To dream of what he could never have. He had to remember that always.

Any chance he and Celia had ever had was long lost.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Enter!” John barked, louder than he’d intended. His temper was on edge and he had to rein it in.

But he hadn’t completely concealed his anger when his friend Lord Marcus Stanville came into the room, caught a glimpse of John’s face, and raised his dark golden brow.

“Perhaps I should come back another time,” Marcus said. “If I don’t want my nose bashed in by your fist.”

John grinned reluctantly and shook his head. He sat back down in his chair and rubbed at the back of his neck. “The ladies of the Court would never forgive me if I ruined your pretty face.”

Marcus gave an answering grin and shook back the long, tawny mane the ladies also loved. If they hadn’t been friends since childhood, fostered in the same household after their parents died, John would surely hate the popinjay.

Yet he knew that the handsome face concealed a devious mind and a quick sword arm. They had saved each other’s lives more than once.

“They do seem terribly fond of my visage just as it is,” Marcus said, carelessly sprawling out in the other chair. “But a judiciously placed wound or two might elicit some sympathy in the heart of a certain lady …”

“Lady Felicity again?”

“Aye. She’s a hard-hearted wench.”

John laughed. “You just aren’t accustomed to chasing. Usually women throw themselves under your feet for a mere smile.”

Marcus gave a snort. “Says the man who has every woman in London lining up for his bed.”

John scowled as he remembered Celia’s grey eyes, cold as the winter sky when she looked at him. “Not every woman,” he muttered.

“What? Never say a lady has refused Sir John Brandon! Have pigs been seen flying over London Bridge? Has Armageddon arrived?”

John threw a heavy book at Marcus’s laughing head. Marcus merely ducked and tossed it right back.

“I never thought to see this day,” Marcus said. “No wonder you looked so thunderstruck.”

“Enjoy it while you can,” John said. “For soon enough we will be on our way to bloody freezing Edinburgh.”

Marcus grew sombre. “Aye, so we will. ‘Tis not an assignment I relish, playing nursemaid to that drunken lordling lout Darnley. I wager the devil himself couldn’t keep him out of trouble.”

“I think there is more to this journey than that,” John said.

Marcus sat forward in his chair, his hands braced on his knees. “You’ve talked to Burghley, then?”

“Not as yet, but I’m sure we will be summoned tomorrow.”

“Will it be like our journey to Paris?”

John remembered Paris and what had happened there. The deceptions and danger. The sorrow over what had happened with Celia. “The Scottish Queen is always a thorn in Elizabeth’s side.”

“And will we have to pluck it out?”

“I fear so. One way or another.” All while John dealt with his own thorn—one with the softest, palest skin beneath her barbs. “The Queen is sending someone else to Edinburgh as well.”

Marcus groaned. “As well as Darnley and his cronies?”

“Aye. Mistress Celia Sutton.” Even saying her name, feeling it on his tongue, twisted something deep inside him. Those tender feelings he had once had for her haunted him now.

“Celia Sutton?” Marcus said, his eyes widening. “She could freeze a man’s balls off just with a look.”

John gave a harsh laugh as he remembered the erection that had only just subsided. An almost painful hardness just from her look, her touch. The smell of her skin. “She is to be the Queen’s own emissary—a representative to show Elizabeth’s affections to her cousin.”

“She might as well have sent a poisoned ring, then,” Marcus scoffed. “Though there is something about Mistress Sutton that seems …”

His voice trailed away, and his eyes sharpened with speculation as he looked at John.

John held up his hand. “Do not even say it.”

They had been friends so long that Marcus obviously saw the warning in John’s face. He shrugged and pushed himself to his feet.

“Your passions are your own business, John,” he said, “no matter how strange. Just as mine are. And now I must go and dress for the Queen’s ball. I have little time left to woo Lady Felicity before we leave for hell.”

Marcus strode from the room, leaving John alone to his brooding thoughts again. He looked back outside, to where the cold winter night was quickly closing in. Torches flickered along the banks of the river, the only light in the cloud-covered city.

It felt as if he was already in hell. He had been for three years—ever since he’d betrayed Celia and thus lost her for ever. The only woman he could have dared to envisage a future with had been her.




Chapter Three (#ulink_513c6a68-eb6f-54a2-a29f-a45bb3d78532)


Celia stared at her reflection in the small looking glass as the maidservant brushed and plaited her hair before pinning it up in a tightly wound knot. She was even gladder now that the Queen had given her a rare, precious private chamber, away from anyone else’s prying eyes and gossiping tongues. Anyone looking at her now would surely see the agitation in her eyes, the way she could not keep her hands still.

She twisted them harder in her lap, buried them in the fur trim of her robe. She had to go down to the ball soon, and there she would have to smile and talk as if nothing was amiss. She would have to listen and watch, to learn all she could about the hidden reasons for this sudden journey to Edinburgh. She had to be wary and cautious as always, careful of every step.

She closed her eyes, suddenly so weary. She had been cautious every day, every minute, for three years. Would the rest of her life be like this? She was very much afraid it would. Thomas Sutton was dead, but the taut wariness was still there. The certainty of pain.

In an unconscious gesture she rubbed at her shoulder. It was long healed, but sometimes she could vow she still felt it. She had fought so hard for control. She would not lose it now. Not because of him.

Behind her closed eyes she saw John Brandon’s face, half in mysterious shadow as he held her to the wall, his blue eyes piercing through her like a touch, as if he saw past her careful armour to everything she kept hidden. His hands on her had roused so much within her—things she’d thought long-dead and buried, things she’d thought she could never feel again because her marriage had killed them in her.

One look from John scared her more than any of Thomas’s blows ever could. Because Thomas had not known her, had never possessed her. Not really. She had always hidden her true self from him even as he’d tried to beat it from her. But John had once possessed all of her, everything she had to offer, and because of him it was gone now.

“Are you quite well, Mistress Sutton?” she heard the maid ask, bringing her back to the present moment.

Celia opened her eyes and gave the girl a polite smile. “Just a bit of a headache. It will soon pass.”

“Shall I loosen your hair a bit, then? A style of loose curls here and here is quite fashionable.”

Celia studied herself in the looking glass. Her hair was already dressed as it always was, the heavy black waves tightly plaited and pinned in a knot at the nape of her neck. Since it was a ball, a beaded black caul covered the knot, but that was its only decoration. It was all part of the armour.

“Nay, this will do,” she said, slipping on her jet and pearl earrings. “I will dress now.”

She eased out of her robe and let the maid help her into her gown: a bodice and overskirt of black velvet with a stomacher and petticoat of glossy purple brocade trimmed with jet beads. Her sleeves were also black, tied with purple ribbons. Even her shoes and the garters that bound her white silk stockings were black.

Thomas had been dead for many months. She could put aside mourning and wear colours again, the blues and greens she had once loved, but she liked the reminder of where she had been. Where she vowed never to be again. The half-world of mourning suited her.

Celia held up her arm for the maid to lace on the tight sleeves and pluck bits of the white chemise between the ribbons. As she stared at the fireplace she let herself drift away, just for a moment, and remember when she first met John.

She’d been just a silly girl then, who had never been to Court, never away from her family and their country gentry neighbours. John Brandon had been sent to stay with his uncle at a nearby estate, exiled from Court for some unknown scandal. He’d been meant to rusticate until he had learned his lesson and repented.

That dark hint of some roguish secret had made her cousins all afire with speculation even before they’d met him, and Celia had not been immune to it. She’d liked to sit by the fire of a winter evening and listen to romantic tales as much as any young lady, and a handsome rake from London seemed a perfect part of such stories. Then, when she had seen him at last, a glimpse across his uncle’s hall at a banquet …

It had been as if the whole world tipped upside down and everything looked completely different. His eyes, his smile, the way he strode through the crowd right to her side and kissed her hand—she’d been dazzled.

Celia shook her head hard now as she remembered. Foolish, foolish girl.

And now foolish woman. For hadn’t she almost melted all over again when he touched her today?

But the next time they met, touched, she would be the one in control. She had to be.

As soon as the maid had finished adjusting her gown she fastened a black feather fan and a silver pomander to the chain girdle at her waist. As she had no sword, they would have to do.

But when the maid turned away she bent and gathered up her skirts to tuck a small dagger in the sheath at her garter. She could not go down there completely unarmed.

As she made her way down the many staircases and along the twisting corridors of the palace the crowd grew thicker the closer she came to the great hall. After the nightly revels of Christmas Celia would have thought the courtiers would be weary of Queen Elizabeth’s glittering displays, but there was a hum of excitement in the air, in the buzz of laughter and chatter around her as she was swept along.

She could hear music—the lively strains of a galliard—and the thunderous pattern of dancing feet. All around her was the rustle of fine satins, the flash of jewels, the smell of expensive perfumes, warm skin and wine. It all made her head spin, but she was caught in the tide now and could not get away. She was swept inexorably into the hall.

She slid her way through the crowd to a spot near one of the tapestry-hung walls, a little apart from all the frantic laughter, the jostling for position. She couldn’t breathe when she was caught in the very midst of it all, buffeted by so many touches, so much desperate energy.

She took a goblet of wine from one of the servants in the Queen’s livery and sipped at the rich red French wine as she studied the gathering. She prayed John would not be there, would not see her. She had barely recovered her hard-won composure after their last meeting. His body close to hers, his heat and scent in that dark closet …

Celia took a long gulp of the wine, and then another. She usually only drank small beer, slowly, always remembering what a monster drink had made of her husband. How it had destroyed her father after what had happened to her poor brother. But tonight she needed every fortification she could find.

As the wine warmed her blood she examined the company. The Queen led the dancing with her handsome Robert Dudley, who was now the Earl of Leicester, reputedly to make him of a stature worthy to be the Queen of Scots’s consort. Queen Elizabeth’s red-gold hair shimmered brighter than her gold brocade gown as she laughed and leaped, twirling higher and lighter than everyone else. The troubles of the last few weeks, and the troubles sure to come, seemed forgotten in the music and merriment.

Celia’s gaze trailed over the Countess of Lennox, a great, large woman in black who stood near another wall and studied the revels with her lips pressed tightly together. She gave Celia a quick nod before turning to her son. Lord Darnley sulked and drank by her side, though even Celia knew he would not be there long. He could not stay away from his debauched pleasures for more than an hour.

He was handsome, Celia would admit that—very tall and lean, with golden hair and fine Tudor features. But, like his mother’s, his mouth had a cruel cast that Celia recognised all too well. She didn’t trust him, and she didn’t know what game Queen Elizabeth played with him, Leicester and Mary.

She definitely did not know why she had to be involved in the messy quagmire. But beggars could not be choosers.

“Good evening to you, cousin.” She heard a deep, quiet voice, lightly touched with a Scandinavian accent, behind her.

She turned to face the very man she had once blamed for that beggaring: her cousin Anton Gustavson. They had never known each other; his mother—her father’s sister—had married a Swedish nobleman and disappeared to the frozen north before Celia was born. Then he’d appeared here at Court, with a party sent to woo the Queen on behalf of the Swedish King—and to claim a family estate Celia had hoped to have for her own. The last remnant of her family’s lost fortune.

She had blamed Anton bitterly for this final disappointment. But now, as she looked into his wary dark eyes, she could no longer blame him. He sought his own redemption here in England, and perhaps he had found it with his new estate and his Lady Rosamund.

Celia still had to find hers.

“And good evening to you, too—cousin,” she said. “Where is Lady Rosamund? Everyone says you two are quite inseparable of late.”

“Not entirely so,” Anton said. He gestured towards the dance floor, now a whirling stained-glass mosaic of brilliant jewels and silks. “She is dancing with Lord Marcus Stanville.”

Celia saw that Rosamund did indeed dance with Lord Marcus, their two golden heads close together as he whirled her up into the air.

“Lord Marcus Stanville—one of the greatest flirts at Court,” Celia said as she finished her wine and exchanged the empty goblet for a full one. “I’m surprised.”

Anton laughed. “Rosamund is immune to his blandishments.”

“But not to yours?”

He arched his dark brow at her. “Nay. Not to mine. We are soon to be married.”

Celia swallowed hard on her sip of wine and carefully studied the dancers. A cold, hard knot pressed inside her, low and aching. Once she’d had the foolish hope she could marry someone she loved too.

“My felicitations to you, cousin,” she said. “Surely you did not expect quite so much here when you left Sweden?”

“I had hoped to find family here,” Anton said. “And you and I are all that is left. Can we not cry pax and be friends?”

Celia studied him over the silver rim of her goblet. Aye, he was her family. All she had. For an instant she thought she glimpsed a resemblance to her father in his eyes, and that hard knot inside her tightened. How she missed her family sometimes. She was so alone without them.

“Pax, cousin,” she said, and slowly held out her hand to him.

Anton gave a relieved laugh and bowed over her hand. “You are most welcome at our home at any time, Celia.”

Celia shook her head. “You needn’t worry, Anton. I shall not be the dark fairy at the feast. The Queen is sending me on an errand, and I probably shan’t be back for some time.”

A frown flickered over his face. “What sort of errand?”

Celia opened her mouth to give some vague answer, but she stopped at a sudden sensation of heat on the back of her neck. She pressed her fingers over the spot, just below the tight twist of her hair, and shivered.

She glanced over her shoulder and met John Brandon’s bright blue eyes staring right at her. Burning. His head tilted slightly to one side, as if he was considering her, as if she was a puzzle, then he moved towards her.

Celia reacted entirely on instinct. She shoved her empty goblet into Anton’s hand and said, “Excuse me. I must go now.”

“Celia, what …?” Anton said, his voice startled, but Celia was gone.

She only knew she had to run, to get away, before John could catch her and strip her soul bare with those eyes as he had come so close to doing earlier.

The hall was even more crowded and noisy than before, and Celia had to elbow her way past knots of people. She was a small woman, though, and slid past the worst of the crowds and into the corridor. She could still hear the high-pitched hum of voices, but it seemed muted and blurred, as sounds heard underwater. The air pressed in on her, hot and close.

Yet she could still vow she heard the soft, inexorable fall of his boots on the floor, coming closer.

“I am going mad,” she whispered. She lifted the heavy hem of her skirts and hurried to the end of the corridor, where it turned onto another and then another. Whitehall was a great maze. It was quieter here, darker, the narrow, dim length lit at intervals by flickering torches set high in their sconces. She heard a soft giggle from behind one of the tapestries, a low male groan.

She didn’t know which way to go, and that moment’s hesitation cost her. She felt hard fingers close over her arm and spin her around.

She lost her footing and fell against a velvet-covered chest. Her hands automatically braced against that warm, solid wall and a diamond button pressed into her soft palm. It was John. She could smell him, knew his touch. The hawk had swooped down and caught its prey.

She forced herself to freeze, to go perfectly still and not panic and run again.

“Do you have an urgent appointment somewhere, Celia?” he asked quietly. “You certainly seem in a great hurry.”

Celia tried carefully to move away from him, slide out of his hold on her arms, but it seemed she was not unobtrusive enough. His other arm came around her, a steel bar at her back.

She eased her hands down his chest, and that hold tightened and kept her where she was. Her head was tucked under his chin, and she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart under her palm.

Her own heart was racing. She couldn’t breathe too deeply because his scent was all around her. She closed her eyes and sought out the icy centre that had held her together all these years. The distance that had saved her. It was not there now. He had torn it away.

“I am tired,” she said. “I merely sought to retire. There was no need to chase me down like this.”

John gave a low, rough chuckle. “Usually when a woman runs like that she wants to be chased.”

“Like a doomed deer on the Queen’s hunt?” Celia choked out. She had been on such hunts, had seen Queen Elizabeth cut the fallen deer’s heart out. Celia had thought she herself had no heart left to be ripped out. It seemed she was wrong. There was still one small, hidden part of it, bleeding, and he was dangerously close to touching it again.

John had surely chased scores of eager women since they had last met, and held them thus. Kissed them in the darkness until they happily bled for him too.

“I am not most women,” she said, and tried once more to wrench out of his arms.

He only held her closer, until she felt her feet actually leave the floor. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her backwards until she felt the cold stone wall at her back, chilly through her brocade bodice.

Her eyes flew open to find he had carried her into a small window embrasure, where they were surrounded by darkness and silence.

“Nay,” he said. “You, Celia Sutton, are quite unlike any other woman in all England.” His voice held the strangest, most unreadable tone—bemused, angry.

“And you know all of them, I am sure,” she muttered.

John laughed and eased her back another step. He braced his palms to the wall on either side of her head, holding her trapped by his body as he had earlier. “Your faith in my stamina is quite heartening, my fairy queen. But I have only had twenty-eight years on this earth. Alas, not long enough to find all the women out there.”

Hearing his old name for her—fairy queen—once whispered in her ear as they embraced in a forest grove, snapped something inside Celia. He had no right to call her that. Not any longer.

Before she could think, her hand shot out and her fingers curled hard around his manhood.

He froze, and she heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. His eyes narrowed as he stared down at her, and the very air around them seemed to crackle with a new tension. This strange game, whatever it was, was shifting and changing.

The codpiece of his breeches was not a fashionably elaborate one, and she could feel the outline of him through the fine velvet. He was already semi-erect, and as her fingers tightened he stirred and lengthened. Oh, yes, she did remember this—how he liked to be touched. Caressed. She felt her hard-won sense of control steal back over her.

She twisted her wrist to cradle the underside of his penis on her palm and slowly, slowly traced her way up. She remembered how it felt naked, hot satin over steel, the vein just there throbbing with his life force. She reached its base, and with another twist of her fingers she held his testicles.

“Is this what happens when you catch your prey, John?” she whispered. She stroked a soft caress, lightly scraping the edge of her thumbnail over him.

She could feel the burn of his eyes on her as he held himself rigid around her. For once she had caught him unbalanced. He didn’t know which way she would jump. And neither did she. Not any longer. He did that to her.

She had acted on instinct, reaching out to bring her control back. But it seemed to be slipping even further away.

“Usually they get down on their knees to me and take me in their mouths about now,” John said crudely.

One hand left the wall by her head and she felt his finger press lightly to her lower lip. He traced the soft skin there. The merest whisper of a touch.

Celia gasped, and he used that small movement to slide his finger into her mouth, over her tongue. She jerked her head back, but she could still taste him—salt and wine. She wished she could pull away from him and snatch her dagger from its sheath on her thigh, plunge it into his heart so he could not touch her heart again.

“That will never happen,” she said.

“Nay? I think it will in my dreams tonight,” John answered. “But perhaps you want me on my knees to you instead?”

Before she knew what he was doing, he’d deftly twisted out of her grasp and arched his body back from hers. The hand that had been at her mouth slid all the way down to her skirts and drew up the heavy fabric until her legs were bare. The white stockings glowed in the darkness.

As Celia watched in frozen shock he fell to his knees before her and let those skirts fall back over him. She tried to kick him away, but his strong hands closed over the soft, bare skin of her thighs above those stockings. He caressed her there, on the tender inner curve of her leg, and pressed her legs further apart.

Then she felt his hot breath soft on the vulnerable curve of her, light as a sigh, just before his tongue plunged inside.

God’s blood. Her eyes slammed shut and her palms pressed hard to the wall at the trembling, burning rush of sensation that shot through her body. Oh, dear heaven, but she had forgotten how it felt when he did that!

Just as she had remembered how he liked to be touched, he remembered how she liked to be kissed there. He licked up—one languorous stroke, then another—before flicking at that tiny, hidden spot with the tip of his tongue. She felt herself contract at the pleasure, felt a rush of moisture trickle onto her inner thigh, and he groaned.

How she wanted him. How she had missed him, missed this, the feeling of being so wondrously, vitally alive. It had been so long. She had been dead inside for so long …

For just an instant she let herself feel it, let him pleasure her. This was John. The only man who had ever touched her heart. But then his hand closed hard on her thigh, just above the dagger, stroking her there so tenderly. So deceptively—just like before.

Before he’d destroyed her.

With a ragged sob she jerked herself away from him. She pulled her skirts from above his head and sent him toppling to the floor. But she also lost her own balance, and fell heavily on her hip against the wall. She leaned onto the cold stone for support and tried not to cry. Not to feel.

But his heat was still around her, and the musky scent of their arousal, the heated swirl of her feelings for him. She had to escape from it all.

John found his balance on his knees again, lithe as a cat. In the shadows she saw the frown on his face, the darkness of his eyes. He started towards her. “Celia …” he began.

But she stopped him with the sole of her shoe planted on his chest. She knew he could easily sweep any of her barriers away, yet he stayed where he was, watching her. She dug the heel of her shoe in, just enough to hold him there as she had with his balls in her hand.

“Celia, what has happened to you?” he said quietly.

She gave a hoarse, humourless laugh. How could she even begin to answer such a question? She gave him a slight push with her foot, and when he sat back on his heels she lurched upright to her feet. She ducked out of the hidden embrasure, and this time when she ran he did not follow.

Curse it all! Every instinct within John shouted at him to run after Celia, to catch her in his arms and hold her to him until she broke open and gave him all she had. All those dark secrets in her eyes. He wanted to strip away her clothes until she was naked before him, every pale, beautiful inch of her, and drive into her.

But he was too angry, and she was too brittle and fragile. She would surely shatter if he pushed her too hard, and the way he was feeling now he could not hold back. He braced his palms against the cold stone floor and let his head drop down, his eyes close as he struggled for control.

It was that damnable nickname. Fairy queen. His fairy queen. He could see her as she had been that day, her midnight-black hair loose over her bare shoulders, her grey-sky eyes gleaming an otherworldly silver as she looked up at him. She’d lain on a grassy, sunny spot in the woods, the light dappled over her skin, and John had never seen anyone so beautiful and free, so much a part of the nature around them. A fairy queen who had cast her magical spell over him. His wild youth had been forgotten when he saw her—the first time he’d felt such a rush of tenderness, dreamed of what he couldn’t have. All because of her.

There seemed nothing of the fairy left in her now. She seemed instead an ice queen, encased in snow. But when she’d touched his manhood, when he’d tasted her, his Celia had flashed behind her cold eyes.

And, z’wounds, but she tasted the same as he remembered—of honey and dew. She had become wet when he’d kissed her there, the silken folds of her contracting over his tongue. Not so frozen after all. Did she remember too?

But still so far away from him. He remembered the panic in her eyes when she shoved him away, the way those walls in her eyes had slammed up again. It hurt to know she was so wary of him, even as he knew he so richly deserved it.

It was good she had run, for he obviously had no control at all when it came to her. Had he not resolved that very afternoon to stay away from her? To forget their past? Not to hurt her again, and not to torture himself with what he could no longer have? Only hours later he’d been on his knees under her skirt.

John pushed himself to his feet and automatically reached down to adjust his codpiece. He felt again her slender fingers on him, caressing him just where it was calculated to drive him insane. Pleasure and pain all mixed up in a blurred tangle.

When he emerged into the corridor Celia was long gone. The music from the ball floated back to him, echoing off the walls, mocking him with its merriment. He could feel someone watching him, and spun around to find Marcus leaning against a marble pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. He arched his brow at John.

“Are your balls frozen off, then?” Marcus asked with a grin.

John shot him an obscene gesture and turned to stride away down the corridor. His friend’s laughter followed him.

It was certainly going to be a long and wretched journey to Edinburgh. Or were they all headed into hell instead?




Chapter Four (#ulink_e6208d92-aa76-53aa-a761-d4f0420d8e2c)


“Is this all of it, Mistress Sutton?” the maidservant asked as she fastened shut the travel chest.

Celia glanced around the small chamber. All of her black garments and his meagre personal possessions had been packed and carried away, and the box containing her few jewels and Queen Elizabeth’s documents was tucked under her arm. She had no more excuses to linger.

“Yes, I think that is all,” she said. She glanced in the looking glass. She wore a plain black wool skirt and velvet doublet for travel. Her hair was pinned up and held by a net caul and tall-crowned hat. She looked calm enough, composed and quiet, but part of her wanted to hide under the bed and not face the inevitable.

The past few days had passed in a blur of meetings with the Queen and Lord Burghley to learn more of her tasks in Scotland. She was to befriend Queen Mary, who was said to chatter freely with her favourite maids, and try to gauge her marital inclinations and report back to Elizabeth. To try and persuade Mary that an English marriage of her cousin’s choosing would be best for her. To watch and listen, which Celia had become very good at. A wary nature was always cautious of what would happen next.

But Elizabeth said Mary should wed Lord Leicester, and Burghley said Darnley. Celia wasn’t sure whom to incline Queen Mary towards—if the Scottish Queen could be “inclined” at all.

There had also been banquets and balls, tennis games to watch, and garden strolls, which she had tiptoed into as if they were the flames of hell. But the chief demon, John Brandon, had never appeared there to torment her. To draw her into quiet corners and reveal parts of her she had long ago encased in ice and buried. To watch her with those eyes of his that saw too much.

She wasn’t sure if she was grateful or angry he’d stayed away.

No doubt he has much to occupy him, she thought as she jerked on her leather riding gauntlets. Like saying farewell to all his amours.

Lord Burghley had said John would be her conduit in Scotland for any messages, so she knew she would have to face him eventually. Face what he had made her feel.

Celia stared down at the black leather over her palm and remembered the hard heat of him in her hand. The power and, yes, the pleasure she had felt in that one instant as he grew hard for her. The way she’d longed to pull away his clothes and feel him against her again. Part of her in every way.

She convulsed her hand into a fist. Maybe if she had crushed him, hurt him, she would be done with him now—as he had once been done with her.

But the feeling of his mouth on her, driving her to a mad frenzy, told her they were not done with each other. Not at all.

She spun around and snatched up her riding crop, cutting it through the air with a sharp whistle. She imagined it was John’s tight backside under the leather’s touch, but pushed away that thought when a disturbing spasm of desire caught at her. The less she thought of John Brandon and his handsome body and sweet words the better!

Celia hurried downstairs and out through the doors into the courtyard, where the travelling party was assembling. It was chaos, the long line of horses and carts struggling into place as servants loaded last-minute bundles and trunks.

Lord Darnley and his mother stood slightly apart from the others as Lady Lennox whispered intently into his ear. He nodded sulkily, his gaze straying to where his chosen companions played at dice on the steps. Though it was early in the day, and long hours of travel awaited them, they were all obviously inebriated.

Celia was thankful that at least her tasks did not include being nursemaid to them. She would just as soon they fell off their horses and froze in a snow bank somewhere.

She studied the rest of the people. Servants piling onto the carts and courtiers unlucky enough to be chosen for this journey finding their horses. Lady Allison Parker, another of Elizabeth’s ladies sent to cozen Queen Mary, was letting one of Darnley’s friends lift her into her saddle. She laughed as she settled her bright green skirts around her, flirtatiously letting the poor lad glimpse her long legs as her red hair gleamed in the greyish light.

Celia had the feeling she and Lady Allison would not become bosom bows on this journey.

Then she saw John, the merest flash of his light brown hair from the corner of her eye, and she stiffened. Every sense suddenly seemed heightened, the wind colder on her skin, the light brighter in her eyes.

She half turned to find that he stood near the front of the procession, holding the reins of a restless jet-black horse. He softly stroked the horse’s nose, crooning in its ear, but his eyes were on Celia, intently focused. His body was held very still, as if he waited to see what she would do. Which way she would jump.

Celia remembered her fantasy of her riding crop on his backside, and she felt a smile tug at her lips. Her gaze flickered down to his long legs encased in leather riding breeches and tall black boots.

When she looked back to his face some unspoken promise seemed to burn in his eyes. As if he could see her thoughts, her fantasies, and he was only waiting to get her alone to make them come true.

Celia spun away from him, only to find that Lord Marcus Stanville watched her from the doorway. She had seen him talking with John a few times. Obviously they were friends. Celia was inclined to like Lord Marcus, with his golden good looks and light-hearted demeanour, but she did not like the way he watched her now. Like John, it was almost as if he could see what she was thinking and it amused him.

“An excellent day for a journey, wouldn’t you say so, Mistress Sutton?” he said.

“If one enjoys freezing off one’s vital appendages, mayhap,” she answered tartly. “I would prefer staying by a warm fire, but perhaps you have different inclinations, Lord Marcus?”

He laughed, and Celia sensed John watching them. To her shock, Lord Marcus took her hand and raised it to his lips.

“I hope I am as adventurous as the next man, Mistress Sutton,” he said, “but I confess some of the finest adventures of all can be had by a fire. Still, we must all do the Queen’s bidding.”

“Indeed we must,” Celia said. “Whether we like it or not.”

“I admit I was not overly enthusiastic about this task at first,” Lord Marcus said. “But with you and my friend Brandon along it’s looking more promising than an afternoon at the theatre.”

Before Celia could demand he tell her what that meant, he took her elbow in his clasp and led her towards a waiting horse. He lifted her into the saddle and grinned up at her.

“Let the games begin, Mistress Sutton,” he said.

Celia glanced at John, where he still stood several paces ahead of her. He watched her and Marcus with narrowed eyes, and Celia was sure the games had begun long ago.

And she had the terrible certainty that she was losing.

Celia stared out at the passing landscape as her horse plodded along, and tried not to rub at her numb thigh. They had been riding for several hours now, and the cold and boredom had conspired to put her in a sort of dream state. There was nothing before or after this steady forward movement, only the moment she was in.

And it gave her far too much time to think.

She wrapped the reins loosely around her gloved hands and watched the bare grey trees on either side of the road. The wind moaned through the skeletal branches, almost like low voices carrying her back into the past.

She tried not to look back at where she knew John was riding, but she was always very aware of him there. In the quiet that had fallen since the cold had driven everyone into silence, she fancied she could almost hear him as he shifted in his saddle or spoke in a low voice to Marcus.

Celia shook her head. It was going to be a very long journey. She needed to keep her focus on the task that awaited her in Edinburgh. And on the reward Queen Elizabeth would give her if she performed the task well—a rich marriage where she would never have to beg for her bread again.

A rich marriage to some nameless, faceless stranger, which she could only pray would be better than her first. It was her only choice now. She had to survive, to keep fighting.

And when she looked at John she feared she would lose the will to fight. He had always made her want to surrender to pure emotion, from the first moment she’d seen him. A shiver passed through her as she remembered how he’d taken her hand that first day, how he’d smiled down at her as if he already knew her.

“Cold, Mistress Sutton?” she heard him say.

For an instant his voice made her think she had been hurtled back in time. She blinked and glanced up, to find that while she had been woolgathering he’d drawn his horse up next to hers. It was as if he could sense her vulnerable moments, the wretched man.

“Aye,” she said. “It feels as if I’ve been in this saddle for a month.”

A slight smile touched his lips, and his gaze swept down to where her legs lay against the saddle. The side pommel turned her towards him, her skirts draped over her legs, and she thought of how he had crawled beneath them at the ball. The touch of his hands and tongue …

Suddenly she was not cold at all. She looked away from him sharply, and to her fury she heard him give a low chuckle—as if he knew what she thought.

“We are almost to Harley Hall,” he said. “We’re to stop there for the night.”

“Hmph. One night to get warm, and back out into the cold tomorrow. Is that kindness or cruelty?”

“To taunt us with a taste of what we can’t have?”

Celia looked back at him, startled by the tension in his low voice. But his expression was entirely bland as he looked back at her.

“If it becomes too unbearable, Celia,” he said, “you’re welcome to ride pillion with me. I would gladly keep you warm.”

Celia gave an unladylike snort and stared straight ahead. She couldn’t keep the image of his words out of her head—herself perched before John on his saddle, his arms wrapped around her as he rested his chin on her shoulder, his breath warm against her ear.

She thought if she ignored him he would leave, perhaps go and flirt with Lady Allison, who kept giving him sidelong glances. Yet he stayed by Celia’s side, riding along in silence for long moments.

“Do you live entirely at Court now?” she finally said, to break the silence and the thoughts in her head.

“Most of the time. Except when my estate requires my attention, which is not very often,” he answered. “It is the only life I know. Why do you ask?”

“I have been at Court for many weeks now, and yet you only appeared that day I met with the Queen.”

“So you had begun to think you could avoid seeing me again?”

Of course that was what she had thought. But she said nothing.

“Celia, surely you knew we would meet again one day?” he said. “Our world is too small to avoid each other for ever.”

“I did think I would never see you again,” she said. “I am a country mouse and you—well, after you left so abruptly I did not even know where you went. You could have sailed off to the land of the Chinamen or some such thing.”

“I did not want to go,” he said suddenly, fiercely.

Celia turned to him, startled. His eyes were icy blue as he stared back at her.

“I had no choice,” he said.

“And neither did I,” Celia answered. She had tried to wait for him, had believed he would return. But as days and then weeks had passed, with no word at all, she had seen the truth. He had left her. She was alone.

Suddenly it felt as if a knife’s edge had passed along the old scar and it was as raw and painful as when it was fresh. She pressed her free hand against her aching, hollow stomach.

“After you left … after I had to marry …” After her brother and the destruction of her family. “I had to marry Thomas Sutton. His family had wanted an alliance for a long time, though mine was wary of them. But after what happened to my brother I had no choice in who to marry. We had to agree to the union.”

“Tell me about your marriage, Celia,” John said, and she could still hear that hoarse edge to his voice.

A tense stillness stretched between them.

It was hell. A hell she had only been released from when Sutton died. She had gone on her knees in thanksgiving at her deliverance. But she couldn’t say that to John. She was already much too vulnerable to him.

She shrugged. “It was a marriage like any other, but blessedly short.”

“Is he the reason you wanted to twist my manhood off when you had it in your hand?”

Celia gave a startled laugh. “I think you yourself would be reason enough for that, John Brandon. And that was not exactly what I wanted to do with it.”

He looked at her from the corner of his eye, that half-smile touching his lips as if he too had a few ideas about ways she could make use of him.

“Have you never married, John?” she asked. But did she really want to know the answer? She hated the thought of him uniting his life with another woman.

“You know I have not. I haven’t the temperament for it.”

“Who does, really? It is merely a state we must endure—unless we are Queen Elizabeth and can make our own choice,” Celia said wistfully.

“Yet you will let the Queen arrange a new marriage for you, despite what might have happened in your first?” John sounded almost angry. She could not fathom it—could not fathom him.

Celia shrugged again. “I have no choice. Briony Manor went to Anton, and I have little dower. I will endure.”

“Celia …” His hand shot out and he covered her hand with his, holding tight when she tried to pull away. “Tell me what happened with Sutton. The truth.”

“I owe you nothing!” she cried. “You have no right to demand anything of me, John. And I will thank you to let me go this instant!”

Her gaze flew to her riding crop, tucked in its loop on her saddle.

“You want to use that on me now, don’t you, Celia?” he said roughly.

She jerked against his hand, but he held her fast. It was so infuriatingly easy for him to get her where he wanted her.

“It wouldn’t be my hand twisting your balls this time,” she whispered.

Lightning flared in his eyes. “I might let you try—if you told me about your husband. About what has happened to you since I saw you last.”

The convoy suddenly ground to a stop, and Celia saw to her relief that the gates of Harley Hall, their stop for the evening, were just ahead.

John raised her hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles through the leather of her glove. His mouth was warm on her skin.

“This is not over, Celia,” he said against her hand.

Celia pulled away from him at last. “Oh, John. This was over a long time ago …”




Chapter Five (#ulink_658526b6-fdb5-58fd-949e-cd9192bca5f4)


Celia leaned her arms on the crenellated wall of Harley Hall’s roof, high above the grand courtyard, and looked out into the night. It was very late—even Darnley and his cronies had stumbled off to bed after draining their generous host’s wine stores. The house was silent, but Celia couldn’t sleep.

She drew the folds of her long cloak closer around her and tilted back her head to stare up at the stars. They shimmered so brightly in the cold, like diamonds and pearls scattered across black velvet. When she was a child she’d used to lie on her back in the garden and look up at the sky just like this, and imagine she could leap up higher and higher and become part of them. Flying among the stars, letting their sparkle draw her in further and further until she was part of them.

But now she knew there was no escape from the claims of the world. Not among the stars. Not anywhere. There were only the hard, cold choices of the world they lived in. Marriages made for convenience; hearts that had to be protected.

Celia braced her hands hard on the stone wall until she felt the bite of it on her palms. Why couldn’t John stay away from her? Why had he ridden next to her today, talking to her, watching her with those eyes as if he waited for something from her?

She had learned long ago that it was much better not to feel at all, to let herself be numb to everything around her. But every time she saw John he chipped away at that ice she’d put around her heart, carefully, relentlessly, until she could feel that terrible heat on her skin again.

She pressed her hands to her face, blocking out the night. Why was he here, suddenly in her life again, reminding her of the fool she had once been?

He had seen the way she’d wanted to reach for her riding crop today, guessed how she longed to lash out at him. To make him hurt as she once had. And that primitive emotion frightened her. It was far too much, too overwhelming.

Just let this journey be over soon, she thought.

Or let John disappear somewhere and cease to torment her.

As if to taunt her, the door to the roof suddenly opened, cracking into her solitude. Her hands dropped from her face and she stiffened.

It could be anyone, of course, but she knew it was not. It was him, John. She could feel it in every inch of her skin, could smell him. Some mischievous demon seemed intent on tormenting her tonight.

She carefully composed her face into its usual cool, calm lines that hid her thoughts, and glanced over her shoulder. She felt no surprise at all to see John there, leaning in the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her.

Though the night was cold, he wore no cloak. The crimson velvet doublet he worn at dinner was carelessly unfastened, hanging open over a white shirt that was unlaced halfway down his chest. His hair was tousled, falling over his brow in soft brown waves.

Celia had to turn away from the sight of him before she devoured him with her eyes.

“I should have known you would find me here, John Brandon,” she said as she stared out blindly into the night. “You do seem intent on tormenting me.”

“I would have said you were the one doing the tormenting, Celia,” he answered. “Though I would have been here much sooner if I’d known this was where you were hiding. I merely wanted to escape the cursed snoring of the other men in my chamber.”

Celia smiled faintly at the disgruntled tone of his voice, glad he could not see it. “And I came here to escape Lady Allison’s incessant prattling. The woman has an inordinate store of gossip.”

“Then we can be quiet here together,” John said.

She heard the soft fall of his boots on the flagstones as he approached the wall.

She stiffened, but he stayed a few feet away from her, leaning his arms on the low wall as she did and looking out into the darkness. Slowly Celia relaxed and listened to the soft rhythm of his breath.

He didn’t look at her, but he said, “Your hair is down.”

Celia shifted, and self-consciously touched the loose fall of her hair over her shoulder. “I didn’t think I would see anyone here. The pins were giving me a headache.”

“You confine it too tightly.”

“I can hardly parade around with it hanging loose like a girl,” she said with a laugh.

“But you don’t have to torture it either,” he said.

He shifted his body towards her and reached out to lay his fingertips lightly on her hair. He traced a strand all the way down to where it curled under at her elbow. He only touched her hair, but Celia could feel his heat on her collarbone, the soft curve of her breast, the angle of her ribs under her cloak.

She thought again of a predator tormenting its prey, freezing it with the glow of its eyes so it could not flee. Didn’t even want to flee.

He slowly wrapped the hair around his wrist, holding her with him. “You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen. It’s like the night itself. I used to dream of it—of touching it, kissing it, wrapping it over my chest as you leant over me …”

Celia gasped at the jolt of heat that went through her at his words, at the flashing memory of how he had once done that. Drawn her hair around him as she’d straddled his hips and bent down to kiss him. A wave of the greatest tenderness swept over her. She tried to pull away, but his hand tightened.

“Tell me about your husband, Celia,” he said, his voice soft and yet utterly unyielding.

His voice held her even more than his fingers in her hair.

“He doesn’t matter now,” she said, fighting to keep her own voice steady. Not to lean into him, wrap her arms around his shoulders. “He is dead.”

“For how long?”

“Above a year now. There was a fever that swept through the neighbourhood. My parents died of it as well.”

His hand slid up her hair, twisting it around his fingers, caressing it over his skin. His blue eyes glowed down at her in the night, as bright and unyielding as ice. Celia closed her eyes, and she felt his other arm slide around her waist above the cloak. He turned her so her back was against his chest. She wanted so much to give in to him again, not to be alone. To know only him.

“Were you not taken ill?” he asked.

Somehow behind her closed eyes, because she could not see him, with his hand soothing against her skin she felt strangely free. Her careful guard slipped just a bit.

“I was ill,” she said, a frown fleeting across her brow as she remembered those terrible days. His touch brushed it away before sliding back to her waist. “I had the fever too, though I remember little of it. Only nightmares and that dry, burning heat, a thirst that could never be quenched. I do remember they wanted to cut off my hair, and I drove them away.”

“Thank God for that,” John muttered, and she thought she felt the press of his lips on her hair. “It would have been a terrible crime to lose this hair.”

“I was the only one who caught the fever and lived.”

“That is because you are the most stubborn person I have ever known. The devil himself could not drag you down to hell.” He sounded so angry, so desperate—just as she felt.

Celia smiled bitterly. “He has tried.”

John’s hand pressed to her hair. “And when you awoke you found your husband was dead?”

“Aye.”

“What did you do?”

To her shock, Celia found herself telling the truth. “I got on my knees in the chapel and thanked God, or the devil, or whoever had done it, for the merciful deliverance.”

John’s hands suddenly closed on her shoulders and spun her round to face him again. She opened her eyes and looked up to find raw fury on his face, with no polished cloak of civility to hide it. His hands were hard where they held her.

Celia tried to pull back, frightened, but his grasp immediately gentled and his face went blank. He slowly drew her closer, until she was cradled to his chest, and his palms slid over the back of his head to hold her there.

“Why did you marry him?” he asked tightly. “Surely your parents …?”

Celia shook her head fiercely even as she buried her face further into his chest, the soft linen of his shirt. She breathed in deeply of the scent of him, and curled her fingers into the loose fabric.

“I had no choice, and neither did my parents,” she said. “After you—left …” She paused to draw a deep breath and her hands tightened into fists against him. “You surely know what happened to my family then? Everyone knows.”

His muscles tightened under her touch and he went very still. “Your brother?”

Aye, her brother. Poor, stupid William, caught up in matters far beyond his understanding. “He was a traitor. Part of a Catholic conspiracy to overthrow the new Queen.” That had been the strange part—their family was not religious, beyond attending weekly services at the Protestant church, and her brother had never shown the slightest interest in such things. But he had chosen to go along with his equally foolish friends when they’d conceived a notion to replace Elizabeth with her cousin Mary on the throne, no matter what. And his choices had affected her life too.

“They were obviously quite incompetent at conspiracy,” she went on, in the numb, quiet voice that held it all at a distance. “They were caught quite handily and justice was swift. He was dead within a fortnight. And even though my parents retained their estate the fines were crippling. When they died the estate was sold.”

“That was why you were married to Sutton?”

Celia nodded against him. “The Suttons had long wanted certain lands from my family to extend their estate. So they got them. But they got me along with them. And an old name to go with their new money.”

And she’d got two years of marriage with Thomas Sutton. Her punishment. Even on the eve of her ill-starred wedding she had looked for John, waited for him, prayed he would return. That there was a reason he had suddenly vanished, that he loved her and would come for her. Even after months of silence.

But of course he had not come back, and she had learned that one inexorable truth. She was alone in life. Even now, with his body wrapped around hers, she was alone.

Yet she could not resist one kiss to that bare, warm skin so close. She pressed her lips just over his heart, felt the powerful beat of it, tasted him.

Then she pushed him away and spun round to run for the door. She heard him take a stumbling step after her and she half feared, half hoped he would stop her, pull her back into his arms. But he let her go, and she tripped down the stairs and along the corridor until she found her borrowed chamber.

Lady Allison still slept, and Celia crawled unseen into her narrow bed and drew the blankets over her head. She couldn’t stop shivering even as the woollen warmth closed around her.




Chapter Six (#ulink_0eca2fe8-a37e-5663-97fb-3720fbc5f798)


John stared ahead of him along the rutted, muddy road, where Celia rode with one of the other men, Lord Knowlton, who had begun to pay her attention. She nodded at something he was saying, a faint smile on her lips, but even from that distance John could see that her eyes were distracted, her fingers stiff on the reins.

Part of him was fiercely satisfied that she paid no attention to the man’s flirtations. If she had laughed with Knowlton, let him kiss her hand, John would have had to drag the man from his saddle and hit him in the jaw. He felt as if he walked a sword’s edge today, his temper barely in check.

Usually when that darkness came upon him he had to find a brawl or have a bout of rough, hot sex to appease it. Neither was an option today.

He glared at Celia and Lord Knowlton as she laughed at his coaxing words. A real laugh that sounded sharp and rusty, as if she had not laughed in a very long time.

John dug his fist into his thigh, his muscles taut with the effort not to grab Celia and kiss her until she felt something again—felt him. He didn’t know if his anger was because she laughed with someone else, or at himself for even caring.

Once he had cared for her far too much. She had slipped behind his defences before he’d even realised, with her black hair and her laughing smiles, her kisses and her passion that burned as hot and fierce as his own. Because of her he had nearly failed in his duty.

And because of what he had done she had been wounded and changed for ever. Every time he looked into her cold, flat eyes and remembered how they had once flashed and danced, every time she pushed him away, that guilt burned in his gut.

And he hated feeling guilty for the scars on someone’s soul. Guilt was a burden he could not afford—not in his work. That work had once been his salvation. If he felt the pain of everyone caught in the Queen’s justice he would be ruined.

But Celia was not just everyone, anyone. She was Celia. And he still cared far too much for her.

She reached up to rub at her shoulder, a small, unconscious gesture he had seen her make before when she’d thought no one watched. It wasn’t a noticeable thing, but he saw her smile slip when she touched herself there.

Now he wanted to pull her from her horse—not to kiss her until she burned as he did, but to strip away her black doublet and see her bare shoulder. Soothe whatever ache she held there. He wanted to take away all her pain and make her life bright again, even as he knew he could not.

“God’s teeth,” he ground out, his fist tightening.

“Someone is in a foul mood today,” Marcus said cheerfully as he drew his horse up next to John’s.

“And someone is disgustingly cheerful for no reason,” John answered.

“Temper, temper,” Marcus said with a laugh. “I’m to meet with Lady Allison’s pretty maid tonight. But I’d be happy to oblige you with a fight first, if me beating your pretty face would make you feel better.”

“You obviously do not recall what happened the last time we fought.”

“I certainly do. My eye was swollen shut for a week,” Marcus said. He gave John a considering look. “But that time I was the one in a blind fury.”

“I am not in a fury,” John said. He glanced again at Celia, who was nodding at something Lord Knowlton said. She no longer rubbed at her shoulder, but she didn’t smile either.

“If you say so,” Marcus said. “Not that I blame you for being in a temper. A forced journey in the middle of winter could defeat even my good mood. And it looks as if the weather is going to get even worse.”

John had been so caught up in Celia that he hadn’t even noticed the bite of the wind around him, the frost on the muddy ruts of the road that slowed their progress to a crawl. He looked up at the sky to see that the clouds had grown thicker and darker. It was barely past midday, but already the light was being choked off. There was the distinct cold, clean smell of snow on the air.

“God’s blood,” John cursed. “We’ll never make it to the next village by nightfall.”

“We’ll just have to ride harder, eh?” Marcus said. “At least I have a warm bed waiting at the end …”

The inn was crowded with travellers, all seeking shelter from the freezing rain that pounded down outside, but room was made for an important personage like Lord Darnley and his party. Celia was given a palette in a corner with Lady Allison, and then found herself hastily changed into dry clothes and put in a chair near the fire of the inn’s great room for supper.

Celia sipped at a cup of spiced wine as she studied the crowded chamber. Lord Knowlton sat beside her, chatting with her of inconsequential Court gossip as they shared a trencher of beef stew. He had been very attentive on today’s journey, staying close to her and entertaining her through the cold, tedious hours. He seemed nice—handsome enough, if older than her, and non-threatening with his kind brown eyes, his polite attentions and compliments.

Usually she stayed as far from men as she could, but she hardly noticed Lord Knowlton when he was right beside her. John Brandon, though—she always seemed keenly aware of where he was all the time, even though he had not come near her all day. He seemed to emit some kind of strange, lightning glow that drew her attention to him.

She turned her head slightly to find him again. He sat in a shadowed corner with Lord Marcus and two other men. Marcus had one of the tavern maids on his lap, the two of them laughing, but John didn’t seem to see them at all. He stared down into his goblet with a brooding look on his face, as if he was far away from the raucous inn. She well remembered that look.

His fingers slowly tapped at the scarred tabletop, and Celia found her gaze drawn to that slow, rhythmic movement. He had beautiful hands, and long, elegant fingers that were so good at wielding a sword, soothing a fractious horse …

Pleasing a woman.

His stare snapped up from his hand to find her watching him. Some deep, heated anger simmered in those blue depths, and Celia felt her cheeks turn hot.

John had a façade of such elegance and charm, with his fine Court clothes, his handsome looks, his smile. But Celia knew that so much more lurked beneath—a storm of passion and volcanic fury. He could fight like a Southwark street thief—or make love with a force that burned away all else.

She remembered that part of him all too well now, as he watched her across the room, and it made her want to leap up from the table and run. She sensed that part of him was barely tethered tonight.

“… is that not so, Mistress Sutton?” Lord Knowlton asked.

The sound of her name made Celia turn away from John’s stare, but she could still feel him studying her. Biding his time, waiting for something from her she couldn’t even fathom.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Knowlton?” she said. “I fear I could not hear you.”

He smiled, his brown eyes soft as he looked at her. “It is rather loud in here. I was merely asking if you planned to remain long at Queen Mary’s Court after we have delivered our charge there.”

He nodded towards Lord Darnley, who was dicing with his friends by the fire. The man’s fine-boned, handsome face was already flushed with drink, his eyes glittering dangerously.

“If he can be safely delivered,” she murmured. “It is a long way yet to Edinburgh.”

Lord Knowlton laughed. “Hopefully there are enough of us to finish the job. If we can keep from freezing to death in the meantime. Do you look forward to our sojourn at Holyrood, Mistress Sutton?”

Celia laughed, relaxing under the admiration in Lord Knowlton’s eyes. When was the last time a man had looked at her like that, in simple admiration that did not twist her up into knots? It was—nice. “I am not sure I look forward to it. Yet I do think it will be interesting.”

“To say the least,” he said with a smile, pouring her more ale. “They do say Queen Mary is a fascinating lady.”

“And a beautiful one.”

“Aye, that too. We shall see what her Court is like in comparison to her cousin’s. What are you expecting of this sojourn, Mistress Sutton?”

They talked easily together for the rest of the evening, about Scotland and the situation they would find there, about their lives in England, drinking ale as the room became louder around them, the air hotter.

Celia suddenly felt tired. The voices around her were turning chaotic, and she shook her head when Lord Knowlton offered her more to drink.

“I think I should find my bed, Lord Knowlton,” she said. “The hour grows late. But I am glad we had this chance to talk together again.”

“As am I, Mistress Sutton. Very glad indeed.” He raised her hand to his lips, and the look he gave her over their joined fingers was suddenly intense. His mouth opened on her bare skin.

A shiver of disquiet ran over Celia’s back, her earlier quiet pleasure in his company dissipating. What had happened to change things? She couldn’t fathom what he was thinking about her, and it made her think strangely of her dead husband.

She drew her hand out of his and edged away from him until she could stand up. “Goodnight, Lord Knowlton.”

“Goodnight, Mistress Sutton.”

Celia turned and hurried away from him, making her way through the crowd. She didn’t like the atmosphere in the room now. She only wanted to find her bed and be alone for a time.

But her foot had barely touched the bottom of the staircase leading up to their lodgings when she heard a shout.

She whirled around just in time to see a massively burly man grab Lord Darnley by the front of his doublet and shove him to the wall. Darnley’s cronies leaped on the man, tables flew as crockery shattered, and women screamed. The strange tension Celia had sensed snapped into a full-blown fight.

She hurried up the stairs to a point where she could see the fray but not be in danger. Her stomach lurched in fear at the violence, and she pressed her hand to her mouth.

She felt even sicker when she glimpsed John in the swirling melee, a tall figure throwing out his fist to catch a jaw, jabbing his elbow into a midsection, kicking with his booted foot to make a foe go down. There was a terrible grace to his movements, a power, and she wanted to scream his name. To dash into the fray and drag him to safety.

He seized the man who was pounding Darnley’s face and threw him backwards. Darnley crawled away, but his attacker bellowed in rage and dived for John instead. John fended him off with a neat sidestep, and ducked under the man’s raised arm to drive a fist into his belly.

He didn’t see the other man behind him, who lashed out with a splintery log and hit John on his thigh. Blood bloomed on his leg and Celia screamed. Raw, heated emotion and fear overwhelmed her. She raced into the crowd, ducking around the brawlers even as the landlord and his henchmen came to break it up. She reached John just as Marcus did.

“John!” she cried, reaching for his arm as he reeled.

He pushed her away gently, bending to press his hand to the wound. “It is merely a scratch.”

“Nonetheless, let’s get you out of here,” Marcus said, winding his arm around John’s shoulders to haul him upright. “Before someone decides to ruin your pretty face. Mistress Sutton, if you would find us a chamber?”

Ignoring John’s growled protests, Celia got the landlord’s wife to show them to a small room where a fire was lit. Marcus followed her closely.

“Put him down here,” Celia said, clearing a pile of mending from the bench by the fire.

Lord Marcus unceremoniously slid John from over his shoulder onto the bench, where John promptly let free a string of colourful curses.

Marcus merely grinned and stepped back. “Whatever she does to you, my friend, you deserve it for jumping into a brawl like that.”

“I quite agree,” Celia said. She knelt on the floor beside the bench, trying to ignore the hot, angry glare of his eyes as he watched her. That fear she’d felt for him when she’d seen him hit still hummed through her veins and made her tremble. “Why would you do that to save a looby like Darnley?”

“Because it is my task at the moment,” he ground out. “If I had my way I would have left him to what he so richly deserves.”

“But why?” Celia said. Slowly, cautiously, as if she feared the wolf might snap and bite, she peeled the torn breeches away from his wounded leg. “Why are you meant to be his protector?”

John hissed between his teeth, and his hands curled over the edge of the bench, but he did not pull away from her touch. “He has to get to Scotland in one piece somehow.”

“I don’t know why,” Celia murmured. She delicately examined the bleeding gash on his leg while studiously not looking at the smooth, warm skin, the masculine roughness of the dark hair that curled there. “I think it would be no terrible loss if someone did remove him from the situation.”

John and Marcus looked at each other over her head. “Unfortunately that is not our decision to make,” Marcus said lightly.

“Not yet,” John added.

Celia didn’t really want to know what they meant by that. She didn’t want to be involved in these secret matters of crown and families at all. She had enough to worry about on her own.

Such as ignoring what happened to her when she was close to John.

She almost sighed aloud in relief when a maidservant delivered her valise. Celia opened it and dug through the contents for the herbal salves and tinctures she had packed.

As she laid them out on the floor, Marcus said, “I will leave you to your task then, Mistress Sutton. I should make sure all is well out there now.”

He bowed to her and turned on his heel to go, the door clicking shut behind him. For an instant Celia could hear sounds from the public room, cries and quarrels and the landlady demanding payment for the destruction. Then she was closed in firelight and flickering shadows, alone with John.

She bit her lip, trying to press down the nervous trembling inside her, and peeled the cloth back further.

The log had caught him halfway between the knee and the groin, leaving a long cut. The bleeding had mostly stopped, was clotting around the edges. She could smell the coppery tang of it, but blood no longer had the power to make her swoon. She had seen too much of it.

But the smell of John—that made her feel light-headed. Leather and wine, the faint whiff of spicy soap, the darkness of his skin and sweat. The musk of his manhood. It was heady, alluring. It made all the old memories of a time when they had been as close as two people could be return to her, so strong.

Celia sat back on her heels, away from the too vulnerable position of kneeling between his thighs, and reached into her valise for a clean rag. She soaked it with lavender water.

“There are splinters caught in the wound,” she said. “I have to clean it before it can be bandaged.”

His fists curled even tighter into the edge of the bench, and she saw the knuckles were bruised. He had certainly left his opponents in worse shape than he was. But it could have been so much worse. If the log had caught him higher …

“You’re fortunate the wound is where it is,” she said. She set her jaw in a determined line and leaned forward to dab at the raw edges of it with her cloth. His thigh tensed, but he said nothing. “A bit higher and all the Court ladies would be in mourning.”

He laughed. “And would you have been disappointed, Celia?”

“Certainly not,” she snapped. “I would have sung a hosanna—womankind safe again.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He uncurled one hand from the bench and reached out. She felt his soft touch on a strand of hair that had fallen free in the tussle. He ran a caressing touch down its length.

Celia ground her jaw tighter, determined not to jerk away. Not to show how his touch made her so damnably weak. Made her remember things she should forget—like how she had once cared for him so very much.

“I’m sure you remember how many other delightful things there are to do,” he whispered. “With hands and tongues …”

Celia pressed the cloth hard to his wound and he straightened up with a hiss. His hand fell from her hair.

“I need to finish this,” she said quietly. “Unless you want it to fester until you lose the leg—among other things.”

He chuckled and leaned back as he placed his palms flat behind him. “Do your worst, then, Celia. But I know you do remember.”

He said nothing more as she finished cleaning and binding the wound. She tied off the ends of the bandage and sat back on her heels to look up at him.

A half-smile lingered on his lips as he watched her, his eyes dark, his skin gilded a molten gold in the firelight. His doublet hung open, his shirt half unlaced to reveal a chest damp with the sweat of the fight. He looked lazy, considering—like some Eastern king watching a slave who had been delivered to his feet.

Celia suddenly wanted to shatter his laziness, that look of casual possessiveness. She gave him a smile, and his own faded.

Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward and rested her hand on his unwounded thigh. His whole body grew taut and wary. Celia held onto him and placed her parted lips on the skin left bare by the torn breeches. She moved her mouth over him, tasting him.

“Celia …” he said hoarsely.

She pressed her hand tighter on his leg and he went still. She closed her eyes and kissed her way higher, over the velvet fabric that lay tight over his upper thigh, until she could trail the tip of her tongue along the crease between leg and groin.

She could smell him there, the faint scent of sweat and musk she had once known meant he wanted her. He had left her, but he still wanted this, and the knowledge gave her a sudden surge of satisfaction. Of pleasure. At least she still had that. And now she wanted more, wanted to know all of him.

Her feelings surged inside her, so tangled and confused.

Her hand slid up his leg to just beneath his codpiece, cradling him in her fingers. He was already hard, but he grew even harder, longer. She found the vein on his underside beneath the cloth and slid her fingertips along it.

“Oh, aye,” she whispered. “I remember all the things one can do with hands and mouths …”

She’d just barely touched her lips to the tip of him when she felt his fingers dive into her hair, tumbling the few pins that were left there free. He pulled her head back until she stared up into his eyes.

Those burning eyes that pierced right through her tore her careful defences down one by one and destroyed them until they were ashes around her.

“Celia, you drive me mad,” he growled. Then his mouth drove down onto hers.

His tongue plunged inside, tasting her, claiming her—every part of her. She tried to draw back but he held her fast, his hand tight in her hair, his mouth sealed over hers.

She moaned and tried to push his tongue out with hers, but instead she found it twisting with his, tasting him return. He tasted dark and sweet, like wine and the night and John, and she wanted it. She wanted it with such raw longing it terrified her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason. He was all around her, all she knew.

His other arm came around her shoulders and drew her up until she sat on his lap, balanced on his unwounded thigh. He never broke the desperate rhythm of the kiss, only drove deeper into her.

She wrapped her hands around his neck and felt the soft hair at his nape brush over her fingers. She caressed him there, trying to learn the feel of his skin, the essence of him, all over again. John groaned, and untangled his hand from her hair to touch the base of her throat, pressing over her pulse.

He brushed aside the edges of her surcoat and traced his fingertips over the bare swell of her breasts above her bodice. His fingers were rough on that soft skin, and she wanted more. She arched her back with a soft moan into his mouth and his palm flattened over her breast.

One finger slid beneath the brocade and swept over her aching nipple once, twice, then harder, making her cry out. His thumb slid in with the finger and he pinched her between them.

Pleasure shot through her, and Celia accidentally fell back on his lap. She kicked his wounded leg with her slipping foot and he gasped.

“Oh, hell!” she cried, tearing her mouth away from his. She pushed out of his arms and leaped to her feet.

He reached out for her, but she could see the fresh blood spotting his bandage.

It brought her coldly to her senses as nothing else could. He had held her captive in their own hidden world where there were only the senses, the way he made her feel. She couldn’t stay there, no matter how much she wanted to. It had already destroyed her once.

“I—I will send someone in to finish tending to your wound,” she stammered. John reached out for her, but she shook her head and spun round to run out of the room. She was always fleeing from him, from whatever terrible power lay between them, but it seemed it was all she could do.

Clutching her surcoat closed, she dashed through the near-empty great room and up the stairs. Past the sleeping bodies to the palette where Lady Allison already slumbered.

Trembling, Celia shed her clothes as best as she could and slid under the blankets in her chemise. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to find sleep, to forget John Brandon, even as her body still felt tingling with newly aroused life.

“Why, Mistress Sutton,” she heard Lady Allison whisper, “you naughty thing.”

Celia’s eyes flew open and she peered at Allison over her shoulder. Allison grinned at her, as if they were conspirators.

“Is he as wonderfully skilled as they say?” Allison whispered.

Celia felt her cheeks grow warm. Ashamed of that ridiculous blush, she turned away and closed her eyes again as Lady Allison softly laughed.

Oh, aye, she thought bitterly. John Brandon was entirely too skilled for any woman’s good.




Chapter Seven (#ulink_3677bfb4-a204-5f66-9e1f-b7d36969da94)


John shifted in his saddle, trying not to wince as his bandaged leg brushed the hard leather. It had been some time since he had indulged in a tavern brawl, despite his reputation for wildness, and he felt every bit of the violence in his bruised muscles and the healing gash on his leg.

But it was worth every ache just to remember how Celia had cared for him, bandaging his wound, kneeling between his knees. Kissing him so passionately, so wildly, as if he was all that mattered to her.

Just as he had felt when his lips touched her, tasted her. Nothing else existed. Nothing had ever come between them.

That had been last night. Everything was always different in the cold light of day.

And a damnably cold day it was. Snow had set in soon after their hasty midday meal of bread and cheese—great fat flakes that melted on his cloak and drifted into white piles at the side of the road. The wind felt like needles as it swept around them. Even Lord Darnley, his pretty face bruised and sulky after last night, has subsided into the silence of endurance.

John looked to where Celia rode in one of the carts, lodged between the meagre shelter of two travel trunks. The hood of her black cloak was drawn over her hair, and he could see only the curve of one pale cheek. The long, thick lashes that cast shadows over her cheekbone as she stared down at the book in her gloved hands.

She hadn’t turned a page in fully fifteen minutes. John knew because he had been watching her the whole time. Yet she was not asleep. Her shoulders and slim back were too stiff and straight.

She never looked his way, never indicated by the slightest gesture that she knew he was there. Her walls were back up, her drawbridge slammed closed to him. It would be best for both of them if he just let it stay closed. Old scars did not need to be ripped open all over again.

Yet still that desire burned deep inside him to see her eyes free of that caution, that icy chill, to see his Celia again. To make her admit she had never ceased to be his.

But she was not his. She never had been. It had all been a terrible mistake. He couldn’t let her touch his heart as she once had—until he’d found out her brother was one of the conspirators he had come to the countryside to catch. Too late, for by then he had already fallen for Celia.

“You look as if last night’s fight was merely a prelude to what you’d like to do today,” he heard Marcus say as his friend’s horse fell into step beside him. “You look furious.”

“Then shouldn’t you best stay away from me?” John growled.

“I’m not that easily frightened,” Marcus answered carelessly. “If you need to beat on someone that badly, Darnley is over there. But I don’t think that would help.”

“Of course it wouldn’t. The Queen would have my hide if I damaged her pretty pawn.”

“I mean I don’t think violence will ease you. When were you last with a woman?”

John slanted a hard warning look at his friend. “Marcus …”

“That long, eh? No wonder you’re so fierce.”

Aye, John thought, it had been a while since he tupped a woman. Since before he’d seen Celia again. Now it seemed when he looked at another woman, talked to her, saw her smile of invitation, it stirred nothing at all within him. It was not enough.

“Lady Allison is always up for a lark, you know,” Marcus said, as if heedless of the turmoil within John. “Or Mistress Andrews. She is meant to be Darnley’s inamorata right now, but she’s bound to be bored waiting around for him to get it up. Or the next town is sure to have a decent brothel—”

“I don’t need you to play pimp for me, Marcus,” John interrupted.

“Of course you don’t. Women fall at your feet everywhere you go. You hardly have to seek them out. But you need something to free you from whatever demon has you in its clutches.”

John grimly shook his head. “Just leave, Marcus.”

“So you can go on brooding? Nay, we have been friends for too long. I know this journey is hellish, but there is something more. What is it?” Marcus’s tone had become suddenly serious. He and John had known each other for too long—through their wild youths and into this dangerous work.

John’s stare unconsciously went to Celia, where she sat in the cart. Lord Knowlton was with her now, and she smiled at whatever he’d said to her, just as she had when the man had sat with her in the tavern last night. She seemed to like him too much.

His hands tightened into fists on the reins.

“Ah,” Marcus said softly. “I see.”

John tore his eyes away from Celia to glare at Marcus. “What do you see?”

“Every time the two of you are together I would vow you are about to murder each other or strip each other’s clothes off—or both.”

A wave of despair rolled over John, hard and cold. All his years of careful subterfuge and one moment with Celia pulled all the lies and façades away. He was being such a fool. “Am I so obvious?”

“Only to me, as I would be to you. To everyone else you are still the rakish, careless Sir John Brandon. But I have never seen you like this with a woman. What is she to you?”

John glanced around to see that they had fallen slightly behind the others and no one was near. They were all too occupied in their own cold misery to pay attention to anyone else.

“A few years ago, when I was in the country on a task, we had a—dalliance,” he said.

Marcus gave a low whistle. “And I take it matters did not end well?”

Considering he had betrayed her brother and his friends to their death, nay, it had not ended well, and he had left Celia—and his heart—behind. And he had never forgotten her since. “Nay,” he said shortly.

“But you still want the lady?”

John said nothing, and finally Marcus laughed. “Then I think we can look forward to many more brawls on this journey. Unless you make love to Mistress Sutton again, get past those icy walls of hers and rid her from your system.”

“Do you really think she would let me in her bed again, knowing all she does now?” John said bitterly.

Marcus said nothing in reply, and they rode on in heavy silence.

“Halt!”

Celia glanced up from the book she held in her hands to see the head of Lord Darnley’s guard blocking the procession on the road. She had not been reading at all, merely staring at the book as she felt John stare at her. As last night’s kiss flashed through her mind over and over.

Something had shifted between them in that kiss, something she sensed was profound even as she could not decipher what it was. What a hold on her he still had.

She was glad of any distraction. She put the book back in her saddlebag and slid off the cart, holding onto the wooden slats as the legs she had tucked under her cramped. Everyone else had come to a halt as well, looking relieved to stop. The day had only grown more bitterly cold, the snow falling thickly.

“The bridge across the river ahead is out,” the guard said. “We can either turn back and make camp, or go downstream to the next bridge and continue to the next manor.”

Either way, they were surely in for more cold. Celia sagged back against the cart as she watched the guards consult with Darnley and his men. It looked as if they would be here for a time. Celia turned and made her way through the milling crowd, away from the noise, until she found a silent spot on the sloped icy banks of the river. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood there very still, watching the freezing water rush past below her.

Surely this journey would never end? She would never be free of John, of seeing him every day and remembering. Remembering the foolish girl she had once been, how much she had wanted him. How much she still wanted him, curse it all.

She heard a soft footfall crunch on the frosty ground behind her, heard a breath, and she knew without turning who it was. She always felt when John was near.

“You seem to enjoy spending time with Lord Knowlton,” he said roughly.

Celia almost laughed. Was that jealousy in his tone? Surely not. That was too ridiculous. He was always surrounded by women. “He is charming.”

John gave a half-snort, half-laugh. “Of course he is. He wants to tup you.”

“He is a gentleman!” Celia protested, trying to dismiss the feeling of disquiet she had felt with Knowlton.

“So am I,” John said solemnly.

Celia shook her head. She turned to look at John and found he wore a fierce scowl on his face, his hands curled into fists. Because she had been talking with Knowlton? He had no right to care. Should not care. And she should not be feeling as she did either. As if her whole being was wound so tightly she might burst.

“John, you are the very furthest thing from a gentleman there could be,” she said.

“God’s teeth, Celia, don’t push me away like this any more!” he suddenly shouted.

He moved so fast she couldn’t back away, lunging forward to seize her arm and pull her towards him.

“Tell me what you’re feeling. Tell me how I make you feel.”

How he made her feel? Anger and pain as she had never known, everything she had locked inside her for so long, rose up in her like the fiery force of a volcano. It exploded from her, and she lunged forward to slap John across the face. “You left me!” she cried, all the pain of years ago flooding out of her. “Tell me why you did that? Tell me how you felt then. Tell me …” She slapped out at him again as he instinctively stepped back.

In her blindness, she caught him low on the jaw with the flat of her hand. It wasn’t a hard blow, but he was caught by surprise and fell back a step. She reached out to hit him again, and he caught her wrist in his hand. His fingers tightened on the slender bones there and she sobbed as she struggled to break free.

The flash of fury in his eyes, of some pain that answered her own, made her sob again.

“You have no right to question me, John Brandon,” she cried raggedly. “You have no right to say anything to me at all. You left me. You have no part in my life!”

“Celia …” he began, his voice tight as if he too was on the brink of an explosion. As if he held himself tightly leashed.

“Nay! I survive however I can now. And you—you …”

His fingers closed even harder on her wrist, a manacle she couldn’t escape from, and he reeled her closer. She tried to dig her boots into the frozen mud, but he was stronger.

His stare was so glittering, so intense. No one had ever looked at her like that before—as if he knew her, was part of her. Yet he wasn’t. Hadn’t been in so long. She had been alone.

She wanted only to leave him, to run and hide, to be free at last of whatever hold he had on her. She twisted her body hard as it touched his, trying to wrench away. But she overbalanced on her uncertain feet and fell heavily to the side.

Her hand was pulled from John’s at last, yet she couldn’t right herself. She felt herself toppling to the ground.

“Celia!” she heard him shout.

As she fell heavily onto the ice her leg caught on a fallen branch and she rolled forward. She had only a dizzy glimpse of him, of the raw horror on his face, of the flat grey sky above her, and then she was tumbling down the steep riverbank. Faster and faster.

She tried to catch at the ground, at anything she could find, but it slid out of her grasp. Her head struck something and bright stars whirled around her. Her whole body seemed to go numb.

Yet she felt it when she tumbled into the water. The icy-cold waves closed over her head, and it felt like a thousand daggers plunging into her skin. She tried to scream at the agony, and water rushed into her mouth.

Celia did know how to swim, and she struggled to push past the pain and fight her way to the surface. Her heavy skirts and boots grew sodden, weighing her down. She kicked hard against them and managed to break upwards and gulp in a precious breath. But the river wasn’t finished with her yet. It caught at her again, pulling her down.

And suddenly she only wanted to live. When her brother had died, when she’d been with Thomas, she had never really wanted to die. But merely surviving, putting one day behind her and then the next, had been all she could do. Otherwise the pain and anger would overwhelm her.

But now, with her whole body numb and the rushing river carrying her away, she wanted life again. Music and colour and sunshine. She wanted to see John—to slap him properly, to find out once and for all what had really happened when he left her. Or to kiss him as she once had, with nothing held back.

That was her last thought as she was sucked under the water again. The precious air was cut off.

Suddenly a hard arm caught her around her waist and jerked her up towards the light.

She gasped and let her head fall back onto a naked shoulder as she was drawn towards the shore. It seemed so very far away, yet she wasn’t scared now. Somehow she knew it was John who held her, and that he wouldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t let the river have her.

He reached the bank and hauled her up its slippery length under his arm. Celia couldn’t stop shivering, couldn’t think. When they reached the top, he laid her on the ground and pulled up her skirt, to draw her own dagger from its sheath at her thigh.

He cut away her sodden doublet and the stays beneath in smooth, quick strokes and spun her onto her stomach, his legs straddling her hips. The flat of his hand hit her hard between the shoulderblades once, twice, until she expelled the water that choked her lungs.

She sobbed out all her fear and relief, and through her tears she felt him pull her back into his arms. He wrapped his body all around her, all his heat and strength. He pressed his lips hard to her cheek, and to her shock she felt his own tears on her skin.

“God’s teeth, Celia,” he growled. “I thought you were dead. I thought …”

“You saved me,” she sobbed through her chattering teeth. “You—you could have drowned.”

“I won’t let you go,” he said. “Not without me.”

Celia heard a shot and the pounding of running feet on the icy mud.

“John!” Lord Marcus said, and for once there was no lightness at all in his voice. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“She fell into the river,” John answered. He still held onto her.

“Oh, sweet God, Mistress Sutton, but you will surely freeze to death!” Lady Allison cried.

Celia heard the swish of fabric and a warm, fur-lined cloak covered her icy skin.

She was drawn away from John even as she tried to hold onto him. “Nay,” she cried.

But darkness closed in on her, born of the cold and shock, and she fainted into its weighty oblivion.




Chapter Eight (#ulink_016dd3d5-c456-51d5-a298-40ee94e9e2e6)


“Shh. Be still. Rest now.” John slowly smoothed the cool, damp cloth over Celia’s brow and whispered to her until she settled back in the bed. She still frowned, and her hands were curled tightly against the sheets as if she fought demons in her sleep. But she quieted.

John sat back in his chair by the bed and ran the cloth over her shoulders and along her arms. It had been three days since she’d tumbled into the icy river—three days that they’d been alone in the small hunting lodge tucked into the woods. The chills and fever that had come upon her seemed to be subsiding, but sometimes he feared that was his own wishful thinking. His own fear of losing her all over again—for ever this time.

He balanced her hand on his palm and studied the delicate pale fingers. She had survived the fever that killed her parents and husband because her delicacy hid a fierce spirit. He had told her she was the most stubborn person he had ever seen, and she was. She would survive this. He would make certain of it. He would use all his strength to pull her back to him.

Once he had dared to begin to think of a future with someone else, with Celia. Could he afford to think of that now? What could he offer her? She was in this place now because of him. He never wanted to hurt her again.

“I should never have quarrelled with you that day, Celia,” he whispered. He should have known she would fight like the warrior she was, his fairy queen with claws. But he wasn’t willing to let her hurt herself.

He laid her hand back on the sheets at her side and went on bathing her skin. She felt cooler to his touch now. Most of the heat on her bare arms was from the fire he had built up in the grate. She wore a chemise with the sleeves cut away, a bandage wrapped above the elbow, where the physic had bled her before the others moved on with their journey. Her hair fell over one shoulder in an untidy black braid.

John slowly smoothed the cloth up her arm and over her collarbone. He saw again the shoulder that had had him so furious when he first undressed her.

It had obviously been damaged, wrenched out of its socket and then reset improperly, so that it stood out crookedly under her smooth white skin. Pale scar tissue lay in a pattern over it. There were also faint marks on her back and buttocks, thin white scars that had not been there when they’d made love three years ago.

Her bitterness and distance, her hatred of her husband and gratitude for his death, made terrible sense now. If the man hadn’t already been dead John would have killed him with his own hands, in a slow, terrible way involving red-hot pokers and dull daggers.

But torturing Thomas Sutton wouldn’t bring his Celia back. How could he do that?

“You have to fight to live now, my fairy queen,” he said fiercely. “Fight so you can go on hating me.” Go on punishing him. He deserved no less. Yet he could never bear it if Celia died. She would take with her every dream he’d ever had of a better life than the one he led.

“Fight, damn you!” he shouted.

“Oh, John, do leave me alone,” she murmured hoarsely. “I cannot sleep with so much noise.”

John’s eyes shot to her face. Her eyes were open and clear, not glassy from the fever, and she watched him as if she actually saw him, not some nightmare hallucination.

“Celia, you’re awake!” he said, and a new happiness pushed away the fear and fierceness. He carefully took her hand in his, reassured when her fingers weakly squeezed his.

“Am I?” she said. She carefully shifted on the bed, frowning. “I feel as if I’ve been drawn and quartered. Where are we?”

“At one of the Queen’s hunting boxes. Luckily one of Darnley’s cohorts remembered it was nearby.”

“Nearby what?” She looked terribly confused, so young and vulnerable.

“Do you not remember?” John asked.

“I remember riding in the cold. It was snowing …” Her eyes widened. “I fell into the water! I wanted you to tell me … something.”

John shook his head. “And you caught a feverish chill. We’ve been here three days.”

“Three days?” Her gaze darted quickly around the chamber: the large bed, the faded tapestries on the walls, the fire. The freezing rain that lashed at the mullioned window.

“Alone?”

“Don’t worry, Celia,” John said with a teasing grin. He suddenly wanted to burst out laughing like a fool, to shout with exultation. She was awake! He could face anything if she would only stay alive, stay with him. “I am not in the habit of ravishing unconscious females.”

“But you came in after me. How are you not ill?”

“I was not in the water as long as you. And we can’t both be ill.”

She glanced down at her body under the sheet, at the bandage and the basin of cool water. “You have been taking care of me?”

“The others had to continue on their journey if they were to make it to Holyrood when expected. And that cursed Darnley was fearful of contagion.”

“It would serve him right,” Celia muttered. She shifted on the bed. “I’m so thirsty.”

“Here, take some wine. The doctor said it would strengthen your blood, but you haven’t been able to keep it down.” John slid onto the mattress beside her and eased his arm around her shoulder to help her sit up against his shoulder. She shivered, and he frowned as he felt how thin she was under the chemise.

Celia was too slender anyway, much thinner than she’d been three years ago. Until they were able to travel and catch up to the others John would see to it that she ate, that she grew strong again. A heated, tender rush flowed over him as he looked at her.

He held up a goblet of fine, rich red wine to her lips and she drank deeply. When it was gone, he eased her back down to the pillows and tucked the blankets around her.

“Could you take some broth?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I feel so tired.”

“Then just sleep now. You will feel stronger in the morning.”

He started to leave the bed, but her hand reached out to grasp his arm.

“Stay with me?” she whispered.

He looked down into her eyes, now the pale grey of a winter’s day. She looked back. Steady, calm. Beseeching.

Oh, how he wanted to stay with her. To hold her close in his arms and feel her breath, her heartbeat, the very life of her. Even as he knew he should stay away from her, not hurt her any more, he couldn’t stay away.

He lay slowly down on the bed beside her and she turned onto her side, her back to his chest. John wrapped his arms around her waist and felt her relax with a sigh. She was with him now, in this moment. That was all that mattered for now. All that had ever really mattered.

“Thank you,” she breathed, and sank down into healing sleep.

But John stayed awake all night, cradling her against him and remembering all he had lost when he’d lost her. Did he dare hope to get it back?

Celia slowly drifted up from her soft, dark sleep, becoming aware of the world around her again. It had been a good sleep, not the plague of nightmares like before, and her body didn’t ache and burn. She could feel a soft pillow under her cheek, clean linen sheets around her shoulders, the brush of a fire’s warmth on her face.

Everything felt so quiet and peaceful. Safe. When had she ever felt safe? She couldn’t even remember. Had she died and gone to heaven, then? She slid deeper into the warm cocoon of the bedclothes—and then she truly remembered where she was. Who was with her.

John. He had pulled her from the river, had nursed her here, just the two of them alone. It felt so strange to be here with him, it felt—right. Yet she had been so angry with him. She was utterly confused.

Slowly, carefully, Celia raised her head from the pillow and opened her eyes to look around. She had vague memories of John holding her as she fell asleep, lying on the bed with her. He wasn’t there now, she was alone on the wide feather mattress, but she could see the imprint of his head on the pillow beside her.

Holding the sheet against her, she sat up. She realised she wore only a chemise with the sleeves cut away, one arm bandaged. Had she done that? Undressed herself, torn away her sleeves? Nay, it had to have been him. And that meant he had seen her bare shoulder.

Celia rubbed at the bump there and wondered what he’d thought of it. Well, he had his own secrets and she had hers. Nothing could change that, not even the most fervent wishes. She had to remember that, even when she felt so overwhelmed with tenderness for him.

But where was he now?

She eased back the blankets and carefully slid off the edge of the bed. Her legs trembled they were so weak, but she held onto the carved bedpost until the dizziness passed and she could stand. She saw his doublet tossed over a chair, and picked it up to wrap around her shoulders. It smelled of him, of that lemon soap he used, leather and John.

It made her shiver all over again.

She carefully made her way to the window, her bare feet cold on the uncovered wood planks of the floor. The diamond-shaped panes of glass were covered in frost, and she scrubbed away a small spot to peer outside.

Snow still fell, a silent white blanket that covered the ground and iced the trees, obscuring the whole world in cold and silence. They were at a hunting box, John had said, and everyone else had ridden on ahead. How long would they be here together?

She heard the chamber door open, and glanced over her shoulder to see John standing there in his shirtsleeves, a tray in his hands. A frown darkened his face, and he dropped the tray onto the table to stride across the room to her.

Celia instinctively backed away, but the window was behind her and she could only go one step before he was upon her. He caught her up in his arms, holding her high against his chest, and turned towards the bed.

“You foolish woman,” he said roughly. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Celia tried to kick, to push him away, yet that damnable weakness still pulled at her limbs. “I’m not ill now! I wanted to see what was outside.”

“I can tell you what’s out there. Snow and more snow.” He deposited her in the middle of the bed and climbed up beside her to hold her there when she tried to scramble away. “You’ve had a terrible chill, and you’ll catch it again wandering about in bare feet.”

“Then where are my boots?” she asked, to cover what she really wanted to say. She wanted to demand to know why he had left her three years ago, what he felt now—what he was making her feel. But she dared not.

“Your trunk is here. You can have your boots when I tell you you can. Until then you’ll stay right here.”

“Villainous bully,” Celia muttered. She slumped back on the pillows.

John grinned at her, that mischievous smile that brought out the dimple in his unshaven cheek and made such odd, disturbing things happen inside her. She felt so ridiculously young and vulnerable again.

“You remembered,” he said. “If it takes bullying to keep you here until you are completely well, then I’m prepared to do it. Don’t make me tie you to the bedpost.”

Celia narrowed her eyes as she studied the new, hard light on his face. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. She had a sudden vision of herself bound to the bedpost, naked, and John kneeling between her legs with that expression of intent determination on his face …

She rolled away from him, her face feeling embarrassingly warm.

“You would not,” she whispered.

“Why don’t you try me and see, fairy queen?” he said.

When she crossed her arms over her chest, he laughed. He drew her feet onto his lap and started to rub them gently, bringing heat into her frozen toes.

Celia slowly relaxed under his soothing touch. She let herself lean back into the pillows and closed her eyes. His gentle touch moved in slow, soothing circles over her ankles and her calves, tracing a light pattern over her skin that felt delicious.

She knew she should pull away from his touch, hold herself back from him, but she was so tired, so horribly weak. It felt too good to feel his touch, not to be alone just for a moment. To remember all the good things about when they had first met.

“You said we are at a hunting box of the Queen’s?” she asked.

“Aye, though not one that’s been used since her father’s day, I would wager. This is the only chamber that has any furniture. Everything else is covered with dust.”

“But there is food?” she said, remembering the tray he brought in.

“They left us provisions. There is broth and bread there, and I’m going to make sure you eat every bite.”

“You are a terrible bully, Sir John.” But she smiled as she said it. She could feel her whole body relaxing under his touch.

“Of course I am. A man has to be to get the best of a minx like you.”

Celia rubbed her toes over his thigh, feeling the shift of his powerful muscles under the leather breeches. “Just wait until I have my strength back.”

She felt him bend down, and his lips touched the inside of her ankle. The tip of his tongue flicked over the sensitive skin there, then was gone.

“I’m shaking with anticipation of that day, Celia,” he said quietly. “But come and have your supper now. Or you will never have that fiery spirit again.”

After she had taken as much of the broth as she could, and hastily washed in a basin of warmed water, John tucked her under the blankets again and blew out the candles. Once the chamber was dark, with nothing but the flickering shadows from the fire in the grate, he climbed back onto the bed beside her.

She felt him hesitate, felt the tension of his body, but then he drew her against him again, her back to his chest and his arm light over her hip. His palm flattened on her abdomen, and to her surprise she followed her instinct and traced her fingertips over the bare, hair-roughened skin of his forearm.

He went very still, his body taut against hers, yet he didn’t draw away. Celia closed her eyes and just let herself feel him under her fingers, his chest curved around her protectively. The ice pattering at the window, the crackle of the fire, seemed to enclose them in their own little world. Their own special moment. The anger had drained away, and there was only the warm tenderness of old memories she hadn’t let herself think about for so long. It was one moment out of real time.

Maybe that feeling of deceptive security was what made her open her mouth and ask, “Where did you go? When you left your uncle’s house in the country?”

His hand tightened, and she closed her fingers over his arm to keep him from moving away. She didn’t want to lose the good feelings with him. Not just yet.

“I went to Paris,” he said brusquely.

“Paris?” She wasn’t quite sure what answer she’d expected, but it hadn’t been that. He’d gone to France? So very far away? To get away from her, from their flirtation that had burned so out of control? Was that why he had left so suddenly?

And what had he found in Paris?

“I was given a position in the ambassador’s household,” he said.

“How long were you there?”

“Above two years,” he answered.

Two years—at the most sophisticated, licentious Court in Europe. No wonder he had forgotten his country dalliance. Celia turned her face into the pillow and tried to force away the old pain that was trying so hard to rise up in her again. She didn’t want that again. Not yet.

“I was told I had to return to London for a new task,” he said. “But I had other work to perform on the journey.”

Celia gave a laugh. “Perhaps you would have stayed in France if you’d known the task was minding Lord Darnley and the Scottish Queen.”

John laughed too, and his warm breath stirred the loose hair at her temple over her skin. It made her shiver despite the warm room, and that tenderness she had always felt towards him returned. So dangerous.

“Perhaps I would have. But then perhaps I would have returned much sooner if I’d known you were here, Celia.”

He brushed aside her hair and kissed her just beside her ear. At the touch of his lips she closed her eyes tightly, and thoughts of French ladies and what John might have done with them flew out of her mind. Only this moment mattered.

John kissed her cheek, and the corner of her mouth. The tip of his tongue touched her, but when she opened her mouth to make him kiss her properly, he drew back.

His arm tightened around her and pulled her closer against his chest. He tucked his legs along hers, their bodies perfectly aligned. She could feel his erection on her backside, but he just pressed his mouth to her ear and whispered to her.

“Sleep now, Celia,” he said. “You need your strength. Especially if you still think you can give me that whipping you promised.”

Celia laughed and closed her eyes. She was tired. Her whole body was sore from fighting off her illness. Yet she feared that when she slept her dreams would be filled with images of John, stripped naked and stretched out on his stomach across the bed as he waited for her pleasure, his blue eyes aglow with tenderness …

John held Celia against him closely as she slept, listening to the soft, even sound of her breath, feeling the movement of her, the wondrous life of her. For a few moments there, in the depths of her fever, he had feared to lose her. He had already lost her once. He wasn’t sure he could bear it again—not when death was such a great severing and he’d never been able to make things right for her again.

And all he wanted to do now was make things right for Celia, as he should have done so long ago. If only he knew how.

Celia sighed in her sleep and curled into him, trusting him in her dreams as she could not when awake. He smoothed tendrils of her dark hair back from her brow and thought of the first time he’d seen her. It was a moment he had never been expecting—a moment like something in a sonnet or a madrigal—something he would have scoffed at before he knew Celia.

His youth had been a mostly wasted one, his years at Cambridge a tangle of drink and women and brawls, until one particularly vivid fight had caught his uncle’s attention and he’d been forced to find a new direction in his life. Forced to take the chance to redeem himself by serving the Queen. He’d been sent to the country to ferret out the participants in a rumuored Catholic plot to unseat Elizabeth and put Queen Mary on the throne—the sort of plot that came up like weeds every year and had to be chopped down. It had seemed a simple enough task. An easy way to get back in his family’s good graces and make a name for himself with Elizabeth.

But then he’d seen Celia standing across the room at a banquet, dressed in a simple white gown and with her hair loose over her shoulders in midnight-coloured waves. It had seemed as if all the light in the chamber gathered only on her, on her shy smile, the pale, serene cast of her face. Everything had gone so still in that moment.

Everything had changed, and he had never forgotten it. He had always liked women—their voices, their laughter, their soft, perfumed bodies. He’d liked them too much to think of settling with only one, but Celia was different. She’d made him imagine a new life, new ways of thinking and being. Until it all had exploded—as he’d known it would from that first moment.

Yet he still couldn’t stay away from her. It seemed he never could.

Celia sighed again, and a frown drifted over her brow as if she saw something in her dreams that disturbed her.

“Shh,” John whispered, and she settled in his arms. In her sleep she trusted him.

And in that moment, in the silent, cold darkness of the night, enveloped in their own small world of firelight and snow, they were together. He held her safe. He only wanted to make that moment last.




Chapter Nine (#ulink_4a73ca97-55c2-50f2-9214-e724ff451535)


When Celia woke again, she could tell it was day by the pale grey light beyond her closed eyes. Yet she didn’t quite want to relinquish her dreams. Not yet. She wanted to hold onto that fantasy world, and to those fleeting moments when she and John were not enemies.

She slowly stretched against the rumpled sheets and realised most of the ache was gone. She only felt a new, fresh energy flowing through her, the brush of warm air over her bare arms.

She turned her head on the pillow and opened her eyes to find herself alone on the bed. No snow fell outside the window; there was just that hard grey light.

She pushed herself up against the pillows and saw that John sat by the fire, frowning down at some papers in his hand. A basin and a length of towelling lay on the table beside him, and he looked as if he had just washed. He wore no shirt, and the damp ends of his hair slowly trailed crystal drops of water over his naked shoulders and chest. That light golden skin glowed with the water and the firelight, as if he was an idol in some pagan temple.

She watched avidly as one drop traced a path through the light scattering of brown hair on his chest, arrowing down to the fastening of his leather breeches. For a moment she indulged in the fantasy that it was her hand touching him there, teasing him until that ridged abdomen tightened and …

He glanced up and caught her staring. A roguish grin curved his lips, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She felt her cheeks turn hot, and she sank back down to the bed so he couldn’t see that she blushed like a silly, innocent girl. She remembered so well that old feeling with him.

“So you’re awake at last,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Aye, thank you,” Celia managed to answer. “I feel much recovered.”

She heard the papers he held flutter to the table, and the tread of his bare feet on the wood floor as he walked purposefully towards the bed.

She felt his knee press into the mattress and tried to draw the sheet over her head. His fingers curled over the edge of the fabric and pulled it away as he knelt over her. She found herself staring up into his glowing blue eyes as he smiled down at her. He seemed in a strangely good mood.

“I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better, Celia,” he said, still smiling. “Perhaps you’re wanting your breakfast now? You looked hungry enough just then.”

“I …”

Before she could say anything else, his mouth swooped down over hers. Open, hot, hungry, as if he wanted to devour her. It awakened something deep inside of her, that seed of longing and need that only John had ever created. He had caused such pain and anger in her life, but such wondrous things too. Emotions and sensations she had never dreamed could exist.

He still did. And when he kissed her he swept her away on a river of fire.

She opened her lips and drew his tongue in over hers. His taste filled her mouth and she moaned. Oh, yes—she did remember this, so very well. And it made her feel just as it once had.

John’s arms came hard around her and dragged her closer to his naked chest. As they kissed, deeper, hungrier, their tongues entwining, thrusting, she laid her hands flat on his shoulders and felt the damp heat of him against her palms. John groaned deep in his throat, his hands fisting in the cloth of her chemise as if he would rip it from her.

Emboldened, Celia slid her caress lower, slowly, savouring the way he felt against her. He was just as she remembered—just as he was in her fevered dreams of the past—only even better. Stronger, harder, hotter. This was what she needed. This was what would close her past with him, let her put it all aside. To have him as he was now, as she was now, and know that was all there was. Free of the past, with only the feelings of this one moment to think of.

She traced her fingertips over his flat nipples and felt them pebble under her touch. She scraped the edge of her thumbnail over one and he growled. She pressed slightly harder, hard enough to give just the slightest edge of pain, but he didn’t shove her away or slap her as her husband would have. His skin rippled, but he went on kissing her.

She slid her touch lower, feeling every inch of his torso, every bit of his skin. He felt like hot satin stretched taut over hard muscle, and the light whorls of hair tickled her palms. She dipped the tip of her smallest finger into his navel before she moved even lower to the band of his breeches.

Suddenly her boldness fled. She could feel his erection, rock-hard against her wrist.

“Curse it, Celia, don’t stop now,” he whispered as his mouth left hers. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to her jaw, the soft curve of her throat. He nibbled at her there, drawing the skin between his teeth to nip lightly at her.

Celia gasped and let her head fall back as her hand convulsed against his waist. Her heart was pounding as if it would burst, and she could feel that his was too as his body pressed closer to hers.

His mouth opened on the pulse that beat at the base of her neck, that vulnerable hollow so sensitive to sensation. He licked at it, swirling the tip of his tongue there before he closed his teeth on it.

“John!” she cried, her head arching back even more until the braid of her hair lashed at his arm. She felt him tug the binding free and her hair fell loose over her shoulders. He didn’t raise his head. His open mouth swept over her collarbone, the little hollows just at her shoulders, until he could nip at the soft upper swell of her breast. The edge of his teeth scraped over that skin too, and Celia’s fist closed on the band of his breeches until he gave a rough laugh.

“You still like that, then?” he whispered.

“And do you still like this?” She moved her hand lower, until she covered the hard bulge behind the leather fabric. She slid her fingers down its length, not as hard as when she’d touched him at the Queen’s banquet, but slower, caressing softly until he groaned.

She pressed her thumb to that spot on the underside she knew he liked, that had once driven him to such fierce need. He seemed to grow even harder.

Suddenly he pulled her chemise over her head, tearing her hand from him. She knelt in front of him, her body naked for him as it had not been in so long. For an instant the heat of passion faded and she remembered she was not as she’d been then. She was thinner, her breasts smaller. And there was her shoulder. She wanted him to remember her as she once had been, not as she was now.

She tried to turn away, to draw her hair over that shoulder, but his hands were already on her again. He turned her back into his arms, his head lowering to her breast.

“So beautiful,” he muttered. “You are so damnably beautiful, Celia.”

And when he looked at her, touched her, she could almost feel beautiful again, as she once had with him. As his mouth closed over her nipple her head fell back and her eyes closed. She felt the soft brush of her hair on her back, and the heat of his lips on her aching breast.

He suckled hard, drawing her deep into his mouth. She bit her lip to keep from crying out at the way it made her feel. Her body, which had felt so frozen and numb for so long, roared back to burning life again.

He covered her other breast with his palm, his fingers spread wide to cradle her, caress her. One fingertip brushed over that engorged nipple and a cry burst free from her lips. She felt him smile against her, just before his teeth bit down lightly and he pinched her other nipple.

She reached desperately between their bodies to unfasten his breeches and push them down over his lean hips. His penis sprang free against her abdomen, rock-hard and hot. As she touched it, naked in her hand at last, it jerked and he groaned. His teeth tightened on her nipple before he arched his head back.

Celia looked into his eyes and they were burning and dark, the blue almost swallowed in black lust. She bent to kiss the side of his neck, to bite at him as he had with her. He tasted salty and sweet under her lips, of that night essence that was only John. It was intoxicating, dizzying.

As she kissed him she ran her palm down his manhood to its swollen tip. There was a drop of moisture there, and she caught it on her finger to spread it upward again, slow, steady. Aye—she remembered this so very well.

John’s hands suddenly closed on her backside, his fingers digging into the soft skin as he dragged her even closer. Her hand dropped away from him and he slowly pressed the tip of his penis against the soft nest of damp curls between her thighs. He moved up and down, lightly teasing at her swollen cleft.

“John …” she whispered against his neck. “So wet—so hot,” he growled. He pulled her flush against his hips, and then suddenly pushed her back to the bed. He came down on top of her, his hips between her spread legs, his lips claiming hers in a wild, desperate kiss.

Celia wrapped her legs around his waist and instinctively arched up into him. He was so large, so strong and—and overwhelming. She was completely surrounded by him, by his heat and power. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

She tore her lips from his kiss and tilted her head back to try and gulp in a breath. Her hands dug into his shoulders as if she would push him away.

But he seemed to sense something was wrong, that the icy hand of fear was creeping over her, reminding her of the horror that was her marriage bed. His hands slid around her waist, and in one deft twist he lay on his back on the bed and she was on top of him. Her legs lay to either side of his hips as she straddled him.

She stared down at him in dizzy astonishment. The air suddenly seemed clearer around her, the fear dissipating like clouds after a storm. She wasn’t held down, overpowered. She was free, yet still tethered to John by the light touch of his hands at her waist, the look in his eyes. He watched her with an almost feral gleam in those eyes, as if he was so hungry he could devour her now in one bite, yet there was tenderness there too, so deep and reassuring. His face was set in taut lines of fierce control.

Yet he made no move. It was as if he knew what she needed now: to be in control of what was happening. Celia swallowed hard. She had never been in this position before, never looked at a man in this way. It was—quite nice.

Very nice indeed, she thought as she braced her palms flat on John’s chest. She slid them down, down, a slow, hard glide on his skin. He felt so tense under her touch, as if he waited for her, held himself tightly leashed to let her touch him as she would.

It made her want him even more.

She shook her hair back and smiled down at him. A muscle flexed in his jaw and his eyes never wavered from her. She gently moved his hands from her waist and held them to the bed as she leaned down and laid her open mouth on his chest. His hands jerked but he didn’t push her away.

She tasted him with the tip of her tongue, and moved to swirl it lightly over his flat, brown nipple. It hardened under her kiss, and she could hear the harsh hiss of his breath.

She nipped her teeth over the arc of his ribs.

“I always remember this, John,” she whispered. “Even when I hated you, when I cursed your name, I would remember this late at night. Your taste. Your smell. The way your skin felt on mine. It was as if I could still taste you on my tongue. You must be a sorcerer, to hold my dreams so enchanted by what you would do to me.”

She licked at the indentation along his hip, that enticing masculine line of muscle that dipped towards his manhood. She exhaled a sigh over the base of his penis, and sat up again.

“You’re the witch,” he ground out as he stared deep into her eyes, not letting her go. “No one has ever made me feel like you did, Celia, from the first moment I saw you.”

Celia shook her head. She didn’t want to know he had thought of her. Not now. She wanted to remember how it had once been. She only wanted this, them together, now.

“Sometimes when I dreamed of you at night, John, I ached so much. I had to do this.” She closed her eyes and laid her hand lightly between her breasts. Slowly, slowly, she traced her touch down her body, over her abdomen, until her hand lay over the place that was so wet for him she ached with it all over again. He had taught her to do this, and she remembered how the sight of her hand there affected him. How it made him explode.

She slid one fingertip between her folds, and that was all it took.

“Hell, Celia!” he shouted, and his control snapped.

Her eyes flew open as his hands seized her hips. But he did not drag her under him to drive into her. He drew her body up along his until his mouth closed over her womanhood. She knelt over his face as his tongue plunged deep into her.

Celia screamed, and grabbed onto the carved wood of the bed as his mouth claimed every intimate part of her. His fingers dug hard into her buttocks as he kissed her, licked her, tasted her so deeply. She was no longer in control, but she didn’t care. She only wanted his mouth, his hands on her. Claiming her. Making her remember—and forget.

His tongue flicked on that tiny knot high inside her, and she moaned. One of his hands let go of her and slid around her hip, until he could drive one long finger inside of her, just below that talented tongue. He moved it in and out, pressing, sliding, until she cried out wordlessly. “John,” she moaned.

“Let go, my fairy queen,” he whispered against her. “I have you with me. You’re safe.”

And strangely she did feel safe, as she never had before. Another finger slid into her, and she felt pressure building low in her belly. Oh, sweet saints, but she had not felt like this in such a long time! Sex had come to mean only pain and humiliation, but now she remembered what it could be, what it had been—with John. Only John. That heat built and built, expanding inside of her until she couldn’t breathe. Her whole body was suffused with golden light.

“Let go!” he said, and his tongue pressed hard to that knot as his fingers curled inside her.

And she did let go. She shattered, that pressure exploding like a bonfire within her. She screamed again, her hands clutching at the bed to keep her from falling into the abyss below.

But John wasn’t finished with her. He lifted her trembling body off his mouth and pushed himself up to half-sit against the headboard. He drew her down until she straddled his hips again, her open, wet womanhood spread over the tip of his penis.

“Ride me, Celia,” he said hoarsely. “I am yours.”

She braced her hands on his slick, sweaty shoulders and tried to focus her pleasure-dazed mind. She stared down at him, at the way his lips glistened with her own essence, the way his eyes were so dark and wild with lust. She could smell herself on him, the scent of the two of them blended, and it made her want him all over again. Need him.

And she wanted him to need her just as much. To remember how they had once been together.

She raised herself slightly, until she felt his swollen tip at her opening, and then she held tightly to his shoulders and slid down. Lower, lower, until he was all the way inside of her, their hips pressed together.

His eyes suddenly went blurry, and his head fell back as his hands closed on her waist.

“Ah, curse it, Celia,” he groaned. “You’re so tight—so perfect. I can’t …”

She raised up again and sank back down, over and over, until she found her rhythm. His hips arched up to meet her. They moved together, harder, faster. Until she felt her climax building up all over again.

Her body fell back and she braced her hands on his thighs as he thrust up into her. She closed her eyes and saw whirling stars in the darkness, blue and green and white, exploding around her until she cried out his name.

“Celia!” he shouted, amid a flood of incoherent curses as his whole body went rigid. She felt him go still inside her, the hot rush of him against her as he too let go and soared free.

She let herself fall to the bed, her legs unable to hold her up any longer. She trembled as she felt a heavy, hot languor steal over her, a boneless exhaustion as she had never known before. The beamed ceiling spun above her as she tried to catch her breath.

John crawled up to collapse beside her. They didn’t touch, but she could feel the heat of his sweat-damp body close to hers, could hear the rough rush of his breath.

She rolled her head to look at him. His eyes were closed as he kicked his breeches away, his hair falling damply over his brow. She gently brushed it back, and he caught her hand in his to kiss her palm.

She sighed and closed her eyes, feeling the way he pressed her hand flat to his chest and held her there. She felt the brush of cold air over her heated skin. The fire had died away in the grate, but she didn’t care. She was too tired and replete to care about anything but John’s hand on hers.

“You still talk filthy in bed, John Brandon,” she whispered teasingly. “Where did you learn those words? In Paris?”

He gave a drowsy chuckle. “And you still remember everything that drives me insane. Did you really touch yourself when you thought of me?”

Celia smiled. “A lady must keep her secrets, John,” she said. And then she let herself tumble down into a deep, dreamless sleep.




Chapter Ten (#ulink_e96742db-4d18-536d-843e-4423ac7e5e2c)


A lady must keep her secrets.

John heard Celia’s words in his mind as he watched her sleeping in the bed they had shared. Cool grey light moved over her bare skin as she lay on her stomach, her arms around her pillow and her black hair spilling over the rumpled sheets. The coverings were low on her hips, leaving her slender, supple back bare to tempt him.

And, God’s teeth, but he was tempted. His muscles were coiled to send him striding across the chamber, to grab the sheets and tear them away until she was naked for him again.

Until she opened for him again, let him in, let him see every part of her, body and soul. Until she cried his name and needed him, as he needed her in that moment.

He braced his fists on the table and let his head drop between his shoulders, shutting out the sight of her. Shutting out the temptation. It had always been that way with Celia, even when they’d first met. She had been innocent then, more vulnerable, but there had always been that sharp intelligence behind her cool grey eyes. That edge to her words, that unwillingness to suffer fools.

That desire as she looked at him, that passion that matched his own and drove him higher and hotter.

The memory of her had haunted him for years, until he’d become sure he made her into something she had never really been. An elusive fairy queen who’d never existed except in his mind, his dreams.

But earlier she had shown him she was every bit all he’d once thought her, and so much more. He had never wanted anything or anyone as he wanted her. When she’d taken him inside her, her body over his, her eyes burning with raw need, he had gone mad with it. With her. He’d dared to begin to think he could make it different at long last.

She had been his again, only his. No rational thought, only feeling—primitive, ferocious feeling.

But now he wished with all his might that she would run from him. Push him away and flee so far they could never see each other again. When they came together it was as elemental as that storm outside, and as lethal. They would destroy each other even as they couldn’t stay apart.

Secrets. Aye, she had been so very right about that. So many secrets lay between them. How could he ever make it right?

He opened his eyes and reached out for the papers scattered across the table. Marcus had sent them via messenger while Celia slept yesterday, and they were updates on their travels. It seemed all was not well there, and Marcus needed John to rejoin them soon. Something was amiss among Darnley’s cohorts. Something besides drink and fights.

More secrets.

John heard a soft sound from the bed, and looked up to see that Celia was stirring awake. She slowly stretched against the sheets, the fabric easing lower until he could see the vulnerable hollow of her back. Just one of the soft, sweet spots he had so recently kissed. He snapped his too-eager stare up from her bare skin to her face, turned in profile on the pillow.

A smile touched her lips, and she looked so young then. So happy and innocent that he almost went to her. Almost climbed beside her on the bed and kissed her, damning the consequences.

Then she seemed to come fully awake and remember. The smile faded into a small frown and her eyes opened.

Celia rolled onto her back—and caught him staring at her. She gasped and sat up straight on the bed, yanking the sheet up to cover her nakedness. John pushed down the sharp sense of disappointment and gave her a humourless smile.

“Good day to you, Celia,” he said.

The tip of her tongue touched her lips—a tiny, nervous gesture that sent a bolt of pure fire straight to his groin. She shook her tangled fall of hair back from her shoulders and lifted her chin in a gesture he had become too familiar with by now. Her armour was closing around her again. He had to decipher how to tear it away.

“So it is true,” she said softly.

“You can pretend it was all a dream if you like,” he answered, keeping his voice cool and calm even as his heart ached. He did not want her to think it was a dream! He wanted her to remember every second, every touch and kiss, as vividly as he did. To want him as he had always wanted her.

“I’m not as good at pretending as I once was,” she said, just as calmly.

“Just as you like. You don’t have to cower there under the bedclothes. I’m not a starving wolf, set to devour you as soon as you move.”

“Nay, the wolf is sated for now. And I do not cower,” she snapped. Then softer, as if she spoke to herself, “Not any more.”

Her words made him look at her damaged shoulder and think of the fear that had flashed in her eyes when he’d pinned her to the bed. The fear that had only eased when he’d rolled her on top of him. He longed to go to her, to snatch her up in his arms and hold her against him until she knew only him. Only remembered him.

But he had not been able to protect her from her villain of a husband. He had to protect her now.

He made himself stay where he was, his fists braced to the table as he watched her reach for her crumpled chemise on the floor and pull it over her head. He had the briefest glimpse of her bare breasts before she was covered again.

She walked to the table where he stood and reached for the pitcher of ale set there. She didn’t look at him as she poured out a gobletful and sipped at it. He tried not to stare hungrily at the soft movement of her throat as she swallowed, at her slender fingers wrapped around the goblet. Tried not to remember what she had done with them.

“What are those?” she asked, gesturing with the goblet at the papers.

“Messages from Marcus,” he said, forcing his attention back to the documents. “It seems there is trouble.”

Celia gave a little snort of a laugh and took a deep sip of the ale. “Now, why am I not surprised to hear that? Is our presence required?”

“Soon, I think. When you are strong enough to travel. I don’t want you to become ill again.”

She shrugged and turned away to refill her goblet. “It was only a chill. I am perfectly able to travel. Today, if needs be.”

“Celia …” That fierce protectiveness rose up in him again.

“I said I can travel! I want to go,” she snapped.

The words she left unspoken hung in the air, and John knew what she meant—she did not want to stay there with him. It was what she should feel, and yet he was angry. He wanted to change her mind.

“I should send for a litter for you,” he said, pushing himself back from the table. From her.

“That would take too long, and you know it,” she said. “I can ride.”

“Nay, Celia.”

She spun back to face him, her eyes sparkling. “Do you doubt my strength after earlier this morning?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a hard line as they stared at each other. The very air seemed to crackle around them.

She turned away first, her shoulders slumped. “Just see to the horses,” she said, her voice small and quiet. “I will get dressed.”

He did not want to leave her—not like this, with so much still between them. So much that could not be said. But her very stillness held him away. She looked as if she would crack if he touched her. He could bide his time. He had learned patience in the last few years.

“Aye,” he said, and strode towards the door. He let it close softly behind him even as every instinct in him urged him to drive his fist into the wall.

Or to grab her, slam his mouth down on hers as he stripped away her chemise and repeated what they had done earlier.

Celia stabbed the pins into her upswept hair as she stared at her reflection in the window. Even in the fractured wavy glass she looked pale and gaunt, ghost-like. Haunted.

She twisted her hair harder, glad of the sting on her scalp as it distracted her and brought her back to her task. She hadn’t been herself earlier this morning. Now she had to find herself again.

She glanced over her shoulder at the rumpled empty bed. Earlier, in those tangled sheets, she had been wild and free. Everything she had held so tightly in check for so long had flown free. All because of John. His touch, his kiss—they had always unleashed something in her she didn’t understand. And earlier the pleasure of that wildness had been unfathomable.

Now she wanted to scream with the anger and sadness of losing it all over again. When she’d woken up from delicious dreams and seen the distant, wary look in his eyes, the cool lack of expression on his face, she’d longed to fly at him. Slap his face, scratch at his golden skin until he reacted to her. Showed her something, anything, that told her he had been affected by their lovemaking. That, despite everything, he wanted her still.

She’d managed to hold herself still, to match his distance with a chill of her own. She had become quite good at hiding her thoughts and emotions. Sometimes not reacting, keeping herself apart, had been all that saved her.

And now, in the cold daylight, she saw that he was right to stay away. Perhaps their swiving had been inevitable—something that still lay between them from the past. Their bodies still knew each other, no matter what their minds said.

But it was the past. This was the present, and a gulf wider than the English Channel lay between them.

She finished pinning up her hair and turned from her reflection to put the final touches to her dress. Some of her clothes had been left for her, and she put on her warmest quilted petticoat and wool skirt, a high-necked black wool and velvet doublet. She wedged her feet into her riding boots and reached for her hat and gloves. She was ready to ride into any battle now.

She hurried out of the chamber where so much had happened and down the stairs, as if she could flee John and what he had made her feel there at the same time. But he waited for her in the cold, empty foyer.

He was also dressed to ride, in brown leather and wool, his hair brushed back from his face. She let her eyes linger on those strands, thinking of how they’d felt as they slid through her fingers, as she’d used them to pull him down to her.

She turned sharply away to jerk on her gloves.

“You still wear mourning,” he said, his voice flat.

“I can’t afford new Court clothes,” she answered. “My black was the last thing I could get from my husband’s cheese-paring family. I couldn’t let it go to waste. Are we ready to depart, then?”

John frowned as if he wanted to say something else, but he merely nodded. He swung open the door and a blast of cold wind curled around her.

“Let us go, then,” he said.




Chapter Eleven (#ulink_aea4003b-d19d-52a8-8fbe-124fd24db380)


Celia reined in her horse at the crest of the hill to catch her breath after the hard gallop. She tossed a smile over her shoulder at John as he drew up beside her. Her uncertainties of before had been lost in the exhilaration of the ride, the sheer joy of still being alive.

“I do believe I was the victor,” she said.

“So you were,” he answered with a grin. “This time.”

“I will outrun you again, John Brandon. And again and again.”

“I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you, my lady. Perhaps I allowed you to win out of gallantry.”

Celia laughed. “Certainly you did not. The great Sir John, victor in all his endeavours, bested by a woman? You would never want word of that to spread. It would quite ruin your reputation.”

“I don’t see anyone here to witness my loss, do you? I would say my good name at Court is safe.”

Celia glanced around as he gestured with his riding crop at the landscape below. She still smiled as she surveyed the frozen fields, bisected by grey stone walls. It felt good to laugh and tease with John again, to feel at least a bit at ease in his presence.

In the days since they’d left the hunting lodge they had ridden in silence, saying only the little that was necessary as they’d travelled hard over the mostly deserted roads. At night they’d stopped at quiet inns to gulp down a hasty meal and fall into bed—alone. She noticed he always slept at a careful distance from her, close enough to protect her in a strange place, but far enough that there was no contact at all.

He would take her hand to help her from the saddle, would ask her how she fared, make sure she had enough wine or blankets, but that was all.

Celia was happy to be quiet with him, to keep her distance. She thought too much about him as it was. The bare, wintry landscape they passed offered little distraction from memories of what had happened between them in that bed. The feel of his hands on her bare skin, his mouth and tongue on her, his hoarse moans and curses as they rode each other. She saw the look in his eyes as he watched her. It was all still there, vivid and painful—sweet in her mind.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was absently patting his horse’s neck as he surveyed the land around them, a small frown on his lips. He looked as if his own thoughts were a hundred miles away, and against her better judgement she found she desperately wanted to know what they were. What he kept hidden deep inside himself.

But she feared that if she caught a glimpse of John, the real John, she would have to share the real Celia in return. That she could not do.

“So this is Scotland,” she said. “It looks scarcely different from England.”

Or rather scarcely different from the England they had seen in the last few days. Harsh, austere, forbidding northern England, so different from the softness of southern England, the noise and commotion of London. The place seemed like a separate world from all she had ever really known. It was silent and grey-green all around.

Yet she liked it. The very harshness seemed beautiful to her, seemed to respond to something hard and cold and wild inside her.

“Aye, this is Scotland,” John said. “What do you think of it so far?”

Celia looked around her again and drew in a deep breath. She even liked the air here, clean and diamond-clear, smelling of frost, green, and the faint tang of a peat fire.

“I like it very much,” she said. “I like the loneliness of it.”

John gave her a strange look, and she thought she saw a flash of surprise in his eyes. “I doubt there will be any time for loneliness once we reach Edinburgh.”

“I dare say there won’t. If Queen Mary’s Court is anything like her cousin’s, there won’t be a moment of silence.”

“They say she is trying to bring elements of her French life to the Scottish Court,” John said. “Dancing, cards, masquerades, hunts. I doubt that pleases Knox and his Puritan cohorts. They thought never to see their French Catholic queen again.”

That must certainly be true. Surely they’d thought that with Mary in France Scotland was theirs to run as they wanted. The country’s religion, alliances and culture in their hands. Until suddenly she’d returned, with her own ways of doing things.

“Has there been trouble?” Celia asked quietly.

“Nothing serious as yet. Mary has proved strangely popular with her subjects since she returned from Paris—except for the men who thought they ruled Scotland and dictated its religion and allies. Threats, stones thrown at courtiers’ carriages, ugly pamphlets railing against female rulers. But there will be more to come. That seems inevitable.”

“Is that what Lord Marcus’s message said?”

John shifted in his saddle. “Knox and Queen Elizabeth aren’t the only ones who want to control Queen Mary. She still has her French attendants with her, who have their own ideas of what she should do.”

“Not to mention the Spanish,” Celia murmured. It was so nice to be able to talk to John like this again, to share her ideas and hear his, to know what he thought of their strange situation. “To have a Catholic ally right on Elizabeth’s northern border could only be a boon to them. Is the marriage of Queen Mary to Don Carlos still a possibility?”

“A distant one, perhaps, or Mary would have snapped it up by now. She wouldn’t dally with the likes of Darnley if she had the Spanish heir.”

“And one of these parties is not causing trouble in Edinburgh.”

John suddenly gave her a rakish grin. “Celia, where a crown is at stake there is always trouble. We must make more of it for our opponents than they do for us.”

Was that how he lived his life, then? Made trouble for others before they could do it to him? Before she could say anything to him, he tugged at his reins and took off down the hill.

“We need to find a place to stop for the night,” he called to her, his words caught on the wind.

Celia dashed after him. The cold wind kept them from saying any more as they galloped over the fields and found the road again. The narrow track was muddy and rutted, clotted with fallen branches, but they made good time. Dusk was falling when they finally stopped in front of a pair of gates that stood ajar.

They were of an elaborate design of twisted wrought iron, surmounted by a family crest, but they were being eaten away by rust. Beyond the gates she glimpsed an overgrown trail winding away between towering trees.

John stared up at the crest with an unreadable look on his face.

“Are we stopping here?” Celia asked quietly.

He was silent for a long moment. So long she thought he might not answer. That he had forgotten she was even there.

Finally he said, “Why not? It’s growing dark, and it’s still a fair ride into the village.”

He led his horse through the gap in the gates and Celia followed. As they made their way slowly down the path she felt as if she had stepped into a troubadour’s song of enchanted forests and ghosts. It seemed even quieter here than on the hill, perfectly silent, as if even the wind dared not brush through the bare, skeletal trees.

She could see that once this had been a grand park, laid out for pleasure rides and pretty vistas, but now it was all a tangle. She glimpsed a half-frozen lake in the distance, with a pale stone folly crumbling on the shore. The gathering evening mist only made it more mysterious.

Celia shivered.

“Are you cold?” John asked. “We will soon be there, and we can build a fire.”

“I’m quite well,” she said, even as that chill danced up her spine again.

They turned at a twist in the path, and Celia saw a house rise up before them. It was a surprisingly fine manor of faded red brick and dark wood latticework that had once been painted. The small windows stared down, blank and dark.

Above the door was another chipped stone crest.

“How did you know this place was here?” Celia asked as John swung down from his horse and came round to help her dismount. “Have you been here before?”

“Nay, but I heard about it as a child,” he said. When he lowered her to her feet he didn’t immediately release her, as he had been doing, but kept his arm around her waist. He held her with him as he studied the house with narrowed eyes. “This was my mother’s family’s house,” he said.

“Your mother?” Celia gasped in surprise. Then she remembered John’s mother had been Scottish—one of the reasons Queen Elizabeth had given for sending him here. But John had never spoken of her before. “Where are they, then?”

“All dead. They died even before I was born. After my mother was sent to England to serve one of Henry’s many queens. Since my parents died when I was six, it is mine now.” He kicked at a fallen chunk of brick on the ground. “For all the good it does me.”

Celia blinked as she looked up at him. She had seen John angry, cold, passionate, but never like this. So very distant. It made her shiver again, and his arm tightened around her.

“Come, you should be inside,” he said.

Celia nodded. She didn’t want to go inside. This place seemed haunted in truth. But it was dark now, and there was nowhere else to go.

John pushed the door open with his foot and led her inside.

She had thought the hunting lodge was quiet and desolate, but it was nothing to this place. Everything in the foyer was so still she could hear the wind whistling outside, creeping through the walls. The floor was warped and cracked, the balustrade of the staircase broken. From somewhere up in the ceiling she thought she could hear the rustle of birds.

She rubbed at her arms through her sleeves and followed John into what had once been the great hall. There was a large fireplace at one end, and a few broken bits of furniture littered on the floor. He found an almost intact stool and set it by the empty fireplace.

“Sit down and rest,” he said. “I’ll try to make a fire so we can stay somewhat comfortable tonight. We should catch up to the others by tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Their time together was ending so very soon. The reality of their lives, their two separate lives, grew closer with every moment. She should be eager to leave John behind, to move towards the future. Work for Queen Elizabeth; a new marriage. The past gone.

But instead she only felt colder. Hollow inside. She had been closer to John than she had ever been to another person, no matter how deceptive those feelings had been in the end. Yet she craved it again—that warmth she sometimes glimpsed in his eyes.

She had put him out of her life once. Surely she could do it again?

She wrapped her arms around her waist as she watched him use the remnants of the wooden furniture to build a fire. The flames were slow to grow at first, until they grabbed onto the dry, brittle wood and crackled to life. Celia slowly felt herself grow warmer, steadier, calmer. They were here together now. That had to be enough.

Once the fire was well lit, John brought in their saddlebags and made a quick meal of hard biscuits, dried beef and wine. It was full dark outside when quiet fell between them, broken only by the snap of the fire and the wind outside.

Celia saw the way he rolled his head between his shoulders and rubbed wearily at his neck. Something softened deep inside of her, and before she knew what she was doing she reached out to touch his arm. She couldn’t stop herself. His back tightened, and he gave her a wary glance over his shoulder.

“Lean against me for a while,” she said softly. “Let me rub your shoulders. You used to like it when I did that after a day’s hunting.”

For a moment she thought he would refuse. Would stride from the room and leave her alone. But then he leaned against her legs and let his head fall back to her knees, heavy through her skirts.

She sat on the stool while he was on the floor, so her hands floated naturally to his shoulders. His doublet was unfastened, and she eased it down his arms. He wrapped his arms around her calves as she kneaded at his hard shoulder muscles. His skin was warm and smooth through his shirt.

She pressed her thumbs into the tense knots of his back. “This must have been a grand house once,” she said as she felt him slowly relax against her.

“My mother always said it was, when she told me stories when I was a child.” John’s voice sounded deep and distant, as if her touch carried him far away. “There were grand banquets here. Especially at Christmas. Dancing and music, minstrels’ tales here by this very fire. Queen Marie of Guise was even invited here one year.”

Celia studied the hall around them, seeing it not as it was now but the way it had been. Could be. The floors polished and gleaming, tapestries on the walls, delicacies piled high on silver plates atop carved sideboards. Musicians playing a pavane in the gallery above as the brightly dressed guests danced.

“It’s a shame the house isn’t ready to receive Queen Marie’s daughter, then,” Celia said.

“Who knows if my mother’s tales were true?” said John as he leaned back into her hands. “This place might have been a ruin for decades before she was born. She just liked to make Scotland sound like a romantic dream. Z’wounds, Celia, but that feels good! I should keep you close to me after tournaments. You would banish any wound with a touch.”

Celia smiled, but she didn’t want to dwell on how good his words felt. How much she would love to see him ride in a tournament, her favour tied to his lance. “You remember your mother, then?” she said.





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