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

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

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

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.