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

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

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.”