Tarnished Rose of the Court

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

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.

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