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
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
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.”
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.”
Tarnished Rose of the Court Page 10
