There was a long silence, then the sound of a bar being drawn back. The door opened a small amount and Celia peered out at him. Her hair was drawn back tightly again, and she wore solemn, unrelieved black.
Her eyes still held that flat, stone-grey deadness.
“John, please,” she said softly, tonelessly, “there is no more to say.”
There was everything in the world to say, John thought as he stared down at her. She was right before him, and yet she was as unreadable as if oceans were between them. All he could say, all he could feel, was, “I am sorry.”
“Sorry for what? You were doing your task. I merely got in your way.” She sounded so bitter as she looked away from him, her whole body stiff and still. “It will not happen again.”
“Because you are going back to England without me?”
“Queen Mary has agreed to provide an escort. Queen Elizabeth will want an account of what happened here. You will not have me to burden you any longer.”
“Burden me?” John could not hold himself back any longer. He caught her hand in his, holding it fast. Her skin was cold and she did not draw away. But neither did she yield, and he had to restrain that primitive urge to push her down, hold her until she gave in and admitted what they were to each other.
“Celia, tell me how to set this right,” he demanded. “Tell me how to prove to you I have changed!”
She shook her head. “You do not have to prove anything to me, John. Please, I am tired. Let me go.”
“Nay, Celia. Not until you let me tell you all that happened.”
“I know what happened! It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters.” She wrenched herself free and slammed the door.
John pounded his forehead on the wood that lay between them and rested his clenched fists against it to keep from pounding the barrier down and claiming Celia as his own. It wouldn’t work now, he knew that well—not when that coldness was upon her. He had to cool his temper, wait and plan.
Celia would be his again. There was no way either of them could be without the other now. She simply did not know it yet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Celia stared down into the rushing water of the river far below where she stood on the edge of the bluff. The water was a cool grey-blue, dotted with lacy chunks of ice, and she remembered all too well how it had felt when she’d fallen in and it had closed around her. How it had felt when John pulled her out of the cold depths and saved her life.
She closed her eyes and shivered. But it wasn’t the bite of the wind. It was the memories that made her feel so cold on this journey home. It had been days since she’d left John and started to make the long trip back to England, and she had thought she could leave him behind. Forget him and how she had given her heart to him—again.
But the images bombarded her at night in her dreams, and during the long, cold days. Images of John’s face as he made love to her, his stark intensity as they moved together. His smile as they danced, his fierce protectiveness as he shielded her from the blast. So many memories, overlaying those of that past, so much deeper and richer than the wild moments of their youth.
So much more hurtful now, when she felt as if she had glimpsed John’s true soul and let him see hers.
Celia turned away from the river and walked along the bank as she listened to the echo of her escorts’ conversation as they rested for the midday meal. She hadn’t been able to eat or be still since they’d left Edinburgh. She kept turning John’s words over in her mind as she tried so hard to make sense of the past and the future. To make sense of him and how he made her feel.
As she walked now, the sound of the rushing river in her ears, she made herself remember her brother. William had been older than her but had always seemed younger, in the way he’d been so easily seized with strange passions and ideas. He had been her parents’ darling, their heir, their hope for fading fortunes, but even they had seemed to realise he could be as changeable as mercury.
When the Queen’s men had come to their house and arrested him for his part in his friends’ conspiracy, Celia had been shocked and grieved, but there had been little surprise. It had seemed the sort of wild fancy he would have. But it had cost him his life and her parents the last of their fortune. And it had been John who had found William out. The man she had begun to love with all the fire of her young heart.
The man she had begun to love again with all her wounded soul.
Celia shook her head hard, as if she could rid herself of her troubled thoughts and emotions, but they clung stubbornly. The fury she’d felt when she had first found out about the true nature of John’s work had burned itself out in the cold, solitary days since. Her rational knowledge of how the world really worked had begun to come back again. Her brother had gone against the Queen’s law in his foolishness and would have inevitably been caught. John had had no choice in what he’d done.
But he had left her. That she could not understand. She needed to hear it from his own lips, needed to know if she had meant anything to him. And she had things she had to tell him as well.
It was time to lay the past to rest and move into the future.
Celia turned and strode back to camp, sure now of what she had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She was back where it had all begun, as if nothing had happened at all.
Celia looked around the crowded presence chamber at Whitehall and remembered when she’d stood there all those weeks ago, watched those same people waiting, whispering, desperate for Queen Elizabeth’s attention. It looked the same, sounded the same, and yet it was not the same at all. Things had happened, and she had changed profoundly.
But she was still alone.
She rubbed at her arms through her purple satin sleeves as if she was chilled, even though the close-packed bodies and the roaring fire created a humid heat against the freezing rain outside. She stayed in her shadowed corner and ignored the curious stares around her. She could hardly see them anyway.
She just saw John, the last time she’d glimpsed his face before she had closed the door on him. That final glimpse had haunted her on the long journey back to England—that image of anger and passion and something she couldn’t even recognise on his handsome features. His voice demanding she listen to him.
A swift glimpse of his family’s house on her journey—the place where they had stayed together, held each other, talked—had almost torn out what little was left of her heart. She had glimpsed John’s past there, what had driven him to do what he did now. She had seen what might have been a home.
But she could not have listened to him after that—not when she was so raw, so furious. She wasn’t sure if she could ever listen. He had betrayed her not once but twice, and she in her infatuation had let him.
The journey had given her time to be quiet and think, to start to mend her heart again, but she was still so very confused. She needed to talk to him, to make sense of everything that swirled in her mind and heart.
Celia studied the crowded chamber, the swirl of fine velvets and silks, the taut voices and brittle laughter. She saw in her mind all that happened—John, Queen Mary and Lord Darnley, Holyrood, Marcus and Allison—had it been real? Or had it been a dream, and this room the only reality?
“Mistress Sutton?” she heard someone say behind her, and she snapped out of her daydream to turn and see one of the Queen’s pages.
“Yes?” she said.
“Her Grace will see you now.”
Celia followed the man through the crowd and past the guards at the doorway. Just as at that first meeting, she was taken through a series of chambers into the inner sanctum of the Queen’s own room, where the page bowed and departed and Celia was left alone with Elizabeth.
They were truly alone now. There were no ladies on the scattered cushions and stools, no Lord Burghley hovering. The household was soon to move to another palace, and there were open crates and cases around the room. The Queen sat at the table by the window, a quill in her
long fingers and papers scattered before her. She wore stark black and white today, her red-gold hair pinned atop her head with pearl combs.
Elizabeth glanced up and smiled. “Ah, Mistress Sutton. You have returned to us.”
Celia sank into a curtsy. “I have, Your Grace.”
“Are you happy to be back in England?”
Happy? Celia wasn’t sure she understood that word now, not for a long time. “Very much.”
Elizabeth gestured to her, jewelled rings sparkling in the firelight. “Then come, sit here with me, and tell me about Scotland. You trapped a villain, so I understand.”
“I played a very small role in that indeed,” Celia answered as she lowered herself onto a stool across from the Queen.
It was John who had fought Lord Knowlton, John who had been wounded, who’d killed the man. John who had done so many things to change her life.
“That is not what I have heard.” Elizabeth sat back in her chair and tilted her head as she studied Celia thoughtfully. Her careful solemnity in that moment was a contrast to her cousin’s merry laughter. “You helped rid us of a traitor in the pay of the French. We owe you our thanks.”
Celia swallowed. “Yet I fear I failed you in your request.”
“Concerning my dearest cousin’s marital intentions?” Elizabeth said. She tapped her fingers on the table. “Aye, I did hear she is quite infatuated with Lord Darnley. She is nursing him through a bout of the measles even as we speak. But you did not fail me, Mistress Sutton. You helped me a great deal.”
Confused, Celia shook her head. “But Your Grace...”
“Do you think me foolish, Mistress Sutton?”
“Not at all, Your Grace!”
Elizabeth laughed. “Good. Growing up, I had to learn to read people very closely, to learn their real fears and desires. To know what they were going to do even before they did it. It was the only way to stay alive at times. I sense you have lived in much the same way, Mistress Sutton.”
Celia could only nod. Her entire life had felt that way until John.
“Aye. You also know that sometimes we must make our hearts cold, deny what we want in order to do our duty. My cousin has been a queen since she was born. She does not understand these things. She doesn’t know what it feels like to lose everything. I knew she would never marry Lord Leicester, or I would never have offered him to her.”
“Oh,” Celia breathed. A slow understanding dawned in her mind, a realisation of how clever Queen Elizabeth had been. How she had moved them all in her game—even Lord Burghley and Darnley.
“You see, Mistress Sutton? I couldn’t allow Mary to ally herself with France or Spain again. It is too perilous. Nor could I give her my Robin. She would not have appreciated him. And he would be too strong a consort. Darnley, on the other hand...”
“Is a cruel, drunken knave,” Celia whispered.
“But a handsome one, charming when he wants to be, and from a family almost as close to the throne as Mary’s. He could maintain a façade long enough to draw in a woman desperate to be married again. Once the crown matrimonial is on his golden head...”
“Disasters will likely ensue,” Celia said. “Very clever, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Mistress Sutton. But you spent much time at my cousin’s Court. Do you think my little scheme will work?”
Celia thought of Mary’s hand on Darnley’s arm, the way she’d laughed with him as they danced. The loneliness in her eyes that Celia understood too well. “Very probably. Queen Mary seems ripe for romance.”
“Then you did serve me well.” Elizabeth rose from her chair and went to the window. She pushed it open to let in the cold breeze, staring out at the garden below, and Celia saw a quick spasm of pain pass over her pale face before her queenly mask fell into place again.
“I can’t help but envy my cousin in one respect, Mistress Sutton,” she said softly.
Celia laughed. “Having Darnley as a husband?” She could not imagine such a thing.
Elizabeth laughed too, and gestured for Celia to join her at the window. “Nay, never that. I would never choose so poorly. Only that she can choose—that she can be married and have someone beside her. A throne can be a cold place alone—as can life.”
Celia peered past the Queen’s shoulder to the garden. A man walked there, tall and broad-shouldered in a green velvet doublet, his black hair covered by a plumed cap. Lord Leicester. He also looked alone as he strode down the path. Elizabeth watched him, her fingers clutching the window frame.
“You have been married, Mistress Sutton,” she said. “Do you miss it?”
“Nay, Your Grace,” Celia answered honestly. She did not miss being married to Thomas Sutton at all.
“Yet you would accept a marriage as a reward for your service to me?”
Celia shrugged, wishing she could push away that old longing for a home, a place to belong. “I have no home, Your Grace. I need a place to be.”
“Yet we don’t need marriage for that.” Elizabeth slanted a speculative look at Celia. “How did you fare on the journey with John Brandon?”
The sound of John’s name, so unexpected and sudden, seemed to hit Celia in her soul. She didn’t know what to say, and stared down at the garden. “Sir John?”
“He is handsome, is he not? Half my ladies are in love with him. Yet he won’t let any of them near—not really. When you two met here...” Elizabeth shook her head. “I see people, Mistress Sutton, as I told you. I know things they don’t even know themselves. But you may leave now. I will consider your reward.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Celia bobbed an unsteady curtsy and made her way out of the chamber.
Such a strange conversation. She scarcely knew what to make of it. Did the Queen know what had happened with her and John? How could she, when Celia hardly knew what had really happened herself?
She walked slowly up the stairs, nodding at greetings, feeling numb and removed from the scene around her. She didn’t know where she was going until she found herself at the door of her chamber.
She pushed it open and stepped over the threshold—only to find John sitting on the edge of her bed.
He watched her as she slowly closed the door behind her, not smiling, his blue eyes glowing.
“Good day, Celia,” he said. “I trust you had a fruitful meeting with the Queen.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So you have returned to England,” she said slowly. Her eyes greedily took him in—every detail, every inch of him. She had thought of him every day on the long journey home, had gone over every word they had shared, all the touches and kisses. Now he was here, with her again, she didn’t know what to say.
She wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him and feel that he was really there with her again.
Yet he was not with her. The short distance between the bed and the door might as well be the distance between Edinburgh and London.
“I left soon after you did and rode hard the whole distance,” he said.
She could see the marks of a fast journey on his face, the harsh lines and dark circles under his eyes that spoke of weariness. His hair looked damp, as if he had just washed it, pushed back from his face to reveal the austere, elegant lines of his features. His doublet was a fine Court garment of crimson velvet, but was only half fastened.
“Such haste,” she murmured.
“I had to see you again,” he said.
His own stare roved hungrily over her face, as if he had missed seeing her. Had he truly missed her? Thought of her when they were apart?
The thought, the longing, made something raw crack inside Celia again. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly as if she could hold it in. Could contain all the emotions that threatened to burst free when she thought of all that had happened in Scotland.
“I wanted to run after you—to run your horse to ground and pull you into my arms until you listened
to me,” he continued harshly, staring into her eyes. “To make you
understand.”
Celia couldn’t bear the look in his eyes, so hungry and hard, for another moment. She shifted away. “Why did you not?” she asked as she went to peer out of the window. She couldn’t even see the half-frozen river below through the haze in her eyes.
“I wanted to. Every primitive instinct in me told me to!” he said ruefully. “But Marcus held me back. He said you needed time to be calm, to think about all that had happened, and that I needed to think as well. He was right.”
Celia gave a choked laugh. “For miles after Edinburgh I half wanted, half feared to hear you coming after me.”
“What would you have done if I had?”
“I do not know. Hit you. Screamed at you. So Marcus was quite right to urge caution.”
She heard a soft rustle as he rose from the bed, the fall of his booted steps on the floor as he crossed the room to stand behind her. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body wrap around her, his breath on the nape of her neck. She trembled and closed her eyes.
“Do you want to scream at me now, Celia?” he said quietly. “Do you hate me?”
She thought she felt the light touch of his finger on her hair, but when she let her head fall back it was gone. Nay, she did not hate him. Perhaps for one moment, in that searing hurt when she had found out what he had done, she’d hated him. Now she knew what kind of world he lived in, what he had to do to survive. Now her feelings were so much more complex, so tangled.
“Did you use me back then, John? To find out information about what my brother and his friends were planning?” she demanded. That question had haunted her for days. “Was that all I was to you? Tell me the truth.”
“Never, Celia,” he said firmly.
His hands closed on her shoulders and spun her round to face him. His eyes burned with a pale blue fire, and she feared she would fall into them and be consumed. Lost.
“I knew you had nothing to do with your brother’s actions. I only...”
“Only what? Tell me! I need to know.”
Tarnished Rose of the Court Page 20
