Tarnished Rose of the Court
Amanda McCabe
BOUND BY ROYAL COMMAND! A dangerous mission at Queen Elizabeth’s bidding is Celia Sutton’s chance to erase the taint of her brother’s treason. Her life is at risk if she’s discovered – and so is her heart when she learns her co-conspirator is also her one-time seducer: brooding and mysterious John Brandon!John can’t believe the change in Celia – what’s happened to the carefree English rose she once was? Leaving Celia was the only thing to do, but now guilt tears at his soul. He has to heal the sadness in her past, and he’s not above using anything – from expert seduction to royal favours – to achieve his goal…
Praise for Amanda McCabe:
A NOTORIOUS WOMAN ‘Court intrigue, poison and murders fill this Renaissance romance. The setting is beautiful …’ —RT Book Reviews
A SINFUL ALLIANCE ‘Scandal, seduction, spies, counter-spies, murder, love and loyalty are skilfully woven into the tapestry of the Tudor court. Richly detailed and brimming with historical events and personages, McCabe’s tale weaves together history and passion perfectly.’ —RT Book Reviews
HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY ‘Smell the salt spray, feel the deck beneath your feet and hoist the Jolly Roger as McCabe takes you on an entertaining romantic ride.’ —RT Book Reviews
‘What has happened to you, Celia?’ he said roughly.
‘What do you mean?’ she gasped. She went very still and stared at the hard angle of his jaw above the high collar of his doublet. A muscle flexed there and his lips were pressed in an angry line.
‘You look like the Celia I remember,’ he said. One hand slid slowly down her arm, rubbing her velvet sleeve over her skin until he touched her bare wrist. Something flared in his eyes as he felt the leap of her pulse, and he twined his fingers with hers.
Celia was too frozen to pull away. She felt like the hawk’s prey, in truth—mesmerised as he swooped closer and closer.
‘You’re even more beautiful than you were then,’ he said, his voice softer and deeper. ‘But your eyes are hard.’
Celia jerked in his arms. ‘You mean I am not the foolish, gullible girl who can be lured by a man’s pretty words? I have learned my lesson well since we last met, John, and I’m grateful for it.’
About the Author
AMANDA McCABE wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA
, RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook.
Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com
Previous novels by the same author:
TO CATCH A ROGUE* (#ulink_fb7a84e8-c0fa-597f-b680-1a1ac17484c5) TO DECEIVE A DUKE* (#ulink_fb7a84e8-c0fa-597f-b680-1a1ac17484c5) TO KISS A COUNT* (#ulink_fb7a84e8-c0fa-597f-b680-1a1ac17484c5) CHARLOTTE AND THE WICKED LORD (in Regency Summer Scandals) A NOTORIOUS WOMAN† (#ulink_fb7a84e8-c0fa-597f-b680-1a1ac17484c5) A SINFUL ALLIANCE† (#ulink_fb7a84e8-c0fa-597f-b680-1a1ac17484c5) HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY† (#ulink_fb7a84e8-c0fa-597f-b680-1a1ac17484c5) THE WINTER QUEEN (in Christmas Betrothals) THE SHY DUCHESS SNOWBOUND AND SEDUCED (in Regency Christmas Proposals) THE TAMING OF THE ROGUE
And in Mills & Boon
Historical Undone! eBooks:
SHIPWRECKED AND SEDUCED†
TO BED A LIBERTINE
THE MAID’S LOVER
TO COURT, CAPTURE AND CONQUER
GIRL IN THE BEADED MASK
UNLACING THE LADY IN WAITING
ONE WICKED CHRISTMAS
* (#ulink_d43ad49b-7372-5b09-b014-61a3c5b087e3)The Chase Muses trilogy † (#ulink_d43ad49b-7372-5b09-b014-61a3c5b087e3)linked by character
Did you know that some of these novelsare also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Author’s Note
When I wrote my book The Winter Queen—the story of Anton Gustavson and Rosamund Ramsay—I was very intrigued by Anton’s cousin Celia Sutton. She seemed so unhappy, so haunted, and I wanted to know why! I wanted to know what had happened to her, and what it would take to make her believe in love again.
I so enjoyed spending time with her and her gorgeous hero in this story. I also enjoyed researching the story’s setting and learning more about Mary Queen of Scots. I knew quite a bit about her late life in English captivity, but not much about her early days back in Scotland after years in France. It was fascinating to read about this time in her very complex and tragic life, but very hard not to shout warnings at her not to marry Darnley!
Her life does indeed slide into disaster after her marriage, just as Queen Elizabeth predicts. For a detailed look at the events surrounding her marriage and its violent unraveling I like Alison Weir’s Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley.
Celia and John’s part in the tale is fiction, of course, but much of what happens to them and the people they meet is part of history. Mary and Darnley, Elizabeth and Burghley—and their disagreements over Mary’s marriage—Mary’s four Marys, the terrible weather on Darnley’s journey to Scotland, Mary’s efforts to recreate a French Court in the rougher environs of Scotland, her religious feud with John Knox, even her excursions out into the city dressed in men’s clothes, are all things I enjoyed incorporating into the story. It also seemed like the perfect backdrop for Celia and John’s tumultuous romance!
If you’d like to read more about this period, there are many, many sources on Mary Queen of Scots. Here are just a few I enjoyed:
—John Guy, The True Life of Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland (2004) —GW Bernard, ed., Power and Politics in Tudor England (2000) —J. Keith Cheetham, On the Trail of Mary Queen of Scots (1999) —Roderick Graham, The Life of Mary Queen of Scots: An Accidental Tragedy (2009) —Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (1969) —G. Donaldson, All the Queen’s Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart’s Scotland (1983) —M. Swain, The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots (1986) —Jane Dunn, Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens (2003) —Caroline Bingham, Darnley: A Life of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Consort of Mary Queen of Scots (1995) —James Mackay, In My End is My Beginning: A Life of Mary Queen of Scots (1999) —Alison Plowden, Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stewart: Two Queens in One Isle (1984) —S. Haynes, ed. State Papers of William Cecil, Lord Burghley —JS Richardson, The Abbey and Palace of Holyroodhouse (1978)
Plus the guidebook to Holyrood, now available at the palace—the photos were invaluable!
Tarnished Rose
of the Court
Amanda McCabe
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To the Martini Club—
Alicia Dean, Christy Gronlund, Kathy Wheeler!
Thanks for the inspiration,
and for always keeping Friday nights fun …
Chapter One
Whitehall Palace, December 1564
It was him.
Suddenly dizzy, Celia Sutton reached out to steady herself against the panelled wall of Queen Elizabeth’s presence chamber. The thick crowd had pressed in around her again, obscuring her view with a sea of jewelled velvet and embroidered satin. The nervous laughter and high-pitched chatter as they waited anxiously to petition the Queen sounded like a flock of birds in her ears, buzzing and formless.
She rubbed her hand over her eyes and looked again, standing on tiptoe to try and peer over the crowd. She could no longer see him. Not even that tiny glimpse of his tall figure by the door. The flash of his careless grin. He was gone.
Or maybe he had never been there at all. Maybe it had just been her imagination playing tricks on her. She had not been sleeping well—had spent too many late nights here at Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas revels. She had too many worries, and it was wearing on her. That was all.
And yet—he had looked so real.
“It was not him,” she whispered. John Brandon was gone. She had not seen him for over three years—three very long, hard years—and she would never see him again. What was more, she did not want to see him. It would only remind her of the foolish girl she’d once been, of her old weakness for his handsome face, and right now she needed all her strength.
She pushed herself away from the wall and took a deep breath, trying to stand perfectly still, to keep herself calm. The Queen would call for her soon, and she had to have all her wits about her when they met. Her entire life depended on it. She should look only to the future now, not to the past. Not to John Brandon.
But still that fleeting image lingered in her mind, that glimpse of his lean, muscled figure through the crowd and the pounding of her heart at the sight. Despite the roaring fire in the stone grates, the close press of the crowd, and her own fur-trimmed black and purple velvet gown, she shivered.
All around her were desperate faces—people who saw their last chance in catching the Queen’s attention. Did she look like them? She feared it was so. What would John say if he could see her now? Would he even recognise her?
The door to the Queen’s privy chamber opened and everyone’s attention turned towards it in the hope their name would now be called. Hope sank down again when they saw it was only Anton Gustavson and Lord Langley, the last parties to be called to consult with Queen Elizabeth. The nervous chatter fluttered anew.
Celia froze when her gaze met Anton’s. He was her long-lost Swedish cousin, recently arrived in England to lay his claim to their grandfather’s estate at Briony Manor. That estate was Celia’s last hope for a comfortable, independent life in which she did not have to answer to the whims of a cruel man any longer. But as she had watched Anton charm the Queen, and every other lady at Court, her hopes had slipped away. He would have the estate, and she would be thrown back to the dubious mercy of her late husband’s family.
Anton gave her a wary nod, and she curtsied in answer. He was the only family she had left, yet she did not know him and could not trust him. That was one of the hard lessons John Brandon had once taught her—never to trust in appearances or emotions. Always to be cautious.
Anton’s latest flirtation, the beautiful golden-blonde Rosamund Ramsay, came to his side and gently touched his arm. He smiled down at her, and they gazed into each other’s eyes as if the crowded chamber, the whole world, had vanished but for the two of them.
A cold sadness washed over Celia at the sight. She had once looked at John like that, sure that he felt that incandescent connection too. But it had been false in the end.
She turned away from the sight of Anton and Rosamund and pretended to study the tapestry on the wall. But the vivid greens and reds of the silken threads blurred in her vision, and she saw only that long-ago summer day. The sun so bright and warm in a cloudless azure sky, the cool shadows under the ancient oak tree where she’d waited for him. Imagining his kisses, the embrace of his strong body …
But he had not come, even after he’d hinted at a future with her. The warm sun had melted away and there had been only the shadows.
It was not him, she told herself fiercely. He was not here. Not now.
The door swung open again, and this time it was the Queen’s major-domo. A tense hush fell over the crowd.
Celia turned around to face him, wiping fiercely at her eyes. She hadn’t cried in three years. She could not start now.
“Mistress Celia Sutton, Her Grace will see you now,” the man announced.
Bitterly envious looks spun towards Celia, but she ignored them and slowly made her way forward. This was her chance. She couldn’t let the memory of John Brandon distract her for even an instant. He had taken too much from her already.
Just inside the door a small looking glass hung on the wall, and she glimpsed her reflection there—the black cap on her smooth, tightly pinned dark hair, the high fur collar of her gown, the jet earrings in her ears. In mourning for a husband she could not truly mourn.
Her face looked chalk-white with worry, just like everyone else’s in that room outside, but red streaked her cheekbones as if in memory of that long-ago summer’s day. Her grey eyes glowed with unshed tears.
She forced them away, clasping her hands tightly before her waist as she followed the major-domo into the inner sanctum of the privy chamber. It was also crowded there, but the atmosphere was lighter, the conversation free of the strained quality outside. Ladies-in-waiting in their pale silks sat on cushions and low stools scattered over the floor and around the marble fireplace, whispering and laughing over their embroidery. Handsome young courtiers played cards in the corner, casting flirtatious glances at the ladies.
But the Queen’s most favourite of all, Robert Dudley, was nowhere to be seen. Everyone said that after the alarming events of the Christmas season, the attempts on the Queen’s life, he worked day and night to ensure the security of the palace. Nor was the Queen’s chief secretary, Lord Burghley, who so rarely left her side, in evidence.
Queen Elizabeth sat by herself next to the window, a table covered with the scrolls of petitions beside her. The pale grey sunlight filtered through the thick glass, turning her red-gold hair into a fiery halo and making her fair ivory skin glow. She wore a splendourous robe of crimson velvet trimmed with white fur over a gold silk gown, rubies on her fingers and in her ears, and a band of pearls holding back her hair.
She looked every inch the young Sun Queen, but her dark eyes were shadowed and the set of her mouth was grim, as if the events of the last few days had taken their toll on her.
Celia had heard that those strange occurrences were not the Queen’s only worries. Parties from Austria and Sweden were at Whitehall to press their marriage suits. Spain and France were constant threats. And the Queen’s cousin to the north, Mary Queen of Scots, was always a thorn in Elizabeth’s side.
It was almost enough to make Celia feel her own troubles were tiny in comparison! No one was trying to kill her or marry her.
“Mistress Sutton,” Queen Elizabeth said. “You have had a long wait, I fear.”
Celia curtsied low and made her way to the Queen’s desk. Elizabeth tapped her long pale fingers on the papers, her rings sparkling. “I’m just grateful Your Grace has the time to meet with me.”
Elizabeth waved her words away. “You may not be so grateful when you hear what I have to say, Mistress Sutton. Please sit.”
A footman leaped forward with a stool, and Celia sank onto it gratefully. She had a terrible feeling this interview would not go as she so fervently wished. “Briony Manor, Your Grace?”
“Aye.” Elizabeth held up a scroll. “It seems clear to us that your grandfather’s wish was for the estate to go to Master Gustavson’s mother and then to him. We feel we cannot go against this.”
Celia felt that chill wash over her again—the cold of disappointment, of an anger she had to suppress. If she could not go to Briony, where could she go? What would be her home? “Yes, Your Grace.”
“I am sorry,” Elizabeth said, and there was a tinge of true regret in her voice. She even used “I” instead of the official “we”. “When I was a girl, I had no true place of my own. No place where I could be assured of my own security. Everything I had was dependent on others—my father, my brother, my sister. Even my life depended on their whims.”
Celia glanced at the Queen in surprise. Elizabeth so seldom spoke of the difficult past. Why would she now, and to Celia of all people? “Your Grace?”
“I know how you must feel, Mistress Sutton. We are alike in some ways, I think. And that is why I sense that I can ask a great favour of you.”
Ask? Or demand? “I will do anything I can to serve Your Grace, of course.”
Elizabeth tapped at the papers again. “You have heard the recent rumours surrounding my cousin Queen Mary, I am sure. She always seems of such acute interest to my courtiers.”
“I—well, aye, Your Grace. I sometimes hear tales of Queen Mary. Is there a specific rumour you refer to?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, yes, there are many. But I refer to the fact that she intends to marry again. They say she has hopes of a union equal to her first with the King of France. I hear she has her sights set on Don Carlos of Spain—King Phillip’s son.”
“I have heard such rumours as well, Your Grace,” Celia said. She had also heard Don Carlos was a violent lunatic, but even a reputed great beauty like Queen Mary seemed willing to overlook that for the chance to be Queen of Spain.
Elizabeth suddenly slammed her fist down on the desk, sending an inkwell clattering to the floor. “That cannot be! My cousin cannot make such a powerful alliance. She is menace enough as it is. I have suggested she should marry an English nobleman. I must have someone I can trust in her Court.”
“Your Grace?” Celia said in confusion. How could she assist in such a task?
Elizabeth lowered her voice to a whisper. “I have a plan, you see, Mistress Sutton. But I will need help to see it carried off.”
“How can I help, Your Grace? I know of no candidates for Queen Mary’s hand.”
“Oh, I will take care of that, Mistress Sutton. I have the perfect candidate in mind—someone I can trust completely. I cannot say who just yet, but I promise you will know all you need to soon.” The Queen sat back in her chair and reached for one of the papers on her desk. “In the meantime my cousin, the Countess of Lennox, who is Mary’s cousin as well, petitions for her son Lord Darnley to be given a passport to visit his father who is now resident in Edinburgh.”
Celia nodded. She knew well of the Countess’s petition, as Lady Lennox had made certain indiscreet confidences to her in the last few days. Lady Lennox hoped that once Queen Mary met Lord Darnley, who was tall, blond and angelically handsome, she would marry him and make him King of Scotland. His own royal lineage would strengthen Mary’s claim to be Elizabeth’s heir.
Celia was not so sure such a plan could work, hinging as it did on Lord Darnley. Even she could see, from her brief time at Court, that he was a drunken braggart under his pretty exterior, and rather too fond of men.
“Yes, Your Grace,” she said.
“It appears Lady Lennox has made a friend of you in these last few days.”
“Lady Lennox has been welcoming to me. But she tells me little except that she misses her husband.”
“I have been reluctant to let Lord Darnley travel north,” Elizabeth said. “He seems the sort it is best to keep an eye on. But Lord Burghley counsels, and I concur, that we should allow him this passport now. He will depart for Scotland in a week’s time.”
“So soon, Your Grace?” Celia was surprised anyone could travel now. It was the coldest winter anyone could remember, with the Thames frozen through. Sensible people stayed home by their fires.
“I think time is imperative in this matter,” the Queen said. “And Lord Darnley seems eager to go. I wish for you, Mistress Sutton, to be one of the travel party.”
Celia tried not to gape at the Queen like a country lackwit. She had no idea what to say or even how to calm her jumbled thoughts. She—go to Scotland? “I fear I do not quite understand how I could help you in Edinburgh, Your Grace.”
Elizabeth gave an impatient sigh. “You will serve Queen Mary as a lady-in-waiting—a gift from me. I need a lady’s close eye on matters there, Mistress Sutton. Men are all very well for certain things, of course, and Burghley will have his spies in the party. But a woman sees things men are blind to—especially when it comes to other women. I need to know Mary’s true thoughts concerning her possible marriage. And I need to know if she is … persuadable in that regard.”
“And you believe I can do that?” Celia said carefully.
Elizabeth laughed. “I am sure you can. I have been watching you these last few days, Mistress Sutton, and I see how you notice everything around you. How you observe and listen. I need someone like that. Not a preening Court peacock who sees nothing but the cut of their own coat. It is vital that I know everything my cousin does right now. The security of our northern borders depends on her marital choice.”
Celia nodded. She knew how unpredictable the Scottish Queen could be. Everyone knew that. And Celia did watch and listen; it was the only way for a woman alone to survive. She also knew how limited her own choices were. With no money or estate of her own, and no husband or family to lean on, she was dependent on the Queen’s favour.
Better that than the cold charity of her in-laws.
“You would be rewarded for your efforts, of course,” the Queen said. “As soon as Queen Mary’s marriage is settled satisfactorily and you have returned to our Court you shall have a marriage of your own. The finest I can arrange, I promise you, Mistress Sutton. And then you will be settled for life.”
Celia would rather have an estate of her own than another husband. In her experience husbands were useless things. But for now she would take what the Queen offered—and renegotiate later.
“What would be a—a satisfactory settlement?” she asked.
Elizabeth smiled and slid a folded letter from under the ledger on her desk to give to Celia. “This will tell you all you need to know, Mistress Sutton. I intend to propose my own marital candidate to Mary. When you have messages to send to me, you may give them to my own trusted contact and he will see they reach me quickly.”
Celia tucked the letter into her velvet sleeve. “Contact, Your Grace?”
“Aye. You can meet him now.” Elizabeth gestured to the major-domo, who bowed and disappeared through a door tucked into the panelling. He returned in only a moment, followed by a tall, lean man clad in fashionable black and tawny velvet and satin.
John Brandon. It was him she had seen before. He was no illusion. Celia half rose at the sight of him, and then fell back onto her stool. She felt cold all over again.
His eyes—those bright sky-blue eyes she had once loved so much—widened when they glimpsed her. For a fleeting instant she saw a flare of emotion in their depths. A hint of a smile touched his lips. But a veil quickly fell over those eyes, and she could read nothing there but fashionable boredom. He gave no signs of recognising her at all.
“Ah, Sir John, there you are,” Queen Elizabeth said. She waved him forward, holding out her hand for him to bow over. He gave her an elaborate salute and a flirtatious grin that made her laugh.
“Your Grace outshines the sun itself,” he said. “Even in the midst of the winter you send us warmth and light.”
“Flatterer,” the Queen said, laughing even harder.
Celia remembered that smile all too well, and how it also had made her laugh and blush whenever he turned it in her direction. Back then it had been half hidden in a close-cropped beard. Now he was clean-shaven, the sharp, elegant angles of his chiselled face revealed and the full force of that smile unleashed.
From the corner of her eye Celia saw some of the young ladies-in-waiting sigh and giggle. Yes, she remembered very well that feeling—that sense of melting under the heat of his smile. But that had been long ago, and she had learned the painful consequences of falling under John Brandon’s spell.
“Sir John, this is Mistress Celia Sutton, who will also be journeying to Scotland,” Queen Elizabeth said. She lowered her voice to whisper confidentially, “She will give you any messages to be dispatched directly to me. You must see that she stays safe in Edinburgh.”
A frown flickered over John’s face, as if he was not happy with the task. But he could not be any less happy than Celia. Her heart sank in appalled confusion. She would have to travel with him? Confide in him?
She had the wild impulse to leap from her seat, cry out that she refused the Queen’s task and run from the room. But she forced herself to stay where she was, biting her lip until she tasted blood to keep from shouting. She could not refuse the Queen. There was nowhere for her to run.
John’s frown vanished as quickly as Celia had glimpsed it. He bowed again and said, “I am Your Grace’s servant in all things,” he said.
Elizabeth leaned back in her chair with a smug little cat’s smile. “Come now, Sir John. This is surely far from the most onerous task I have asked of you. Mistress Sutton is quite pretty, is she not? I’m sure spending time with her will not be so difficult on your long journey.”
Celia froze at the Queen’s teasing words. John’s glance flickered over her with not much interest. “I fear that when Your Grace is near I can see nothing else,” he said.
Elizabeth laughed. “Nevertheless, I expect the two of you will work together very well. Your mother was Scottish, was she not, Sir John?”
A muscle tightened along John’s jaw. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“She even lived at the Court of Queen Mary’s mother, when Marie of Guise was Regent, I believe?” Elizabeth said carelessly, as if those years when the English and Scottish armies under Queen Marie de Guise had been at bitter war was a mere trifle. “So you should be able to assist Mistress Sutton in learning the ways of the Scottish Court. Perhaps you will even rediscover your own family there.”
“I have no family but that of England, Your Grace,” he said tightly.
Elizabeth waved this away and said, “You may both leave us now. You will have a great many tasks to prepare for your journey, and I must finish these petitions before tonight’s banquet.”
Celia rose slowly from her stool and curtsied, her legs trembling and unsteady. She still could not quite believe all that happened in this strange short meeting. Her worries of having no home or income had been whisked away, only to be replaced by the sudden reappearance of John Brandon and a journey to Scotland to spy on Queen Mary. Her head spun with it all.
She would have laughed if it was not so coldly serious.
John bowed to the Queen, and the major-domo came forward again to lead them away. He took them not to the crowded presence chamber but through a hidden door into a small, dimly lit closet. After the brightness of the privy chamber Celia could see nothing but the shadow of heavy tapestries on dark wood walls.
She rubbed her hand over her eyes and took a deep breath. When she looked again the servant was gone—and she was alone with John.
He watched her closely, his lean, muscled shoulders tense and his handsome face wiped of all expression.
“Hello, Celia,” he said quietly. “It has been a long time, has it not?”
Chapter Two
Celia stared up at John in the shadows of the closet. The faint, hazy bars of light fell over his face, and she saw that the years had changed him just as they had her. He was leaner, harder, his eyes a wintry, icy blue as they studied her warily.
Once she had thought those eyes as warm as a summer sky, melting her heart, piercing all her defences. But now her heart was a stone, a heavy weight within her that was numb to all feeling. It was better this way. Feelings were deceptive, treacherous. Never to be trusted.
Especially when it came to this man.
Celia stepped back until she felt the hard wood panelling of the wall against her shoulders. He didn’t move, yet his eyes never wavered from her face and it felt as if he followed her. It felt as if he pressed up against her in that dim, quiet light, his hard, hot body touching her as it once had. Demanding a response from her.
She twisted her hands into her skirts, struggling not to look away from him. Not to show her weakness.
“Aye, it has been a long while,” she said, once she finally found her voice again.
The last time she’d seen him he had been kissing her beneath that tree, their secret meeting place. His body had held her against the rough wood of the trunk, just as she braced herself to the wall now. He had kissed her, his mouth and tongue claiming hers, demanding she give him all her response as he dragged her skirt up, baring her to his touch. There had been such a wild desperation between them that day, a need such as she had never known. He had made her dream of a romantic, glorious future with him.
And the next day he was gone. Vanished without a word.
“Yet not nearly long enough,” she said coldly. “I thought never to see you again.”
His glance swept down over her again, taking in her austere gown, her ringless fingers, the tight, smooth twist of her hair. For an instant another image flashed in her mind. John taking her hair down, freeing it from its pins and running his hands through its heavy length. Calling it a fairy queen’s hair as he buried his face in it …
Those all-seeing blue eyes focused on her face again, narrowing as he watched her closely, as if seeking her thoughts. Once she had gifted him with all she was, given herself to him in every way.
She hoped she was no longer such a fool. She looked back at him with a steady, cool daring. Let him try to read her, play her again. The besotted, silly, giddy Celia he’d once known was gone. John had killed her—with the able assistance of her wretched husband and foolish brother.
“I’ve thought of you, Celia,” he said.
She quickly scrambled to cover her surprise at his words. He had thought of her? Surely not. Unless it had been to chuckle at her naivety. The country girl who had fallen so easily for his charm, his dalliance to pass the time of rural exile.
Celia laughed. “I would have thought Court life would be far too busy for any idle nostalgia, John. So many tournaments to win, ladies to woo. I’m sure every moment is filled for a man of your … assets.”
She let her gaze drift down over his body—the long, lean line of his legs in his tall leather boots, the snake-like hips and powerful shoulders. The years had not softened him one bit.
Her stare slid over the bulge in his breeches and she had to turn away. She remembered that part of him all too well … hot velvet over steel, sliding against her, inside of her.
“Aye,” she said tightly. “You must be busy indeed.”
Something seemed to crack in his iron control then. As fast as the strike of a hawk diving for its prey he seized her arms in his hard hands and held her against the wall. Those blue eyes she had thought so icy burned down at her in a white-hot blaze.
Celia could feel her own carefully built walls slipping and she struggled to hold onto them. Nay, this could not be happening! Five minutes in John’s presence could not be destroying all she had built up to protect herself. She twisted away from him but he wouldn’t let her go.
“Let me go!” she cried. His hands just tightened, holding her between the wall and his body. The heat of him, the vital, fiery life that had always been a part of him, wrapped around her like velvety unbreakable bonds. She remembered the tenderness, the need she had once felt with him.
“What has happened to you, Celia?” he said roughly.
“What do you mean?” she gasped.
She went very still and stared at the hard angle of his jaw above the high collar of his doublet. A muscle flexed there and his lips were pressed in an angry line. She imagined twisting her hands in that collar, tighter and tighter, until he let her go. Until she could hurt him as he had once hurt her.
“You look like the Celia I remember,” he said. One hand slid slowly down her arm, rubbing her velvet sleeve over her skin until he touched her bare wrist. Something flared in his eyes as he felt the leap of her pulse, and he twined his fingers with hers.
Celia was too frozen to pull away. She felt like the hawk’s prey in truth, mesmerised as he swooped closer and closer.
“You’re even more beautiful than you were then,” he said, his voice softer and deeper. “But your eyes are hard.”
Celia jerked in his arms. “You mean I am not a foolish, gullible girl who can be lured by a man’s pretty words? I have learned my lesson well since we last met, John, and I’m grateful for it.”
He raised the hand he held to study her fingers. The pale skin and neat buffed nails. His thumb brushed over her bare ring finger. Celia tried to twist out of his caress, but despite his deceptive gentleness he held her fast.
“You aren’t married?” he asked.
“Not any longer,” she answered with a bitter laugh. “Thanks to God’s mercy. And I intend never to be again.”
He raised her hand, and to her shock pressed his mouth to the hollow of her palm. His lips were parted, and she could feel the moist heat of him moving slowly over her skin. It made her legs tremble, her whole treacherous body go weak, and she braced herself tighter against the wall.
That weakness, that rush of need she had thought she was finished with, made her angry. She made herself go stiff and unyielding, building her defensive walls up again stone by hard-won stone.
“I may have changed, John, but you certainly have not,” she said coldly. “You still take what you want with no thought for anyone else. A conquering warrior who discards whatever no longer amuses you.”
His mouth froze on her skin. Slowly he raised his head and his stare met hers. She almost gasped at the raw, elemental fury she saw in those depths. The blue had turned almost black, like the power of a summer storm.
“You know nothing of me,” he whispered, and it was all the more forceful for its softness. “Nothing of what I have had to do in my life.”
I know you left me! her mind cried out. Left her to the cruel hands of her husband, to a life where she had nowhere to turn for sanctuary. She bit down on her lip to keep from shouting the words aloud.
“I know I do not want to work with you on the Queen’s business,” she said.
“No more than I want to work with you,” he answered. With one more hard glance down her body, he abruptly let her go and spun away from her. His back and shoulders were rigid as he raked his hands through his hair. “But the Queen has commanded it. Would you go against her orders?”
Celia braced her palms against the wall, trying to still the primitive urge to smooth the light brown waves of his hair where he had tousled them. “Of course I would not go against the Queen.”
“Then to Edinburgh we go,” he said.
He heaved in a deep breath, and Celia could practically see his armour lowered back into place. He shot her a humourless smile over his shoulder.
“I shall see you at the ball tonight, Celia.”
She watched him leave the small closet, the door clicking shut behind him. She was surrounded by heavy silence, pressing in on her from every corner until she nearly screamed from it.
She let herself slide down the wall until she sat in the puddle of her skirts. Her head was pounding, and she let it drop down into her hands as she struggled to hold back the tears.
She had thought her life could become no worse, no more complicated. But she had been wrong. Sir John Brandon was the greatest, most terrible complication of all.
God’s blood. Celia Sutton.
John shoved the pile of documents away so violently that many of them fluttered to the floor, and slumped back in his chair. It was of vital importance that he read all of them, that he knew exactly what he would be up against in Scotland, yet all he could see, all he could think about, was Celia.
Celia. Celia.
He raked his fingers hard through his hair, but she wouldn’t be dislodged from his mind. Those cool grey eyes watching him in the shadows of that closet, sliding down his body as if she was remembering exactly what he was remembering himself.
The hot touch of bare skin to bare skin, mouths and hands exploring, tasting.
Her keening cries as he entered her, joined with her more deeply and truly than he ever had with anyone before. Or since.
But then her regard had changed in an instant, becoming hard and distant, cold as the frozen Thames outside his window. His Celia—the woman whose secret memory had sustained him for so long, despite everything—was gone.
Or maybe she was just hidden, buried behind those crossed swords he’d seen in this new, hard Celia’s eyes. It was clear she had walled herself away from something, that her soul had been deeply wounded, and no matter what they had once been to each other she wouldn’t let him reach her now. And she was quite right. One of those wounds on her soul had been placed there by him.
Once he had wanted her more than anything else in the world. She had awakened things in him he had thought he could never feel. He had even dared to dream of a future with her for one brief, bright moment. That connection was still there, after all these years. When he’d touched her it had been as if he could sense her thoughts, her fury, her passion. Hatred so close to lust he’d almost tasted it, because it had called out to the yearnings he felt just as strongly.
It had taken every ounce of his iron control not to push her to the floor, shove her skirts above her waist, raise her hips in his hands and drive his tongue into her. Taste her, feel her, until her walls fell and his Celia was with him again. The girl who had once made him smile.
He groaned as he felt the tightness in his codpiece, half-hard ever since he’d first touched her, lengthen. Just the memory of how she tasted, like summer honey, the way she would drive her fingers into his hair and pull him closer between her legs, had him aroused.
But if the murderous look in her eyes was any indication, memories were as close as he would ever get to that part of her again.
John pushed himself up from his chair and strode over to the window of his small chamber. He opened the casement to let the freezing wind rush over him, despite the fact that he had discarded his doublet and wore only a thin linen shirt. He needed the cold to remind him of his task, his duty. He had never failed in his service to the Queen. He couldn’t fail now, no matter how much Celia distracted him.
He could see the river, a frozen silver ribbon as grey and icy as Celia’s eyes. This Christmas season had been the coldest anyone could remember, so frigid the Thames had frozen solid and a frost fair was set up on the surface. It had warmed a bit in the quiet days after the Christmas revels, but chunks of ice still floated along the water and the people who dared to go outside were muffled in cloaks and scarves.
And he would have to travel to Scotland in the cold—and take Celia with him. Long days huddled together for heat, nights in secluded inns, bound together in danger and service to Queen Elizabeth. Surely there she would open to him? Surely there he could destroy all her shields, one by one, until his Celia was revealed to him again?
Nay! John cracked his palm down hard on the windowsill, splintering the cold brittle wood. This journey was meant to neutralise the constant threat of Queen Mary and her possible marriage alliances, not to be a chance for him to lose himself in Celia all over again. To dream of what he could never have. He had to remember that always.
Any chance he and Celia had ever had was long lost.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Enter!” John barked, louder than he’d intended. His temper was on edge and he had to rein it in.
But he hadn’t completely concealed his anger when his friend Lord Marcus Stanville came into the room, caught a glimpse of John’s face, and raised his dark golden brow.
“Perhaps I should come back another time,” Marcus said. “If I don’t want my nose bashed in by your fist.”
John grinned reluctantly and shook his head. He sat back down in his chair and rubbed at the back of his neck. “The ladies of the Court would never forgive me if I ruined your pretty face.”
Marcus gave an answering grin and shook back the long, tawny mane the ladies also loved. If they hadn’t been friends since childhood, fostered in the same household after their parents died, John would surely hate the popinjay.
Yet he knew that the handsome face concealed a devious mind and a quick sword arm. They had saved each other’s lives more than once.
“They do seem terribly fond of my visage just as it is,” Marcus said, carelessly sprawling out in the other chair. “But a judiciously placed wound or two might elicit some sympathy in the heart of a certain lady …”
“Lady Felicity again?”
“Aye. She’s a hard-hearted wench.”
John laughed. “You just aren’t accustomed to chasing. Usually women throw themselves under your feet for a mere smile.”
Marcus gave a snort. “Says the man who has every woman in London lining up for his bed.”
John scowled as he remembered Celia’s grey eyes, cold as the winter sky when she looked at him. “Not every woman,” he muttered.
“What? Never say a lady has refused Sir John Brandon! Have pigs been seen flying over London Bridge? Has Armageddon arrived?”
John threw a heavy book at Marcus’s laughing head. Marcus merely ducked and tossed it right back.
“I never thought to see this day,” Marcus said. “No wonder you looked so thunderstruck.”
“Enjoy it while you can,” John said. “For soon enough we will be on our way to bloody freezing Edinburgh.”
Marcus grew sombre. “Aye, so we will. ‘Tis not an assignment I relish, playing nursemaid to that drunken lordling lout Darnley. I wager the devil himself couldn’t keep him out of trouble.”
“I think there is more to this journey than that,” John said.
Marcus sat forward in his chair, his hands braced on his knees. “You’ve talked to Burghley, then?”
“Not as yet, but I’m sure we will be summoned tomorrow.”
“Will it be like our journey to Paris?”
John remembered Paris and what had happened there. The deceptions and danger. The sorrow over what had happened with Celia. “The Scottish Queen is always a thorn in Elizabeth’s side.”
“And will we have to pluck it out?”
“I fear so. One way or another.” All while John dealt with his own thorn—one with the softest, palest skin beneath her barbs. “The Queen is sending someone else to Edinburgh as well.”
Marcus groaned. “As well as Darnley and his cronies?”
“Aye. Mistress Celia Sutton.” Even saying her name, feeling it on his tongue, twisted something deep inside him. Those tender feelings he had once had for her haunted him now.
“Celia Sutton?” Marcus said, his eyes widening. “She could freeze a man’s balls off just with a look.”
John gave a harsh laugh as he remembered the erection that had only just subsided. An almost painful hardness just from her look, her touch. The smell of her skin. “She is to be the Queen’s own emissary—a representative to show Elizabeth’s affections to her cousin.”
“She might as well have sent a poisoned ring, then,” Marcus scoffed. “Though there is something about Mistress Sutton that seems …”
His voice trailed away, and his eyes sharpened with speculation as he looked at John.
John held up his hand. “Do not even say it.”
They had been friends so long that Marcus obviously saw the warning in John’s face. He shrugged and pushed himself to his feet.
“Your passions are your own business, John,” he said, “no matter how strange. Just as mine are. And now I must go and dress for the Queen’s ball. I have little time left to woo Lady Felicity before we leave for hell.”
Marcus strode from the room, leaving John alone to his brooding thoughts again. He looked back outside, to where the cold winter night was quickly closing in. Torches flickered along the banks of the river, the only light in the cloud-covered city.
It felt as if he was already in hell. He had been for three years—ever since he’d betrayed Celia and thus lost her for ever. The only woman he could have dared to envisage a future with had been her.
Chapter Three
Celia stared at her reflection in the small looking glass as the maidservant brushed and plaited her hair before pinning it up in a tightly wound knot. She was even gladder now that the Queen had given her a rare, precious private chamber, away from anyone else’s prying eyes and gossiping tongues. Anyone looking at her now would surely see the agitation in her eyes, the way she could not keep her hands still.
She twisted them harder in her lap, buried them in the fur trim of her robe. She had to go down to the ball soon, and there she would have to smile and talk as if nothing was amiss. She would have to listen and watch, to learn all she could about the hidden reasons for this sudden journey to Edinburgh. She had to be wary and cautious as always, careful of every step.
She closed her eyes, suddenly so weary. She had been cautious every day, every minute, for three years. Would the rest of her life be like this? She was very much afraid it would. Thomas Sutton was dead, but the taut wariness was still there. The certainty of pain.
In an unconscious gesture she rubbed at her shoulder. It was long healed, but sometimes she could vow she still felt it. She had fought so hard for control. She would not lose it now. Not because of him.
Behind her closed eyes she saw John Brandon’s face, half in mysterious shadow as he held her to the wall, his blue eyes piercing through her like a touch, as if he saw past her careful armour to everything she kept hidden. His hands on her had roused so much within her—things she’d thought long-dead and buried, things she’d thought she could never feel again because her marriage had killed them in her.
One look from John scared her more than any of Thomas’s blows ever could. Because Thomas had not known her, had never possessed her. Not really. She had always hidden her true self from him even as he’d tried to beat it from her. But John had once possessed all of her, everything she had to offer, and because of him it was gone now.
“Are you quite well, Mistress Sutton?” she heard the maid ask, bringing her back to the present moment.
Celia opened her eyes and gave the girl a polite smile. “Just a bit of a headache. It will soon pass.”
“Shall I loosen your hair a bit, then? A style of loose curls here and here is quite fashionable.”
Celia studied herself in the looking glass. Her hair was already dressed as it always was, the heavy black waves tightly plaited and pinned in a knot at the nape of her neck. Since it was a ball, a beaded black caul covered the knot, but that was its only decoration. It was all part of the armour.
“Nay, this will do,” she said, slipping on her jet and pearl earrings. “I will dress now.”
She eased out of her robe and let the maid help her into her gown: a bodice and overskirt of black velvet with a stomacher and petticoat of glossy purple brocade trimmed with jet beads. Her sleeves were also black, tied with purple ribbons. Even her shoes and the garters that bound her white silk stockings were black.
Thomas had been dead for many months. She could put aside mourning and wear colours again, the blues and greens she had once loved, but she liked the reminder of where she had been. Where she vowed never to be again. The half-world of mourning suited her.
Celia held up her arm for the maid to lace on the tight sleeves and pluck bits of the white chemise between the ribbons. As she stared at the fireplace she let herself drift away, just for a moment, and remember when she first met John.
She’d been just a silly girl then, who had never been to Court, never away from her family and their country gentry neighbours. John Brandon had been sent to stay with his uncle at a nearby estate, exiled from Court for some unknown scandal. He’d been meant to rusticate until he had learned his lesson and repented.
That dark hint of some roguish secret had made her cousins all afire with speculation even before they’d met him, and Celia had not been immune to it. She’d liked to sit by the fire of a winter evening and listen to romantic tales as much as any young lady, and a handsome rake from London seemed a perfect part of such stories. Then, when she had seen him at last, a glimpse across his uncle’s hall at a banquet …
It had been as if the whole world tipped upside down and everything looked completely different. His eyes, his smile, the way he strode through the crowd right to her side and kissed her hand—she’d been dazzled.
Celia shook her head hard now as she remembered. Foolish, foolish girl.
And now foolish woman. For hadn’t she almost melted all over again when he touched her today?
But the next time they met, touched, she would be the one in control. She had to be.
As soon as the maid had finished adjusting her gown she fastened a black feather fan and a silver pomander to the chain girdle at her waist. As she had no sword, they would have to do.
But when the maid turned away she bent and gathered up her skirts to tuck a small dagger in the sheath at her garter. She could not go down there completely unarmed.
As she made her way down the many staircases and along the twisting corridors of the palace the crowd grew thicker the closer she came to the great hall. After the nightly revels of Christmas Celia would have thought the courtiers would be weary of Queen Elizabeth’s glittering displays, but there was a hum of excitement in the air, in the buzz of laughter and chatter around her as she was swept along.
She could hear music—the lively strains of a galliard—and the thunderous pattern of dancing feet. All around her was the rustle of fine satins, the flash of jewels, the smell of expensive perfumes, warm skin and wine. It all made her head spin, but she was caught in the tide now and could not get away. She was swept inexorably into the hall.
She slid her way through the crowd to a spot near one of the tapestry-hung walls, a little apart from all the frantic laughter, the jostling for position. She couldn’t breathe when she was caught in the very midst of it all, buffeted by so many touches, so much desperate energy.
She took a goblet of wine from one of the servants in the Queen’s livery and sipped at the rich red French wine as she studied the gathering. She prayed John would not be there, would not see her. She had barely recovered her hard-won composure after their last meeting. His body close to hers, his heat and scent in that dark closet …
Celia took a long gulp of the wine, and then another. She usually only drank small beer, slowly, always remembering what a monster drink had made of her husband. How it had destroyed her father after what had happened to her poor brother. But tonight she needed every fortification she could find.
As the wine warmed her blood she examined the company. The Queen led the dancing with her handsome Robert Dudley, who was now the Earl of Leicester, reputedly to make him of a stature worthy to be the Queen of Scots’s consort. Queen Elizabeth’s red-gold hair shimmered brighter than her gold brocade gown as she laughed and leaped, twirling higher and lighter than everyone else. The troubles of the last few weeks, and the troubles sure to come, seemed forgotten in the music and merriment.
Celia’s gaze trailed over the Countess of Lennox, a great, large woman in black who stood near another wall and studied the revels with her lips pressed tightly together. She gave Celia a quick nod before turning to her son. Lord Darnley sulked and drank by her side, though even Celia knew he would not be there long. He could not stay away from his debauched pleasures for more than an hour.
He was handsome, Celia would admit that—very tall and lean, with golden hair and fine Tudor features. But, like his mother’s, his mouth had a cruel cast that Celia recognised all too well. She didn’t trust him, and she didn’t know what game Queen Elizabeth played with him, Leicester and Mary.
She definitely did not know why she had to be involved in the messy quagmire. But beggars could not be choosers.
“Good evening to you, cousin.” She heard a deep, quiet voice, lightly touched with a Scandinavian accent, behind her.
She turned to face the very man she had once blamed for that beggaring: her cousin Anton Gustavson. They had never known each other; his mother—her father’s sister—had married a Swedish nobleman and disappeared to the frozen north before Celia was born. Then he’d appeared here at Court, with a party sent to woo the Queen on behalf of the Swedish King—and to claim a family estate Celia had hoped to have for her own. The last remnant of her family’s lost fortune.
She had blamed Anton bitterly for this final disappointment. But now, as she looked into his wary dark eyes, she could no longer blame him. He sought his own redemption here in England, and perhaps he had found it with his new estate and his Lady Rosamund.
Celia still had to find hers.
“And good evening to you, too—cousin,” she said. “Where is Lady Rosamund? Everyone says you two are quite inseparable of late.”
“Not entirely so,” Anton said. He gestured towards the dance floor, now a whirling stained-glass mosaic of brilliant jewels and silks. “She is dancing with Lord Marcus Stanville.”
Celia saw that Rosamund did indeed dance with Lord Marcus, their two golden heads close together as he whirled her up into the air.
“Lord Marcus Stanville—one of the greatest flirts at Court,” Celia said as she finished her wine and exchanged the empty goblet for a full one. “I’m surprised.”
Anton laughed. “Rosamund is immune to his blandishments.”
“But not to yours?”
He arched his dark brow at her. “Nay. Not to mine. We are soon to be married.”
Celia swallowed hard on her sip of wine and carefully studied the dancers. A cold, hard knot pressed inside her, low and aching. Once she’d had the foolish hope she could marry someone she loved too.
“My felicitations to you, cousin,” she said. “Surely you did not expect quite so much here when you left Sweden?”
“I had hoped to find family here,” Anton said. “And you and I are all that is left. Can we not cry pax and be friends?”
Celia studied him over the silver rim of her goblet. Aye, he was her family. All she had. For an instant she thought she glimpsed a resemblance to her father in his eyes, and that hard knot inside her tightened. How she missed her family sometimes. She was so alone without them.
“Pax, cousin,” she said, and slowly held out her hand to him.
Anton gave a relieved laugh and bowed over her hand. “You are most welcome at our home at any time, Celia.”
Celia shook her head. “You needn’t worry, Anton. I shall not be the dark fairy at the feast. The Queen is sending me on an errand, and I probably shan’t be back for some time.”
A frown flickered over his face. “What sort of errand?”
Celia opened her mouth to give some vague answer, but she stopped at a sudden sensation of heat on the back of her neck. She pressed her fingers over the spot, just below the tight twist of her hair, and shivered.
She glanced over her shoulder and met John Brandon’s bright blue eyes staring right at her. Burning. His head tilted slightly to one side, as if he was considering her, as if she was a puzzle, then he moved towards her.
Celia reacted entirely on instinct. She shoved her empty goblet into Anton’s hand and said, “Excuse me. I must go now.”
“Celia, what …?” Anton said, his voice startled, but Celia was gone.
She only knew she had to run, to get away, before John could catch her and strip her soul bare with those eyes as he had come so close to doing earlier.
The hall was even more crowded and noisy than before, and Celia had to elbow her way past knots of people. She was a small woman, though, and slid past the worst of the crowds and into the corridor. She could still hear the high-pitched hum of voices, but it seemed muted and blurred, as sounds heard underwater. The air pressed in on her, hot and close.
Yet she could still vow she heard the soft, inexorable fall of his boots on the floor, coming closer.
“I am going mad,” she whispered. She lifted the heavy hem of her skirts and hurried to the end of the corridor, where it turned onto another and then another. Whitehall was a great maze. It was quieter here, darker, the narrow, dim length lit at intervals by flickering torches set high in their sconces. She heard a soft giggle from behind one of the tapestries, a low male groan.
She didn’t know which way to go, and that moment’s hesitation cost her. She felt hard fingers close over her arm and spin her around.
She lost her footing and fell against a velvet-covered chest. Her hands automatically braced against that warm, solid wall and a diamond button pressed into her soft palm. It was John. She could smell him, knew his touch. The hawk had swooped down and caught its prey.
She forced herself to freeze, to go perfectly still and not panic and run again.
“Do you have an urgent appointment somewhere, Celia?” he asked quietly. “You certainly seem in a great hurry.”
Celia tried carefully to move away from him, slide out of his hold on her arms, but it seemed she was not unobtrusive enough. His other arm came around her, a steel bar at her back.
She eased her hands down his chest, and that hold tightened and kept her where she was. Her head was tucked under his chin, and she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart under her palm.
Her own heart was racing. She couldn’t breathe too deeply because his scent was all around her. She closed her eyes and sought out the icy centre that had held her together all these years. The distance that had saved her. It was not there now. He had torn it away.
“I am tired,” she said. “I merely sought to retire. There was no need to chase me down like this.”
John gave a low, rough chuckle. “Usually when a woman runs like that she wants to be chased.”
“Like a doomed deer on the Queen’s hunt?” Celia choked out. She had been on such hunts, had seen Queen Elizabeth cut the fallen deer’s heart out. Celia had thought she herself had no heart left to be ripped out. It seemed she was wrong. There was still one small, hidden part of it, bleeding, and he was dangerously close to touching it again.
John had surely chased scores of eager women since they had last met, and held them thus. Kissed them in the darkness until they happily bled for him too.
“I am not most women,” she said, and tried once more to wrench out of his arms.
He only held her closer, until she felt her feet actually leave the floor. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her backwards until she felt the cold stone wall at her back, chilly through her brocade bodice.
Her eyes flew open to find he had carried her into a small window embrasure, where they were surrounded by darkness and silence.
“Nay,” he said. “You, Celia Sutton, are quite unlike any other woman in all England.” His voice held the strangest, most unreadable tone—bemused, angry.
“And you know all of them, I am sure,” she muttered.
John laughed and eased her back another step. He braced his palms to the wall on either side of her head, holding her trapped by his body as he had earlier. “Your faith in my stamina is quite heartening, my fairy queen. But I have only had twenty-eight years on this earth. Alas, not long enough to find all the women out there.”
Hearing his old name for her—fairy queen—once whispered in her ear as they embraced in a forest grove, snapped something inside Celia. He had no right to call her that. Not any longer.
Before she could think, her hand shot out and her fingers curled hard around his manhood.
He froze, and she heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. His eyes narrowed as he stared down at her, and the very air around them seemed to crackle with a new tension. This strange game, whatever it was, was shifting and changing.
The codpiece of his breeches was not a fashionably elaborate one, and she could feel the outline of him through the fine velvet. He was already semi-erect, and as her fingers tightened he stirred and lengthened. Oh, yes, she did remember this—how he liked to be touched. Caressed. She felt her hard-won sense of control steal back over her.
She twisted her wrist to cradle the underside of his penis on her palm and slowly, slowly traced her way up. She remembered how it felt naked, hot satin over steel, the vein just there throbbing with his life force. She reached its base, and with another twist of her fingers she held his testicles.
“Is this what happens when you catch your prey, John?” she whispered. She stroked a soft caress, lightly scraping the edge of her thumbnail over him.
She could feel the burn of his eyes on her as he held himself rigid around her. For once she had caught him unbalanced. He didn’t know which way she would jump. And neither did she. Not any longer. He did that to her.
She had acted on instinct, reaching out to bring her control back. But it seemed to be slipping even further away.
“Usually they get down on their knees to me and take me in their mouths about now,” John said crudely.
One hand left the wall by her head and she felt his finger press lightly to her lower lip. He traced the soft skin there. The merest whisper of a touch.
Celia gasped, and he used that small movement to slide his finger into her mouth, over her tongue. She jerked her head back, but she could still taste him—salt and wine. She wished she could pull away from him and snatch her dagger from its sheath on her thigh, plunge it into his heart so he could not touch her heart again.
“That will never happen,” she said.
“Nay? I think it will in my dreams tonight,” John answered. “But perhaps you want me on my knees to you instead?”
Before she knew what he was doing, he’d deftly twisted out of her grasp and arched his body back from hers. The hand that had been at her mouth slid all the way down to her skirts and drew up the heavy fabric until her legs were bare. The white stockings glowed in the darkness.
As Celia watched in frozen shock he fell to his knees before her and let those skirts fall back over him. She tried to kick him away, but his strong hands closed over the soft, bare skin of her thighs above those stockings. He caressed her there, on the tender inner curve of her leg, and pressed her legs further apart.
Then she felt his hot breath soft on the vulnerable curve of her, light as a sigh, just before his tongue plunged inside.
God’s blood. Her eyes slammed shut and her palms pressed hard to the wall at the trembling, burning rush of sensation that shot through her body. Oh, dear heaven, but she had forgotten how it felt when he did that!
Just as she had remembered how he liked to be touched, he remembered how she liked to be kissed there. He licked up—one languorous stroke, then another—before flicking at that tiny, hidden spot with the tip of his tongue. She felt herself contract at the pleasure, felt a rush of moisture trickle onto her inner thigh, and he groaned.
How she wanted him. How she had missed him, missed this, the feeling of being so wondrously, vitally alive. It had been so long. She had been dead inside for so long …
For just an instant she let herself feel it, let him pleasure her. This was John. The only man who had ever touched her heart. But then his hand closed hard on her thigh, just above the dagger, stroking her there so tenderly. So deceptively—just like before.
Before he’d destroyed her.
With a ragged sob she jerked herself away from him. She pulled her skirts from above his head and sent him toppling to the floor. But she also lost her own balance, and fell heavily on her hip against the wall. She leaned onto the cold stone for support and tried not to cry. Not to feel.
But his heat was still around her, and the musky scent of their arousal, the heated swirl of her feelings for him. She had to escape from it all.
John found his balance on his knees again, lithe as a cat. In the shadows she saw the frown on his face, the darkness of his eyes. He started towards her. “Celia …” he began.
But she stopped him with the sole of her shoe planted on his chest. She knew he could easily sweep any of her barriers away, yet he stayed where he was, watching her. She dug the heel of her shoe in, just enough to hold him there as she had with his balls in her hand.
“Celia, what has happened to you?” he said quietly.
She gave a hoarse, humourless laugh. How could she even begin to answer such a question? She gave him a slight push with her foot, and when he sat back on his heels she lurched upright to her feet. She ducked out of the hidden embrasure, and this time when she ran he did not follow.
Curse it all! Every instinct within John shouted at him to run after Celia, to catch her in his arms and hold her to him until she broke open and gave him all she had. All those dark secrets in her eyes. He wanted to strip away her clothes until she was naked before him, every pale, beautiful inch of her, and drive into her.
But he was too angry, and she was too brittle and fragile. She would surely shatter if he pushed her too hard, and the way he was feeling now he could not hold back. He braced his palms against the cold stone floor and let his head drop down, his eyes close as he struggled for control.
It was that damnable nickname. Fairy queen. His fairy queen. He could see her as she had been that day, her midnight-black hair loose over her bare shoulders, her grey-sky eyes gleaming an otherworldly silver as she looked up at him. She’d lain on a grassy, sunny spot in the woods, the light dappled over her skin, and John had never seen anyone so beautiful and free, so much a part of the nature around them. A fairy queen who had cast her magical spell over him. His wild youth had been forgotten when he saw her—the first time he’d felt such a rush of tenderness, dreamed of what he couldn’t have. All because of her.
There seemed nothing of the fairy left in her now. She seemed instead an ice queen, encased in snow. But when she’d touched his manhood, when he’d tasted her, his Celia had flashed behind her cold eyes.
And, z’wounds, but she tasted the same as he remembered—of honey and dew. She had become wet when he’d kissed her there, the silken folds of her contracting over his tongue. Not so frozen after all. Did she remember too?
But still so far away from him. He remembered the panic in her eyes when she shoved him away, the way those walls in her eyes had slammed up again. It hurt to know she was so wary of him, even as he knew he so richly deserved it.
It was good she had run, for he obviously had no control at all when it came to her. Had he not resolved that very afternoon to stay away from her? To forget their past? Not to hurt her again, and not to torture himself with what he could no longer have? Only hours later he’d been on his knees under her skirt.
John pushed himself to his feet and automatically reached down to adjust his codpiece. He felt again her slender fingers on him, caressing him just where it was calculated to drive him insane. Pleasure and pain all mixed up in a blurred tangle.
When he emerged into the corridor Celia was long gone. The music from the ball floated back to him, echoing off the walls, mocking him with its merriment. He could feel someone watching him, and spun around to find Marcus leaning against a marble pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. He arched his brow at John.
“Are your balls frozen off, then?” Marcus asked with a grin.
John shot him an obscene gesture and turned to stride away down the corridor. His friend’s laughter followed him.
It was certainly going to be a long and wretched journey to Edinburgh. Or were they all headed into hell instead?
Chapter Four
“Is this all of it, Mistress Sutton?” the maidservant asked as she fastened shut the travel chest.
Celia glanced around the small chamber. All of her black garments and his meagre personal possessions had been packed and carried away, and the box containing her few jewels and Queen Elizabeth’s documents was tucked under her arm. She had no more excuses to linger.
“Yes, I think that is all,” she said. She glanced in the looking glass. She wore a plain black wool skirt and velvet doublet for travel. Her hair was pinned up and held by a net caul and tall-crowned hat. She looked calm enough, composed and quiet, but part of her wanted to hide under the bed and not face the inevitable.
The past few days had passed in a blur of meetings with the Queen and Lord Burghley to learn more of her tasks in Scotland. She was to befriend Queen Mary, who was said to chatter freely with her favourite maids, and try to gauge her marital inclinations and report back to Elizabeth. To try and persuade Mary that an English marriage of her cousin’s choosing would be best for her. To watch and listen, which Celia had become very good at. A wary nature was always cautious of what would happen next.
But Elizabeth said Mary should wed Lord Leicester, and Burghley said Darnley. Celia wasn’t sure whom to incline Queen Mary towards—if the Scottish Queen could be “inclined” at all.
There had also been banquets and balls, tennis games to watch, and garden strolls, which she had tiptoed into as if they were the flames of hell. But the chief demon, John Brandon, had never appeared there to torment her. To draw her into quiet corners and reveal parts of her she had long ago encased in ice and buried. To watch her with those eyes of his that saw too much.
She wasn’t sure if she was grateful or angry he’d stayed away.
No doubt he has much to occupy him, she thought as she jerked on her leather riding gauntlets. Like saying farewell to all his amours.
Lord Burghley had said John would be her conduit in Scotland for any messages, so she knew she would have to face him eventually. Face what he had made her feel.
Celia stared down at the black leather over her palm and remembered the hard heat of him in her hand. The power and, yes, the pleasure she had felt in that one instant as he grew hard for her. The way she’d longed to pull away his clothes and feel him against her again. Part of her in every way.
She convulsed her hand into a fist. Maybe if she had crushed him, hurt him, she would be done with him now—as he had once been done with her.
But the feeling of his mouth on her, driving her to a mad frenzy, told her they were not done with each other. Not at all.
She spun around and snatched up her riding crop, cutting it through the air with a sharp whistle. She imagined it was John’s tight backside under the leather’s touch, but pushed away that thought when a disturbing spasm of desire caught at her. The less she thought of John Brandon and his handsome body and sweet words the better!
Celia hurried downstairs and out through the doors into the courtyard, where the travelling party was assembling. It was chaos, the long line of horses and carts struggling into place as servants loaded last-minute bundles and trunks.
Lord Darnley and his mother stood slightly apart from the others as Lady Lennox whispered intently into his ear. He nodded sulkily, his gaze straying to where his chosen companions played at dice on the steps. Though it was early in the day, and long hours of travel awaited them, they were all obviously inebriated.
Celia was thankful that at least her tasks did not include being nursemaid to them. She would just as soon they fell off their horses and froze in a snow bank somewhere.
She studied the rest of the people. Servants piling onto the carts and courtiers unlucky enough to be chosen for this journey finding their horses. Lady Allison Parker, another of Elizabeth’s ladies sent to cozen Queen Mary, was letting one of Darnley’s friends lift her into her saddle. She laughed as she settled her bright green skirts around her, flirtatiously letting the poor lad glimpse her long legs as her red hair gleamed in the greyish light.
Celia had the feeling she and Lady Allison would not become bosom bows on this journey.
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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