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

Pleasing a woman.

His stare snapped up from his hand to find her watching him. Some deep, heated anger simmered in those blue depths, and Celia felt her cheeks turn hot.

John had a façade of such elegance and charm, with his fine Court clothes, his handsome looks, his smile. But Celia knew that so much more lurked beneath—a storm of passion and volcanic fury. He could fight like a Southwark street thief—or make love with a force that burned away all else.

She remembered that part of him all too well now, as he watched her across the room, and it made her want to leap up from the table and run. She sensed that part of him was barely tethered tonight.

“… is that not so, Mistress Sutton?” Lord Knowlton asked.

The sound of her name made Celia turn away from John’s stare, but she could still feel him studying her. Biding his time, waiting for something from her she couldn’t even fathom.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Knowlton?” she said. “I fear I could not hear you.”

He smiled, his brown eyes soft as he looked at her. “It is rather loud in here. I was merely asking if you planned to remain long at Queen Mary’s Court after we have delivered our charge there.”

He nodded towards Lord Darnley, who was dicing with his friends by the fire. The man’s fine-boned, handsome face was already flushed with drink, his eyes glittering dangerously.

“If he can be safely delivered,” she murmured. “It is a long way yet to Edinburgh.”

Lord Knowlton laughed. “Hopefully there are enough of us to finish the job. If we can keep from freezing to death in the meantime. Do you look forward to our sojourn at Holyrood, Mistress Sutton?”

Celia laughed, relaxing under the admiration in Lord Knowlton’s eyes. When was the last time a man had looked at her like that, in simple admiration that did not twist her up into knots? It was—nice. “I am not sure I look forward to it. Yet I do think it will be interesting.”

“To say the least,” he said with a smile, pouring her more ale. “They do say Queen Mary is a fascinating lady.”

“And a beautiful one.”

“Aye, that too. We shall see what her Court is like in comparison to her cousin’s. What are you expecting of this sojourn, Mistress Sutton?”

They talked easily together for the rest of the evening, about Scotland and the situation they would find there, about their lives in England, drinking ale as the room became louder around them, the air hotter.

Celia suddenly felt tired. The voices around her were turning chaotic, and she shook her head when Lord Knowlton offered her more to drink.

“I think I should find my bed, Lord Knowlton,” she said. “The hour grows late. But I am glad we had this chance to talk together again.”

“As am I, Mistress Sutton. Very glad indeed.” He raised her hand to his lips, and the look he gave her over their joined fingers was suddenly intense. His mouth opened on her bare skin.

A shiver of disquiet ran over Celia’s back, her earlier quiet pleasure in his company dissipating. What had happened to change things? She couldn’t fathom what he was thinking about her, and it made her think strangely of her dead husband.

She drew her hand out of his and edged away from him until she could stand up. “Goodnight, Lord Knowlton.”

“Goodnight, Mistress Sutton.”

Celia turned and hurried away from him, making her way through the crowd. She didn’t like the atmosphere in the room now. She only wanted to find her bed and be alone for a time.

But her foot had barely touched the bottom of the staircase leading up to their lodgings when she heard a shout.

She whirled around just in time to see a massively burly man grab Lord Darnley by the front of his doublet and shove him to the wall. Darnley’s cronies leaped on the man, tables flew as crockery shattered, and women screamed. The strange tension Celia had sensed snapped into a full-blown fight.

She hurried up the stairs to a point where she could see the fray but not be in danger. Her stomach lurched in fear at the violence, and she pressed her hand to her mouth.

She felt even sicker when she glimpsed John in the swirling melee, a tall figure throwing out his fist to catch a jaw, jabbing his elbow into a midsection, kicking with his booted foot to make a foe go down. There was a terrible grace to his movements, a power, and she wanted to scream his name. To dash into the fray and drag him to safety.

He seized the man who was pounding Darnley’s face and threw him backwards. Darnley crawled away, but his attacker bellowed in rage and dived for John instead. John fended him off with a neat sidestep, and ducked under the man’s raised arm to drive a fist into his belly.

He didn’t see the other man behind him, who lashed out with a splintery log and hit John on his thigh. Blood bloomed on his leg and Celia screamed. Raw, heated emotion and fear overwhelmed her. She raced into the crowd, ducking around the brawlers even as the landlord and his henchmen came to break it up. She reached John just as Marcus did.

“John!” she cried, reaching for his arm as he reeled.

He pushed her away gently, bending to press his hand to the wound. “It is merely a scratch.”

“Nonetheless, let’s get you out of here,” Marcus said, winding his arm around John’s shoulders to haul him upright. “Before someone decides to ruin your pretty face. Mistress Sutton, if you would find us a chamber?”

Ignoring John’s growled protests, Celia got the landlord’s wife to show them to a small room where a fire was lit. Marcus followed her closely.

“Put him down here,” Celia said, clearing a pile of mending from the bench by the fire.

Lord Marcus unceremoniously slid John from over his shoulder onto the bench, where John promptly let free a string of colourful curses.

Marcus merely grinned and stepped back. “Whatever she does to you, my friend, you deserve it for jumping into a brawl like that.”

“I quite agree,” Celia said. She knelt on the floor beside the bench, trying to ignore the hot, angry glare of his eyes as he watched her. That fear she’d felt for him when she’d seen him hit still hummed through her veins and made her tremble. “Why would you do that to save a looby like Darnley?”

“Because it is my task at the moment,” he ground out. “If I had my way I would have left him to what he so richly deserves.”

“But why?” Celia said. Slowly, cautiously, as if she feared the wolf might snap and bite, she peeled the torn breeches away from his wounded leg. “Why are you meant to be his protector?”

John hissed between his teeth, and his hands curled over the edge of the bench, but he did not pull away from her touch. “He has to get to Scotland in one piece somehow.”

“I don’t know why,” Celia murmured. She delicately examined the bleeding gash on his leg while studiously not looking at the smooth, warm skin, the masculine roughness of the dark hair that curled there. “I think it would be no terrible loss if someone did remove him from the situation.”

John and Marcus looked at each other over her head. “Unfortunately that is not our decision to make,” Marcus said lightly.

“Not yet,” John added.

Celia didn’t really want to know what they meant by that. She didn’t want to be involved in these secret matters of crown and families at all. She had enough to worry about on her own.

Such as ignoring what happened to her when she was close to John.

She almost sighed aloud in relief when a maidservant delivered her valise. Celia opened it and dug through the contents for the herbal salves and tinctures she had packed.

As she laid them out on the floor, Marcus said, “I will leave you to your task then, Mistress Sutton. I should make sure all is well out there now.”

He bowed to her and turned on his heel to go, the door clicking shut behind him. For an instant Celia could hear sounds from the public room, cries and quarrels and the landlady demanding payment for the destruction. Then she was closed in firelight and flickering shadows, alone with John.

She bit her lip, trying to press down the nervous trembling inside her, and peeled the cloth back further.

The log had caught him halfway between the knee and the groin, leaving a long cut. The bleeding had mostly stopped, was clotting around the edges. She could smell the coppery tang of it, but blood no longer had the power to make her swoon. She had seen too much of it.