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

And a damnably cold day it was. Snow had set in soon after their hasty midday meal of bread and cheese—great fat flakes that melted on his cloak and drifted into white piles at the side of the road. The wind felt like needles as it swept around them. Even Lord Darnley, his pretty face bruised and sulky after last night, has subsided into the silence of endurance.

John looked to where Celia rode in one of the carts, lodged between the meagre shelter of two travel trunks. The hood of her black cloak was drawn over her hair, and he could see only the curve of one pale cheek. The long, thick lashes that cast shadows over her cheekbone as she stared down at the book in her gloved hands.

She hadn’t turned a page in fully fifteen minutes. John knew because he had been watching her the whole time. Yet she was not asleep. Her shoulders and slim back were too stiff and straight.

She never looked his way, never indicated by the slightest gesture that she knew he was there. Her walls were back up, her drawbridge slammed closed to him. It would be best for both of them if he just let it stay closed. Old scars did not need to be ripped open all over again.

Yet still that desire burned deep inside him to see her eyes free of that caution, that icy chill, to see his Celia again. To make her admit she had never ceased to be his.

But she was not his. She never had been. It had all been a terrible mistake. He couldn’t let her touch his heart as she once had—until he’d found out her brother was one of the conspirators he had come to the countryside to catch. Too late, for by then he had already fallen for Celia.

“You look as if last night’s fight was merely a prelude to what you’d like to do today,” he heard Marcus say as his friend’s horse fell into step beside him. “You look furious.”

“Then shouldn’t you best stay away from me?” John growled.

“I’m not that easily frightened,” Marcus answered carelessly. “If you need to beat on someone that badly, Darnley is over there. But I don’t think that would help.”

“Of course it wouldn’t. The Queen would have my hide if I damaged her pretty pawn.”

“I mean I don’t think violence will ease you. When were you last with a woman?”

John slanted a hard warning look at his friend. “Marcus …”

“That long, eh? No wonder you’re so fierce.”

Aye, John thought, it had been a while since he tupped a woman. Since before he’d seen Celia again. Now it seemed when he looked at another woman, talked to her, saw her smile of invitation, it stirred nothing at all within him. It was not enough.

“Lady Allison is always up for a lark, you know,” Marcus said, as if heedless of the turmoil within John. “Or Mistress Andrews. She is meant to be Darnley’s inamorata right now, but she’s bound to be bored waiting around for him to get it up. Or the next town is sure to have a decent brothel—”

“I don’t need you to play pimp for me, Marcus,” John interrupted.

“Of course you don’t. Women fall at your feet everywhere you go. You hardly have to seek them out. But you need something to free you from whatever demon has you in its clutches.”

John grimly shook his head. “Just leave, Marcus.”

“So you can go on brooding? Nay, we have been friends for too long. I know this journey is hellish, but there is something more. What is it?” Marcus’s tone had become suddenly serious. He and John had known each other for too long—through their wild youths and into this dangerous work.

John’s stare unconsciously went to Celia, where she sat in the cart. Lord Knowlton was with her now, and she smiled at whatever he’d said to her, just as she had when the man had sat with her in the tavern last night. She seemed to like him too much.

His hands tightened into fists on the reins.

“Ah,” Marcus said softly. “I see.”

John tore his eyes away from Celia to glare at Marcus. “What do you see?”

“Every time the two of you are together I would vow you are about to murder each other or strip each other’s clothes off—or both.”

A wave of despair rolled over John, hard and cold. All his years of careful subterfuge and one moment with Celia pulled all the lies and façades away. He was being such a fool. “Am I so obvious?”

“Only to me, as I would be to you. To everyone else you are still the rakish, careless Sir John Brandon. But I have never seen you like this with a woman. What is she to you?”

John glanced around to see that they had fallen slightly behind the others and no one was near. They were all too occupied in their own cold misery to pay attention to anyone else.

“A few years ago, when I was in the country on a task, we had a—dalliance,” he said.

Marcus gave a low whistle. “And I take it matters did not end well?”

Considering he had betrayed her brother and his friends to their death, nay, it had not ended well, and he had left Celia—and his heart—behind. And he had never forgotten her since. “Nay,” he said shortly.

“But you still want the lady?”

John said nothing, and finally Marcus laughed. “Then I think we can look forward to many more brawls on this journey. Unless you make love to Mistress Sutton again, get past those icy walls of hers and rid her from your system.”

“Do you really think she would let me in her bed again, knowing all she does now?” John said bitterly.

Marcus said nothing in reply, and they rode on in heavy silence.

“Halt!”

Celia glanced up from the book she held in her hands to see the head of Lord Darnley’s guard blocking the procession on the road. She had not been reading at all, merely staring at the book as she felt John stare at her. As last night’s kiss flashed through her mind over and over.

Something had shifted between them in that kiss, something she sensed was profound even as she could not decipher what it was. What a hold on her he still had.

She was glad of any distraction. She put the book back in her saddlebag and slid off the cart, holding onto the wooden slats as the legs she had tucked under her cramped. Everyone else had come to a halt as well, looking relieved to stop. The day had only grown more bitterly cold, the snow falling thickly.

“The bridge across the river ahead is out,” the guard said. “We can either turn back and make camp, or go downstream to the next bridge and continue to the next manor.”

Either way, they were surely in for more cold. Celia sagged back against the cart as she watched the guards consult with Darnley and his men. It looked as if they would be here for a time. Celia turned and made her way through the milling crowd, away from the noise, until she found a silent spot on the sloped icy banks of the river. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood there very still, watching the freezing water rush past below her.

Surely this journey would never end? She would never be free of John, of seeing him every day and remembering. Remembering the foolish girl she had once been, how much she had wanted him. How much she still wanted him, curse it all.

She heard a soft footfall crunch on the frosty ground behind her, heard a breath, and she knew without turning who it was. She always felt when John was near.

“You seem to enjoy spending time with Lord Knowlton,” he said roughly.

Celia almost laughed. Was that jealousy in his tone? Surely not. That was too ridiculous. He was always surrounded by women. “He is charming.”

John gave a half-snort, half-laugh. “Of course he is. He wants to tup you.”

“He is a gentleman!” Celia protested, trying to dismiss the feeling of disquiet she had felt with Knowlton.

“So am I,” John said solemnly.

Celia shook her head. She turned to look at John and found he wore a fierce scowl on his face, his hands curled into fists. Because she had been talking with Knowlton? He had no right to care. Should not care. And she should not be feeling as she did either. As if her whole being was wound so tightly she might burst.

“John, you are the very furthest thing from a gentleman there could be,” she said.

“God’s teeth, Celia, don’t push me away like this any more!” he suddenly shouted.