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

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 …”