Tarnished Rose of the Court

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.