Tarnished Rose of the Court Read online

  Part of him was fiercely satisfied that she paid no attention to the man’s flirtations. If she had laughed with Knowlton, let him kiss her hand, John would have had to drag the man from his saddle and hit him in the jaw. He felt as if he walked a sword’s edge today, his temper barely in check.

  Usually when that darkness came upon him he had to find a brawl or have a bout of rough, hot sex to appease it. Neither was an option today.

  He glared at Celia and Lord Knowlton as she laughed at his coaxing words. A real laugh that sounded sharp and rusty, as if she had not laughed in a very long time.

  John dug his fist into his thigh, his muscles taut with the effort not to grab Celia and kiss her until she felt something again—felt him. He didn’t know if his anger was because she laughed with someone else, or at himself for even caring.

  Once he had cared for her far too much. She had slipped behind his defences before he’d even realised, with her black hair and her laughing smiles, her kisses and her passion that burned as hot and fierce as his own. Because of her he had nearly failed in his duty.

  And because of what he had done she had been wounded and changed for ever. Every time he looked into her cold, flat eyes and remembered how they had once flashed and danced, every time she pushed him away, that guilt burned in his gut.

  And he hated feeling guilty for the scars on someone’s soul. Guilt was a burden he could not afford—not in his work. That work had once been his salvation. If he felt the pain of everyone caught in the Queen’s justice he would be ruined.

  But Celia was not just everyone, anyone. She was Celia. And he still cared far too much for her.

  She reached up to rub at her shoulder, a small, unconscious gesture he had seen her make before when she’d thought no one watched. It wasn’t a noticeable thing, but he saw her smile slip when she touched herself there.

  Now he wanted to pull her from her horse—not to kiss her until she burned as he did, but to strip away her black doublet and see her bare shoulder. Soothe whatever ache she held there. He wanted to take away all her pain and make her life bright again, even as he knew he could not.

  “God’s teeth,” he ground out, his fist tightening.

  “Someone is in a foul mood today,” Marcus said cheerfully as he drew his horse up next to John’s.

  “And someone is disgustingly cheerful for no reason,” John answered.

  “Temper, temper,” Marcus said with a laugh. “I’m to meet with Lady Allison’s pretty maid tonight. But I’d be happy to oblige you with a fight first, if me beating your pretty face would make you feel better.”

  “You obviously do not recall what happened the last time we fought.”

  “I certainly do. My eye was swollen shut for a week,” Marcus said. He gave John a considering look. “But that time I was the one in a blind fury.”

  “I am not in a fury,” John said. He glanced again at Celia, who was nodding at something Lord Knowlton said. She no longer rubbed at her shoulder, but she didn’t smile either.

  “If you say so,” Marcus said. “Not that I blame you for being in a temper. A forced journey in the middle of winter could defeat even my good mood. And it looks as if the weather is going to get even worse.”

  John had been so caught up in Celia that he hadn’t even noticed the bite of the wind around him, the frost on the muddy ruts of the road that slowed their progress to a crawl. He looked up at the sky to see that the clouds had grown thicker and darker. It was barely past midday, but already the light was being choked off. There was the distinct cold, clean smell of snow on the air.

  “God’s blood,” John cursed. “We’ll never make it to the next village by nightfall.”

  “We’ll just have to ride harder, eh?” Marcus said. “At least I have a warm bed waiting at the end...”

  * * *

  The inn was crowded with travellers, all seeking shelter from the freezing rain that pounded down outside, but room was made for an important personage like Lord Darnley and his party. Celia was given a palette in a corner with Lady Allison, and then found herself hastily changed into dry clothes and put in a chair near the fire of the inn’s great room for supper.

  Celia sipped at a cup of spiced wine as she studied the crowded chamber. Lord Knowlton sat beside her, chatting with her of inconsequential Court gossip as they shared a trencher of beef stew. He had been very attentive on today’s journey, staying close to her and entertaining her through the cold, tedious hours. He seemed nice—handsome enough, if older than her, and non-threatening with his kind brown eyes, his polite attentions and compliments.

  Usually she stayed as far from men as she could, but she hardly noticed Lord Knowlton when he was right beside her. John Brandon, though—she always seemed keenly aware of where he was all the time, even though he had not come near her all day. He seemed to emit some kind of strange, lightning glow that drew her attention to him.

  She turned her head slightly to find him again. He sat in a shadowed corner with Lord Marcus and two other men. Marcus had one of the tavern maids on his lap, the two of them laughing, but John didn’t seem to see them at all. He stared down into his goblet with a brooding look on his face, as if he was far away from the raucous inn. She well remembered that look.

  His fingers slowly tapped at the scarred tabletop, and Celia found her gaze drawn to that slow, rhythmic movement. He had beautiful hands, and long, elegant fingers that were so good at wielding a sword, soothing a fractious horse...

  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 turnin
g 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.

  But the smell of John—that made her feel light-headed. Leather and wine, the faint whiff of spicy soap, the darkness of his skin and sweat. The musk of his manhood. It was heady, alluring. It made all the old memories of a time when they had been as close as two people could be return to her, so strong.

  Celia sat back on her heels, away from the too vulnerable position of kneeling between his thighs, and reached into her valise for a clean rag. She soaked it with lavender water.

  “There are splinters caught in the wound,” she said. “I have to clean it before it can be bandaged.”

  His fists curled even tighter into the edge of the bench, and she saw the knuckles were bruised. He had certainly left his opponents in worse shape than he was. But it could have been so much worse. If the log had caught him higher...

  “You’re fortunate the wound is where it is,” she said. She set her jaw in a determined line and leaned forward to dab at the raw edges of it with her cloth. His thigh tensed, but he said nothing. “A bit higher and all the Court ladies would be in mourning.”

  He laughed. “And would you have been disappointed, Celia?”

  “Certainly not,” she snapped. “I would have sung a hosanna—womankind safe again.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He uncurled one hand from the bench and reached out. She felt his soft touch on a strand of hair that had fallen free in the tussle. He ran a caressing touch down its length.

  Celia ground her jaw tighter, determined not to jerk away. Not to show how his touch made her so damnably weak. Made her remember things she should forget—like how she had once cared for him so very much.

  “I’m sure you remember how many other delightful things there are to do,” he whispered. “With hands and tongues...”

  Celia pressed the cloth hard to his wound and he straightened up with a hiss. His hand fell from her hair.

  “I need to finish this,” she said quietly. “Unless you want it to fester until you lose the leg—among other things.”

  He chuckled and leaned back as he placed his palms flat behind him. “Do your worst, then, Celia. But I know you do remember.”

&n
bsp; He said nothing more as she finished cleaning and binding the wound. She tied off the ends of the bandage and sat back on her heels to look up at him.

  A half-smile lingered on his lips as he watched her, his eyes dark, his skin gilded a molten gold in the firelight. His doublet hung open, his shirt half unlaced to reveal a chest damp with the sweat of the fight. He looked lazy, considering—like some Eastern king watching a slave who had been delivered to his feet.

  Celia suddenly wanted to shatter his laziness, that look of casual possessiveness. She gave him a smile, and his own faded.

  Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward and rested her hand on his unwounded thigh. His whole body grew taut and wary. Celia held onto him and placed her parted lips on the skin left bare by the torn breeches. She moved her mouth over him, tasting him.

  “Celia...” he said hoarsely.

  She pressed her hand tighter on his leg and he went still. She closed her eyes and kissed her way higher, over the velvet fabric that lay tight over his upper thigh, until she could trail the tip of her tongue along the crease between leg and groin.

  She could smell him there, the faint scent of sweat and musk she had once known meant he wanted her. He had left her, but he still wanted this, and the knowledge gave her a sudden surge of satisfaction. Of pleasure. At least she still had that. And now she wanted more, wanted to know all of him.

  Her feelings surged inside her, so tangled and confused.

  Her hand slid up his leg to just beneath his codpiece, cradling him in her fingers. He was already hard, but he grew even harder, longer. She found the vein on his underside beneath the cloth and slid her fingertips along it.

  “Oh, aye,” she whispered. “I remember all the things one can do with hands and mouths...”

  She’d just barely touched her lips to the tip of him when she felt his fingers dive into her hair, tumbling the few pins that were left there free. He pulled her head back until she stared up into his eyes.

  Those burning eyes that pierced right through her tore her careful defences down one by one and destroyed them until they were ashes around her.

  “Celia, you drive me mad,” he growled. Then his mouth drove down onto hers.