“I’m quite well,” she said, even as that chill danced up her spine again.
They turned at a twist in the path, and Celia saw a house rise up before them. It was a surprisingly fine manor of faded red brick and dark wood latticework that had once been painted. The small windows stared down, blank and dark.
Above the door was another chipped stone crest.
“How did you know this place was here?” Celia asked as John swung down from his horse and came round to help her dismount. “Have you been here before?”
“Nay, but I heard about it as a child,” he said. When he lowered her to her feet he didn’t immediately release her, as he had been doing, but kept his arm around her waist. He held her with him as he studied the house with narrowed eyes. “This was my mother’s family’s house,” he said.
“Your mother?” Celia gasped in surprise. Then she remembered John’s mother had been Scottish—one of the reasons Queen Elizabeth had given for sending him here. But John had never spoken of her before. “Where are they, then?”
“All dead. They died even before I was born. After my mother was sent to England to serve one of Henry’s many queens. Since my parents died when I was six, it is mine now.” He kicked at a fallen chunk of brick on the ground. “For all the good it does me.”
Celia blinked as she looked up at him. She had seen John angry, cold, passionate, but never like this. So very distant. It made her shiver again, and his arm tightened around her.
“Come, you should be inside,” he said.
Celia nodded. She didn’t want to go inside. This place seemed haunted in truth. But it was dark now, and there was nowhere else to go.
John pushed the door open with his foot and led her inside.
She had thought the hunting lodge was quiet and desolate, but it was nothing to this place. Everything in the foyer was so still she could hear the wind whistling outside, creeping through the walls. The floor was warped and cracked, the balustrade of the staircase broken. From somewhere up in the ceiling she thought she could hear the rustle of birds.
She rubbed at her arms through her sleeves and followed John into what had once been the great hall. There was a large fireplace at one end, and a few broken bits of furniture littered on the floor. He found an almost intact stool and set it by the empty fireplace.
“Sit down and rest,” he said. “I’ll try to make a fire so we can stay somewhat comfortable tonight. We should catch up to the others by tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. Their time together was ending so very soon. The reality of their lives, their two separate lives, grew closer with every moment. She should be eager to leave John behind, to move towards the future. Work for Queen Elizabeth; a new marriage. The past gone.
But instead she only felt colder. Hollow inside. She had been closer to John than she had ever been to another person, no matter how deceptive those feelings had been in the end. Yet she craved it again—that warmth she sometimes glimpsed in his eyes.
She had put him out of her life once. Surely she could do it again?
She wrapped her arms around her waist as she watched him use the remnants of the wooden furniture to build a fire. The flames were slow to grow at first, until they grabbed onto the dry, brittle wood and crackled to life. Celia slowly felt herself grow warmer, steadier, calmer. They were here together now. That had to be enough.
Once the fire was well lit, John brought in their saddlebags and made a quick meal of hard biscuits, dried beef and wine. It was full dark outside when quiet fell between them, broken only by the snap of the fire and the wind outside.
Celia saw the way he rolled his head between his shoulders and rubbed wearily at his neck. Something softened deep inside of her, and before she knew what she was doing she reached out to touch his arm. She couldn’t stop herself. His back tightened, and he gave her a wary glance over his shoulder.
“Lean against me for a while,” she said softly. “Let me rub your shoulders. You used to like it when I did that after a day’s hunting.”
For a moment she thought he would refuse. Would stride from the room and leave her alone. But then he leaned against her legs and let his head fall back to her knees, heavy through her skirts.
She sat on the stool while he was on the floor, so her hands floated naturally to his shoulders. His doublet was unfastened, and she eased it down his arms. He wrapped his arms around her calves as she kneaded at his hard shoulder muscles. His skin was warm and smooth through his shirt.
She pressed her thumbs into the tense knots of his back. “This must have been a grand house once,” she said as she felt him slowly relax against her.
“My mother always said it was, when she told me stories when I was a child.” John’s voice sounded deep and distant, as if her touch carried him far away. “There were grand banquets here. Especially at Christmas. Dancing and music, minstrels’ tales here by this very fire. Queen Marie of Guise was even invited here one year.”
Celia studied the hall around them, seeing it not as it was now but the way it had been. Could be. The floors polished and gleaming, tapestries on the walls, delicacies piled high on silver plates atop carved sideboards. Musicians playing a pavane in the gallery above as the brightly dressed guests danced.
“It’s a shame the house isn’t ready to receive Queen Marie’s daughter, then,” Celia said.
“Who knows if my mother’s tales were true?” said John as he leaned back into her hands. “This place might have been a ruin for decades before she was born. She just liked to make Scotland sound like a romantic dream. Z’wounds, Celia, but that feels good! I should keep you close to me after tournaments. You would banish any wound with a touch.”
Celia smiled, but she didn’t want to dwell on how good his words felt. How much she would love to see him ride in a tournament, her favour tied to his lance. “You remember your mother, then?” she said.
“Some things. She had brown hair, and wore a rosewater scent. She liked to sit by my cot at night and tell me tales in her Scots accent. Sometimes I wonder if I merely imagined all that.”
“What happened to your parents?”
John gave his head a hard shake, as if to clear it of old dreams. “Like yours, they died of a fever. I was a mere child.”
“I’m so sorry,” Celia whispered, and smoothed her palm gently over his shoulder. His skin rippled under her touch. She had not known that, like her, he was alone in the world. To be so young a child...
“My uncle was my only family left then, and he was fighting in France,” John said coolly, as if he discussed the weather outside. “So I was given to the Court of Wards. I met Marcus when we were fostered in the same household, and together we made our own family of sorts.”
“And you have never seen your mother’s home before.”
“Nay.” He looked up at her with a wry grin. “Not much of a legacy, is it?”
Celia looked around the hall again. “’Tis more than I have. It could be made habitable again.”
A frown flickered over his face. “But I am the servant of Queen Elizabeth. I could be no Scotsman.”
Silence fell between them, and Celia smoothed her fingertips over the nape of his neck. A strange and most unwelcome tenderness washed over her.
“You must be tired, Celia,” John said, drawing away from her touch.
She blinked away the last tendrils of that quiet, yearning dream and watched as he spread out their cloaks and blankets from the saddlebags to make a makeshift bed by the fire.
“Aye,” she whispered. She did feel tired, bone-deep weary, and so very cold.
“Then lie down beside me and sleep for a time. Let me keep you warm.” John held out his hand to her, but Celia hesitated. A smile touched the corner of his lips. “I vow I will not ravish you tonight, Celia. Just stay with me.”
Celia smiled back, and tried to push away a twinge of disappointment at not being ravished again. She took his hand and let him draw her down beside him on the blankets. She lay on her side, f
acing the fire, and he curled his body around her, his knees tucked behind hers and his arm around her waist. She felt his warm breath on the back of her neck.
She closed her eyes and tried to give in to the exhaustion that tugged at her, but sleep would not come. It felt far too good to be wrapped in John’s arms—too safe, too right. It seemed even more intimate than their passionate lovemaking.
She wanted to turn in his arms, kiss his hard, hot mouth and lose herself in his body again. She wanted that mindless lust, that forgetfulness of need.
She understood physical need. She could even somewhat control it, use it.
But the longings of her heart, unleashed by his tenderness, were tearing her apart.
* * *
John braced his hands on the cracked windowsill and stared out into the black, frost-tinged night. Celia slept in the room behind him, tossing fitfully in her dreams for a moment before she settled again with a sigh. He wished he could join her in the oblivion of sleep, hold her in his arms and find peace, at least for the night. Celia had once brought him such a peace as he had never known before.
But tonight they were in his family’s home, a place he had thought never to see except in his mother’s tales, and it made him feel restless in ways he had not expected. He shouldn’t have brought Celia here, but there had been little choice. He’d had to find her a place to rest, to take care of her, and this was the nearest house he knew of.
John turned to study the bare, dusty chamber, so full of crooked shadows and the shifting light from the fire. In the night, it looked almost as it might once have been, the cracked plaster and warped floors hidden. The crackle of the flames might have been the ghosts of old laughter.
Once this had been a home, a place for a family. He had never known such a thing, having been orphaned so young and tossed upon the world alone. He had known only that, only looking out for himself, and for a time it had been enough. Until Celia. But the thought that he could have more had been only an illusion in the end. Much like this house in the firelight.
He crossed his arms over his chest and studied Celia where she lay sleeping, still and calm now, her face sculpted by the light. Her arm was flung out, her fingers curled as if she reached out for something elusive.
Nay, he should not have brought her here. She and this house only made him feel things he should not. He couldn’t dream of her again. Couldn’t hurt her again.
Celia stirred a bit, her hand closing on the blankets. “John,” she murmured.
“I am here,” he answered. He moved across the room and lay down beside her, even as he knew he should stay away. Something always drew him back to her, some dark force he couldn’t understand. He drew her into his arms and she curled against his chest, soft and vulnerable as she so seldom was when awake.
John pressed a soft kiss to her hair and inhaled deeply of her perfume, as if he could memorise the scent and hold it with him always. “I am here,” he said again. “Sleep now.”
Celia smiled and fell back into her dreams. But John could not follow her. He lay awake until dawn, holding her there in that house of ghosts.
Chapter Twelve
Edinburgh at last.
Celia stretched her aching shoulders as she rode with John through the city gates and along the narrow, winding lanes of the city. She felt as if she had been years and years on this journey, not just weeks. So much had happened since she’d left London. She hardly felt the same person she’d been before.
But now she was here, the journey behind her and an unknown precarious future ahead. Her days alone with John were at an end.
She glanced at him where he rode just ahead of her and to her side, sheltering her from the worst of the crowd. She should be happy that they wouldn’t be thrown together any longer. Happy that he could no longer chip away at her defences, remind her of how she had once felt about him, opened herself to him. He could no longer tempt her.
She tore her gaze away from his muscled shoulders and studied the city around her as he led her onward. After weeks of travelling the winter-silent countryside the sounds and smells of a busy town felt like an assault to the senses. Shouts and cries, laughter, and the rhymes of food sellers bombarded her ears. The mingled scents of smoke from hundreds of chimneys, fried meat pies, chamber pots and too many people in too small a space were raw and pungent.
John suddenly reached back for her horse’s bridle and tugged her out of the way as one of those pots had its contents hurled down onto the cobbled street from a window far above. It ran down to the sloped channel down the middle of the street along with all the other rubbish of city life.
Celia looked up from under her hat brim. The streets here seemed even narrower than those of London, the houses packed even closer together. Everything seemed coated in a layer of grey soot and grime, with snow in slushy drifts beneath windows and in the gutter. The rooftops nearly touched above the street, blocking out what little daylight there was.
Celia looked ahead again, and found John watching her. Ever since they had left his family’s house he had been quiet, his face wiped clean of any expression. He was calmly efficient, solicitous of her comfort—and cold. For an instant she thought she saw something flicker deep in his eyes, but then it was gone.
“Are you well, Celia?” he asked quietly.
“Of course. I’ve dodged chamber pots before in my life.”
“We’ll be to the palace soon.”
“Very good. Though I dare say if Whitehall is anything to go by it won’t be much cleaner.”
A small smile touched his lips before he turned away. “Hopefully it will at least be warmer.”
They left the city’s most crowded centre streets and climbed higher up the steep lanes to a more open, airy section of the larger houses. She could see the rugged crags that rose up above the town, blank and austere against the cold sky, and the silent grey-green bulk of Arthur’s Seat, a long-dormant volcano. It still looked ominous to Celia, as if it just waited to swallow up the whole land again.
At last they came to the arches of a gatehouse and passed through them to the forecourt of Holyrood Palace itself.
Celia recognised it well from the descriptions she had read. Squat and low, it was built of honey-coloured stone around a quadrangle, rising only two storeys in the front and three at the sides.
It looked surprisingly modern and comfortable. Celia had read that the old palace had been damaged by King Henry’s campaign of “Rough Wooing” many years ago, when he’d tried to negotiate a marriage between his son and the infant Queen Mary by warfare and invasion. Instead Marie of Guise had sent her daughter to France, to be betrothed to the Dauphin, and fought on until Henry was persuaded to look elsewhere for a match. Holyrood had been rebuilt in a more modern style, with towers, large windows to let in the light, and battlemented parapets.
There were graceful towers to either side of the entrance, surmounted by the royal arms of Scotland carved over the door. Queen Mary’s standards fluttered from the parapets, the arms of Scotland, France and England emblazoned on them.
Celia followed John over the iron drawbridge and along a wide gravelled drive, around a silent fountain towards the palace. She could hear voices floating from a hidden garden somewhere, laughter and music, growls from the menagerie, but she could not see anyone. The rolling lawn to either side of the drive was deserted, and only guards in the Queen’s livery could be seen outside the doors and along the towers.
But as they drew to a halt the doors opened and a woman ran down the front steps. Celia recognised Lady Allison’s red hair, and stiffened when the woman gave John a brilliant, flirtatious smile.
“Here you are at last!” Allison cried. “Both of you. Marcus said you would probably arrive today and that I should watch for you.”
Celia struggled not to frown as John smiled back at Allison. It was nothing to her if he flirted with every lady at Queen Mary’s Court! That was his reputation in London—why would it be different here?
; Because she had seen another part of him at the hunting lodge and in his family’s house, when they had both let their façades drop for an instant. She’d seen that he struggled with something dark and hidden in his heart. She longed to know what it was, but at the same time it frightened her. Fascinated her.
Yet this man before her now looked as if he hid nothing more dire than a need for mischief of the sort found amid a royal Court—sex, sport, drink. He still grinned as he swung down from his horse and came round to lift Celia from her saddle. He held onto her for a moment as she swayed on numb legs.
His gloved hands were hard and warm against her waist, and she had to hold herself stiffly rigid to keep from clinging to him. To keep from wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her head in his chest. Begging him to take her away from here and back to the hunting lodge.
Instead she pulled herself out of his touch and stepped back. His smile dimmed, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at her. Then he too stepped away and turned to Lady Allison. He took her outstretched hand and kissed it as she laughed up at him.
Celia twisted her riding crop between her fingers.
“How is everyone here, Allison?” he asked.
Allison giggled. “I’m sure we will be much merrier now that you are here! But Queen Mary is not at Holyrood, I fear. She and most of her courtiers are off on a hunting expedition. Lord Darnley has gone to meet her at Wemyss Castle. They should return within a few days.”
“I hope he has not gone unattended,” John said darkly.
“Nay, certainly not! He would vanish into the village alehouse and not be found for months,” said Allison. “Most of his friends are with him, with Marcus to keep them steady. That’s why he left me to look out for you. And now you two must be so tired. Mistress Sutton—if you care to come with me I can show you to your lodgings and send for some food. I know John here can look after himself quite well!”
“Thank you, Lady Allison,” Celia murmured. She followed Allison through the doors, forcing herself not to look back at John. To leave him behind.
Tarnished Rose of the Court Page 11