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

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But she feared that if she caught a glimpse of John, the real John, she would have to share the real Celia in return. That she could not do.

“So this is Scotland,” she said. “It looks scarcely different from England.”

Or rather scarcely different from the England they had seen in the last few days. Harsh, austere, forbidding northern England, so different from the softness of southern England, the noise and commotion of London. The place seemed like a separate world from all she had ever really known. It was silent and grey-green all around.

Yet she liked it. The very harshness seemed beautiful to her, seemed to respond to something hard and cold and wild inside her.

“Aye, this is Scotland,” John said. “What do you think of it so far?”

Celia looked around her again and drew in a deep breath. She even liked the air here, clean and diamond-clear, smelling of frost, green, and the faint tang of a peat fire.

“I like it very much,” she said. “I like the loneliness of it.”

John gave her a strange look, and she thought she saw a flash of surprise in his eyes. “I doubt there will be any time for loneliness once we reach Edinburgh.”

“I dare say there won’t. If Queen Mary’s Court is anything like her cousin’s, there won’t be a moment of silence.”

“They say she is trying to bring elements of her French life to the Scottish Court,” John said. “Dancing, cards, masquerades, hunts. I doubt that pleases Knox and his Puritan cohorts. They thought never to see their French Catholic queen again.”

That must certainly be true. Surely they’d thought that with Mary in France Scotland was theirs to run as they wanted. The country’s religion, alliances and culture in their hands. Until suddenly she’d returned, with her own ways of doing things.

“Has there been trouble?” Celia asked quietly.

“Nothing serious as yet. Mary has proved strangely popular with her subjects since she returned from Paris—except for the men who thought they ruled Scotland and dictated its religion and allies. Threats, stones thrown at courtiers’ carriages, ugly pamphlets railing against female rulers. But there will be more to come. That seems inevitable.”

“Is that what Lord Marcus’s message said?”

John shifted in his saddle. “Knox and Queen Elizabeth aren’t the only ones who want to control Queen Mary. She still has her French attendants with her, who have their own ideas of what she should do.”

“Not to mention the Spanish,” Celia murmured. It was so nice to be able to talk to John like this again, to share her ideas and hear his, to know what he thought of their strange situation. “To have a Catholic ally right on Elizabeth’s northern border could only be a boon to them. Is the marriage of Queen Mary to Don Carlos still a possibility?”

“A distant one, perhaps, or Mary would have snapped it up by now. She wouldn’t dally with the likes of Darnley if she had the Spanish heir.”

“And one of these parties is not causing trouble in Edinburgh.”

John suddenly gave her a rakish grin. “Celia, where a crown is at stake there is always trouble. We must make more of it for our opponents than they do for us.”

Was that how he lived his life, then? Made trouble for others before they could do it to him? Before she could say anything to him, he tugged at his reins and took off down the hill.

“We need to find a place to stop for the night,” he called to her, his words caught on the wind.

Celia dashed after him. The cold wind kept them from saying any more as they galloped over the fields and found the road again. The narrow track was muddy and rutted, clotted with fallen branches, but they made good time. Dusk was falling when they finally stopped in front of a pair of gates that stood ajar.

They were of an elaborate design of twisted wrought iron, surmounted by a family crest, but they were being eaten away by rust. Beyond the gates she glimpsed an overgrown trail winding away between towering trees.

John stared up at the crest with an unreadable look on his face.

“Are we stopping here?” Celia asked quietly.

He was silent for a long moment. So long she thought he might not answer. That he had forgotten she was even there.

Finally he said, “Why not? It’s growing dark, and it’s still a fair ride into the village.”

He led his horse through the gap in the gates and Celia followed. As they made their way slowly down the path she felt as if she had stepped into a troubadour’s song of enchanted forests and ghosts. It seemed even quieter here than on the hill, perfectly silent, as if even the wind dared not brush through the bare, skeletal trees.

She could see that once this had been a grand park, laid out for pleasure rides and pretty vistas, but now it was all a tangle. She glimpsed a half-frozen lake in the distance, with a pale stone folly crumbling on the shore. The gathering evening mist only made it more mysterious.

Celia shivered.

“Are you cold?” John asked. “We will soon be there, and we can build a fire.”

“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.