beneath the brocade and swept over her aching nipple once, twice, then harder, making her cry out. His thumb slid in with the finger and he pinched her between them.
Pleasure shot through her, and Celia accidentally fell back on his lap. She kicked his wounded leg with her slipping foot and he gasped.
“Oh, hell!” she cried, tearing her mouth away from his. She pushed out of his arms and leaped to her feet.
He reached out for her, but she could see the fresh blood spotting his bandage.
It brought her coldly to her senses as nothing else could. He had held her captive in their own hidden world where there were only the senses, the way he made her feel. She couldn’t stay there, no matter how much she wanted to. It had already destroyed her once.
“I—I will send someone in to finish tending to your wound,” she stammered. John reached out for her, but she shook her head and spun round to run out of the room. She was always fleeing from him, from whatever terrible power lay between them, but it seemed it was all she could do.
Clutching her surcoat closed, she dashed through the near-empty great room and up the stairs. Past the sleeping bodies to the palette where Lady Allison already slumbered.
Trembling, Celia shed her clothes as best as she could and slid under the blankets in her chemise. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to find sleep, to forget John Brandon, even as her body still felt tingling with newly aroused life.
“Why, Mistress Sutton,” she heard Lady Allison whisper, “you naughty thing.”
Celia’s eyes flew open and she peered at Allison over her shoulder. Allison grinned at her, as if they were conspirators.
“Is he as wonderfully skilled as they say?” Allison whispered.
Celia felt her cheeks grow warm. Ashamed of that ridiculous blush, she turned away and closed her eyes again as Lady Allison softly laughed.
Oh, aye, she thought bitterly. John Brandon was entirely too skilled for any woman’s good.
John shifted in his saddle, trying not to wince as his bandaged leg brushed the hard leather. It had been some time since he had indulged in a tavern brawl, despite his reputation for wildness, and he felt every bit of the violence in his bruised muscles and the healing gash on his leg.
But it was worth every ache just to remember how Celia had cared for him, bandaging his wound, kneeling between his knees. Kissing him so passionately, so wildly, as if he was all that mattered to her.
Just as he had felt when his lips touched her, tasted her. Nothing else existed. Nothing had ever come between them.
That had been last night. Everything was always different in the cold light of day.
And a damnably cold day it was. Snow had set in soon after their hasty midday meal of bread and cheese—great fat flakes that melted on his cloak and drifted into white piles at the side of the road. The wind felt like needles as it swept around them. Even Lord Darnley, his pretty face bruised and sulky after last night, has subsided into the silence of endurance.
John looked to where Celia rode in one of the carts, lodged between the meagre shelter of two travel trunks. The hood of her black cloak was drawn over her hair, and he could see only the curve of one pale cheek. The long, thick lashes that cast shadows over her cheekbone as she stared down at the book in her gloved hands.
She hadn’t turned a page in fully fifteen minutes. John knew because he had been watching her the whole time. Yet she was not asleep. Her shoulders and slim back were too stiff and straight.
She never looked his way, never indicated by the slightest gesture that she knew he was there. Her walls were back up, her drawbridge slammed closed to him. It would be best for both of them if he just let it stay closed. Old scars did not need to be ripped open all over again.
Yet still that desire burned deep inside him to see her eyes free of that caution, that icy chill, to see his Celia again. To make her admit she had never ceased to be his.
But she was not his. She never had been. It had all been a terrible mistake. He couldn’t let her touch his heart as she once had—until he’d found out her brother was one of the conspirators he had come to the countryside to catch. Too late, for by then he had already fallen for Celia.
“You look as if last night’s fight was merely a prelude to what you’d like to do today,” he heard Marcus say as his friend’s horse fell into step beside him. “You look furious.”
“Then shouldn’t you best stay away from me?” John growled.
“I’m not that easily frightened,” Marcus answered carelessly. “If you need to beat on someone that badly, Darnley is over there. But I don’t think that would help.”
“Of course it wouldn’t. The Queen would have my hide if I damaged her pretty pawn.”
“I mean I don’t think violence will ease you. When were you last with a woman?”
John slanted a hard warning look at his friend. “Marcus …”
“That long, eh? No wonder you’re so fierce.”
Aye, John thought, it had been a while since he tupped a woman. Since before he’d seen Celia again. Now it seemed when he looked at another woman, talked to her, saw her smile of invitation, it stirred nothing at all within him. It was not enough.
“Lady Allison is always up for a lark, you know,” Marcus said, as if heedless of the turmoil within John. “Or Mistress Andrews. She is meant to be Darnley’s inamorata right now, but she’s bound to be bored waiting around for him to get it up. Or the next town is sure to have a decent brothel—”
“I don’t need you to play pimp for me, Marcus,” John interrupted.
“Of course you don’t. Women fall at your feet everywhere you go. You hardly have to seek them out. But you need something to free you from whatever demon has you in its clutches.”
John grimly shook his head. “Just leave, Marcus.”
“So you can go on brooding? Nay, we have been friends for too long. I know this journey is hellish, but there is something more. What is it?” Marcus’s tone had become suddenly serious. He and John had known each other for too long—through their wild youths and into this dangerous work.
John’s stare unconsciously went to Celia, where she sat in the cart. Lord Knowlton was with her now, and she smiled at whatever he’d said to her, just as she had when the man had sat with her in the tavern last night. She seemed to like him too much.
His hands tightened into fists on the reins.
“Ah,” Marcus said softly. “I see.”
John tore his eyes away from Celia to glare at Marcus. “What do you see?”
“Every time the two of you are together I would vow you
