She turned sharply away to jerk on her gloves.
“You still wear mourning,” he said, his voice flat.
“I can’t afford new Court clothes,” she answered. “My black was the last thing I could get from my husband’s cheese-paring family. I couldn’t let it go to waste. Are we ready to depart, then?”
John frowned as if he wanted to say something else, but he merely nodded. He swung open the door and a blast of cold wind curled around her.
“Let us go, then,” he said.
Celia reined in her horse at the crest of the hill to catch her breath after the hard gallop. She tossed a smile over her shoulder at John as he drew up beside her. Her uncertainties of before had been lost in the exhilaration of the ride, the sheer joy of still being alive.
“I do believe I was the victor,” she said.
“So you were,” he answered with a grin. “This time.”
“I will outrun you again, John Brandon. And again and again.”
“I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you, my lady. Perhaps I allowed you to win out of gallantry.”
Celia laughed. “Certainly you did not. The great Sir John, victor in all his endeavours, bested by a woman? You would never want word of that to spread. It would quite ruin your reputation.”
“I don’t see anyone here to witness my loss, do you? I would say my good name at Court is safe.”
Celia glanced around as he gestured with his riding crop at the landscape below. She still smiled as she surveyed the frozen fields, bisected by grey stone walls. It felt good to laugh and tease with John again, to feel at least a bit at ease in his presence.
In the days since they’d left the hunting lodge they had ridden in silence, saying only the little that was necessary as they’d travelled hard over the mostly deserted roads. At night they’d stopped at quiet inns to gulp down a hasty meal and fall into bed—alone. She noticed he always slept at a careful distance from her, close enough to protect her in a strange place, but far enough that there was no contact at all.
He would take her hand to help her from the saddle, would ask her how she fared, make sure she had enough wine or blankets, but that was all.
Celia was happy to be quiet with him, to keep her distance. She thought too much about him as it was. The bare, wintry landscape they passed offered little distraction from memories of what had happened between them in that bed. The feel of his hands on her bare skin, his mouth and tongue on her, his hoarse moans and curses as they rode each other. She saw the look in his eyes as he watched her. It was all still there, vivid and painful—sweet in her mind.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was absently patting his horse’s neck as he surveyed the land around them, a small frown on his lips. He looked as if his own thoughts were a hundred miles away, and against her better judgement she found she desperately wanted to know what they were. What he kept hidden deep inside himself.
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
