The Ghost

by Monica McCarty

  Making war on women and youths was bad enough, but when Alex guessed that Boyd had taken Rosalin to his bed, the dishonor done to her while in their care had seemed the final blow.

  Alex just couldn’t do it anymore. He could no longer be party to such dishonorable acts done in the name of war.

  Not just Boyd’s, but his own as well.

  Alex couldn’t forget how close he’d come to doing something for which he could never forgive himself—that little girl’s face in the flames was never too far from his mind. He’d reached her in time, thank God, and pulled her from the flames of the building to which he’d set fire in that same retaliatory raid in Norham. But that was the moment he knew something had to change. Holding the sobbing child in his arms whom he’d almost accidentally killed, something in him had snapped.

  This wasn’t right—no matter how just the ends—and he couldn’t do it anymore.

  He couldn’t set fire to one more barn, see one more town razed, or one more innocent harmed. There had to be another way than the “eye for an eye,” “you raze me, I’ll raze you more” mentality that had defined the war in the Borders for so long on both sides.

  In that child’s tear-stained, smoke-blackened face, Alex realized it was never going to end. Not like this. It had become a war of attrition that could and would go on for years, with Alex’s people in the Borders—and little girls like this—the ones who suffered.

  He knew he had to do something. Something drastic. Something that might make a difference. Something that actually had a chance of putting an end to the damned war.

  It had become painfully clear that that something wasn’t going to be fighting for Bruce with the Highland Guard. It wasn’t that Alex had never fully embraced the pirate style of warfare, which went against everything he had been taught was honorable as a knight, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere—not anymore. The skirmishes, ambushes, and raids that had given Bruce a foothold were never going to give him the definitive victory he needed to signal God’s judgment in the righteousness of his cause and force the English to accept him as king. Only a pitched battle—army meeting army—would do that, but Bruce vehemently refused to do something so risky. Why should he, when he could go on as he was until the English gave up?

  If Bruce wouldn’t end the war with a battle—and God knows Alex had tried to persuade him—it would have to be done with a truce. And Bruce wasn’t the one who needed to be convinced to parley. It was the English. The only thing Alex could do was to try to end the war from the other side, using reason, negotiation, compromise, and the influence he’d once had as a former English baron to help them see the value in peace and bring them to the bargaining table.

  It would be a difficult task—hell, a Promethean one—but God knew, it would be better than raids, hostages, and burning barns with innocents.

  When Rosalin decided she wanted to return to England, Alex had “rescued” her—as Boyd had just accused him—by escorting her. Alex didn’t know what Boyd had done to win her back, but it must have convinced her that he’d changed. For Rosalin’s sake, Alex hoped so.

  Unlike Rosalin, however, Alex hadn’t gone back.

  He told himself he was still fighting for Bruce’s place on the throne, but he knew his former brethren wouldn’t see it that way. To them he betrayed them—stabbed them in the back—and his reasons for switching sides wouldn’t matter.

  They wouldn’t care that it was the hardest decision he’d ever had to make in his life. That he’d agonized over it for months. That leaving the Guard had been like cutting off his own arm—with the damage he’d done in removing his tattoo he practically had. That it had torn him apart for weeks . . . months . . . hell, it still tore him apart.

  Now here he was facing not God’s judgment in the righteousness of his cause, but his former brethren’s.

  He was a dead man.

  Ignoring Boyd’s jibe about the knife in the back, he said, “Aye, well, I didn’t think you’d see her in time, and I doubt even someone who blackens their armor would let a little girl get run over if he could stop it.”

  He heard a sharp laugh from the man next to Boyd. “He has you there, Raider,” MacSorley said.

  But any thought that Alex might find sympathy from the always jesting and good-humored seafarer was lost when their eyes met. MacSorley’s face was a mask of betrayal every bit as hard and impenetrable as Boyd’s. They all were: MacLeod, MacSorley, Campbell, MacGregor, Boyd, Sutherland, MacKay, Lamont, MacLean, and one face he didn’t recognize beneath the helm.

  His replacement?

  The sting was surprisingly sharp. Alex could never go back. He’d known that, but seeing it staring at him in the face and condemning him was different. For seven years these men had been his brothers, and now they hated him.

  It was hard to take—no matter how good his reasons for leaving.

  MacSorley’s sarcasm was just as heavy as Boyd’s when he added, “Wearing a wyvern on a surcoat doesn’t give someone a lock on chivalry and honor—even if Sir Alex seemed to think so.”

  Wyvern, not a dragon. That hurt. At one time Alex would have liked nothing more than to hear MacSorley refer to the emblem of his arms correctly. As a young knight the jest about the “dragon” on the Seton coat of arms had driven him crazy. But eventually, it had given him his secret war name among the Guard. By calling it a wyvern now, MacSorley couldn’t have made it more clear that Dragon was no longer a part of them.

  “I never thought that,” Alex started to explain, and then stopped. He’d never been a part of them. That had always been part of the problem. Why would they understand him now when they never had before?

  It was too late for explanations. They all knew that. He would not beg for understanding or forgiveness. He’d made his decision; he would have to live with it.

  Or not live, as was the case.

  Jaw locked, he turned to the chief of the Highland Guard, Tor MacLeod. “Do what you must.”

  MacLeod motioned to Boyd. Fitting, Alex supposed, that it would be his former partner to strike him down. They’d never seen eye to eye. About the war. About the way to fight it. About anything. But instead of pulling his sword from his scabbard, Boyd moved his horse a few feet forward and stopped.

  “Was it worth it?” his former partner asked, his mouth a hard line of bitterness and anger.

  The deceptively simple question took Alex aback. He’d never thought about it—perhaps because he didn’t want to know the answer.

  But he considered it now and answered truthfully. “I don’t know yet.” God willing, he could still do something to put an end to this. He’d made some inroads, but as today’s precipitous attack by Pembroke on Carrick proved, he hadn’t made enough. “But at the time I didn’t feel as if I had any other choice.”

  He’d had to do something. He couldn’t go on as he was, and trying to fight from the other side had seemed the best—the only—way of making a difference. If he never had to see another village razed, another family left to starve, another face in the flames, it would have all been worth it. No matter the personal cost.

  Boyd’s mouth clamped into an even harder line. “Because of Rosalin.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Alex didn’t attempt to answer. Rosalin might have been the final blow, but why he’d left was far more complicated than that.

  Was it because his former partner had violated every code of honor and decency by seducing a woman in their care? Because Boyd had been ready to retaliate for a raid he thought was ordered by Rosalin’s brother by burning down the castle she considered her home? Because Alex was tired of jumping out of trees and hiding in the dark, and wanted to fight knight to knight on a battlefield? Or because being a knight and living by certain codes actually meant something to him?

  Was it because he couldn’t stand the sight of one more injustice done in the name of war—by either side—that he was supposed to ignore as the ends justifying the means? Because he was tired of seeing the people in the Borders�
��his people—suffer for the misfortune of where they lived? Because he’d held a child he’d nearly killed in his arms and felt something inside him break? Because he knew Bruce would not risk the pitched battle that would bring an end to the war when he could wage a war of attrition and prolong that decision indefinitely? Because Alex thought he could do more to help end the war on the other side by trying to make the English see the value of the bargaining table?

  Or maybe he just couldn’t take it anymore—the war, the atrocities, the injustice, the constant disagreements with his partner, the feeling as if he was the lone voice of dissent.

  Yes. That was the simple answer. It was all those things. But Boyd hadn’t wanted to hear it when they were friends—or partners, at least—why would he want to hear it now when they were enemies?

  They’d always had different lines in the sand. Boyd was willing to do whatever it took; Alex wasn’t.

  The two men faced off in the darkness, the tension palpable.

  Why didn’t he just get it over with? Was this part of their torture? Did they want him to beg? He wouldn’t do it, damn it.

  He couldn’t have been more shocked when Boyd moved to the side to let him pass.

  “You are letting me go?” Alex asked.

  “This time,” Boyd said. “Consider it repayment for what you did for my wife. You were right to defend her honor. I was wrong.”

  Alex had thought he couldn’t be more shocked, but Boyd had just proved him wrong.

  It sounded like an apology, and coming from Boyd, that would have been a first. But if Alex might have harbored an instant of wondering whether it might have been an opening, the door was quickly closed.

  “But the next time we meet across the battlefield, Sir Alex, you will not be so lucky.”

  Boyd always did have a way of making his temper flare, and Alex couldn’t resist responding, “Perhaps it is you who will not be so lucky, Sir Robert.”

  After all the shite Boyd had given him about being a knight, Alex still couldn’t believe that his partner had been knighted. No doubt he’d done it to prove something to his wife. But as Alex had been reminded too many times in England, there was more to being a knight than wearing spurs and a surcoat.

  Boyd hadn’t missed the taunt. And the return flare of anger in Boyd’s gaze told Alex that he had not forgotten who won the last time they crossed swords—or in that case, fists.

  “I hope MacGregor can get someone to sell tickets,” MacSorley quipped. “I can’t believe I missed the strongest man in Scotland eating dirt.”

  Alex’s gaze shot to Boyd’s in surprise. He’d told them. Somehow knowing that he’d been hearing MacSorley’s jabs for years felt like some form of recompense.

  Without another word, Alex rode through the gap in the circle. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t look back. That was all too clear.

  He’d thought the day he’d taken a knife to his arm and obliterated the tattoo that marked him as a Guardsman had been the most difficult. He was wrong. Coming face-to-face with his former friends, and seeing the way they looked at him . . . that had been far worse. They might not have killed him, but it felt as if eighteen knives had eviscerated him all the same. He knew how badly he’d betrayed them, but it wasn’t until that moment that he’d really felt it.

  He still couldn’t believe they’d let him go. He’d half-expected MacRuairi to slip a dagger in his back as he rode by—

  He stopped, all of a sudden realizing what he’d missed . . . and the significance: MacRuairi hadn’t been there, and Alex knew all too well what that might mean.

  Already riding hard for the castle, he quickened his pace.

  The rest of the army was still straggling in as he came storming through the gate. After finding his men, he told them what he wanted them to do. He didn’t identify MacRuairi by name, just that he thought one of Bruce’s men might be in the castle. They were to tell him—and only him—if they saw anything suspicious, but not to approach. Fortunately, Alex was familiar with Carlisle—and MacRuairi’s methods—and knew the likely places to look. But if the famed brigand had been here, he wasn’t any longer.

  Still, Alex knew MacRuairi’s absence couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Maybe Pembroke had learned a little humility from his defeat earlier, because when Alex told him his concerns, he not only listened, he took them to the keeper of the castle, Sir Henry de Beaumont. Security was tightened, the guard was increased, and when the attack came later that night, they were ready.

  Edward Bruce’s attempt to take the castle had failed. Though she’d been alerted to the attack by the noise with the rest of the castle, Joan had waited not so patiently all morning to hear the details. It wasn’t until she was helping her cousin ready for the midday meal that Alice volunteered what she knew. By that point, Joan had been perilously close to breaking her rule not to ask her cousin direct questions. Though Alice was too spoiled and self-centered to focus her attention long enough on her “unfortunate” cousin to become suspicious, Joan didn’t want to take chances.

  “One of the Earl of Pembroke’s men suspected what was happening with raiders in the area and foiled the rebel trickery when they attempted a diversion at the gate,” Alice said proudly. “It was fortunate that the earl arrived when he did.”

  “Very fortunate,” Joan agreed, hiding her anger behind a facade of polite interest. It wasn’t just the missed opportunity to take the castle that infuriated her, it was also Pembroke’s arrival. She should have known he was coming. How could she have not heard that one of Edward’s most important commanders in the north, accompanied by at least two hundred men, was headed to Carlisle?

  This was exactly the type of information Bruce was counting on her to uncover. That she hadn’t—and Edward Bruce’s men had been surprised—could well have been a disaster. Had Randolph not arrived when he did, the king’s last remaining brother might have been taken or killed, and Joan would have considered herself responsible.

  This was the first time she hadn’t learned of something this important beforehand. Were the English keeping Pembroke’s arrival a secret for a specific reason, or were they just being more careful with information?

  Neither was a promising development.

  Joan knew that the English were determined to uncover the well-placed spy who was feeding information to the Scots, but as women were beneath their scrutiny, she’d never felt the threat of suspicion—which didn’t mean she wasn’t careful. She always took care not to appear too interested in the war or politics, not to ask too many questions, and not to show any loyalty to the land of her birth. She tried to appear just as “English” as her cousin—although Alice’s blood was every bit as Scottish as hers. You would never know it by looking at her or listening to her. Alice had fully embraced her adopted homeland and regarded Scotland as a rough “backward” place filled with “rebels” who must be conquered and civilized.

  Alice shivered. “Can you imagine what might have happened if their plan had succeeded? We could be some barbarian’s hostage right now.” She gasped as if something had just occurred to her. “Do you think they would have ravished us?”

  Good Lord, she sounded almost excited by the prospect. There was nothing romantic or exciting about having a man force you—nothing. But her beautiful cousin liked to be the object of male desire and thought their lust flattering. Joan knew differently.

  Though a few years older than her twenty, Alice seemed far less mature. Joan had always been older than her years, and with everything that had happened since her mother was imprisoned, it sometimes felt as if she were Alice’s mother rather than a young woman near her own age.

  Though Joan wanted nothing more than to shake some sense into that silly head, she pretended to take the question seriously. “I suspect they might have. We are fortunate indeed that Sir Aymer’s man figured out their plan. Who was he? Perhaps we should thank him for saving us.”

  Her tone must have been more curious than she intended. Her cousin’s g
aze seemed to narrow just a little. “I don’t know. My husband didn’t say. But I don’t think that will be necessary. Besides, I doubt Sir Richard would like it. He watches you like a hungry hawk.” She frowned disapprovingly. “You need to be more circumspect, cousin. People are starting to talk, and it reflects poorly on Henry and me.”

  Joan tried not to choke on her tongue. Good Lord, that was the guilty cast as the accuser. Alice’s rampant promiscuity was equaled only by her husband’s, although Alice was fiercely jealous, whereas Sir Henry couldn’t have cared less with whom his wife shared her bed—much to Alice’s irritation. Her cousin seemed to equate jealousy and possessiveness with love. Joan had seen the fallacy of that with her parents.

  Joan lowered her eyes as if embarrassed. “Sir Richard is leaving soon.”

  “Good,” Alice said, standing from the chair she’d been seated at while Joan helped her with her jewelry. “I do not begrudge you your flirtations, cousin, but I do not like to hear you the subject of unflattering rumors.”

  In other words, she didn’t like Joan being the focus of attention—even negative attention. That Joan had always been content to be in her cousin’s shadow was the only reason Alice had taken her as a companion and tiring woman. Joan had never made herself a threat and needed to keep it that way. Fortunately, although Joan’s looks appeared to resonate with the men, her cousin didn’t view her as competition. With her dainty, well-curved figure, blond hair, blue eyes, and perfect doll-like features, Alice de Beaumont was a strikingly beautiful woman.

  With a properly chastised nod that showed her gratitude for her cousin’s benevolence, Joan followed her cousin to the Hall.

  But the foiled attack, her ignorance of Pembroke’s arrival, and Sir Richard’s upcoming departure combined to make Joan realize that she was going to need to increase her efforts. She would not be caught in the dark again. If she was going to continue to be useful to Bruce, she had to take risks. Sir Richard had information, and she was going to get it. Even if she didn’t like how she would have to do so.