Somehow she would find a way to break the betrothal—even if she feared that by then she might not want to.
Her fears were not unwarranted. No sooner had Joan and her cousins descended the stairs to join the other women in the courtyard than Alex appeared by her side.
“I’ve been conscripted as an escort,” he said, by way of answer to her unspoken question.
Joan lifted a brow. “Why do I think you were not averse to the duty?”
“Aye, it’s a nice break from the preparations of war.”
“Is that all?”
“There might have been another reason or two.”
She frowned. “Two?”
He quirked a decidedly devilish smile that made his already too-handsome face even more devastating and landed with a thump somewhere in the region above her ribs.
Dear God, would she ever grow used to how handsome he was?
He can be yours . . .
No, he can’t. She had to force herself to quiet the voice of temptation. But every minute she spent with him, it grew louder.
He was everything she’d once imagined a knight could be: courteous, gallant, charming, and attentive. He made her laugh, made her feel like she was the most important person in the world, and seemed to anticipate her wishes even before she thought them. When one of the “ladies” in the queen’s party tried to flirt with him—not seeming to care that Joan was right there—he gently but firmly cut her off. He only had eyes for one woman, and he made sure everyone knew it.
It was like a dream. She might as well have fallen back in time into the pages of her favorite stories: the fair maid being wooed by the gallant knight. He seemed to have forgotten her reputation, and she forgot the disappointment and cynicism that had helped construct it.
Maybe if she could have kept it at that it would have been easier to dismiss, but Alex was intent on drawing her in deeper and deeper with questions and conversations that made her realize he really wanted to know her. The real her. The person she hadn’t been for a very long time.
The royal party had ridden for a few miles before stopping in a wide swath of moorland. As Joan had never had much interest in hawking—not only was it an extremely expensive sport, but frankly birds of prey terrified her—she had joined a few of the other ladies on an old stone wall to watch. After attending to his duties, Alex had ambled over to take a seat beside her. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused when the two ladies she’d been sitting with moved to give them some privacy.
It didn’t take long for their light conversation to take a more serious turn. “I saw you once,” Alex admitted. “A long time ago.”
Joan was so shocked that he mentioned it that at first she didn’t know what to say. She looked around to make sure no one was near and knew that she had to tread very carefully. “I thought I might have seen you once before as well.”
He was clearly surprised. “You did?”
She nodded.
“At Roxburgh?” he asked.
She nodded again. “About the time of my cousin’s wedding.” She paused, debating how much more to say. “I believe you were with my mother.”
He held her gaze with an intensity that made her want to turn away. Keeping her thoughts hidden from him was getting harder and harder.
“Aye, she was not very happy that I noticed you. You were far too young. Christ, you still are,” he said half to himself.
“I haven’t been young for a very long time. Having my mother imprisoned in a cage and knowing my father was one of the people responsible for her being put there, as well as being disinherited and branded a bastard, tends to make one grow up fast.” Not to mention having her innocence taken from her by force at fifteen.
Though she’d said it lightly, maybe he heard more bitterness than she intended.
“Aye, I can see that,” he said slowly. “Why did you stay? You might have returned to Scotland after your mother was released.”
She shook her head firmly; this was very dangerous ground. “Why would I? My life has been in England for the past eight years. My family is here.”
“Your Comyn family, perhaps, but what about your mother, brothers, and sister?”
The question pierced too deeply, touching on nerves that were more raw than she wanted them to be. She kept her voice as even and nonchalant as she could. “I barely remember my mother, and my brothers and sister I have never met.”
“I have,” he said. “Your sister resembles you.”
“She does?” Lachlan had never said anything, probably guessing that the subject cut deeper than she wanted to admit. “People have always said I look like my father.”
“You do, but there is more of your mother in you than I realized. Christina had just started to walk when I saw her last. She has blond hair like your mother, but there is something in the eyes, nose, and chin.”
He studied her face until she grew self-conscious, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What about Erik?” Robbie had been born after Alex left.
“He has your color eyes and hair, but he looks just like his father.”
There was an edge to his voice she couldn’t ignore. “You don’t like my mother’s husband?” She proceeded slowly. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; Lachlan MacRuairi does not have the best reputation.”
Alex gave a sharp laugh. “That is putting it rather mildly—and most of it is true. He’s more brigand than knight, and as mean as a snake.”
Viper. Lachlan’s war name.
“And yet,” Alex continued with a shrug. “Your mother saw something in him.”
“And you did as well?”
He gave her another shrug. “Maybe at times. It was complicated.”
Joan suspected that was the biggest understatement of the day. Not for the first time she wondered what had happened to make him leave.
They were quiet for a while, watching the hawks dive and soar, from their seat on the old wall. She might not like the birds up close, but they were absolutely beautiful to watch. “Why did you not say anything about seeing me at Roxburgh before?” Alex asked.
She could ask him the same. “I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to make things any more difficult for you.”
He gave her a wry smile. “So I see you’ve heard that my loyalties are currently suspect?”
“My cousin mentioned something about your helping to uncover the spy to clear you from suspicion.”
He shook his head, not without some disgust. “It’s bloody ironic, isn’t it? I turned traitor to one side only to be thought a traitor by the other. Everywhere I go, it’s suspicion.”
She’d never thought about it that way, but as a baron with lands on both sides of the border he didn’t really have a side—he was caught in the middle. Was that it? She couldn’t hold back the questions any longer, though part of her feared the answer. Alex’s betrayal of Bruce and the Guard was the only thing keeping her heart at bay. It was easier not to know—it kept a wall between them. And yet she could no longer stop herself from asking, “Why did you do it, Alex? What made you decide to leave the Scots to fight for the English?”
There was an almost imperceptible stiffening of his shoulders. “There are many people who have changed allegiance throughout this war. It is hardly unusual.”
He was avoiding the question. “But those men aren’t you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You live and breathe honor and integrity.”
He smiled, his teeth a white flash against his already sun-darkened skin. “You make me sound like some kind of paragon, which I assure you I am not.”
“Maybe so, but those things are important to you.”
He gave her a wry smile. “And a man who betrays his compatriots cannot be honorable and have integrity, is that it?” She didn’t say anything. “Yet that is why I left.”
It was clear she didn’t understand, and he seemed to be weighing whether to say more. Perhaps her patience and silence helped to convince h
im. “Do you know how to swim?”
The question caught her off guard. She blinked and nodded.
“I almost drowned once. I was swimming in the Western Isles during a bad storm. I remember struggling against the current and trying to fight my way out of it. But no matter what I did, no matter how hard I swam, I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I was so tired and cold, sapped of all my energy. The water was pulling me under, and I knew I was drowning.”
She looked at him in horror.
“That’s how I felt when I left,” he said. “Like I was swimming against a current that was dragging me under, and I had to get out before I was pulled under.”
From the tortured look on his face she knew there was more. “Why, Alex? Why did you feel like that? What happened?”
“There were things . . .” His voice trailed off. “Things done in the name of war that I did not agree with.”
Joan could guess what he meant. She had to remind herself that no matter what she thought—or that it was necessary to have a chance against a much more powerful foe—the rest of Christendom saw Bruce as fighting an unchivalrous war. To a knight like Alex—a knight who obviously took the code of chivalry very seriously—the “pirate” warfare that Bruce had adopted would have seemed antithetical to everything he’d been taught to believe was “right” and “honorable.” It wasn’t nearly that black and white, of course, but Alex didn’t exactly see a lot of gray, and the new style of warfare must have been hard to accept and a difficult adjustment for him. “You can’t shoulder the conscience of everyone else, Alex, only yourself. Are the English so much better?”
Though she hadn’t said it sarcastically, his mouth quirked as if she had. “Maybe not, but I wasn’t shouldering other people’s consciences, it was mine I was worried about. I came very close to doing something for which I would never have been able to forgive myself.” She could hear the self-disgust and latent bitterness in his voice. “We were raiding Norham. I didn’t want to be there. I was already fed up with all the back-and-forth raids that were destroying the Borders. But Clifford had raided our town so we had to raid his. I was in charge of removing the livestock from the barns and then setting fire to the buildings. It was maybe the second or third building that I’d set my torch to when I looked up at an open loft door and saw a face in the flames. It was a little girl—no more than six or seven.”
Joan gasped in horror and instinctively put her hand on his arm.
He gave her a wry grimace. “The flames were licking at her skirts when I reached her. She was black with smoke and terrified, but otherwise unhurt.” He gave a harsh laugh. “She’d been playing with a kitten in the loft where she wasn’t supposed to be and thought the men were her father’s. But that was when I knew I couldn’t go on doing what I was doing. I had to do something different. Something that would put an end to the raiding, to the suffering, and to the pain experienced by the innocents who were bearing the brunt of the war.”
Her hand squeezed. “Oh, Alex. I’m sorry. But why fight for the English? The same thing could have happened had you been with them. The Scots aren’t the only ones who burn down barns.”
“Aye,” he admitted bitterly. “There is plenty of dishonor to go around. But I didn’t see how I could put an end to all of it by doing what I was doing. Breaking my vow to Bruce and to the—” He stopped, but she knew what he’d been about to say. To the Guard. “To his men,” he corrected, “was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t see any other way out.” He gave a halfhearted shrug. “I’m sure some of them were glad to see me go. I never really fit in.”
How could he say that? Did he not realize how much his leaving had devastated the others? But she wasn’t supposed to know that. Instead she asked, “Why?”
He thought for a moment. “The men I was fighting with had a different line in the sand. They were willing to do whatever it took to win; I was not. I wanted to win, but not at the expense of being able to look myself in the mirror when it was all over. And secret warfare, lying in wait, hiding in fox holes, and subterfuge didn’t feel much like winning to me. They may have given Bruce a foothold, but it became clear to me that pirate warfare wasn’t going to win the war. The only way for Bruce to do that was to take the field. Which was something he refused to do. Why would he when he could go on forever as he was? Forever wasn’t something I could accept. I couldn’t watch my people suffer for it any longer.” He shrugged again, almost as if he were embarrassed. “I saw two choices: I could stay fighting with Bruce doing the same thing for years and hope that there was a Borders left when it was finally all over, or I could go somewhere where I could actually do something that might end it. I thought that by coming here I could do some good.” His mouth curved. “Apparently, I overestimated my powers of persuasion.”
Joan was quiet for a moment, keenly aware of her own “subterfuge” and role as a spy. “What did you hope to accomplish?”
“I thought I might be able to get Edward to see the value in negotiation—that much could be gained from recognizing Bruce as king. But I underestimated how much of his father he has in him,” Alex admitted. “Perhaps it was naive to think one person could do anything.”
Strangely, Joan understood. It fit with the old-time knight in shining armor. Alex expected the rest of the world to act and think like him. To be reasonable. To have the same honor and principles. But he was bound to be disappointed. Idealism had no place in war. “War isn’t knights riding in tournaments, it’s dirty and unpleasant. You have to fight with the weapons you have, even if it sometimes makes you uncomfortable.” It sounded as if she was trying to defend her own actions. “And it isn’t just the Scots who fight dirty,” she pointed out. “The justice Edward dispensed to my mother was a far cry from honorable or chivalrous.”
From the way his mouth set in a hard line, she could tell he didn’t want to hear what she was saying. “I know that. Believe me, I heard as much from my old partner—over and over.” He was referring to Boyd, and she could hear the deep-seated frustration and anger in his voice. “But there is no perfect answer. I had to do something—something that might have a chance of making a difference—and I did what I thought was right at the time.”
At the time. Perhaps she was reading too much into the words—grasping at any thread to hold on to—but still it gave her hope where there had been none. “Do you ever regret it?”
He was so quiet at first she thought he hadn’t heard her. But when he looked over at her, the bleakness in his eyes betrayed him. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever done. Breaking my vow to the king, who was like a brother to mine, betraying men whom I’d fought with like brothers for almost seven years—” He stopped. The rawness of his voice left her with no doubt that even now he felt the weight of that decision. “But at the time I made the only decision I could. God knows, I wasn’t doing any good there; I thought I might be able to do more from the other side.”
Beneath the emotion, she heard the frustration. “And have you?”
His smile was almost pained. “Like I said, I may have overestimated my ability to persuade and Edward’s ability to listen to reason. But I haven’t given up. Besides, regret would serve no purpose. I can never go back.”
But what if he could? What if she could persuade him to turn once more? It could be an answer to her problems. But she did not delude herself: it wasn’t going to be easy. She didn’t just have to convince Alex, she also had to convince her brethren.
“You are certain of that?” Joan said.
“I am,” Alex said. It was the one thing he was sure about.
Why was she asking him all these questions? Christ, this was the last thing Alex wanted to talk about. Not only did it border on treason, but what good would it do to tear himself up all over again? He’d known when he’d ridden away two years ago that there would be no going back—and seeing his former Highland Guard brethren again had solidified it. But he sounded defensive and knew it. How could he
make her understand when he wasn’t sure he understood himself anymore?
Her eyes were big, wide, and impossibly blue as she stared up at him. “And if the end of the war means Bruce’s defeat? That doesn’t matter to you? Did your differences with how the war was being fought make you lose your faith in Bruce as king?”
He eyed her sharply. It was a strange thing to ask coming from someone loyal to the English. And it was the one question he didn’t want to—couldn’t—answer. It did matter to him. More than he wanted to admit. He’d never stop believing in Bruce as a man or as king. But the cost had seemed too high. The way Bruce was fighting the war could go on forever—and that he couldn’t accept.
“I lost faith that Bruce would ever take the field to lose or win, and the alternative was famine, burned-out villages, stolen cattle and grain, misery for the people who count on me to protect them, and little girls playing with kittens in a barn who get caught in the flames.” He stood up and held out his hand. “We should go.”
She looked over to where the queen and the rest of the entourage were readying to leave, as surprised as he that the hunt had finished already. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” he said, cutting her off. “It serves no purpose and could be misunderstood if overheard.” He gave her a long look. “Why are you so interested? I thought you were content in England.”
“I am,” she said quickly. A light pink flush filled her cheeks. “I am curious, that’s all. I want to know more about you. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset.” But he was—more than he wanted to admit. Her questions had struck old wounds that were more raw than he realized. He suspected they might never fully heal. “It’s just . . .” How could he explain?
“Complicated?” she finished for him.
He smiled. “Aye, complicated.”
They joined the others and the opportunity for more private conversation was lost. He was surprised by how easy it was to talk to her—maybe too easy. The only time he’d talked about his reasons for leaving—very briefly—was with Rosalin as he escorted her back to her brother two years ago and submitted to the English. But still, something troubled him. He didn’t know whether it was the subject of Joan’s questions—rousing things he would rather not think about—or the fact that she was asking them.
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