“Alex, did you hear what I said? I can’t—I won’t—marry you.”
His jaw clamped down with enough force to tell her that he was losing the battle on control. “You are angry right now—we are both angry. There is no need to make any rash decisions. Go to my castle at Winton, and when I return—”
“I’m not going to Winton, Alex.”
“You can’t stay here.”
She didn’t say anything, but he guessed her intent.
He grabbed hold of her and pulled her up against him. “I’m not going to just let you go.”
Her eyes searched his face, memorizing every detail as if it might be the last. “Then come with me,” she said softly.
He let her go and stepped back as if afraid to touch her. “I told you, no.”
She sucked in a breath that felt like inhaling through shards of glass. “Then I’m afraid we are at an impasse.”
Apparently, Alex wasn’t much on impasses. He looked every inch the dangerous brigand when he leaned in threateningly. “I could force you to wait for me. Perhaps I should leave you tied up in my bed where you can’t get into any trouble.”
There was something in his voice that sent a shiver down her spine. She wasn’t quite sure whether it was trepidation or something else. “That doesn’t sound very honorable of you, Sir Alex.”
He swore and took another step back, some of the fierceness leaving his expression.
“You could always turn me in,” she offered. “That should salve your knightly code.”
She’d pricked his temper again. “Don’t bloody tempt me,” he bit out angrily.
They stared at each other in the darkness for a few long heartbeats, the dark, dangerous emotions swirling around them both. But there was also longing and heartbreak, the understanding that the dream—the fantasy—was over.
“So that’s it, then?” she asked, almost in disbelief.
Blue eyes bit into hers unrelentingly. “It is not me who wants this, it’s you.”
“It is the last thing I want, Alex. But what other choice is there? I cannot stay here and you will not come with me.”
“As you said, an impasse.”
He looked so remote. So angry. Her heart squeezed with such longing, it stole her breath. Why couldn’t she have stayed as she was—a ghost, there but not there, unable to touch or be touched, incapable of feeling? Then maybe it wouldn’t have to hurt so badly.
Slowly, she pulled his ring off her finger. Holding it out to him, she said, “This never belonged to me.”
He flinched, looking at the gold band as if it was going to bite him. Finally, after a long, heart-wrenching pause, he took it.
She reached for him, letting herself touch him one more time. “I’m sorry, Alex. Truly. I never meant . . .”
He just stared at her accusingly, his eyes as hard and unyielding as sapphire, until she dropped her hand. Feeling as if each step she was taking was through a deep bog, she walked slowly back to her room.
He didn’t try to stop her.
Alex left at dawn. With tired, red-rimmed eyes, Joan watched from the tower window in Alice’s chamber as he rode out the gate of Berwick Castle at the head of the Earl of Pembroke’s two hundred knights and men-at-arms.
She waited anxiously for a sign. A look. A glance. Any slight turn of the head in her direction that would indicate a chip or crack—no matter how small—in his resolve.
Look up . . . please don’t do this . . . please don’t go.
But her silent pleas could not penetrate the stone walls of the castle or those that surrounded his heart.
His head remained fixed straight ahead. Not once did he look back.
Joan’s heart felt as if it were being squeezed between a grinding stone, but there was still a part of her that refused to believe he would actually go through with it. He couldn’t march on Scotland and fight against the men he’d once stood beside.
He can’t just walk away from me.
It was wrong, and Alex would see that. She had faith in him. He was hurt and angry at her for her deception—as he had every right to be. He was thinking with his pride. But once he had a chance to calm down and think, he would do the right thing.
But he’d walked away on principle before. To him there was only right and wrong, and what she’d done was . . . wrong.
Oh God. Her heart sank. He had to forgive her. She couldn’t bear to consider the possibility that she might never see him again.
His friends needed him. She needed him. He was the only one who never saw it. Alex was their check, their conscience, their moral center. He reminded them of what was right and what was wrong, even when they didn’t want to see it.
He’d reminded her.
She used to know what was right, but men like her father and Sir Phillip made her forget. Just because others were without honor it was no excuse to forget her own. If she hadn’t gone too far already, that was the direction she was headed. But Alex had brought her back from a jaded abyss, restoring her faith in good, honorable men. A good, honorable man in war? Who didn’t need that? She wished someone like Alex had been there to speak for her mother.
“What are you looking at?”
Joan turned in the direction of the door that she had not heard open. “Alice!” she said, surprised. “You are back early.”
“You’ve been crying,” her cousin said, walking toward her. “What is wrong?”
Joan might ask her the same thing. Alice looked as if she’d had as little sleep as Joan. There were dark circles under her eyes and her normally creamy complexion was pale and wan. Sir Henry must have gotten back late from his “meeting” to try to catch the spy.
Instinct had served Joan well last night, but she knew she could not wait for Lachlan any longer. She would leave tonight.
“Alex left this morning,” Joan answered. “He rode out with Pembroke ahead of the army.”
“And you are worried for him?”
Joan felt a hitch in her chest. “Aye.”
Alice stared at her with unusual perceptiveness. “But that isn’t all, is it?”
Joan shook her head, her eyes suddenly swelling with tears. She’d been fighting so hard to control her emotions, but sympathy from an unexpected source caused the dam to break. All the emotion and all the fear that she’d been holding back came rushing out. She crumpled into a ball of tears. “I-it’s over,” she choked. “I think it’s over.”
Alice came forward to stand next to her, and seemingly unsure what to do, put a tentative hand on her shoulder. “What do you mean it’s over?”
Joan looked up at her, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I mean us—the betrothal.”
Any chance she’d had at happiness. When that had become something she wanted she didn’t know, but it had.
Alice looked shocked—but something else as well. Her paleness had turned ashen—almost as if she were ill. “It can’t be over,” she said. “Why? What happened?”
Joan didn’t understand her cousin’s earnestness but was too upset to think about it. “We had an argument.”
“But that can’t be the end. He was so fierce in his defense of you—he cares for you deeply.”
“I betrayed him horribly.”
Strangely, her cousin didn’t seem curious about the nature of her betrayal. “Surely there is something you can do? You have to go.”
“Go?”
“After him,” Alice explained anxiously. She seemed so jittery, and her hands were flying all over the place. “Explain everything. I’m sure he’ll forgive you. You should go as soon as possible—immediately.”
Joan managed a tremulous smile, appreciating her cousin’s urgency on her behalf. “He’s going to Wark, Alice, to march off to war. He’s angry enough. He’d be furious if I showed up in camp.”
“But don’t you see? You have to go now. Otherwise it could be too late. What if . . .” She thought for a moment. “What if something happens to him? You can’t let him march off to war with it lik
e this between you. Do you want his last thoughts of you to be in anger or in love?”
Joan looked at her in horror and wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Oh God.”
“I don’t mean to cause you more distress, cousin, but you must think of all possibilities. I don’t want you to regret not doing something. Go to him. Say whatever you need to convince him to take you back—to take you away from here. Just go now.”
Alice had almost convinced her that it was worth the try. Joan loved him. Could she just let him go without a fight?
Since the day her father had dragged her to see her mother hanging in that hideous cage, Joan had dedicated her life to one thing: doing whatever it took to help Bruce’s cause. Could she do anything less for her own?
She was going to fight for Alex. Even if she had to pound it into that thick male head of his, she wasn’t going to give up. Alex belonged with Bruce—and with her.
“I will help you,” Alice volunteered. She started toward Joan’s chamber.
Joan startled from her thoughts. Alice, help me? Suddenly she was taking notice of her cousin’s strange behavior. Why was Alice so anxious for her to leave? It was almost as if . . .
She knew something.
“Alice, what is going on? Why are you trying to help me win back Alex when I know you weren’t happy about our marriage in the first place?”
“I made a mistake, Joan. I didn’t realize. I thought . . .” She started to cry. “I’m sorry.”
Her cousin’s words didn’t make any sense. Suddenly, the door opened. Sir Henry stood there, a handful of soldiers behind him. He looked with disgust at his wife, as if he knew what she’d been trying to do. Turning to Joan he smiled. “You weren’t going somewhere, were you, cousin? You wouldn’t want to forget this.”
Joan masked the horror from her expression, but she could not prevent the dread that sent her heart crashing to the floor. In his hand he held a thick circle of gold that was painfully familiar to her.
Sir Henry had her bracelet.
23
BY THE TIME the army left Wark on Monday the seventeenth day of June and crossed the Tweed into Scotland, traveling the first fifteen miles to camp for the night in Earlston, most of Alex’s anger toward Joan for deceiving him had faded. He hated that she was involved in any of this, but he understood why she thought she couldn’t tell him the truth.
After another fifteen miles on Tuesday to Sutra in the heat and sun, while riding ahead of the enormous, excruciatingly slow, and drawn-out supply train to sweep the countryside for an enemy that did not appear to be waiting for them, he was regretting his harshly spoken words and replaying every facet of their conversation in his head. Over and over.
By Wednesday—and another fifteen miles to Edinburgh, where they were forced to wait two days for the infantry and supply train to catch up with them, necessitating a twenty-three-mile journey on Saturday all the way to Falkirk or risk not meeting the Monday deadline to come within three leagues of Stirling to relieve the castle by St. John’s Day—he was wondering how the hell he was going to get her back. He might have to track her down, but he would find her, damn it. Somehow they would bridge the impasse.
After the last ten miles to Falkirk, his disgust and frustration at what had to be the worst-run military campaign in history—replete with not only an infantry at least a half-day’s journey from the vanguard and squabbling commanders, but a king who refused to heed any caution or consider anything but utter victory over a clearly “inferior” foe—Alex wasn’t just wondering how to get her back, he was also wondering, for God knows how many times, what the hell he was doing here.
But it wasn’t until the evening of Sunday the twenty-third of June, after a disastrous first day of battle, when Alex stood in the crowded Royal Pavilion, which had hastily been set up in the middle of the boggy Carse of Balquhiderock just north of the Bannock Burn—within the required three leagues of Stirling—listening to the king and his commanders squabble, that Alex knew Joan had been right: he didn’t belong here anymore—if he ever had.
Whether he’d thought he was doing the right thing two years ago no longer mattered. It had become painfully clear that it wasn’t right any longer. Even before Joan’s urging him to change sides, Alex had had second . . . third . . . God-knows-how-many thoughts. The early inroads he thought he’d been making with the English had been replaced by doubt and frustration. From the foolhardy attack on the Earl of Carrick, to them thinking he was the spy and shutting him out of meetings, to Despenser’s petty machinations, to the English attack on his people near Hailes, the realization that his efforts were futile had been building for some time.
But he’d ignored all the gut twists and all the twinges. His rigidity and refusal to see anything other than black and white had prevented him from admitting that even if well intentioned, he might have made a mistake. As MacRuairi had accused him, Alex had tried to make it too simple. But since leaving the Guard, he’d changed. Age and experience had showed him that the world was more gray than he’d realized—especially in war. It wasn’t always clear what was right and what was wrong. It wasn’t always simple.
After what happened with Gifford—experiencing the kind of desire and hatred that might make a man forget his honor—Alex also had to acknowledge that his line in the sand might be more movable than he’d first thought. But he’d always had one—whether he wore shiny mail and a tabard or a blackened helm and a plaid.
Joan had accused him of giving up on his former brethren, and maybe he had. Maybe he should have stayed and fought harder. Maybe he should have banged his head until they listened to him.
But it was too late to go back and do it over. The question was what he was going to do about it now.
The events of the day had made it clear he had to do something.
Since leaving Falkirk that morning, Alex had been marching with the center or main body of the army, which was under the command of King Edward. But he’d ridden ahead to give information to the vanguard—under the disastrous joint command of the young Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, the king’s favored nephew, and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the Constable of England and rightful commander—just in time to see one of the greatest (or most rash, depending on your perspective) displays of chivalric warfare by a king that he could ever recall.
Sir Henry de Bohun, the young nephew of Hereford, had caught sight of some of Bruce’s men coming out of the New Park on the main road, where Bruce had positioned his men to block the English approach to Stirling. Realizing that one of the men was Bruce himself, de Bohun—no doubt thinking of the glory that would be his if he brought down the king in single combat—raced his destrier forward, lance in hand, intent on ending the war with one dramatic strike.
Rather than retreat into the forest of the New Park to avoid the charging knight, or leave his men to dispense with the attack as he should have, Bruce not only accepted the challenge, he skillfully maneuvered his palfrey at the last minute to avoid the lance, and then stood up in his stirrups to deliver a powerful blow with his axe into the helm of de Bohun that had not just cleaved through metal into the skull of the young knight, killing him, but had also broken the handle of the king’s battle-axe.
This was a king to fight for. It was just the kind of extraordinary feat of warfare that had made Bruce an almost mythical figure to his men. The Bruce had more chivalry in his little finger than Edward would have in a lifetime. No doubt MacLeod and some of the other captains were reprimanding him for taking foolish, unnecessary risks—the entire Scottish cause might have died on the end of one lance wielded by a rash young knight—but the story would inevitably add to Bruce’s popularity and his growing legend.
Some might also say that this one decisive single combat was a harbinger of things to come.
The spurious charge by de Bohun provoked an attack by the English cavalry on the Scot position before the New Park that was haphazard, ill-conceived, poorly executed, and ultimately repulsed by
the Scot schiltron formations of pikemen. Alex had taken one look at his former compatriots across the battlefield and knew Joan and Boyd were right. There wasn’t a middle ground. He had to choose, and he’d chosen the wrong side.
Hereford had tried to pull the men back into some semblance of order, but with no clear command it had been an exercise in futility. The English had been forced to retreat, giving Bruce if not his first victory, his first nondefeat of the battle.
The second had come slightly to the east of the New Park, where Clifford and de Beaumont, also in advance, had led a force of eight hundred cavalry on a quest to find an alternative route to Stirling through the boggy, inhospitable carse. They’d nearly surprised Thomas Randolph, the Earl of Moray, who with his men was positioned near St. Ninian’s and was supposed to be guarding the flank for Bruce. Moray recovered in time, and after a hard-fought battle, his schiltrons of infantrymen, too, forced the English into their second retreat of the day.
King Edward had arrived at the Bannock Burn to the shocking news that not only had the vanguard of vaunted English cavalry engaged the enemy twice—without his knowledge—but both times they’d been repulsed by Bruce’s infantry pikemen. The flower of English chivalry defeated by farmers! It was inconceivable! Humiliating! At least it was to Edward. The armies weren’t that unbalanced, of course—Bruce’s men were skilled warriors—but to say that the mood among the English was disheartened was putting it mildly.
A situation that grew worse when the English were forced to set up camp for the night on the boggy, damp carse of mud, streams, and peaty “pols” of water, as the Scots called them. Most of the carts and infantry had to stay on the other side of the Bannock Burn, unable to cross, despite the doors and shutters that had been ripped down from houses to give them traction and make the ground more solid. There was plenty of water to water the horses, but moving them about in this type of terrain was slow and difficult.
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