The Ghost Read online

  Much like her own mother, Joan thought sadly. But from what Alex said, his parents had had a good marriage.

  “Why?” Alex asked. “You don’t think . . . ?” He glanced down at the couple with mild horror on his face.

  She laughed. “It took me a while to realize my mother had her own life to live, too. But I’m glad she’s happy.”

  He considered her words for a moment. “I suppose Murray is a hell of a lot better than MacRuairi.”

  “Alex!” She swatted at him and scowled. “He’ll hear you, and you promised to try.”

  “I will. But what about him? He stood up in the wedding ceremony—right when the priest called for objections, damn it! Bloody bastard!”

  Joan bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “He didn’t end up saying anything.”

  “Only because you shot him a look of death.”

  She feigned affront. “I did no such thing, and I don’t have a look of death.”

  He shivered, ignoring her protests. “I just hope you never look at me like that.”

  “Try to get along with Lachlan, and you won’t give me a reason.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  She grinned. “Don’t whinge, my love, it isn’t knightly. And besides, my mother will help. She has always liked you.”

  “I would say she had impeccable taste if it wasn’t for . . .” He looked down the table at MacRuairi, who was still shooting daggers at him.

  “Alex!”

  “All right, all right. I made a vow—albeit under duress.”

  She blinked up at him innocently. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Tears and pitiful looks won’t work all the time, sweetheart.”

  She tried not to smile. But they had this time. She knew she had to do something drastic or the two men might have come to blows during her wedding ceremony. Alex had backed off, but only after she’d pleaded—tearfully—with him to not let it ruin their day.

  “The ceremony was beautiful,” she said. Even with Lachlan’s not-so-timely interruption.

  He reached over to sweep a tendril of hair behind her ear, but she knew it was only an excuse to let his fingers brush her cheek. “You are beautiful. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  She blushed at the compliment—and the obvious sincerity with which it had been given. “Well, I suppose I look a good sight better than I did this morning. Thanks to your mother.”

  His face darkened. “God, Joan, I am so sorry. If I hadn’t been so damned stubborn—”

  “It wouldn’t have changed what happened to me. You told me yourself what Margaret said.”

  They’d been watching Joan for a while. In a fit of pique after Alex’s threat to claim her inheritance, Alice had voiced her “suspicions” (which ironically weren’t real suspicions—she had no idea Joan was really the spy) to her husband, who had in turn confided in Despenser. But the moment Sir Adam had accidentally confirmed her identity, Joan’s chance to leave was gone. Nothing Alex could have done could have changed that. Ashamed of her part in Joan’s capture, Alice had told Margaret that Joan had left. Fortunately, Margaret hadn’t believed it. Eventually Margaret had worn Alice down, learned that Joan was in the pit prison, and sent a note to John Ross. But Alice had redeemed herself somewhat. It was she who’d put the note in her brooch, and she who’d kept the soldiers busy under false pretenses and given the keys to Margaret to let Joan’s rescuers in and out.

  “My fate was sealed before you left,” Joan told him. “The only thing that would have changed was that we would still be fighting this war.”

  He shook his head. “Christ, you sound like Raider.”

  She didn’t miss the unconscious use of Boyd’s war name. “He is obviously a very smart man.” Her teasing smile softened. “But none of what happened was your fault, Alex. We both made mistakes. I was stubborn, too. I thought I was too good to get caught.” She smiled. “I also thought one man couldn’t make a difference and change the war. But I was wrong. Very wrong.” She was so incredibly proud of him. “Please, don’t let what happened cast a pall over this day.”

  He nodded, but she knew better than to think it was over. She almost pitied the man who’d done this to her, knowing that Alex would not let it go unanswered.

  She looked down the table of her fellow Guardsmen and suspected he wouldn’t be alone. “I’m glad they stayed,” she said.

  “They did it for you.”

  “I think maybe not just for me?” She’d seen him talking to the others after the ceremony, and it was clear something had changed.

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  A swell of happiness rose inside her. She knew what that shrug meant. If Alex wasn’t back with the Highland Guard now, he would be soon. She had faith in him.

  She didn’t think it was possible to be any happier.

  She was wrong. An embarrassingly few hours later—Alex had utterly ignored their duties as hosts and left the feast well before it was over—she was lying in her husband’s arms more content (and sated) than surely any person had a right to be.

  Although maybe she’d earned it. Maybe all the difficulties, hardships, and disappointments in her life had brought her to this point. Maybe she wouldn’t be experiencing this kind of joy if she hadn’t experienced the alternative.

  Alex caressed the naked skin of her shoulder while pressing his mouth to her hair. “What are you thinking about?”

  She propped up her chin on the back of the hand she had planted on his chest to look up at him. Her golden knight. The man who’d renewed her faith in honorable men. It was a heavy mantle of expectation to wear, but she knew he was up to the task. “You. Me. The future. That I’ve never been so happy in all my life.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?” she repeated, surprised by his tone. “You sound disappointed.”

  He grinned rather devilishly for someone who was supposed to be a paragon of honor. “I was rather hoping you were thinking about ways to make me break more vows. That last one was rather . . . effective.”

  “Well, when I bent down to examine that ‘scratch’ you weren’t going to tell me about”—Lachlan had some explaining to do for that!—“it seemed a good place to start.”

  “Oh, it was. And nearly a good place to end a few minutes later.”

  She grinned. “I guess that means I was doing it right?”

  “Sweetheart, with your mouth on me like that there is nothing you could do that wasn’t right.”

  “That’s good, because I had an idea when you were behind me in the saddle.”

  Alex swore, and she looked up at him and frowned. “What was that for?”

  “For what you are about to do to my stamina. This isn’t going to last long.”

  But he was wrong in that. It would last forever.

  EPILOGUE

  Berwick Castle, Berwick-upon-Tweed, July 17, 1328

  THE SPIDER HAD spun her web.

  Robert the Bruce had lived to see the day that at times—too many times—he feared would never come. Twenty-two years ago, when things had seemed their darkest, he’d learned an important lesson in perseverance from a spider in a cave to never give up. Today that lesson had paid off.

  As Bruce listened to his four-year-old son and heir, David, repeat the vows that would bind him to his seven-year-old bride, Joan of the Tower, Edward II’s youngest daughter, he knew that his long struggle was over. The die that had been cast twenty-three years ago at Lochmaben Castle had finally stopped rolling.

  He’d won. He’d won.

  “We did it, my friend,” he said to himself, thinking of the young churchman who’d met with him that late August day in 1305 to bring him the news of William Wallace’s death. But William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, Bruce’s longtime friend and supporter, wasn’t here to see it. He’d died two months ago—eighteen days before the treaty with England had been signed. The treaty that after nearly three decades of warfare had put in writing what Bruce’s vict