Alex gritted his teeth until his jaw hurt. After years of being a soldier, he knew how to follow orders, but that didn’t mean he had to like them. Any more than he liked being rejected out of hand—with barely a pause of consideration, damn it—by the woman he shouldn’t want but did.

So much for not thinking about her.

He’d been almost as surprised by his declaration as she’d been. But he’d known as soon as he said the words that he meant it. She might not be the woman he’d pictured, and God knows it was horrible timing with him riding off to war in a couple of weeks, but nothing had ever felt more right.

Except that she’d refused him. Which didn’t make any sense. He knew she felt something for him, so why was she so determined to have nothing to do with him? He might have pressed her, but when she’d compared what was between them to her past experiences, he’d felt something hot, angry, and primitive burgeoning inside him. Knowing how close he was to acting like the barbarian she seemed to turn him into, he forced himself to walk away. The lass could strip away years of deeply engrained chivalry and honor with a few choice words. But if she thought this—whatever the hell this was—wasn’t unusual and was anything like whatever fleeting fancies she’d had before, she was out of her damned mind. And he intended to prove it to her. If she thought he would give up, she was soon to be disappointed.

But maybe not as soon as he’d like with his shite job Pembroke was trying to foist off on him.

“Do you have a problem with that, Seton?” Pembroke asked.

Knowing how to follow orders also didn’t mean Alex did so in silence. God knows he’d questioned half of Boyd’s orders whenever his partner had been put in charge of a mission. But Alex wouldn’t keep his mouth shut when he didn’t agree with something. Pembroke, it seemed, didn’t like it any better than Boyd had.

“Aye. The loading of the ships can be overseen by the captain and his men.” Or any one of a dozen men of lesser rank in Pembroke’s command. “I can serve you and the king better by accompanying you. I know the roads between here and Dunbar better than anyone.”

If they were scouting for places the army could be attacked, there was no one who could help more than Alex. Pembroke knew that. They all knew that. Shouldn’t they be trying to take advantage of his knowledge? Did they want to end the war or not?

Christ, what the hell was he doing here?