“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.

Chapter 23

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.