Joan didn’t know who “they” were, but there was not time for questions as she was led out of the guardroom—past the dead guard—and into the courtyard where the rest of the Guard were waiting for them. No one said anything as they slid through the moonlight to the rear postern. She was surprised to see so few people around—the castle seemed almost deserted. Where were all the guards?

Suddenly a hooded figure appeared by the door. Joan recognized her instantly. “Margaret!”

She rushed toward her and the two cousins embraced.

“I don’t understand,” Joan said. “How did you—”

“Alex will explain everything,” her cousin said. “But you have to hurry. The guards will be back soon.”

She held a big iron key ring (how had she gotten that?) and carefully unlocked the iron yett. Knowing her cousin was somehow responsible for all of this, she gave her another hug. “Thank you,” she said.

Margaret nodded, tears in her eyes. “I hope we will meet again . . . soon.”

Joan knew she was thinking also of John Ross. If there was any justice in this world, Margaret would find her happiness. “As do I.”

An eventless few minutes later, Joan was lifted up onto a horse, sharing the saddle with Alex, and they rode away from the giant shadow of the formidable castle.

After eight years, Joan was finally going home.

Most of Joan’s questions would have to wait, but what Alex had managed to convey while they rode away was enough to keep her mind reeling.

She couldn’t believe it. Not only had Bruce won his great battlefield victory, but Alex had been a part of it. He’d gone back. Her faith in him had been rewarded, after all.

But apparently, despite his timely changing of sides, not all was well between Alex and his former brethren, as she discovered when they stopped not long after leaving the lights of the burgh behind them.

First it was an argument between Alex and Tor MacLeod, upon which she’d been called to intercede, when Alex—after learning that it was Despenser’s man who’d beaten her—announced that he intended to stay and wait for him while the others took Joan to safety. In this case, he had the support of her stepfather, who said he would join him.

When Tor objected to their plan, Alex told him in stinging and not very pleasant terms that he no longer answered to him, and that he—Tor—could take his opinion and do something with it that was physically impossible.

Only Robbie Boyd’s intervention with Tor, and Joan’s plea with Alex that she needed him with her, prevented a physical confrontation between the two men.