She smiled. “We were honored, my lord. And truth be told it was not the wedding keeping me up the past few nights, it was Margaret.” They’d named their daughter after her cousin who’d helped her escape this very castle all those years ago. She was here, too. Margaret Comyn had married John Ross a year after Bannock Burn—she’d made the de Beaumonts see the benefit in having her be in Scotland rather than England to claim her part of Joan’s English inheritance. Joan shot Alex a look. “Her brothers were telling her ghost stories again. I wonder where they got them?”

Alex’s expression was a tad too impassive. “I have no idea.”

“You have to admit, it is fitting,” Bruce said, fighting his own smile.

She scowled at him. “Then I’ll make sure to send her your way when she wakes up screeching like a banshee.”

Bruce just laughed. “How many do you have again? Between you and the rest of the Guard, I have lost count of all the progeny.”

Clearly, Joan didn’t believe him. “You know very well we have six. And I’ll wager you can name every one of them—and every one of the others, too.”

“Well, that isn’t too hard. Half of them are named Robert,” Alex pointed out.

“Or William,” Bruce added. The loss of William Gordon all those years ago had never been forgotten.

Joan didn’t say anything, still staring at him. Finally, giving up—which is something Bruce didn’t do often—he said, “Thomas, William, Alexander, John, Margaret, and . . .”

“Robert,” Alex finished with a grin.

“I hear from Boyd’s daughter that there will be a marriage to celebrate soon?”

Joan rolled her eyes and shot Alex another look when he started coughing to hide his laughter.

“What?” Alex said, sobering. “Don’t look at me, it’s not my fault.”

“Aye, but you take far too much pleasure in it.”

Apparently, Boyd’s very beautiful nine-year-old daughter had developed an infatuation with their ten-year-old son and was convinced that they were going to marry.

Alex couldn’t resist taunting Boyd with jests about what would happen when they were older, and that he hoped his son had as much honor as they did.

Alex thought it was hilarious; Boyd failed to see the humor. If Alex had ever wanted retribution for the ill-treatment Boyd had given him in the early years of their pairing, he had it.

The seemingly ill-fated partnership between the hate-everything-English and the young knight from Yorkshire had ended up working out, after all. They were as close as—and sometimes fought like—brothers.