Last night. Alex felt the blow like a hammer to the chest. Suddenly, it all slid into place.

“Nay,” he said numbly. “I wasn’t at the evening meal.”

He’d been scouting most of the day and night chasing after any of Edward Bruce’s remaining men. He hadn’t returned until after midnight when he’d been climbing the Captain’s Tower stairs and an angel had fallen from the heavens into his arms.

An angel coming from the very tower where Fitzgerald likely had a room who had claimed to be sleepwalking. Sleepwalking.

And he was fool enough to have believed her.

He felt like a damned idiot.

He caught her before she entered the Hall for the midday meal. With surprising finesse for one so young, Sir Richard had Joan pulled into a storage room and pressed up against a wall with his mouth on her neck before she could react.

But she’d put an end to it—all of it—with ease. Sir Richard would not be propositioning her or demanding she come to his room again. Nay, Joan suspected he wouldn’t come within a few hundred feet of her after this.

It had to be done. The trick with the sleeping powder wouldn’t work twice. He already seemed confused about what had happened last night. She’d hoped he wouldn’t remember anything, but perhaps she hadn’t given him enough.

Tears poured down her cheeks. Crying was a skill that had been difficult to master but had proved useful more than once. She choked on a few more sobs and stared up at him incredulously. “What do you mean you won’t marry me? After last night . . . you have to do right by me!”

The look of horror and fear on the young knight’s face didn’t dim any on the repeating. Her demand of marriage had cooled his lust as surely as a swift dunk in an icy loch.

“But I c-can’t . . . surely you see . . . you’re a bast—”

Fortunately for him, he didn’t finish the word. She might have dragged this out a little longer just to see him suffer.

“But what of your honor?” she couldn’t resist adding. “I thought . . .” She sobbed a little more for effect. “You are a knight.”

As if that should explain it all. The fact that it should made it that much more ridiculous. Knightly code or not, a proud nobleman like Sir Richard wouldn’t think of marrying a “bastard” with a less-than-maidenly reputation—even if he had actually seduced her.

What would she do if one of these “noble” men ever did the “honorable” thing? It would make her job a lot more difficult and it wouldn’t be as easy to get rid of them, that was certain.