Joan had actually been surprised to see the Percys at Berwick. Having recently been freed from prison after his part in the execution of the king’s favorite Galveston, de Percy did not seem likely to fight for the king who’d imprisoned him. He’d reportedly refused his summons. But he was close to Clifford, which she suspected explained his presence now.

Alice was still sobbing. “Now he claims that he has an important meeting tonight, which may go very late. He told me not to wait up for him.”

Important meeting? That caught Joan’s attention.

“What kind of important meeting?” Margaret asked.

Alice threw up her hands, exasperated by what she clearly thought an irrelevant and inconsequential question. “He said something with only the king’s closest advisors. Pembroke, Clifford, Despenser, Henry, and maybe a few others, I don’t know. But don’t you see, it’s probably an excuse.”

“There is a war coming,” Margaret said dryly.

Alice ignored her and wiped her tears, turning to Joan. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Suspecting what she was going to ask her to do, Joan smiled. “Of course.”

Alex stopped at the river before returning to the castle. Now instead of angry and slightly drunk, he was angry, mostly sober, and cold. Not a nice dulling, numb cold, mind you, but a shivering, freezing-to-the-bones cold.

The quick dunk in the water hadn’t cleared his head or calmed any of the restless emotions teeming inside him. First he’d been called to Berwick for a meeting that he’d been excluded from at the last minute, and then he’d been forced to sit for two long hours while Despenser and Lady Joan made spectacles of themselves.

All right, maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe all they’d done was share a trencher and smile and whisper a lot, but did they have to look so damned intimate doing so? Why not just shout out that they were sharing a bed?

Were they sharing a bed?

It wasn’t any of his damned business, and he knew it. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

He didn’t like it. He really didn’t like it, but what the hell could he do about it?

Nothing.

Which was precisely what he’d be doing to help end this war if he didn’t find that damned spy. He’d joined the men after the meal tonight for the meeting to discuss some “new information,” when Pembroke had stopped him and told him he wasn’t needed.

Alex didn’t need to ask why. Not long after he’d arrived, Pembroke had remarked upon his “miraculous” progress on the practice yard. Besting Felton required “great skill and strength.”