“Damn it, Douglas, he said he yields.”
Seton’s voice penetrated the frenzied veil of battle, pricking something James didn’t want it to: his conscience.
James stared in frustration and anger at the warrior who’d come up beside him. He saw the condemnation in his friend’s gaze.
“This isn’t who we are,” Seton said.
Knights. They were knights. With a code that he was supposed to ascribe to, even if at times he would like to forget it.
James warred with himself. De Wilton was barely holding on. One more push and he would be crushed. He wanted this man’s death, wanted it badly. But Seton’s words had come perilously close to Jo’s. It was her voice he heard now. It was her voice that stayed his hand.
With a furious oath, he lifted his sword and moved back from the knight that had been moments from death.
Seton gave him a short nod and started to move off.
De Wilton’s sword had fallen to his side, but out of the corner of his eye, James caught a movement. The knight was reaching for something at his waist. De Wilton grabbed hold of something and started to pull it out.
Instinct took hold, and James reacted. Spinning around, he whipped his sword across the other man’s neck. The steel of De Wilton’s armor prevented the blow from cleaving him in two, but he fell to his side, blood spurting from the deadly wound.
That’s what James got for showing mercy. A knife in the back.
“What in Hades?” Seton said, turning at the sound.
“He was reaching for a blade,” James replied before moving off.
He left Seton standing there and headed toward the castle, shocked to realize the battle was over. There wasn’t an Englishman left standing.
One of the men Boyd had taken with him ran out to meet him. “We’ve taken the gate, my lord,” he said. “The rest of the garrison has retreated into the tower and are asking for terms, but Boyd says we can take it. He awaits your instructions.”
“Tell him to take it,” James said. “Kill them all.”
“Wait,” Seton demanded angrily, coming up behind him. “Before you condemn those men to death, you need to see this.”
Like Joanna, James had had enough of Seton’s interference. Still he asked, “See what?”
“What the knight you just killed was reaching for.”
To James’s surprise, it wasn’t a blade that Seton held out but a piece of parchment.
He scanned the words, his heart sinking with every flourishing stroke of ink on the page. His stomach sank.
Ah hell.
Joanna was awakened by the loud roar of a cheer echoing through the floor of the bedchamber that she shared with her three younger sisters. Her two brothers—also younger—were away being fostered.
It was her sisters’ presence in the room that had prevented Joanna from completely falling apart upon returning from her disastrous meeting with James yesterday. Though she suspected sixteen-year-old Eleanor had noticed her red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks, thirteen-year-old Constance and twelve-year-old Agnes were too busy arguing over a lost silk ribbon to pay any attention to their older sister’s shattered emotions.
They would, Joanna thought with horror, her hand going to her still-flat stomach. God, how it shamed her to know that they would learn everything. If James didn’t marry her, she would be disgraced. She would become nothing more than a source of shame and embarrassment to her family. She looked at the innocent, sleep-rumpled faces of the fair-haired, blue-eyed cherubs waking up beside her and felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes again. What had she done to them? Joanna pushed back the wave of trepidation that rose in her chest.
“What was that noise?” Eleanor asked, clutching the thick plaid that covered their bed.
Joanna shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. It was taking everything she had to hold back the wave of emotions battering down on her. It didn’t help that she’d been up most of the night doing the same thing.
“I’m tired,” Agnes moaned, burying her head in the soft feather pillow. “What time is it?”
Joanna eyed the thin stream of strong daylight coming through the single shuttered window above them. They’d slept late by the looks of it. “Time to get dressed and wash your faces before prayers.” Another cheer sounded from below. “I will find out what is happening in the Hall.”
“Do you think it has something to do with Sir James?” Constance asked, her eyes wide and sparkling with excitement.
Joanna stilled, even the sound of his name causing a stab of pain.
The starry-eyed look of admiration bordering on adulation on her sister’s face was one that Joanna suspected she’d worn more often than not. To her thirteen-year-old sister, James was the greatest, most handsome, most noble knight the world had ever seen. He could do no wrong. The pang in her chest twinged harder. She wanted to think so, too. She wanted that expression back on her own face.