Read The Ghost (Highland Guard 12) for Free Online Page B

have to live with it.
    Or not live, as was the case.
    Jaw locked, he turned to the chief of the Highland Guard, Tor MacLeod. “Do what you must.”
    MacLeod motioned to Boyd. Fitting, Alex supposed, that it would be his former partner to strike him down. They’d never seen eye to eye. About the war. About the way to fight it. About anything. But instead of pulling his sword from his scabbard, Boyd moved his horse a few feet forward and stopped.
    “Was it worth it?” his former partner asked, his mouth a hard line of bitterness and anger.
    The deceptively simple question took Alex aback. He’d never thought about it—perhaps because he didn’t want to know the answer.
    But he considered it now and answered truthfully. “I don’t know yet.” God willing, he could still do something to put an end to this. He’d made some inroads, but as today’s precipitous attack by Pembroke on Carrick proved, he hadn’t made enough. “But at the time I didn’t feel as if I had any other choice.”
    He’d had to do something . He couldn’t go on as he was, and trying to fight from the other side had seemed the best—the only—way of making a difference. If he never had to see another village razed, another family left to starve, another face in the flames, it would have all been worth it. No matter the personal cost.
    Boyd’s mouth clamped into an even harder line. “Because of Rosalin.”
    It wasn’t a question, so Alex didn’t attempt to answer. Rosalin might have been the final blow, but why he’d left was far more complicated than that.
    Was it because his former partner had violated every code of honor and decency by seducing a woman in their care? Because Boyd had been ready to retaliate for a raid he thought was ordered by Rosalin’s brother by burning down the castle she considered her home? Because Alex was tired of jumping out of trees and hiding in the dark, and wanted to fight knight to knight on a battlefield? Or because being a knight and living by certain codes actually meant something to him?
    Was it because he couldn’t stand the sight of one more injustice done in the name of war—by either side—that he was supposed to ignore as the ends justifying the means? Because he was tired of seeing the people in the Borders—his people—suffer for the misfortune of where they lived? Because he’d held a child he’d nearly killed in his arms and felt something inside him break? Because he knew Bruce would not risk the pitched battle that would bring an end to the war when he could wage a war of attrition and prolong that decision indefinitely? Because Alex thought he could do more to help end the war on the other side by trying to make the English see the value of the bargaining table?
    Or maybe he just couldn’t take it anymore—the war, the atrocities, the injustice, the constant disagreements with his partner, the feeling as if he was the lone voice of dissent.
    Yes. That was the simple answer. It was all those things. But Boyd hadn’t wanted to hear it when they were friends—or partners, at least—why would he want to hear it now when they were enemies?
    They’d always had different lines in the sand. Boyd was willing to do whatever it took; Alex wasn’t.
    The two men faced off in the darkness, the tension palpable.
    Why didn’t he just get it over with? Was this part of their torture? Did they want him to beg? He wouldn’t do it, damn it.
    He couldn’t have been more shocked when Boyd moved to the side to let him pass.
    “You are letting me go?” Alex asked.
    “This time,” Boyd said. “Consider it repayment for what you did for my wife. You were right to defend her honor. I was wrong.”
    Alex had thought he couldn’t be more shocked, but Boyd had just proved him wrong.
    It sounded like an apology, and coming from Boyd, that would have been a first. But if Alex might have harbored an instant of wondering whether it might have been an opening, the door was quickly closed.
    “But the