“And how would you have me sit before you?” she snapped, not bothering to peer back at him. “You’re a contemptible Sassenach who’s taking me against my will.”
Nay, he thought, she definitely wasn’t indifferent toward him, and that pleased him immensely. Challenged him, even. Her animosity was like a gauntlet tossed at his feet. He couldn’t walk away. Nor did he wish to, as he sensed the prize was unparalleled.
Nor had he lost a match as yet, and that knowledge gave him satisfaction as it never had before. He didn’t fight unfairly, but neither did he give any mercy. He fought to win.
If it was the last thing he accomplished, he was going to inveigle the little harridan sitting before him. He’d once been told his tongue wove words of gold. No woman was immune to praise. He gently lifted a strand of her hair in his hand. She didn’t seem to feel it... or perhaps she simply allowed it.
Soft.
His fingers reveled in the texture, silky and thick. He brought the strand to his nostrils and inhaled its scent. He knit his brows. “Lovely,” he told her. “Quite lovely. But the scent eludes me.”
She didn’t thank him for the compliment, nor did she seem to take the bait.
“I like it,” he continued.
“I noticed,” she answered, flippantly. “I can tell by the way you’ve buried your nose in it like a mindless hound. Enjoying yourself?”
Lyon couldn’t help but chuckle. She had a smart-mouth. He moved closer, drawn to the softness of her tresses like a lodestone to metal. “Mmmmm,” he murmured, “it rather seems I am.”
She shrugged away from him. “Do ye mind not doing that?” she asked, sounding vexed now. “If ye must know ’tis a rinse made from marrow. That’s what you smell. I use it betimes after washing my hair, else I canna comb it. It’s one of my grandmother’s recipes. And it seems to have that same effect on all animals—dogs in particular.”
He had to crush the urge to laugh. Was she calling him a dog? Certainly an animal, at the very least.
“Does it now?”
“Aye,” she declared, turning and jerking her hair from his grasp. “It does.” She turned her back to him once more, leaning away from him, so as not to touch him.
Lyon grinned. She was not going to be an easy victory, that was plain to see. But then... something worth having was certainly worth fighting for. He’d raised his sword enough times for lesser things. And he was certainly going to enjoy this particular battle. It thrilled him as nothing had in a very long time.
Perhaps she would appreciate a more direct approach? “I beg to differ,” he said at her nape. “’Tis you who has that effect upon me, not your hair rinse.”
He felt her shiver, and was satisfied.
Amazing how her simple reaction to his words could warm his heart and heat his blood, when it had begun to take so much to stir him at all in the past years. It elated him.
He’d become rather jaded in his tastes. But she was different somehow. Even her barbs seemed to enchant him.
He bent nearer, savoring the sweet scent of her flesh. “Tell me, lass... shall I simply call you ‘lass’? Or do you have a name of preference?”
She turned and glowered at him. “Of course I’ve a name, Sassenach, though you can call me lass if it pleases ye.”
“So you’ll not tell me?” He gave her his most wounded look.
She merely smirked, unmoved. “Seems not.”
He lifted his brows. “I could ask your grammie,” he proposed, certain she wouldn’t carry on the charade any longer as it was a lost cause. He planned to have her, will she nill she.
“Go on, then,” she answered, mocking him in return. “She’ll not tell ye, unless I give her leave to, Sassenach, and I shall not give her leave to.”
Stubborn Scot.
“Somehow,” Lyon replied sardonically, “I guessed not.”
“That’s because Fia,” she told him quite pointedly, “respects the wishes of others. Unlike some people I’ve encountered.”
Lyon ignored the barb, determined to woo and win her. “Pity you won’t say...”
“Isn’t it?”
“Aye... a beautiful lass could only bear a beautiful name.”
She turned to cast him a wicked glare. “I should warn you, Sassenach. I am not some empty-headed wench that flattery will fill my head so easily. You will not sway me with pretty words.”
Cunning vixen, though he didn’t believe it. All women loved adulation.
“Idiocy,” she assured him, “does not course through Brodie blood.”
“But madness does?”
Meghan opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it again, uncertain how to reply to that particular remark.
He was baiting her, she realized by the tone of his voice. It was quite clear he did not believe her little tale. But all was not lost.
Of course, it had been said that madness cursed Brodie blood. It wasn’t true, of course. It was just that no one understood her mother or her grandmother. The truth was that her mother had simply been aggrieved by lost love, while old Fia had been a bit eccentric... and still the rumor had been spread... and Meghan could possibly use it now to her benefit. Though she must be careful in answering... if she truly wished Montgomerie to believe her little fabrication. And she certainly did.
Surely he would let her go if he thought her insane? No man could willingly wed a woman who was mad.
Would he?
How now to plant the seed without being so obvious in her intentions?
And suddenly it came to her.
No need to sweeten her tone, as it would merely stir his suspicion. “Do ye always believe everything you hear?” she asked, her tone as snappish as she could manage. Ire was as good a defense as any against the sound of his voice.
Heaven help her, the tone of it sent shivers down her spine... The feel of his breath against her nape sent gooseflesh racing across her skin.
He was silent for an instant, and then answered, “What precisely is it I am to have heard?”
Meghan smiled to herself, pleased that he should fall so easily into her snare. “Well no matter, it isn’t true.”
“What isn’t true?” Confusion was manifest in his tone.
“They’ve no idea of what they speak,” Meghan assured him, well aware that she was confusing him all the more and thinking she was enjoying this entirely too much. Och, but since when had she enjoyed telling a lie so very much? What devil had gotten into her? And why did this suddenly seem more a challenge of wits than a clever machination to save herself from an unwanted marriage?
“You’re confusing me, lass,” he announced quite frankly.
Meghan tried to sound perfectly innocent. “I am?”
“You are.” He sounded too distracted to be precisely angry. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“There is no curse on Brodie blood,” she swore. “’Tis all a rotten lie.”
“I never said there was.” He truly sounded befuddled now.
“Oh,” Meghan exclaimed, and hushed again, waiting.
He said nothing more, and she pretended an interest in the woodlands as they passed through them.
It had been a long time since she’d ventured this way. The MacLeans had owned this adjoining land and she and Alison had explored it all at some point or another. She and her grammie had as well, though old man MacLean had never taken quite so kindly to Fia’s foraging. Meghan vividly remembered the verbal warfare the two frequently engaged in—MacLean calling her a crazy old hag, and Fia calling him a mean, selfish, fat old loon. The memory made her smile.
How she missed her sweet grammie.
Fia had never cowered before anyone in her life—most certainly not to Meghan’s brothers, nor to auld mon MacLean. Not Leith, or Colin, or Gavin had ever understood their grandmother in the least.
Meghan secretly wished she could be her.
“What curse?” Lyon asked suddenly.
Meghan bit the inside of her lip. “Oh... never min
d,” she answered evasively. She peered back to gauge his expression, then pretended an interest in Baldwin’s whereabouts. She bit her lip with feigned concern. “I wonder if my grammie will fare well enough with that daft mon o’ yours.”
“I’m certain she’ll be just fine.”
“She has terrible gout,” Meghan elaborated.
“Does she?” He sounded quite skeptical.
“Oh, aye,” Meghan said. “It pains her terribly.”
“Does it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I have to wonder,” he said, “just why it is you would lead your grandmother about with a rope.”
Meghan thought about that an instant before replying. “She’s half-blind, o’ course.”
“So she has the gout and she is blind, as well... Anything else?”
Once again, Meghan bit the inside of her lip, trying not to smile at their ridiculous discourse. “Well, she’s a wee bit deaf betimes, so you have to scream, or she may not hear you.”
“You don’t say. Anything else?”
“Let me think,” she said. And then, “Nay... I think not.”
“Are you certain?”
“Oh, I think so,” Meghan said, and smiled to herself. “Unless ye consider chin hairs an affliction?”
“Chin hairs?”
Meghan could hear the incredulity in his tone. She sincerely hoped she was driving him as mad as she hoped he thought she was.
“Aye,” she said. “Grammie Fia certainly thinks they are.
Chapter 8
The woman was incorrigible.
She was enjoying herself, Lyon was certain of it.
But she’d managed to pique his curiosity despite the fact that he knew she was baiting him. “What curse?” he pressed her.
She peered coyly back at him. “Och, now, surely ye dinna believe in curses, Sassenach? Not the almighty Lyon?”
Vixen.
He could tell by the sparkle in her eyes that she was mocking him. And quite well, besides. Well, two could play at this game.
“You are correct, of course,” he relented. “Never mind. I’ve no longer any desire to know about your curse.”
She went still before him, and quiet too for an instant. Lyon smiled.
“Well truly ’tis naught more than silly babble at anyway,” she said after another moment’s silence.
“Yes, I’m certain.” He suppressed a grin.
They came from the forest into the bright afternoon sun. Lyon could make out the pounding of hammers and the clamor of voices in the distance, and the sound made him feel a fierce sense of pride unlike any he’d ever experienced. This was his land, his home: his men were at work rebuilding, and there was something incredibly rousing about bringing this particular woman into his demesne. Something about the occasion made him sit a little straighter in the saddle... compelled him to suck in a breath.
The scent of wild heather permeated the air... laced now with a more elusive and intriguing scent. His gaze returned to the woman sitting before him. Aye, something about her inspired him in a way he hadn’t been inspired in much too long.
She made him feel alive.
Nay, she made him feel.
All of his senses were heightened.
He leaned closer, unable to keep himself from it, inhaling the sweet scent of her beautiful hair once more. Marrow, was it? The mere thought made him smile. Nay... what he scented was the faintest trace of rosemary... and sunshine.
There was nothing ostentatious about the woman sitting before him, nothing embellished. She was earthy and honest, and while there was nothing naive about her, she had an air of innocence that was decidedly refreshing. Unlike the women he’d known in his life, her eyes did not speak of seduction all the while her lashes fluttered with affected innocence.
But she seduced him nevertheless.
She sighed audibly and Lyon felt the breath leave his own lungs. How was it that she affected him so keenly?
What was it about her that made him so attuned to every breath she took and every word she uttered?
“Och, I shouldn’t have said anything,” she lamented.
On the contrary, he thought, he relished hearing her voice. Somehow it was the embodiment of both woman and child at once—her tone both sweet and alluring. It bewitched him, made him yearn both to coddle and to kiss her both at once.
She sighed again, and he smiled to himself, knowing it was torturing her not to be able to elaborate, and he decided to put her out of her misery once and for all. “Though I suppose now that you have,” he prompted, smiling, “you’ll expound?”
“Well,” She relented quickly. “If you insist!”
Lyon’s grin widened.
“But if I tell you, ye must not believe it,” she said quite firmly. “Swear it.”
“How can I promise such a thing, lass, when I’ve no idea how your disclosure will strike me? Tell me your tale and I shall tell you quite frankly whether I believe it or nay.”
She seemed to consider that an instant. “Fair enough,” she replied. “’Tis wholly untrue, of course, and unfairly said, but they claim we Brodie women are cursed.”
He sensed where she was leading with this, and it was all he could do to keep from laughing. “How so, wench?”
“Well,” she continued, “’tis rumored that madness runs in Brodie blood—but I swear it isn’t true.”
Lyon had no doubt.
“And quite unkind to say… dinna ye think?”
“I’ve never heard such a thing,” he said. He wondered if she could possibly be speaking the truth, and decided that probably not, as she was clearly enjoying this far too much.
“Ye haven’t?” She sounded so disappointed that he had to reconsider. “Oh,” she said, sounding deflated.
She was certainly a very good liar. Lyon tried not to laugh, but his shoulders shook with mirth. He couldn’t answer at once, and was relieved when she continued of her own accord.
“The truth is that my mother was hardly mad,” she went on, “mayhap a bit... emotional. And my grammie... well, she was only eccentric.”
This sounded more like truth, but then he realized she spoke of her grandmother in the past tense. Lyon’s brows lifted. “Was?” he asked, catching her slip of the tongue, and unable to keep himself from baiting her in return. “She was eccentric? And what is she now?”
She peered back at him, her brows drawn together into a frown. She didn’t seem to catch his meaning at first, and then she did. “Is,” she amended at once. “Is, of course!”
This time he couldn’t contain his chuckle. “’Tis good to know as I wouldn’t wish to bring a madwoman into my home.”
“Oh?” she answered, and managed to instill a note of hope in the single word.
Lyon waited for her to suddenly spout some confession of her own madness, but he waited for naught. She was much too shrewd for that.
‘I wonder what is keeping them?” She sounded worried.
Stubborn siren.
He couldn’t believe she would persist in this absurd charade. He supposed she was hoping he would change his mind, but she was hoping in vain, because the longer he considered this as a solution, the more convinced he was that he was doing the right thing. It was perfect for all concerned.
She turned to search the path behind him, and Lyon was at once intrigued by the flush high upon her cheeks. Not only was he going to wed her, he vowed, but he was going to wed her of her own accord. He delighted in the challenge. Arrogant though it might be, he was perfectly confident in his... powers of persuasion. And he was feeling quite merciless just now, quite the Lion circling his prey.
She brought out something primordial in him—something much more than lust. The need to hold her close was overwhelming.
“They’ll be along,” he assured her, and had to restrain himself from leaning forward and brushing his mouth across the warmth of her cheek. He imagined the feel of her skin against his lips... and it sent a jolt of pure sensation through him.
She seemed to have little notion of the tempest that raged within him. If only she realized, he was certain she’d be kicking and screaming now, instead of employing such sophistry against him. He swallowed with some difficulty as his mouth was becoming quite dry, and said, “’Tis more than likely Baldwin may have—”
“There they are!” she exclaimed. “’Tis about time.”
Lyon turned to find Baldwin emerging from the woodlands some ways behind them, dragging the little lamb in tow.
She shrieked suddenly, startling the devil out of him. He had to reach out and snatch her back before she was able to leap from his mount.
He jerked the reins, halting at once.
“Are you mad?”
Meghan didn’t have to pretend outrage for her grandmother’s sake.
Her temper erupted at the sight of Baldwin dragging the poor lamb behind him. How dare he treat the poor creature so cruelly? She wanted to leap at Baldwin and snatch the hair from his head. Mounted upon his horse, he held the lead rope in hand, and was dragging the poor beast behind him, not bothering to slow when the confused animal resisted in fright. He was all but strangling the poor sweet baby.
“How dare he,” she exploded.
“How dare who what?” Lyon snarled, scowling at her.
She didn’t care if he was angry with her just now. “Stop him,” she said in outrage. “Let me down! How dare he treat her so unkindly?” Meghan glared up at him. “Tell him to lift her onto his mount, Sassenach, or I’ll not go with ye.”
“The lamb?”
Meghan cast him daggers with her eyes. “Fia,” she countered. “Her name is Fia. Tell him to let her ride, or I’ll not go with ye.”
His jaw clenched, and he seemed vexed that she persisted.
Meghan didn’t care.
“Does it seem you have a choice?” he had the nerve to ask her.
How dare he think she did not? “This is not England, Sassenach. Aye, I do have choices, and ye shall find yourself cold in your bed one morn if ye dinna think so.”
Meghan: A Sweet Scottish Medieval Romance (Sweet Scottish Brides Book 2) Page 7
