Read Online Lyon's Gift by Tanya Anne Crosby - Free Book Online Page A

with you, you thieving,
conniving, lascivious, shallow-brained oaf of a man!” Och, but he
would not budge. “What are you made of anyhow! Stone?”
    No matter how hard she tried to free herself, he was
faster, stronger.
    And he had the audacity to laugh!
    “ I do not see what is so blessed
funny!” Meghan snapped.
    He continued to laugh, restraining her with
too-little effort, and Meghan, in her frustration, lunged at him,
trying to find purchase for her teeth on his too-beautiful cheek,
the knave!
    He jerked away, laughing all the harder.

 
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 6
     
     
    “ I think you’ve gone as
mad as the wench!” Baldwin leapt up and out of the fray.
    “ She’s mad as a fox, I
wager!” Montgomerie declared, laughing still.
    Mad as a fox.
    Meghan ceased her struggles suddenly,
hearing her grandmother’s voice as though it were a murmur in her
ears.
    “ They think I’m
mad,” she’d oft said. “I know they think I’m mad, Meggie dearlin’—and I am! I am!
Mad as a fox!” And she’d wink and cackle
in amusement. And then more seriously she’d say, with a crook of
her long slender finger, “You be the same,
Meghan, and with that face of yours you’ll possess the world in the
wee palm of your precious hand.”
    Minnie Fia had certainly had a way with
people, as well as animals. Mad as they’d all thought her, she’d
always seemed a step ahead of everyone, bending folks to her will.
What would Fia do now? she wondered. What would she say to these
English boors? How would she deliver herself from a situation such
as this?
    The little lamb bleated in that instant.
    Meghan turned to see that the poor creature
had retreated against the brush and was watching them warily. They
had yet to accuse her outright of stealing the animal, which told
her in truth that they weren’t entirely certain she had.
    She peered back at Montgomerie, gauging his
expression. He was watching her curiously, waiting.
    Mad as a fox… you be the
same, she heard Fia say to her.
    The little lamb bleated again... and
suddenly Meghan knew what to do.
    She cast another glance at the lamb, trying
not to smirk. So Baldwin thought her mad, did he? Well, it
certainly wouldn’t serve her to confirm that notion because he
wouldn’t believe her then, but Meghan could certainly prove him
right... if she tried.
    She had mad auld Fia’s example to follow,
after all.
    It wasn’t easy to smother her grin, but she
did, thinking that surely Montgomerie wouldn’t wish to wed with
her... if he truly thought her mad.
    She turned to face the wee lammie, and
asked, “What did you say?”
    “ Not a bloody thing,
wench,” Montgomerie answered, sounding suddenly bemused.
    She cast him a glare. “I was not talkin’ to
you!” she snapped and turned again to the lamb.
    The glade went utterly silent. It seemed
even the wind stilled in the treetops. She felt Montgomerie’s gaze
upon her nape—Baldwin’s, as well. Sweet Mary, but she prayed she
could pull this off.
    She waited for the lamb to bleat once more,
and then replied, as though she were in actual conversation with
the creature, “I cannot, Fia! I simply cannot! And you cannot make
me!’’
    Oblivious to her spurious indignation, the
little lamb cried out once more.
    Meghan slumped her shoulders. “Nay,” she
said, hoping she sounded perfectly disheartened, but respectful,
“you never have.”
    She lowered her head in a moment of
contemplative silence, and the little lamb bleated once more.
    Both men were suddenly very quiet, Meghan
noticed, and it was all she could do to strangle the laughter that
welled within her.
    She straightened, wholly aware of the grip
that slackened upon her arms. She thought he might be a little
bewildered.
    “ Well,” she said, sounding
utterly resolved as she faced the lamb once more. “If you really
think so, I will. But I will not like it.”
    Baldwin scratched his head. “Is she talking
to that bloody beast?” he asked, sounding quite