Free Meghan: A Sweet Scottish Medieval Romance by Tanya Anne Crosby, Alaina Christine Crosby

to sound the retreat as yet. Stubborn she might be, but there was much to be said for sheer determination.
    “And what of my brothers?” Meghan persisted.
    “We shall invite them to the wedding, of course,” he said blithely.
    Meghan winced at the very notion. She could scarcely imagine her brothers being so conciliatory. “They would dine upon your eyes and feast upon your tongue,” she apprised with absolute certainty. “Even were I to agree to such a thing, my brothers would never concede.”
    “We shall see,” he said, and then instructed Baldwin to retrieve his mount. Baldwin did as he was told without another word. “And don’t forget grammie,” Montgomerie called after him.
    Baldwin gave him a harried glance, but turned and went after the lamb. If Meghan hadn’t been so distressed, she might have had to laugh at his man called Baldwin, clad in his shiny silver mail, chasing after a bald little lamb.
    “You cannot simply take me,” she protested, when it seemed he was perfectly serious. “Not without giving me a chance to speak to my brothers. They will never agree to this.”
    “Then we shall find a way to convince them,” he told her, and spurred his mount, drawing her firmly against him.
    “Never,” Meghan vowed. “Never!”

Chapter 7
    “ Y e can force me to stand at the altar, but ye canna make me say the vows.”
    Lyon merely smiled. “We shall see.” He hadn’t met a woman yet he couldn’t woo with pretty words and a few stolen kisses. Women were fickle creatures, or so it seemed, with pudding hearts and insatiable vanities; they said never all the while their hands reached out to draw his lips to their lovely, greedy mouths.
    That was his experience.
    Not even his mother had been so different: all the while she’d claimed her independence from men, she’d been a slave to her pride. And she was, in truth, a beautiful woman—even now in her later years. At two score and two years, his mother still commanded her choice of men. They gave her jewels and fine cloth and anything her heart desired... until she grew tired of them and discarded them for another. They even mourned her when she was gone. Lyon could easily count upon his two hands—and then some—the many men whose hearts his mother had collected.
    And yet his mother was not hard-hearted. She was kind and generous and good-natured to a fault. And if she never returned her suitors’ affections, she treated them well. She lived her life without concern for anything but the present. Lyon admired her for that. It was something of a mystery to him that most people either remained so entrenched within the past, or lived entirely for the morrow, that so few remembered to live for the moment. And he was as guilty as any.
    Not today... not this moment. He was following his greatest impulse just now, and didn’t care one whit about the the consequences. It had been too long since he’d followed his gut.
    His mother had cosseted him in his early years, encouraging him to follow his heart’s desires. She’d sacrificed to see him well educated. She’d made compromises for his sake when she would never have done the same for herself. Lyon’s greatest regret was that he had forsaken his own institutions. He’d relied all of his life upon his size and brawn to survive amongst peers who’d viewed him as little more than a castoff, a poor relation. Though never acknowledged by his father, he’d grown up amidst the elite of Henry’s court. And it hadn’t been long before he’d discovered that might and sword brought respect in his cast-off world. And with little hope of ever earning his own fief or pursuing his own life, he’d resigned himself much too early to a mercenary way.
    He’d compromised his convictions.
    For what? A fistful of jewels and a bloody sword.
    Women had come and gone from his life during that time, but he had regarded them as little more than passing fancies—a mutual perception, he was well aware—for he’d