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

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