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

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 mind,” 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
    T he woman was incorrigible .
    She was enjoying herself, Lyon was certain of it.
    But she’d