Lyon's Gift Read online

  Lyon’s

  Gift

  TANYA ANNE CROSBY

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or a portion thereof, in any form. This book my not be sold or uploaded for distribution to others.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to events or people, historical or otherwise are used fictitiously. Names, characters, places and incidences are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Ravven

  ISBN-10: 0988497433

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9884974-3-6

  Published by Oliver-Hebert Books at Smashwords

  Copyright © Tanya Anne Crosby

  Dedication

  For Chaise

  Other books in this series by

  Tanya Anne Crosby

  THE MACKINNON’S BRIDE

  ON BENDED KNEE

  LION HEART

  LION HEART coming soon as e-book

  Prologue

  The forest was their sanctuary.

  Meghan and her grandmother had spent many a morning in the dimness of the woodland, gathering herbs for her grandmother’s potions. Just now they were searching for sweetbriar upon MacLean land, and Meghan was on her hands and knees, crawling across the ground at the forest’s edge, painstakingly inspecting foliage.

  They were not supposed to be here, she knew, as old man MacLean was apt to be angry if he discovered them once more upon his land. Last time he had accused her Minnie of poaching, though there had not been a whit of evidence in their sack. All they had borne away with them that day were weeds and little more. He did not know her grandmother if he thought she would do such a thing; her Minnie would never eat an animal if she looked the creature in the eyes beforehand.

  “Ye dinna have to look so carefully, Meghan!” her grandmother directed. “’Tis not so wee a plant, child—more like a shrub!”

  “I remember, Minnie, and you said look for the pink flowers, too. So I’m looking, but I dinna see any!”

  “Och, lass! That’s because you’re crawling on your belly like a bloody viper! Get yourself up before you grind the dirt into your sweet knees!”

  Meghan peered back at her grandmother over her shoulder, watching her an instant. The old woman was hunched over, scanning the plants, murmuring to herself as she scrutinized each one. Every so oft she would bend to pluck a sample and then crush it between her fingers.

  “Be careful with the thorns,” her grandmother said absently as she inspected a small branch of some plant.

  “I will!” Meghan promised, though she wished her Minnie wouldn’t treat her like a wee bairn. She was all of eight summers now, and not nearly so little anymore.

  Her grandmother, oblivious to her complaint, began to sing and dance.

  “Wretched mon, why art thou proud,

  That art of earth made?

  Hide not behind your shroud!

  But fore thou came naked!”

  Meghan giggled at the sight of her, dancing so lively, and felt warmed by the old woman’s joy.

  “Ta ta dum, da dum, da dum,” her grandmother hummed.

  Meghan made to rise, except that in that instant she spotted a face peering out at her from behind a wide oak and she gave a startled blink. The face was just about the size of her own, and the eyes were wide and full with fright. They were visible only an instant and then they vanished behind the tree.

  Her grandmother carried on.

  “When thy soul have journeyed out,

  Thy body with the earth covered over!

  That body that was so haughty and loud Of all men is hated!

  Ta dum dee dum, dee dum!

  “Och, Meghan!” she called out suddenly.

  “Aye,” Meghan replied, turning to peer over her shoulder to see if her Minnie had noticed the face too.

  “Never let a handsome smile turn your head and woo your heart, d’ ye hear me, lass?”

  “Aye, Minnie,” she replied, confused. She didn’t have any notion why her Minnie was so concerned with boys. Meghan certainly wasn’t.

  “Ye know that Adam took that apple all on his own, d’ ye not? Bluidy knave blamed it on Eve because he did not have the nuts to take the burden on his own!”

  Meghan rolled her eyes, having heard this tale more times than she could count.

  “It serves him right that Eve shoved that apple down his cowardly throat and that he bears it still!”

  “Aye,” Meghan answered absently, and crawled closer to the tree, her heart pounding within her breast. The face did not peek out again, even when she’d reached the trunk, and she was sorely afraid they’d scared her off. Holding her breath, she craned her head around the tree trunk, and gasped at the sight of a wide pair of eyes as green as her own staring back.

  “Oh!” Meghan exclaimed. “There you are! I feared you’d run away!”

  The little girl said nothing, merely stared at Meghan and cast nervous glances over Meghan’s shoulder at her grandmother still carrying on behind her like a mad woman. Meghan turned and appraised her grandmother an instant, seeing her through another’s eyes, and frowned. Her grandmother suddenly fell to the ground upon her knees, cackling in delight at some discovery she made, and Meghan winced at the sight she presented.

  “She’ll not hurt you, I promise,” Meghan swore, turning back to the little girl. “She’s not really mad, she’s just my Minnie.”

  The little girl’s face was frozen in an expression of doubt and her eyes shifted warily to Meghan’s grandmother.

  “Och, Meghan!” her grandmother said, “I believe I’ve discovered something here!”

  The little girl’s eyes widened in sudden fear.

  Meghan shook her head. “Don’t worry,” she said, understanding the girl’s alarm. “I willlna tell her you are here.” Meghan smiled at her and then called out, “What is it, Minnie?”

  “Touch-me-nots!” her grandmother declared.

  Meghan loved the delight with which her grandmother embraced all things great and small.

  “What is it good for?” Meghan asked, trying to keep her grandmother’s attention from turning to their unexpected guest.

  “Not a bluidy thing!” her grandmother said and cackled. “Have you ever seen such a thing, Meghan?”

  “Nay, mum,” Meghan replied, glancing again at her grandmother who was now lying upon her belly on the bracken of the woodland floor.

  And she would have had Meghan get up off her knees? Meghan rolled her eyes again.

  “Looky here! Ye touch the bluidy little buggers and the pods burst with seeds!” Meghan watched her grandmother poke her finger at a few, and then listened to her laugh uproariously.

  She turned back to the little girl. “I am Meghan,” she said to the girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Alison,” the little girl replied, still staring at the cackling old woman.

  “We’re looking for sweetbriar,” Meghan shared.

  “Why?” Alison whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Meghan whispered back. “For my Minnie’s potions.” And then she realized how her disclosure must sound and winced.

  “To turn people into toads?” the little girl asked with no small measure of concern.

  “Och! Nay!” Meghan exclaimed. “My Minnie would never do such a thing! I have never once in my life seen her turn anyone into a toad,” she swore. “But I did hear her call my brother Leith a frog.”

  The little girl tilted her head, looking as though she wanted to believe Meghan. “She wouldn’t?”

  “’Course not!”

  The two of them sat peering at each other a long instant, and Meghan wondered if she dar
ed ask.

  “Do you wanna be my friend?” she whispered to the little girl. “I have never had a friend so little as you!”

  The little girl suddenly seemed to forget her grandmother and her fear. “I am not so much littler than you!”

  Meghan grinned. “Nah,” she agreed. “But I have never had a friend ’cept for my Minnie.”

  “Meghan, listen!” her grandmother called out. “Do you hear them, child?”

  “Hear who?”

  Alison retreated behind the tree.

  “Woodland sprites! I think they are speakin’ to me, lass, though I cannot be certain. Do you hear them too?”

  “I heard nothing, Minnie!” Meghan called back, and peered around the tree again. “She’ll not hurt you, Alison. I swear on our friendship.”

  “I did not say we would be friends!” Alison hurried to make clear. “My da will not let me play near the auld witch—your grandminnie,” she amended.

  Meghan’s face fell, her hopes dashed.

  Alison shrugged. “But maybe I can sneak away,” she offered a little hesitantly. “If you will too?”

  Meghan thought about it less than an instant, desperate as she was for a friend her own age. “Oh, yes, I will,” she promised. “So then we are friends?”

  “Aye,” Alison said, and smiled.

  “Are you certain you did not hear them, Meghan?” Her grandmother cocked her head to listen closer. “I know I do! Listen child.”

  “I’m listening, Minnie!” Meghan said, and turned again to her newfound friend. “I must go and help her, but shall we play in the meadow this noon?”

  “Aye,” Alison agreed, and smiled again. “I shall meet you by the cairn.”

  “Verra well, then.”

  “Come alone,” Alison urged her.

  “I will!” Meghan swore. “Go now,” Meghan urged her, “before she comes to look for me.”

  Alison nodded, and didn’t tarry any longer. She cast a glance at Meghan’s grandmother and then leapt up and hurried away.

  Meghan watched her go, and felt as great a burst of joy at her own discovery as her grandmother certainly had with hers. And then she turned toward the old woman to see what she had discovered.

  She crawled to where her grandmother lay, and sprawled beside her on the ground. The two of them completely forgot about searching for herbs as they played with the little yellow flowers and green pods, poking at them and watching them explode, giggling together upon the forest floor.

  It was very, very nice to have such a sweet grandmother, Meghan thought. But it was a special, special day for she had also made herself a friend.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Twenty-seven!” Baldwin announced, marching into the room where Piers sat poring over his new survey.

  It was a lesson Piers had taken from old King William: one could hardly rule a land unless one knew precisely what one held to rule. Following William the Conqueror’s example, the first thing he’d done upon receiving this fief was to survey his holdings, meager though they might be. And it was a good thing, as it seemed his stock was dwindling quickly. He might never have known until they’d been seriously depleted.

  Thieving, conniving Scots.

  “Twenty-seven!” he exclaimed. Christ, but he didn’t know whether to be angry or amused. At last count—only yesterday evening—the sheep had numbered thirty-four. “When did those whoresons have the occasion to rob me again? I thought I told you to set a man to guard those mangy beasts!”

  “The Scots?”

  “Them, too, cunning bastards! But I meant the bloody sheep, Baldwin! The bloody rotten mangy sheep! I thought I told you to set a guard for them!”

  Baldwin’s ears reddened. “Well...” His face twisted into an abashed grimace. “I did set a man to guard them, you see… but it seems I set a wolf to guard the sheep’s pen.”

  “Wolf?” Piers lifted both brows. He couldn’t wait to hear this one.

  Baldwin winced. “I appointed Cameron,” he said, looking shamefaced. “He was already keeping watch over his own sheep, you see, and I—”

  “Cameron!” Piers exploded. “The arse who refused to leave his parcel and hut?” He tossed down his quill in disgust. “Damn it, Baldwin! Whatever were you thinking to put a thieving Scot to guard against his thieving kinsmen!”

  “Well, I thought—”

  “That he would give his loyalty to an Englishman over his own countrymen?”

  Baldwin frowned. “Well, he did stay when the rest of them abandoned us,” he pointed out.

  “Only because he’s a stubborn old coot who refused to leave his land to a bloody Sassenach. His own words, do you not recall? His behavior was certainly not born out of any sense of loyalty!”

  “Aye, but it’s not what you think,” Baldwin said. “He merely fell asleep, is all.”

  Piers sighed and slumped within his chair, smacking his head in exasperation against the high back of his seat. He rolled his eyes, then stared up at the ceiling, noting its rotten condition for the first time.

  He frowned.

  How had he missed that before now? His chamber was directly above. He was going to have to fix that bloody ceiling soon, lest he plummet through the floor onto the table in front of him and find himself fare for the band of misfit Scots who had remained with this ruined demesne.

  “My lord?”

  Piers turned his attention from the rotting floorboards and eyed his longtime friend with a mixture of bemusement and displeasure. It seemed to him that Baldwin had taken to behaving less like a friend and more like an underling, and though this new manner wasn’t entirely without its merits, he was nevertheless uncomfortable with Baldwin’s unexpected attention to the proprieties. He much preferred the drunken companionability he and his men had shared in the years before his enfeoffment.

  Christ, but he’d never expected to find himself lord—or laird, for that matter—and he’d certainly never aspired to it. It seemed wholly unnatural to him now to be fussed over as though he were some grease-lipped lord casting dinner bones to his dogs. He was a commander first and foremost. It had been his skill at arms that had won him this little piece of Highland hell, and he didn’t see the bloody need to change what had served him so well for so long. His men worked well beside him because they were foremost his fellows. He didn’t want, or need, a bunch of knock-kneed lackeys running about according him undue honors.

  “Sire?” Baldwin’s tone clearly revealed uncertainty over Piers’ mood. “What is it you’d have me do?”

  “You might first cease to call me my lord,” Piers suggested, his tone unmistakably provoked. “And sire, as well, as I am not your bloody father either!”

  Baldwin lifted his head in surprise. “Then what is it you’d have me call you... if not ‘my lord’?”

  Piers thought the answer rather obvious. “What is it you called me before?”

  Baldwin cocked his head a little uncertainly. “Lyon?”

  Piers responded with a droll grin. He’d been given the name by his men after a particularly bloody battle; they’d said he’d appeared to them coming off the battlefield, with his long, gilt mane of hair and bloodied face, like a lion fresh after its kill. It wasn’t an honor he was particularly proud of, but he’d gotten used to the name after all.

  Baldwin’s brows lifted. “But you don’t like that name?”

  “I certainly prefer it to my lord.”

  Baldwin’s lips curved into a companionable smile. “If that is your wish...”

  “It is,” Piers assured him. “I’m no different now merely because I have a parcel of land to piss on. Why should we resort to ceremony after all these years? I didn’t like the damned name before and you hounded me with it anyway! Why not still?”

  Baldwin nodded, his grin spreading from ear to ear. “I am relieved to hear you say so.”

  “Are you now?” Piers was relieved as well at having settled the matter once and for all. Now wasn’t the time for maudlin expressions, as he still had these an
noying, bare-arsed Scots to deal with.

  And yet... strangely enough, though the Brodies had all but robbed him blind, it was a simple enough task to temper his anger against the thieving curs.

  Why was that? he wondered.

  Truth to tell, accustomed as he had become to the intrigues of court and the stealth of warfare, this matter of feuding seemed more like sport.

  In fact, Piers could scarcely help but admire these Scots. They fought their battles fiercely, and by some strange code of honor that somehow appealed to him. They spat upon your boot; you drew your sword; they stole your goat; you stole their sheep; and so on and so on—though bloodshed seemed proscribed—and all of it done openly, as though thieving your good neighbor were the most natural and honorable thing to do. Thus far, not so much as a single beast had been harmed, though Piers had not enjoyed a moment’s peace since first he’d stepped foot upon these Highlands.

  It was more than apparent that a bond of blood was as binding as a Scotsman’s honor would allow—that they defended kith and kin unto their dying breath.

  It was also apparent that an outlander would always be just that... an outlander.

  Well, Piers was perfectly accustomed to that. He didn’t need their bloody approval. David of Scotia might, but he sure as hell didn’t. He had grown up an outlander, didn’t they know it; his father was a king and his mother a whore.

  And while his mother had slept in a different bed many a night, Piers had slipped away and curled beneath a pew in the chapel to close his eyes and dream of all the things he wanted in life. And he had wanted so much!

  He had wanted to go away and study in one of those places he’d only heard speak of... He’d wanted to read until his eyes went blind... He’d wanted to learn things, and do things, and see things.