Lyon's Gift (2 page)

“
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 annoying,
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.

He’d wanted to know why the sky was so blue and the
grass so green. He’d wanted to know what stars were made of, and
why they burned so brightly. He’d wanted to know why his veins were
blue while his blood was red. He’d wanted so much more than a bed
on a cold, hard floor and to stand alone behind invisible doors...
watching other children at play.

Though, in truth, why should he have cared if the
other children were outside playing and laughing? Thanks to his
mother, he’d been able to study with the Archbishop of Canterbury
and that had been no trifling thing. He’d had every reason to be
grateful and no reason at all to yearn for something so negligible
as dirty knees or silly games.

“
Damn it all!” he exclaimed,
lifting up his pen and rapping the quill’s end upon the wooden
table. “We’re going to show these bloody Scots that we can feud
with the best of them!”

And enjoy it every bit as much.

That’s what it was going to take to win their
alliance, he surmised.

Or not.

Either way, he would relish the sport.

Though at first he’d been taken unawares by their
unanticipated raids, some part of him reveled in this honest form
of warfare, where one’s enemy stood up to be counted, and one’s
friends openly declared they’d as soon pluck out your eyes if they
could profit from them. There was something particularly heartening
in that unrelenting honesty.

Aye, he was perfectly pleased to play their
games.

“
These savages will not run us off
this land!” he vowed. “Damn you for a witless arse!” he reprimanded
Baldwin, though he knew his eyes didn’t quite conceal the smile he
hid. “I should take the price of those beasts out of your hide, you
realize?”

Color returned to the tips of Baldwin’s ears. “I
wouldn’t fault you for it, Lyon,” he said, but neither did his
smile vanish either. “So what would you have me do?”

“
What else?” Piers grinned. “We
steal the buggers back—and a few more for good measure!”

Baldwin smirked. “If I didn’t know better,” he said,
“I’d think you were enjoying this.”

Lyon lifted a brow. “And you would probably be
right,” he returned, rising from his seat and taking his sword from
where he’d placed it upon the table before him. He slid it into his
scabbard and winked good-naturedly at Baldwin. “Now, let’s go teach
these Scots how to commit a proper thieving!”

CHAPTER 2

It was a raven, no mistaking it.

Its blue-black wings pummeled the air in obvious
distress though it made not a sound as it flailed about the rafters
searching for escape. Within the silence of the chapel its flight
for freedom—like a soul fighting to be set free—was a cry that
stirred Meghan Brodie’s heart.

She had cast open the shutters to the bright summer
day and the poor bird had flown inside as though it had been
anticipating her appearance at the window. It had startled her,
certainly, but Meghan wasn’t the least bit superstitious, else she
might have considered it an evil omen.

Certainly, her grandminnie Fia, would have claimed
it to be so.

The last time she recalled a bird flying into their
home—and it had been a sparrow that time, not even a wicked raven
as this was—her dear grandmother had taken great pains to make it
fly out the same way it had flown in, so that it might take with it
whatever curse it had brought into their home. Else, old Fia had
explained, the sparrow would die and the one who’d let it in would
remain cursed for all eternity. In her quest to set the sparrow
free, Fia had blocked off every window and every door except for
the one the bird had flown in through, and then had stood speaking
to the creature for hours, until she’d managed to coax it into her
hand with bread crumbs. And then with blessings she had cast it out
the door.

Meghan hadn’t believed a word of it, of course.
She’d thought her grandmother incredibly silly, while her brothers
had simply thought her raving mad—as everyone else did.
Superstition was, in Meghan’s opinion, merely a way of explaining
away circumstances one could not fully comprehend. Nothing more.
When it came to such notions she was truly quite unromantic. Her
mind couldn’t embrace the mystical, though her grandmother’s tales
had certainly been useful for frightening wee grandchildren into
good behavior.

The memory brought a wistful smile to her lips.

Her mother had never meant to frighten Meghan, of
course—and her brothers were entirely fearless—but her grandmother
was another matter entirely.

All that Meghan remembered of her dear mother was
her sad, grieving face; she’d lived only until Meghan’s third
summer. Her da she remembered not at all, as he’d died when Meghan
was but a bairn.

But her grandmother, the old lovable lunatic, had
walked the halls of Meghan’s home until Meghan’s sixteenth winter,
all the while talking to faeries and wraiths—at least that’s what
Fia had claimed. Meghan suspected she’d merely been too chagrined
to admit she liked to talk to herself, as Meghan was wont to
do—och, but she made no apologies for it! She liked her own company
and that of animals so much more than she did people.

People, Meghan often thought, were entirely too
fickle in their attentions, and never seemed to look beyond the
mask of her face. It made her uncomfortable, and truth to tell, she
must not see the same person in the looking glass, for she couldn’t
conceive what it was about her face that made men daft in her
presence and women loathe her at merely a glance. It seemed to
Meghan that nobody cared one whit for the person behind the
face.

Both Meghan’s mother and grandmother had been
blessed with loveliness, but Meghan hadn’t inherited their delicate
beauty at all. Her cheekbones were much too prominent, her lips
much too full, and her auburn hair a riotous mess of curls that
refused to remain bound. At least she hadn’t the tendency to
freckle, though the sun colored her skin much too dark in the
summer.

Her most distinguishing feature, she thought, were
her eyes; they were the deep cool shade of a forest glen. She had
her da’s eyes, she’d been told. Betimes they appeared nigh black,
though they were in fact a pure, deep, woodland green. It was the
same eye color her brothers shared, all but for Colin, whose eyes
were the pale shade of a cloudless summer sky.

She lifted her gaze once more to inspect the
chapel’s ceiling as the raven began to caw. Its blue-black wings
beat the rafters in growing distress, and Meghan frowned. The
chapel had once been naught more than the ruins of an old stone
temple built by the ancients. Its ceiling had stood wide open to
the heavens for most of her life, but her brother Gavin had
recently erected a sloping wooden shelter, and the new wood was
sturdy and true, reinforced by beams that were braced along the
stone walls. No amount of thrashing, not even from stalwart Mother
Nature, was going to raise it. The poor raven had nary a
chance.

She stood there wondering how best to get the bird
out of the chapel.

What might her Minnie have done? Her sweet, mad
grandmother had had a way with creatures that far exceeded what
paltry influence Meghan thought she had.

Though Meghan had been raised by her three brothers,
she’d spent the greater part of her childhood with her grandmother,
either searching for herbs to make potions, or listening to tales
of good faeries who peeked out from behind trees in the woodlands.
Och, but as loony as the old woman had seemed, Meghan missed her
fiercely.