Lyon's Gift Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Dinna even try it, Colin Mac
Brodie. Dinna even try!”
    And with that, she turned her back to him and
hobbled into the cool shade of the forest.

 
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 3
     
     
    God save her soul, she just didn’t think she
could do it.
    Alison, youngest daughter of Dougal MacLean,
sat fretting upon a weather-beaten boulder, the noon sun glaring
down into her face. She sat unblinking as she contemplated the
dilemma at hand: how was she supposed to face her best friend and
explain that it was her own guile that had instigated the feud
between King David’s English Lyon and Meghan’s brothers?
    Whatever could she say to make amends?
    I’m sorry, Meghan, but I did not wish to wed
the awful brute, so I stole his goat and blamed it on your
kinsmen?
    The very thought of such a confession made
her miserable.
    The truth was that she had never meant to
blame it on Meghan’s kinsmen; it had merely worked out that way.
Her plan had simply gone awry. She nibbled anxiously at her
thumbnail.
    Terribly, terribly awry.
    Her shoulders slumped dejectedly.
    Horridly awry.
    She’d intended, in fact, to initiate the
feud between her own kinfolk and Montgomerie, not the Brodies and
Montgomerie, except that the blasted evidence had strayed upon
Brodie land and the Montgomerie brothers had discovered their
rotten little goat in the wrong hands!
    She regretted her fouled plan
wholeheartedly, of course, though she knew it was entirely too late
for mere regrets. What was done was done, and it was up to her to
make amends now.
    Somehow, she had to set things right.
    The rope within her hand jerked, recalling
her attention to the gift she’d brought for Meghan and her
brothers—her own pet lamb, paltry compensation though it might be
for the loss of an entire flock. She tugged the wee lammie within
arm’s reach and patted its newly sheared coat as she considered her
options.
    She could go to her father and reveal to him
what she’d done, but he would blister her rear and make her marry
the loathsome Englishman anyway.
    Or...
    She could confess to the loathsome
Englishman, wed him as she was supposed to do, and then die of a
broken heart—if he didn’t murder her first for her duplicity.
    Or...
    She could continue to wait for Meghan here
upon the meadow, tell her the truth, beg her forgiveness, and then
help her in rectifying the situation. Meghan always seemed to know
what to do.
    Why, oh, why couldn’t she be more like
Meghan? Meghan was pretty and kind and brave and intelligent. She
was all the things Alison wished she could be, and more.
    Beauty alone was not enough recommendation,
she knew. Her eldest sister, Mairi, had been beautiful beyond
words, but not so very intelligent, and certainly not so very kind.
Mairi’s beauty hadn’t gotten her anywhere but dead. And though her
father had blamed Iain MacKinnon for Mairi’s death, Alison knew
very well that her sister had always had a tendency toward
melancholia.
    Her sister hadn’t loved her husband; and she
had chosen to kill herself rather than share her life with him. As
dour as Mairi had always been, the prospect of living with a man
she couldn’t possibly love must have proven such a terrible burden
for her to have committed such an atrocious sin. It made Alison
heartsick to think her sister had been so very unhappy.
    The last thing she wished to do was to end
like Mairi.
    Nay, she couldn’t wed Piers Montgomerie—she
just couldn’t! She didn’t love him. Alison had been so very
relieved when her father had refused Lagan MacKinnon’s offer of
marriage. As flattered as she had been that a man such as Lagan
would take interest in a girl as plain as herself, her heart was
pledged to another. And if she couldn’t bear the thought of wedding
Lagan, less could she bear the thought of wedding some English
vulture.
    The faintest smile curved her lips at the
thought of Colin Mac Brodie.
    His very name made her quiver.
    His face made her sigh at the mere sight