Meghan: A Sweet Scottish Medieval Romance Read Free Page A

been useful for frightening wee grandchildren into good behavior.
    The memory brought a wistful smile to her lips.
    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 abashed 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 a glance. It seemed to Meghan that nobody cared one whit for the person behind the face.
    Both her 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 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, although the sun colored her skin much too dark every summer.
    Her most distinguishing feature, she thought, were her eyes. She had her da’s eyes, she’d been told. Betimes they appeared nigh black, but they were in fact the pure, deep shade of a forest glen. 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 auld ones. Its ceiling had stood wide open to the heavens for most of her life, but her brother Gavin 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 grammie have done? Her sweet, mad grandmother had had a way with creatures that far exceeded what paltry influence Meghan thought she had.
    Although 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 faeries who peeked out from behind trees in the woodlands. Och, but as loony as the old woman had seemed, Meghan missed her fiercely. She knew her brothers loved her well and truly, but it was a burdensome thing to be the only woman in a household of men.
    Not to mention lonely.
    If it weren’t for Alison, the MacLean’s daughter—her best friend—Meghan didn’t know what she would have done.
    Leith, her eldest brother, was laird of their clan. He was sweet and good, even if he was entirely too overbearing and protective. With all his rules, he kept Meghan from living life just as surely as though he were a wall she could not pass. What he didn’t seem to realize was that she had her own little tunnel burrowed beneath those bulwarks, and the defiant thought brought a tiny smile to her lips.
    Her brother Colin, on the other hand, was much too unconcerned with anything but women and drink. Blessed as he was with good looks, Meghan only wished he didn’t give the pursuit of his own pleasures such import above all else.
    Poor, sweet Alison hadn’t