Border Bride

by Hale Deborah

  The time had come to push her threat. “If you aren’t gone from Glyneira by nightfall, I will take it as a sign you mean to wed me, after all. Then I will haul you up in front of Father Thomas to take vows…”

  A look of horror flashed in his eyes that made her want to sink to the ground in tears. But damned if she would let some lapdog to a would-be Norman queen drive her to weep on his sorry account!

  “…with Idwal’s dung fork poked into your back if need be.”

  Con stooped and plucked up one of the cherry blossoms at his feet. “I’m sorry, Enid. You mean more to me than any woman ever has, but…”

  His gaze faltered before the blistering reproach of hers. Skirting around her, he walked away, no doubt bound for the house to collect his harp and scrip.

  Entirely against her will, Enid turned to watch him go. His usual brisk, jaunty gait had deserted him. If Con ap Ifan had been a dog, his tail would have been dragging in the grass. Enid barricaded her heart against any dangerous feelings of pity that might assail it.

  “I mean more to you than any woman ever has,” she whispered to herself as Con disappeared around the corner of the maenol wall. “But not enough.”

  Once before he’d left Enid. Left with no other choice, believing her well provided, never knowing how much she’d cared for him. Still regrets had gnawed at him over the years in spite of his determination to ward them off with the distraction of adventure and the lure of advancement.

  Forcing one reluctant foot in front of the other, Con made his way to the maenol gate, across the courtyard and up the steps to the house.

  This time he was leaving Enid in the full knowledge that she needed him, and that she had always cared for him. Only one thing hadn’t changed…he still had no true choice. Not if he ever wanted to hold his head high or to die in the glorious knowledge that he had lived his life to the fullest.

  And yet…

  It wasn’t easy, this going. With every step his disloyal feet threatened to turn and carry him back into the sweet snare of Enid’s arms.

  Con stole into the great hall, not wanting to be accosted by any of the Glyneira folk. His resolve, he sensed, might not be strong enough to withstand much buffeting. He found his harp and scrip just where he’d left them, in a large chest by the door which stored brychans during the day.

  Off in a better-lit corner of the great chamber, Helydd sat in close talk with a young man Con didn’t recognize. They appeared too preoccupied with one another to spare him a glance. Employing the soft tread that had saved his life more than once, Con crept out of the hall, silently wishing Helydd good luck with her swain. She was a goodhearted creature, a bit too much under Gaynor’s forceful thumb. It would not be easy for her to find a husband with Glyneira so out of the way, and herself with little, if any, dowry.

  “Con! Con!”

  As he emerged into the courtyard, the children’s lusty hails made him start, like a thief caught committing a crime.

  “It’s Pwyll,” cried Davy in a breathless voice. “We can’t find him!”

  “Will you come help us look?” Myfanwy turned soft beseeching eyes upon him, and Con was lost.

  With a glance to check how much longer until sunset, he clapped Davy around the shoulders. “Never fear, lad. Conwy ap Ifan is a tracker of great skill. Besides, how many places can there be in one maenol for a pup to hide?”

  Quite a few, as it happened. The sun had dropped an alarming distance toward the western horizon by the time Con and the children discovered Pwyll once again in the pigsty doing his best to filch a meal from the old sow. The litter of piglets squealed at a pitch even more shrill than usual, as they tried to crowd out the furry intruder.

  Con plucked the pup out of the sty, fanning his nose as he handed the wriggling little creature back to its master. “You’d better go give him a dunk in the river before your mam catches a whiff of him.”

  “I will. I will.” As he headed toward the gate with the pup in his arms, Davy called over his shoulder, “Thank you for finding him!”

  “Glad I could help.” As Con waved after the small, retreating figure, a queer lump of dismay rose in his throat.

  He glanced down to see Myfanwy still standing beside him.

  “Hadn’t you ought to go after your brother?” he asked. “To make sure he doesn’t drown them both?” Hard as he tried to forge a jaunty smile, his lips resisted.

  The girl regarded him with a look just as grave. “You’re going away, aren’t you?”

  “Me?” Con struggled with his answer. A harmless falsehood would spare him an awkward parting. He wasn’t used to bidding goodbye.

  Myfanwy saved him the decision. “You have your harp slung over your shoulder, and your scrip on your belt.”

  “You have a keen eye, lass.” As he’d done so often with her mother in their youth, Con tickled the child’s cheek with the end of her golden braid, trying to coax a parting smile from her. “You’d make a fine general.”

  “Where will you go?” Her steady blue gaze made Con squirm.

  “Hen Coed.”

  “Will you come again?”

  “Who knows?” Con shrugged. “I could well.”

  Myfanwy shook her fair head. “You won’t.”

  It was not an accusation or a complaint, but a plain statement of truth. Yet it struck Con a blow, in the way an ordinary farm tool like an ax or a pike might if wielded as a weapon.

  Her shoulders gave a subtle twitch that seemed to dismiss him. “I’d better go keep an eye on my brother, like you said.” She set off with a brisk step, calling back with cheerful indifference, “Safe journey to you, Master Con.”

  “Ah…Myfanwy?”

  She glanced back without fully stopping. “Aye?”

  “You’ll mind what I told you and Davy about the Normans, and keeping close to the maenol, won’t you?” Con tried to ignore a fierce stinging that beset his eyes.

  “I will.” She turned from him so swiftly her long blond plait of hair whipped around.

  As the child walked away, Con thought he heard her mutter, “Though I don’t see why it matters to you.”

  That made two of them perplexed by the question.

  Con tried to shrug it off, the way Myfanwy had his going, but a strange, worrisome hesitation weighed on his shoulders. He pushed himself toward the gate by imagining the timber walls of Glyneira closing in around him.

  He was about to cross the threshold into the wide world beyond Enid’s maenol when a deep, halting voice lured him back again.

  “Con…axes. Good and sharp.”

  Casting a nervous glance toward the horizon, Con turned. “That’s fine, Idwal. My thanks to you and to Math. I wish I could stay to help you hew those trees and mend the wall, but…I must be on my way.”

  Idwal lowered the half-dozen axes he held in one massive hand. “That’s…sudden. The day’s waning. Bide one more night.”

  Bide one more night, and he’d never get away!

  “I’ve tarried too long, already, my friend.” Though he tried to look and sound casual, Con wondered if Idwal could see through him as easily as Myfanwy had. “I wouldn’t be much use chopping trees, anyway. That’s a job for big brawny fellows like you and Math. I know I can trust you to see to it.”

  Though he tried to resist, a pleading note crept into his voice. “You will, won’t you, Idwal? It’s important.”

  Idwal nodded his big shaggy head. “I will. Never you…fear.”

  “Good.” Con thrust out his hand. “Then I suppose this is goodbye for us.”

  Idwal fumbled the axes to free his right hand for shaking Con’s. “Aye…well, safe journey. Come again, do.”

  Trying not to wince at Idwal’s hearty grip, Con flashed him a broad grin rather than reply with words the other man might recognize as false.

  Again he started for the gate, wondering who might call him back this time. But no further summons came.

  Con breathed a sigh of relief when he finally stepped through the gate
, free of Enid’s wedding threat at last. Yet as he sauntered down a footpath that led to a gap in the trees, he found himself glancing back over his shoulder again and again. Called by a voice only his heart could hear.

  The look on Idwal’s face was enough to tell Enid what she wanted to know. Or rather, what she didn’t want to know.

  She made herself ask just the same, to keep any hope from taking root in her heart like the stubborn, bothersome weed it was.

  “How long ago did Con leave?”

  “Not long.” An expectant light kindled in the big man’s eyes. “If I rode…I could fetch him back.”

  The burst of laughter Enid forced came out harsh. “Fetch him back—whatever for? Lord Macsen is on his way, with a good-sized party, no doubt. This will make one less mouth to feed and one less body to house.”

  “Con brought in…more than he ate.” Idwal replied. “And he didn’t…take much room…in the hall benights. Wasn’t he meant to harp for the guests?”

  Enid tried to ignore the gentle reproach behind her brother-in-law’s words, one of the longest and most complex utterances she’d heard from him since he’d taken his head wound.

  “I know Con was good company for you.” She patted Idwal’s arm, all the while congratulating herself for speaking Con’s name without her voice cracking into tearful splinters. “I’m sorry he couldn’t stay longer with us.”

  Nothing would force her to admit how sorry.

  “But,” she added in a firm tone before Idwal could suggest some other scheme for fetching Con back to Glyneira, “he had matters to attend elsewhere. If the man chose to go, we can’t very well hold him hostage, can we?”

  His burst of eloquence spent, Idwal replied with a cryptic grunt.

  Enid tugged at his sleeve. “Come along to eat, then, before the food grows cold and Gaynor scolds us both.”

  That was what she needed—a good, filling supper to hearten her, and the company of all the Glyneira folk to distract her thoughts from Con ap Ifan.

  On both counts, the meal failed miserably.

  When the food was served, Enid found she had no appetite to do more than nibble at her lagana. Nor did the hall full of people do much to occupy her thoughts. Not since the previous autumn, when Howell had lain dying, had she seen everyone so subdued.

  The only ones who seemed not to notice the oppressive mood of the place were Helydd and Lord Macsen’s nephew, Rhys. Their lively talk and occasional laughter served only to emphasize the downcast silence of the rest. It was all Enid could do to keep from leaping onto the table and demanding they celebrate Con’s going instead of moping about like a party of mourners.

  If any of them had cause to celebrate, it was her, Enid reminded herself as she labored to dredge a crumb of satisfaction or even relief from the aching depths of her heart.

  After all, she’d set herself to get rid of Con ap Ifan, and she’d done it. Her only fault had been the repeated delays in springing her trap, until she’d fallen so far back under Con’s charming thrall that she’d duped herself into believing he might stay.

  He’d wasted no time disabusing her of that ridiculous fancy.

  Throughout that long dull evening, Enid drank more than her usual share of cider. Ointment for the heart was the poetic Welsh term for strong drink, but it provided no balm for hers. Instead it swept through her like a spring flood, demolishing the sturdy bulwark of her pride, and forcing her to admit how much this second leaving of Con’s had hurt and humiliated her.

  What a simpleton she’d been to lap up his seductive lies! Over the years he’d probably told hundreds of women they filled his empty place. Enid’s imagination swarmed with tormenting visions of those women.

  Buxom and pliant, the way most men liked their conquests. Bejewelled, clad in vibrant-colored gowns made of costly fabrics from the Orient. Beautiful in an exotic fashion sure to eclipse a simple Welsh widow.

  Damn Con ap Ifan!

  The man had an empty place inside of him—that much was true. An empty place, right where his heart should have been.

  Chapter Ten

  Were the Welsh heavens as vexed with him as Enid must be? Con wondered when a light but steady rain began to spit from the clouds a while after he’d left Glyneira.

  Too bad about them both! He pulled his cloak tighter and trudged on, reminding himself that he’d marched through far worse than a sprinkle of rain countless times in the past thirteen years. On a far emptier belly, too.

  Though not in recent months.

  As his stomach gave a pitiful growl, Con chided himself for leaving the maenol in such haste and agitation that he hadn’t thought to pass through the kitchen on his way. There, he might easily have charmed Gaynor out of a cake of lagana and a joint of stewed fowl for the road.

  Ah well, there was no help for it now.

  In a way, Con rather welcomed the rain and his hunger. Such minor discomforts of the body went some way to distract him from the acute discomfort of his heart.

  It did no good to remind himself that he’d been forced to quit Glyneira when he’d rather have stayed—that he’d had no true choice in the matter. His troublesome ability to see a question from all possible sides compelled him to view the events of the past week through Enid’s eyes.

  What he saw made him writhe with shame.

  Why had he pursued her with such energy when he knew he could not wed her? Had it been because he’d gotten so used to wooing any available woman wherever he found himself? He of all men had reason to know Enid would never settle for a brief tryst, no matter how exciting.

  Or had he been unable to stop himself from acting on the attraction that had kindled so long ago and never been quenched? Neither reason cast him in a very flattering light, he decided.

  When he could no longer see the path in front of him, Con scrambled up into the branches of a tall oak beside the path. It wasn’t a comfortable spot to sleep, but at least the tree’s thick foliage kept off most of the rain. If he must sleep out in the open, he preferred the illusion of safety provided by a perch well off the ground, hidden from all but the sharpest eyes.

  Straddling a thick branch, with his back braced against the broad rough trunk, Con listened to the soft patter of rain on the leaves. It soothed him like a lullaby, even as it troubled his spirit with a vision of falling tears. On the shadowed, uncanny borderland between waking and dreams, another notion ambushed the Welsh warrior.

  Enid had been willing, even eager, to wed him.

  The significance of that almost knocked Con out of his leafy perch. He’d been so occupied with why he could not marry her, he hadn’t spared a passing thought to this once unimaginable marvel. Her position might not be as high now as it had once been, but within Wales his was scarcely higher than in his youth. He was a rootless, landless fellow in a country where kin and property counted for all.

  Now that Enid was no longer reliant on her father, but as independent as she might ever be in this life, she had fixed her choice upon him. Even when she had hopes of a much more advantageous match. It was an honor beyond anything Con ap Ifan had dreamed during his downtrodden boyhood.

  And how had he received that precious boon?

  A bilious spasm gripped his stomach. Hard as Con tried to persuade himself it was only hunger pangs, he remained unconvinced.

  He’d scorned the offer that must have cost Enid so dearly in pride and peace of mind. Hurled it back in her face as though she were unworthy of him.

  It would take more than a couple of sword taps on his shoulders from the Empress to ennoble a base creature like him, Con acknowledged with a rueful sigh as he slipped deeper into restless dreams.

  No doubt Enid was well rid of him for the second time in her life. The question remained—would he be able to oust her from possession of his heart? For thirteen years he had tried and failed.

  What made him imagine he could succeed this time?

  For all the rest she got that night, Enid might as well have been sleeping out of doors
in the rain. Tossing and turning under her thick woolen brychan, she tried to take vindictive satisfaction from the thought of Con out on such a night.

  It was a plight of his own making, after all. If he’d stayed at Glyneira as she’d bidden him—as she’d begged him—he might be tucked up snug with her at this very moment. Enid rolled over again and tried to keep from imagining Con in her bed.

  It wasn’t any use.

  The charming rascal wormed his way in there as he managed to slither into plenty of other places he had no business being. She could almost hear him whispering lyrical flattery as his hands roved up beneath her night smock, anointing her flesh with need and promises of pleasure. She could almost feel him suckling her lower lip or the tip of her bosom, sending a hot tickle coursing down to her loins.

  Curse his hide! The mere thought of Con ap Ifan ignited a more furious blaze of desire in her than poor Howell’s real mating ever had. And what of Lord Macsen? If she wed the border lord, would Con vanquish him on this field of battle, too?

  After what seemed like endless hours of such tormenting thoughts, Enid dragged herself out of bed with an aching head, a sour stomach and a heavy heart. She tried to sweeten her humor by reminding herself she’d soon see Bryn. If events unfolded as she expected, she might not have to part from her firstborn again for quite some time.

  Yet even the thought of Bryn’s coming didn’t cheer her as it should have, for the boy would remind her too much of his absent father.

  A shiver of apprehension went through Enid.

  Now that the Glyneira folk had seen Con ap Ifan, might some of them mark the likeness between him and her eldest son? Might those with long memories recall how the boy had been born right speedily following her marriage to Howell?

  She couldn’t waste her time worrying about what she could not prevent, Enid chided herself. Instead, she must do what she’d always done when trouble assailed—occupy her hands and at least part of her mind with work.