Border Bride

by Hale Deborah

Though he resented her doubting his ability, Con did understand young Enid feeling that way. Just as he had always minimized risks, she’d always been prone to exaggerate them.

  “I kept hoping you’d speak—give some sign you wanted me as more than a childhood friend or a courtesy sister. Though I knew nothing of what a woman should do to entice a man, I tried. You turned a blind eye to all of it.”

  He could hear the mounting desperation in her voice. If only he’d realized… “I couldn’t let myself believe you cared for me. Can you not see that, Enid? I went away as much to lead myself from temptation as anything else.”

  “And to deliver me from evil?”

  “Just so! You were set to wed a man of wealth and princely blood. How could I stand in the way of that?”

  A bitter chuckle flew out of her, with a sob clinging to its wings. “Oh, Con. You and your damned ambition. I never cared anything for land or power. I only wanted…you.”

  Was it possible for one spirit to be buoyed to the moon and flung down to hell in the same instant? Until that moment, Con hadn’t thought so.

  “I crept into your bed in the barn after you staggered away from the farewell feast.” Her words came out fast and clipped, as if she was reciting a dull lesson and wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. “We fumbled through a mating, then I stole away again.”

  “Why did you say nothing of it?”

  “I had no notion how drunk you were. I thought you’d remember what we’d done.”

  How it must have torn at her when he’d marched away the next morning, too preoccupied with his hammering head and roiling belly to care about anything else. Had he even spared her a word of goodbye?

  “The next morning I told my father I could not wed Tryfan ap Huw because I’d lost my maidenhead to you. No one ever struck me that hard before or since.”

  “Oh, cariad!” Con wrapped his arms around her. “I wish I’d been there to come between you and that blow.”

  For an instant she yielded to his embrace, then she tensed and pulled away, scrambling to her feet.

  “He locked me up until you were gone, then he sold me in marriage to Howell. When I found myself with child so soon after I wed, I wasn’t sure if the babe was his, or yours. As time went by, I could see. Howell pretended he didn’t, but he never felt the same way toward Bryn as he did to the others.”

  Con saw into her heart. “But you loved Bryn best…” He rose, quivering with the barely checked need to hold her again. “…because he’s mine?”

  “There were times he was all that kept me from sewing rocks into the hem of my gown and throwing myself into this river.” Her hand snaked out and gripped his hard enough to make Con wince. “I can’t lose that boy. Not now when I’ve almost got him back again. I beg you, Con, don’t tell him you’re his father. I’ll do anything to buy your silence. Anything.”

  How could he deny her, after all she’d been through and considering how much she’d meant to him?

  Con opened his mouth to swear his secrecy, then closed it again. Even for Enid, how could he surrender the chance to know and acknowledge his son?

  Chapter Twelve

  Con wanted her son.

  Enid had fretted this might happen, but after their talk down by the river, she knew her worst fear had come to pass. A deep, numbing chill settled into her bones. One that neither the hottest fire nor the thickest pile of woollen brychans could warm. It did not help her fitful sleep, that night, to remember it was her own fault.

  After all, she had recognized the threat Con posed from the moment she’d spotted him singing and harping in her hall. She had conceived of a plan for getting rid of him, and a good one it had been. If only she’d had sense enough to put it into effect at the first opening Con had presented her. Or the second…or the fifth….

  By the time she had frightened him away with talk of marriage, it had been too late. Too late to stop him from blundering into Lord Macsen’s party. Too late to keep him from meeting and recognizing their son.

  Once Con had seen the boy, Enid could hardly blame him for being drawn to such a lively, handsome lad. She’d have faulted the man more if he hadn’t. Now, if only Bryn were not so obviously drawn to the fascinating stranger with his winning ways and beguiling stories of dangerous, faraway places.

  The first words out of her son’s mouth the next morning made Enid recoil. “Is it true you and Con grew up together, Mam?”

  He was hanging about the kitchen with Davy, both of them munching small cakes of oats and dried apples that Gaynor baked for feast days and other special occasions.

  It took so much effort to keep her smile from slipping that Enid had no will left over to govern her tongue. She settled for nodding in reply to Bryn’s question.

  “Why did you never tell us of Con before?” Bryn pressed her. “Him a Crusader and all, that’s a friendship to boast of.”

  “I didn’t know he’d gone to the Holy Land.” Fumbling noisily with her storeroom keys, Enid turned away from her sons, so she could let her face relax from its false expression of good cheer. “I had no notion Con was still alive until he turned up at our gate two weeks past.”

  Perhaps her brisk tone warned Bryn that Conwy ap Ifan was not her favorite subject of conversation. Eager to talk about him, nonetheless, the boy turned to his younger brother. “Wasn’t that a brave story Con told last night, about spying in Damascus dressed as a woman?”

  His mouth still full of oats and apples, Davy gave an enthusiastic grunt of agreement. Once he’d swallowed, the child added, “Tonight you must ask him to sing ‘Goat White.’ He makes it so comical!”

  How could she gainsay the boys their avid interest in Con? Enid asked herself as she checked her household stores and consulted with Gaynor about food preparation for the day. The man charmed most everyone he met—why should her sons be any exception?

  Con still charmed her, truth to tell, even when she had reason to fear him, and tried with all her power to hate him.

  Last night on the riverbank, for instance. She hadn’t meant to admit what a rash, urgent love she’d borne him so many years ago. Warmed to life by his nearness, those memories had set old feelings stirring in her heart all over again.

  With his talent for reading people, Con must know Bryn could be his for the asking. How could she possibly compete against Con’s cheerful appeal and the lure of his adventurous freebooting way of life? How could she compel her son to remain with her if Con bid the boy to come away with him?

  Somehow she must find a way to make Con ap Ifan hold his tongue. But what boon could she offer him, or what threat could she hold over his charming head that might have the slightest effect?

  Launched by the force of emotion storming within him, Con’s well-honed ax blade bit into the thick tree trunk, sending chips of wood flying.

  Fate had sent him this fresh opportunity to shore up the defenses of Glyneira, and now more than ever he felt obliged to undertake the task. What if Bryn should happen to be here during a Norman attack?

  The thought of any harm coming to his son bit into Con with a sharp, powerful force, sending chips of his composure flying. Having never given much thought to the prospect of fatherhood, Con had blithely assumed he didn’t care much one way or the other. The unforeseen advent of a half-grown son in his life had changed all that. Though Con wasn’t sure he liked the change, he was powerless to resist it.

  And he hated being powerless.

  “Is aught…wrong, Con?” Idwal’s question punctured the rhythmic lull as Con swung his ax back for the next loud blow.

  “W-wrong?” Con started, making his cut fall awry. “Why do you ask?”

  Testing the edge of his ax head, Idwal shrugged. “You look so…grim.”

  Con let his ax fall idle. “I haven’t much practice at woodcutting.” His breath came in rapid gusts. “Need to pay attention to what I’m doing so I don’t hack off a leg, or send this tree crashing down on top of you.”

  Idwal stroked his br
ow as if urging his mind to deeper thought than it was accustomed to. “So it’s got naught to do…with you and Enid…last night.”

  It would have taken a more subtle fellow than Con ap Ifan to speak false while staring into Idwal’s steadfast blue eyes.

  Con gave a grudging nod. “I’ll own, it has been weighing on me.”

  The look of satisfaction on Idwal’s rough-hewn features was almost worth what his confession had cost Con. “Knew it! You don’t want her to…wed Lord Macsen, do you?”

  Con opened his mouth to assure Idwal that had no bearing whatsoever on his present pensive humor. Try as he might, he couldn’t make the words come out.

  Though his mind might have been occupied with thoughts of Bryn, the matter of Enid and Macsen ap Gryffith had riddled his heart. From the moment tidings of their expected wedding had tripped off Gaynor’s voluble tongue, the whole notion had taken Con aback. As his old feelings for Enid had warmed to life again, hotter than ever, his opposition to the match had grown apace until he’d blurted it out to Enid when she’d asked him.

  At the time he hadn’t realized that her question and all the rest were only an ambush meant to drive him away and keep him from ever knowing about his son. For all Enid’s deception stung him, it didn’t change Con’s attitude toward her remarriage.

  He still didn’t care for the idea one bit. Especially since it would make Lord Macsen Bryn’s stepfather.

  “Knew it,” said Idwal for the second time. Clearly, he took Con’s mute reply for agreement. “You…can stop her…you know.”

  “Stop her?” The notion set Con’s heart hammering. “How?”

  “And some call me…simple in the head.” Idwal’s mouth stretched in a wide, crooked grin. “Why, bid the lass wed you, instead…Con ap Ifan!”

  Yet again Idwal’s words struck Con dumb.

  Bid Enid wed him? What folly!

  He couldn’t take a wife just now, for all the reasons he’d given Enid two days past in the orchard. Somehow, since meeting his son, those arguments seemed far less compelling. If he couldn’t spoil his plans by wedding now, perhaps once he’d gained all he hoped to…

  “Fie! That is simple talk, Idwal.” Con watched as his harsh words demolished the big man’s childlike smile, all the while hating himself for it. “What makes you think Enid would have me when she has the chance of a husband like Lord Macsen?”

  What indeed? Yet Enid had confessed to once choosing the lowly plowboy over an even more exalted suitor…on the long-ago night when their son had been conceived.

  “I mayn’t be…as quick as some…” Idwal hefted his ax with an air of injured dignity, “but I know…what I know. She’d have you…if you were brave enough to ask.” He sounded doubtful of Con’s courage.

  Nonsense! Con wanted to snap, but he couldn’t. He already felt like a lump of pig dung for the way he’d treated Idwal.

  For all that, Enid’s brother-in-law was wrong. True, she had cherished a passion for him during their youth—one he hadn’t dared let himself suspect, much less return. But that must have turned to dust ages ago, having died a painful death on the morning he’d marched away from her father’s estate without so much as a “God be with you.”

  As for her recent pretended interest, it had fooled him, just as it had fooled Idwal. Now Con knew better. The depth of feeling he’d sensed had been no more than a measure of how desperately she’d wanted him gone from Glyneira.

  Or had it? If Enid married the border lord, Con would never find out.

  He struggled to frame an apology that would still shake Idwal from the false hope that had begun a seductive slither through his own thoughts. Before Con could produce one, the underbrush rustled behind him. He spun around to confront the lithe, cheerful figure of his son.

  A sensation of wonder bubbled up in Con’s chest all over again.

  “I beg pardon for interrupting your work,” said the boy, “but Lord Macsen sent me to fetch you, Con. He wants to talk over whatever you came to tell him.”

  “Thank you for bringing me word, lad.” When Bryn drew close enough, Con reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair.

  Somehow it seemed fitting that so sunny and well-made a creature should have sprung from the sweet, forbidden, unacknowledged love that had once shimmered between him and Enid. By heaven, Con wished he could recall the night he’d gotten her with his fine child!

  When Idwal hefted his ax once more, Bryn cocked his head a little to one side, exactly as his mother used to when something piqued her curiosity.

  “Why are you cutting down these trees?”

  Though he knew he should not keep Macsen ap Gryffith cooling his heels, Con could not resist a chance to linger in his son’s company.

  “They stand too hard by the walls.” Con went on to explain the threat they presented to the security of Glyneira.

  Bryn interrupted him now and again, asking questions that betrayed the keen insight of a born warrior. By the time they had thoroughly aired the subject of the maenol’s defenses, the lad’s transparent admiration of him had filled Con with intense pleasure…poisoned by a tincture of shame.

  “To think no one here ever noticed that.” The boy gazed up into the branches of a towering beech tree as if he could picture a Norman archer perched in the topmost boughs. “Lord Macsen says a skilled warrior must always look to his own defenses before he plans an attack.”

  Hearing his son quote Macsen ap Gryffith in a tone bordering on reverence, struck Con like a light blow to a sensitive part of his body.

  Before he could mouth any words of praise for Lord Macsen that might have burned his tongue, the boy called to his uncle. “Idwal, isn’t Con a clever warrior? And a kind man to care how a little place like Glyneira is fortified?”

  “Stand clear!” Idwal barked, as though he had not heard his nephew’s question. One final swing of his ax sent a lofty white poplar crashing to earth.

  In the hush that followed, he answered. “Oh, Con’s clever enough…about some things.”

  Bryn laughed, but Con knew the big man’s words had not been meant in jest.

  “Your uncle’s the wise one, Bryn.” Though he directed his words to the boy, Con met Idwal’s wary gaze. “Warcraft is a child’s game compared to the riddles he understands. It’s a pigheaded fool who ignores his advice.”

  Answering that ham-fisted apology with a cryptic grunt, Idwal strode to the tree Con had been chopping and set to work with his own ax. “You oughtn’t keep…his lordship a-waiting.”

  “Lord Macsen!” cried Bryn. “I’d forgotten. Go Con. He’s not a patient fellow. Tell him it was my fault for keeping you in talk when I should have speeded you on your way.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort.” Con propped his ax against a beech tree, then started for the maenol gate with swift steps. “You told me I was summoned, yet I tarried. The fault is mine.”

  Even if it prejudiced Macsen ap Gryffith against him and his mission, Con could not allow any blame to fall on the lad.

  Suddenly, words of Enid’s echoed in Con’s mind. Words she’d hurled at him in anger. You don’t know what it’s like to care about someone better than your own life. So that you’d rather take any harm yourself than see it fall upon them.

  Now he glimpsed what she’d meant.

  Enid had been talking about her children—Bryn foremost, though Con had not realized it at the time. But had she been talking about something else as well, without meaning to?

  How often during their youth had she taken a scolding or harsher punishment for some mischief of his making? The young plowboy had always been grateful enough to wriggle out of trouble without thinking much about how or why. All these years later, it finally struck him.

  Enid had loved him better than herself. She’d been willing to call harm on her own head, rather than see it fall on him. No doubt she had taken harm aplenty bearing his son and rearing Bryn to clever, sturdy boyhood.

  No matter what it cost him, Con knew he could not stand by an
d let her wed Macsen ap Gryffith.

  “What’s been keeping the pair of you? Lord Macsen’s growing impatient.”

  Meeting Con and Bryn at the maenol gate, Enid planted her hands on her hips as she glared from one to the other. The chastened gazes they turned back upon her looked so much alike it took her breath away. How much of the overpowering love she’d borne her son all these years sprang from Bryn’s likeness to his natural father?

  Too much, Enid found herself suddenly forced to admit. Too much, by half.

  Miserable in exile from her Gwynedd home and wed to a stranger, she had searched her babe’s plump grinning visage for the slightest likeness to a man she claimed to hate. Once she’d satisfied herself that Con had sired the boy, she’d lived in fear that Howell would also guess the truth.

  For all that, the knowledge had nourished something inside her. Hope, perhaps, or strength.

  “I’m sorry, Mam. I got Con talking when I’d no business to.” Bryn hung his head, casting his mother a glance at once penitent and a trifle cocky, as though he never doubted her eventual forgiveness.

  Before she could reply, Con stepped between Enid and her son. “The fault is mine. You’ll recall, I never needed much excuse to lose track of time in talk.”

  Though vexed by the suggestion that Bryn needed to be protected from her motherly displeasure, Enid could not fault Con for jumping to her son’s defense—their son’s defense.

  As usual, her mixed feelings for Con flustered her, as did his nearness. Every part of her body he’d kissed or fondled since coming to Glyneira tingled, as if begging for more of the same.

  “Tell your tale to Lord Macsen.” Though she intended a brisk tone, Enid heard her words tumble out high pitched and breathless. “He’s the one you’ve kept waiting while you minced air.”

  Not that Macsen ap Gryffith had voiced any great impatience. In truth, he’d appeared eager to seize the opportunity to speak with her. About an offer of marriage, perhaps? Some urge, as intense as it was baffling, had sent Enid scurrying away before the border chief could tender his proposal, with the trifling excuse of discovering what had delayed Con ap Ifan.