Border Bride

by Hale Deborah

  Con turned to the boy. “Will you carry my apologies to Lord Macsen and assure him that I’ll come shortly.”

  “Aye, sir.” Bryn fairly radiated his eagerness to be of service to his new idol.

  “Say nothing of detaining me with talk,” Con called after the lad as he hurried away.

  Enid shot Con a suspicious glance. “Why did you send Bryn, when you could go to Lord Macsen just as quickly.”

  “Because I wanted a word with you, first.” The tone of his voice caressed Enid and set her pulse fluttering in a manner she hated.

  “Word?” Her eyes narrowed. “About what? I thought we’d said everything we had to say to each other last night.”

  Con scanned the maenol courtyard, abuzz with activity. Taking Enid’s elbow with a firm but gentle grip, he steered her toward the small dairy that stood not far from the gate.

  “Perhaps I needed some time to ponder on what you told me.”

  Once more, fear gripped her with clammy hands. Had Con said something to Bryn? Recalling her son’s manner, Enid assured herself nothing had rocked his young world…yet.

  Inside the low-ceilinged shed all was dim and still. The dairy maids had dealt with the morning milking, and gone off to other tasks. Enid wrinkled her nose at the sour smell of fermenting curds that hung in the air. Her cheeks warmed as she remembered the fumbling kiss she and Con had exchanged in the washhouse a few days past. That kiss had kindled her dangerous, futile plan to entice him further.

  “Well?” She shook her elbow from Con’s grasp and faced him. “What is it you want with me?”

  Fie, but it felt as if she were trying to balance on the ridgepole of a high roof. On one hand, she could not afford to vex a man who held such power to bring her grief. Yet neither could she bring herself to betray a hint of the stubborn attraction for Con ap Ifan that persisted in spite of everything.

  “Has his lordship bid for your hand yet?” Con’s bearing and tone both gave him the air of a harp string wound too tight. “Have you accepted him?”

  What right had he to know the answer to either of those questions? And why did he care?

  The smell of rancid milk turned Enid’s stomach. At least she blamed it on the pungent odor.

  “Lord Macsen and I haven’t had a chance to talk more about it.” In her eagerness to keep from adding if you must know, Enid bit her tongue.

  “Ow!”

  Con reached for her. “What is it, cariad? Are you all right?”

  “It’s nothing.” Forcing herself to pull back from him, Enid almost tripped over an oaken bucket. “And don’t be calling me that. I am not your cariad!”

  Her eyes had adjusted to the shadowy interior of the dairy shed. She could make out the pensive set of Con’s handsome features.

  “We may pick and choose which people we hold dear.” The barest whisper of a sigh escaped from his lips. “But we can’t decide who will hold us dear. That, they do at their own whim.”

  If she didn’t soon get out of here, she might take a whim to do something unforgivably daft. Kiss him, perhaps, just to still his beguiling tongue.

  “That’s all this is to you, then—a whim?” Her vow not to antagonize Con shattered into a hundred sharp splinters. “A fickle breeze blowing hot one day and cool the next? Changing direction without warning, sweeping everything before it?”

  “You must own, that sounds exciting.” Con gave a tolerant chuckle. “What would you rather have, Cariad Enid Du? A tide whose every ebb and flow you could measure and predict within an inch?”

  Dear dark Enid. The very words seduced her, dammit!

  “If you value this mission of yours from the Normans, perhaps you should save your quibbles to entertain folks after the evening meal, and go attend Lord Macsen, now, as you were bidden.”

  “You speak prudently, as ever.” Con’s teasing grin faded. “I’ll be plain with you, then. Though you weren’t sincere in wanting to marry me, I meant it when I said you should not wed Macsen ap Gryffith.”

  “Why ever not?” Only one reason would satisfy her, and that she would not believe if Con ap Ifan were bold enough to advance it.

  He seemed to search the redolent air for an answer. “You don’t love him!”

  “Love?” Enid couldn’t decide whether to laugh, shriek or retch. “You talk like an Aquitaine! I’ve heard tales of that court. Knights vowing devotion to other men’s wives—spouting ballads to their beauty, carrying their favors into mock battle. Even those decadent idlers don’t wax so foolish as to claim such childish goings-on have any place in a marriage.”

  Con wrinkled his nose and pulled a bilious face that nearly drove Enid to laughter, in spite of herself. “They’re worse than that by half.”

  Before he had time to draw another breath, his tone and visage turned sober once again. “Besides, that wasn’t what I meant by love. I think you know it, too. I pity any man and woman who wed without deep feeling between them. You were cheated of such feeling in your first marriage, and I’ll own the blame I bear for that. I won’t stand by and watch it happen to you again.”

  Guilt and pity. Con was meddling in her future out of nothing stronger than those. She should have known better than to let herself hope for more. Enid chided herself for telling Con as much as she had about her life after she’d seduced him on that late summer evening thirteen years ago.

  Damned if she would let him salve his raw conscience at the expense of her family!

  “What makes you so certain I don’t care for Lord Macsen in the way you mean?” Enid blessed the friendly shadows that shrouded her eyes from Con’s ruthless scrutiny.

  “Why…you told me.” He stammered in a manner that would have made Idwal sound fluent. “At least…I thought…”

  Had she been fool enough to confess her true feelings for his lordship to Con ap Ifan? If so, it would not be the first time Con had cozened her own tongue into playing her false.

  Well, no more.

  “You shouldn’t set much store by anything I told you when you first came to Glyneira.” Enid made her voice as sharp and cold as the long, lethal icicles that hung from the eaves at Candlemas. “As you were so quick to discover, it was all part of my plan to get rid of you.”

  Surely that would make him leave her alone so she could do what she must—a task that was proving hard enough without Con’s interference.

  “So you do care for his lordship, then?”

  Did he mean his question for a challenge…or a plea?

  Enid willed her tone not to betray the tempest that raged inside her. She planted her hands firmly on her hips to keep them from reaching for Con in a moment of weak folly.

  “Happen, I do.” She flung down the words like a mortal challenge.

  His quiet, coaxing reply rocked Enid back on her heels in a way no angry rebuke could have done. “More than you care for me?”

  She replied with the only answer she dared give him. “Lord Macsen offers my family as safe and comfortable a home as we could find in this part of the world. He has always treated me with respect and kindness. What have you ever given me to compare with those?”

  A son dearer than her own heart, whispered Enid’s conscience. More laughter during one golden summer than had passed her lips in all the years since. A sweet, hot rush of desire that she savored, even while she mistrusted it.

  Skilled warrior that Con had become under Norman tutelage, he did not try to counter her feint. Instead, he mounted a subtle assault of his own, moving toward her. Though he made no effort to touch her, he stepped so close to Enid that every breath she inhaled overwhelmed her with his scent.

  “You haven’t answered my question, cariad.” His whisper gently ravished her ear.

  The fine hairs on the back of Enid’s neck rose. Her nipples puckered against the linen of her smock. The inside of her mouth grew wet, forcing her to swallow. The smallest movement on her part would bring their lips into contact.

  Just when she feared she could not withstand the dark, p
otent urge a moment longer, Con murmured, in a voice as insistent as it was beguiling, “Do you care for Macsen ap Gryffith more than you care for me?”

  Her soul must be hopelessly damned to perdition by this time. Would one more log on the fire roast her any hotter? Perhaps, for this one would be the size of those trees Con and Idwal had been hewing.

  “Yes.”

  It was not an eloquent declaration, by any means. And her tone lacked conviction. Still, given the forces Con had brought to bear against her, allied with her own traitorous heart, Enid counted that one wavering word a victory.

  Relishing the sharp hiss of Con’s in-drawn breath, she let her shield fall slack.

  “Very well, then,” Con whispered, grazing her cheek with his. The delicate rasp of whisker stubble set her flesh on fire. His next words set her reeling.

  “Prove it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “P-prove?”

  Was it his imagination, or did Enid sound even less certain than she had a moment ago when she’d claimed to love Macsen ap Gryffith? Con asked himself why he cared so much, only to discover he couldn’t bear to face the answer.

  “I owe you no proof, Con ap Ifan.” With surprising strength for her size, Enid pushed him away. “Any feeling I have for Lord Macsen is between him and me. No business of yours, that’s certain.”

  Part of him believed so, too, but Con refused to heed the voice of his own reason.

  “If you plan to raise my son in a household with Lord Macsen as his stepfather,” Con stabbed the innocent air with his forefinger, “then you make it my business, woman!”

  She flinched, as though he had backhanded her across the mouth.

  The thought of visiting such violence on any woman, let alone his dear dark Enid, made Con’s gorge rise. For their son’s sake, and for the sake of her future happiness, he could not afford to relent.

  “You told me how it was between you and Howell—remember? How you wanted to sew rocks into the hem of your gown and throw yourself in the river. Rather than live in such a household, perhaps Bryn would be better off with me.”

  He hadn’t meant to advance such a plan, but once Con spoke the words the notion warmed him. It could be like a return to the good times when he and Rowan DeCourtenay had roistered about the Holy Land. Only this time he would be the mentor, taking Bryn under his wing.

  “Never!” If Enid had been holding a weapon, Con knew he might have died where he stood. “You said yourself, you haven’t got it in you to be a good father. Besides, I didn’t raise that child on my own for all these years only to have you steal him from me, now, and take him off to who knows where.”

  “When a body takes what belongs to him, it isn’t stealing!” Con felt his temper rising. “And who’s to know what kind of father I might make if I never get the chance to try.”

  Perhaps it would serve Enid right if he let her make a mercenary match with the forceful border chief. Try as he might, Con couldn’t abandon her to such folly. He’d unwittingly abandoned her once before. That knowledge would be hard enough to live with.

  “Bryn isn’t yours!” Enid sounded as though she longed to shriek the words for all of Powys to hear…if only she dared. “One drunken fumble in a hayloft thirteen years ago gives you no claim on my son. Besides, you’re talking nonsense. How can a body prove what they feel in their hearts? You’ve claimed to care for me. Yet you’ve brought me more grief than folks who might profess to hate me.”

  It was true. Con heard it in her voice. He had seen it in her dusky eyes more than once since he’d come to Glyneira. What queer twist of his character let him bring pleasure to women who meant little to him, while visiting distress on the only one he’d ever truly cared for?

  He wasn’t trying to hurt her now, Con’s passion protested to his conscience. He only meant to keep Enid from making a mistake she and her children might regret for years to come. To his surprise, the vow rang true.

  “Well, speak up, man!” Enid’s sharp demand goaded Con from his musings. “How would you have me prove my feelings for Macsen ap Gryffith?”

  “I don’t know,” Con shot back. “But I’ll think of something. Until then, I want you to promise me that you won’t commit yourself to a marriage with him.”

  “I’ll do no such thing! How long do you think Lord Macsen would let a woman dangle him on a string before he decided the wench was more trouble than she was worth? I cannot risk losing this chance for me and my children on some whim of yours, Con.”

  Damn! His opposition was only serving to harden her stubborn resolve. From bitter experience Con knew the futility of trying to budge Enid once she got her heels well dug in. Why, he’d have an easier time coaxing a great ox or prodding an ill-tempered mule than swaying this wee slip of a woman against her will.

  “I…that is…” It took strong emotion indeed to empty Con’s clever mind and tie his facile tongue in knots. Only Enid had ever wielded this terrible power over him.

  The worst of it was, at the same time it made him long to run from her as far and fast as possible, it also lured him to draw as close as she would let him.

  “I thought as much.” Enid crossed her arms in a manner that suggested both wariness and exhausted patience. “You’re so fond of spinning quibbles, Conwy ap Ifan, forever putting me in the wrong. When I answer your bluff, see what comes of it?”

  She pushed past him toward the wide, low doorway of the dairy shed. “Lord Macsen isn’t apt to have much patience with an envoy from the Normans who keeps him cooling his heels, either,” she snapped. “In your place, I’d hie myself to the hall while there’s still a chance he might heed you.”

  As she strayed within his reach, Con caught her by the arm with the gentlest touch that might still detain her. He had only one coin to barter with Enid. Precious as it was to him, did he dare squander it thus?

  The touch of his hand stayed her, though Con sensed it would not last long. Enid canted her face ever so slightly toward him. Hers was a beauty best appreciated in moonlight, dusk or shadow. His reawakened desire for her brought an ache to Con’s loins and an answering pang to his heart. What would he exchange for one clear, true memory of that distant summer night when she’d given herself to him?

  A notion began to take shape in his flustered mind, if only he could buy enough time to let it ripen. “Give me one more day, Enid. Surely his lordship will allow you that much leisure to weigh your decision. For as long as you withhold your consent, I promise I’ll keep mum about Bryn.”

  “Very well.” Enid responded without a heartbeat’s hesitation. “One day.”

  Clearly his silence on the matter was worth a great deal to her. If he promised never to reveal himself as Bryn’s father, Enid would likely refuse Macsen ap Gryffith for good and all. But that was a higher ransom than Con could bring himself to pay for the privilege of saving Enid from herself.

  With a parting caress, he released her arm. “It’s of no advantage for me to meddle in Lord Macsen’s affairs,” he murmured, wishing Enid would not hate him for what he must do. “This is for your own good.”

  She continued her interrupted way toward the door. At the threshold, she paused, her fine profile crisp and black against the light spilling in from the courtyard.

  In a voice tight with anguish she choked out her parting words. “That’s what my father said when he forced me to wed Howell. Just once I wish a man would trust me to know my own good.”

  Leave it to Con ap Ifan to disappear from her life for over a dozen years, then come racing back when she was finally on the brink of arranging matters to her own liking. Saints forbid the charming rascal should have grown enough discretion in the meantime to let well enough alone!

  As Enid stormed away from the dairy shed, the flesh of her arm smarted, the way it might if she’d drawn close to the fire too quickly after coming indoors on a winter night.

  Of course Con couldn’t let her content herself with the kind of settled, certain arrangement marriage with Lor
d Macsen promised to be. Little did Con guess it took no more than his presence in her house, along with the potent memories he stirred, to infect her with vague, bothersome doubts. The last thing she needed was for him to distill those doubts into persuasive words. Perhaps there was one thing she needed less, Enid admitted to herself when she spied Macsen ap Gryffith striding toward her across the courtyard—her own daft yearning to believe that Con wanted her for himself.

  That he wanted her, she didn’t question. But only as a meaningless tumble in the grass, not in the honored, lasting way she needed.

  Lord Macsen bore down on her. “Has our sparrow hawk flown the nest, then?”

  Sparrow hawk? “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

  One of Lord Macsen’s rare smiles softened his dark, formidable visage. “The harper…or the warrior, whichever he is. Wanderer more than either, I daresay.”

  “You mean Con.” Enid glanced back over her shoulder toward the dairy, but saw no sign of him. Was he still skulking there, or had he rambled away? “I spoke with him only a moment ago and bid him attend you in the hall. Perhaps you and he missed one another coming and going.”

  “That could be.” The border chief’s smile faded, replaced by the kind of intense gaze that never failed to make Enid squirm. “For a fellow so eager to bend my ear, he’s been backward enough about doing it.”

  She must not speak a word in Con’s defense. What Lord Macsen said was perfectly true. But after so many years of shielding Con from her father’s displeasure, it had become second nature to her.

  “Do not judge him too harshly, my lord. Con has been laboring to make Glyneira more secure in case of attack.” Before she could regain control of her tongue, Enid heard herself telling Macsen ap Gryffith all about Con’s venture to cut back the trees that pressed too close to the maenol wall.

  His lordship’s dark brows rose as he listened. “I daresay Glyneira is safe enough while Hen Coed stands between it and the Normans. But enough about this. I came here to escape such worries for a few days.”