Border Bride. Deborah Hale

from who-knows-where, lift my skirt as the fancy takes you, then wander off again. I have my future to think of, and my children’s.” At least that much was true.

      Con peeled himself off of her. Putting a little distance between them, he crouched at the edge of the moss bed, leaning against a stout tree stump. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, Enid.”

      His features bore a truculent look she remembered from their younger years, when he’d been scolded or punished unjustly. How often had she taken sole blame for one of their misadventures to keep Con from getting that look?

      “How am I supposed to know?” She pressed her attack, despising herself for it, though she knew it must be done for her children’s sake. “After you boasted of all your conquests? How am I different from any of them?”

      “I didn’t love them!” The words burst out of Con with such force, Enid sensed he would’ve tried to contain them if he could have.

      For an instant she hesitated. Reason prompted her to press the attack and send Con ap Ifan packing. His reckless admission had caught her unwary. She’d expected this campaign of hers to take longer. Perhaps she had better not spring the trap prematurely.

      “And you fancy you love me?” Retching up a bitter chuckle, she shook her head in disbelief. Once upon a time she might have swooned to hear Con come close to declaring such feelings. Thirteen years in purgatory had taught her to distrust the dubious promise of heaven while fearing the certain threat of hell.

      A sheepish crimson tinted the bronzed flesh over Con’s high, jutting cheekbones. He dodged the searching gaze she shot him, perhaps afraid of what his unguarded eyes might reveal.

      “You and I, we had something special between us, once,” he said. “We didn’t dare act on it then. You know all the reasons as well as I do.”

      At least I had the courage to try! Enid clamped her lips together between her teeth to check the accusation she dared not voice. Suddenly she was grateful Con refused to look her in the eye. Otherwise he might have marked the foolish, futile tear she could not quell.

      A tense, troubled silence stretched between them until Con shattered it. “Just because we couldn’t own to the feeling between us, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Doesn’t mean it went away.”

      With that he commenced to spin his web of words and reason around her. Did he truly mean what he said about the old bond between them, or was he just using it as bait to bed her? And if he had cared for her in the way he claimed, why had the reckless warrior gone tamely on his way while she, the cautious one, had risked all for him?

      Little do you guess the trap I’ve laid for you, Con ap Ifan, Enid thought. With every word, you blunder deeper and deeper into it. Once you get the bait well between your teeth, I’ll spring it and make you run.

      She stroked her hand over the velvety moss, hoping she’d get at least one more chance to run her fingers through his hair before she had to bid him farewell forever.

      “We were so young back then.” Enid tucked up her knees and hugged her arms around them. “Neither of us knew anything of the world, or of other lads and lasses our age.”

      She’d met plenty of men in the meantime, most far better suited to her than this charming, restless vagabond. Why had none of them caught and held her heart the way he had?

      A smile took her lips by surprise. “For a little while, just now, I wondered if the Fair Folk had played a trick on me by stealing the years away. I felt like a young girl again, with no responsibilities…no worries. Just the water, the sun, the trees and a handsome boy chasing after me. It was a rare gift and I thank you for it.”

      Con bobbed his head in a vigorous nod. “That’s how it felt for me, too.” Innocent mischief twinkled in his eyes. “Why can’t we just go on that way—pretend we’re sixteen and seventeen again, off on a day’s larking?”

      If only he knew how he tempted her…

      “There’s been a lot of water flow over the falls since those days, Con. Perhaps you can’t understand since you answer to no one, with none to depend on you. I can’t afford to think only of myself.”

      Was she warning him, or reminding herself? “My children and all the Glyneira folk need me.”

      Con shuddered—perhaps from the chill of his damp garments or possibly from the horror of being shackled by that kind of responsibility. “Then I suppose we ought to go see if there are any brave fish still lurking in the river after all our commotion.”

      “Not until we get you dried off.” Enid stretched out her hand. “Give over that tunic and I’ll hang it on a branch in the sun.”

      As Con shrugged out of the garment, she added, “Breeches, too, while you’re about it.”

      “They’ll dry on me well enough.” He tossed the tunic to her.

      “Please yourself.” Resisting the impulse to gloat over Con’s sudden attack of modesty, she stretched his over-garment across the splayed branches of a fallen sapling in a patch of sunlight. “I’m not sixteen anymore. I know what a man looks like with his clothes off. Come to think of it, I did then, too, since you and I swam like fish whenever we stole the chance.”

      She heard a rustle of underbrush behind her, but still let out a squeak of surprise when she felt Con’s fingers tugging at the laces of her kirtle, and heard his voice so close to her ear.

      “Have a jest at my expense, will you, cariad?” He pulled loose the ties that secured the back of her gown. “For all you weren’t dumped into the water, your clothes are every bit as wet as mine. With all those folks relying on you, I’d hate to be the cause of you taking a chill.”

      Words of protest stuck in Enid’s suddenly parched throat. With the protective cover of her woolen kirtle removed, she’d only have her thin, damp linen smock between her body and Con’s impudent gaze. And if the tips of her breasts puckered, pushing brazenly out against the threadbare cloth, would Con blame it on a chill or would he guess the true reason?