Border Bride. Deborah Hale

arrival.

      Con’s surprise coming yesterday had made her realize the border chief might appear any day. She wanted the maenol in good order to welcome him.

      Despite their late night, her children had not slept past their normal rising time. Myfanwy must be out feeding the fowl, while Davy would be off conning lessons with Father Thomas.

      With no company and the prospect of a good day’s work ahead of her, Enid dispensed with a veil. Instead she combed out her long dark hair and plaited it back into a thick braid, with only a passing speculation as to how many white threads it had sprouted as a result of Con’s unexpected advent.

      As she dressed her hair, Enid mulled over the preparations needed for Macsen’s arrival. They must butcher a few geese and perhaps a suckling pig so the meat could hang. She’d send Idwal with the hounds to bring in some fresh game. The hall must be swept out and fresh rushes strewn with sweetening herbs.

      Once all those tasks were seen to, she would turn her attention back to such of the wool clip as she’d chosen to keep for their own use. The rest of the shorn fleeces awaited a visit from the merchant in early summer. Now that the wool had been washed, it would need to boil with dye plants, and mordant to fix the colors.

      Did she have enough woad on hand to dye a batch blue for a new cloak for Bryn? Enid mulled the question over on her way to the wash shed. As she rounded the corner of the house, her mind already planning the pattern of weave, she collided with…

      “Con ap Ifan! By Dewi Sant, what are you still doing here? I thought you meant to be on your way early.”

      If he minded her uncivil greeting, Con gave no sign. “Call it the caprice of a bard.”

      With those airy words and the casual hoist of one shoulder, he razed Enid’s carefully constructed plans to the ground.

      “You and I never truly got a chance to talk over old times,” he added by way of explanation. “Though you got your ears filled with all the news of my doings, I scarcely know a jot about you. Why, I had no inkling you were set to wed your first husband’s lord. As private as a mole, you are, woman. Most ladies I know would boast of such an honor even before they offered a guest water.”

      “How did you come to hear of that?” The abrupt question had hardly left her lips before she guessed the answer.

      “Your sister-in-law told me last night.” Con confirmed Enid’s certain suspicion. “After you’d taken the children off to bed. Gaynor said it was a pity I couldn’t stay to entertain the wedding guests. On reflection I agreed it would be a terrible shame. So I made up my mind to accept your hospitality a few days more.”

      Suddenly aware of how close he hovered over her, Enid took an unsteady step away. “Gaynor’s a good soul, but she gets ahead of herself betimes. There’s nothing settled between Lord Macsen and me by way of wedding.”

      A teasing light twinkled in Con’s blue eyes, like the swift dance of water over a stony mountain riverbed. “You do expect him to come soon, though? And you have hopes of him?”

      “What business is it of yours if I do, Con ap Ifan?” Enid wasn’t sure what vexed her more—his dangerous decision to linger at Glyneira, or the fear that each day he spent here would make it that much harder to part with him again.

      “I only clapped eyes on you yesterday for the first time in a dozen years. You’re burnt brown as a Saracen and you fought long in the service of the Normans.”

      The more she spoke, the hotter her indignation kindled. “You said yourself, you mean to go away again as soon as you may, leaving who knows what kind of a pig’s breakfast behind you. You’ve got no call to meddle in my plans or even to know what they might be.”

      Con flinched back from her vigorous rebuke as he might have from a man brandishing a sword. “What’s got into you, woman? I thought we’d parted as friends. Besides keeping your young ones awake late last night, I haven’t done you any harm since I’ve come under your roof. Why must you scold me so, and do your best to chivvy me away? Am I not welcome in Glyneira? You did offer me water…”

      And that bound her, damn his hide! Having paid so dear a price for her youthful rebellion, Enid could no longer imagine transgressing against the laws of tradition that obligated her.

      “I thought you were someone else.” She doubted the excuse would sway him.

      “Macsen ap Gryffith?”

      She resented the sharp edge in Con’s voice when he spoke the border chief’s name. “As it happens, yes.”

      “Are you saying you wouldn’t have offered me your hospitality had you known who I was?” If she’d kicked Davy’s puppy, the boy and the dog together could not have treated her to such a look of innocent, injured reproach.

      “Yes…I mean…no” she sputtered “…that is…” If she wasn’t careful, she might pitch herself into Con’s arms or gather him into hers.

      “Have I risen too high to suit you, Enid versch Blethyn?” Con’s posture stiffened and the yearning azure of his eyes froze to dark ice. “Is that it?”

      He was the one imposing on her hospitality, rooting into all sorts of matters he had no call to concern himself about. The gall of the fellow to answer her back, proud as a prince!

      “I’m sure I don’t know what kind of air you’re mincing.”

      “Do you not? Then I’ll be plainer, shall I?” Con’s chiselled chin jutted. “When I was a poor plowboy in your father’s house and you the intended bride of a great lord, it amused you to befriend me. Even flirt a bit to exercise your wiles for your future husband.”

      If Enid had soaked her cheeks for a week in bloodroot, she could not have dyed them any redder than they must be at that moment. Con thought she’d been toying with him, when instead she’d been over her head and ears in love.

      “Now that you’ve come down a bit in the world,” said Con, “while I’ve come up, it doesn’t suit you, does it, your ladyship?”

      “I never heard such idle talk…”

      “Let me tell you one thing, then, Blethyn’s daughter, I’ve warmed the beds of plenty women richer and higher-born than you since I left Wales. And they seemed to like it well enough.” With that, Con spun on his heel and stalked off.

      Enid stood rooted to the packed earth of the courtyard, trembling with a mixture of fury and dismay. She feared the bubbling cauldron might also contain a tiny but potent measure of that well-aged poison…desire.

      He was right in what he’d said, Con knew it better than he knew the gospel. He stormed the length of the timber-walled compound, not certain where he was headed.

      When they’d been boy and girl together under her father’s roof, ripe to bursting with all sorts of forbidden inclinations, Enid had fanned his calf-love into a blaze that had consumed him day and night. Especially at night.

      How often had he woken in his loft bed above the oxen’s stalls, rampant and slick with sweat over a dream of that elusive girl naked in his arms?

      As much as he’d been lured into mercenary service by the call of adventure and advancement, Con had also fled headlong from the demons of lust that had gnawed at his young flesh. And the bitter certainty that he had no chance in the world of winning Enid versch Blethyn.

      Con barely noticed his steps slowing.

      If she’d been haughty and scornful of him, it would have been so much easier to bear. For then he’d have craved only her ripening beauty, and any other girl would have made a tolerable proxy. But Enid had never once hinted at the difference in their stations and expectations. Then again, she hadn’t needed to. He’d been aware enough of the gulf between them for both.

      As far back as Con could remember, she’d always spoken and behaved as though he was every inch the equal of the princeling her father meant her to wed. To the