Deborah Hale - Border Bride

“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 most menial member of Blethyn ap Owain’s household, struggling to cultivate a sense of worth, Enid’s manner toward him had been sweet balm.

“Fie!” Con kicked a tussock of weeds that had forced their stubborn way out of the courtyard’s hard dirt. “You’re thinking yourself in circles, fool! Was she only toying with you back then? Or did you imagine her soft looks because you craved them so badly?”

A deep halting voice issued from the stables, “You must…talk slower…if you mean me to answer.”

Enid’s brother-in-law emerged into the courtyard with a dung fork in one hand. A big fellow was Idwal, with ruddy-brown hair and a nose that looked like it had been broken at least once. That and his size might have given him an air of grim menace, but for his guileless blue eyes and ready grin.

“I need no answer, friend.” As Con’s mouth stretched wide, he could feel his annoyance with Enid slipping. He grabbed onto it and tried to hold tight. “I was only thinking with my tongue, as ever.”

“Oh.” Idwal nodded as if he understood, but his jagged features contorted slightly in a look of puzzlement.

It passed in a flash, chased off his face by a broad smile. “Fine music you made…last night.” He broke into a chorus of “Goat white, goat white, goat white,” then stopped abruptly. “Will you play again tonight and tell more stories?”

That was the question of the day, wasn’t it? Con thought. Would he let Enid’s coldness drive him out of Glyneira, to blunder into Macsen ap Gryffith on his way to Hen Coed, or chance missing the border chief altogether?

His time in the East had taught Con not to waste effort chasing quarry that might come to him if he exercised a little patience.

“I’ve a mind to stay a few days more. Would you like that?”

“Oh, yes!” The vigor with which Idwal’s head bobbed up and down warmed Con. In the fellow’s uncomplicated welcome, he found an antidote to Enid’s baffling shifts of manner.

“I may even hang about until Lord Macsen comes.” Con mused aloud. “He might think it an honor that Glyneira has a bard on hand to entertain him.”