Border Bride

She might have told him that she didn’t crave excitement the way he did, but what would’ve been the use? Con had needed a steady diet of thrills the way most folk required meat and drink, air and sleep. He’d never been able to fathom how anyone might feel otherwise.

“I’ll skin that brace of conies we bagged to line your winter hood.” Recalling Con’s parting words to her on that eventful night, Enid’s belly churned.

She’d treasured that hood lined with soft rabbit fur—one material gift from a lad who’d had so little to give, apart from the elusive magic of his company.

Here he sat beside her again after all these years, a man grown, one lean hip pressed snug against hers, eyes glittering with infectious merriment which time had not dimmed. That old bothersome magic stirred again just beneath the surface of Enid’s skin, prompting her feet to dance, her voice to sing and her heart to skip in a fast wild jig.

A coal burst in the hearth just then, with a loud crack and a shower of sparks. Almost like a warning that she might be playing with fire.

Enid gave a guilty start at the noise and pressed her hand to her bosom.

Casting her a wry look, Con chuckled. “You’re strung too tight, woman. I imagine it’s a great responsibility to be master and mistress both of Glyneira. You need to take your ease now and again. It’s not good for a body to work and worry all the time. Physicians in the East say it’ll put the humors out of balance, then you’ll be more apt to fall ill.”

From Enid’s other side, Idwal spoke up. Was it only her fancy, or had her brother-in-law grown more talkative in the short time since their guest had come? “You should…take her fishing…Con.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant.” Con stuffed his mouth with meat and bread, as if the familiar act of eating suddenly required his full concentration.

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Enid said. “I can hardly remember the last time I was out in a coracle. Don’t they say a change is almost as good as a rest?”

The little round boats favored by the Welsh might be the perfect vehicle for her flirtation with Con. Out on the river they’d be well away from any curious eyes and ears. The whole experience might bring back pleasant memories from their youth when they’d paddled about on the upper reaches of the River Conwy in Gwynedd.

Besides, Glyneira needed to lay in a greater supply of fish against the arrival of Lord Macsen and his party. And while they were out there, close and alone, Enid would cast her net for Con ap Ifan.

When the time came to leave his place at the table and take up his harp, Con couldn’t decide whether he was sorry…or relieved.

What had gotten into Enid? Her explanation sounded sensible enough—that she’d been too surprised by his sudden arrival to greet him as graciously as she ought. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to swallow it whole.

The Enid he’d known would never change course in so drastic a fashion, especially in the blink of an eye, like this. She’d never been given to impulsive action, like he was. And once she’d made up her mind, she clung to it with calm tenacity that no amount of reasoning or arguing could sway. Often enough, Con had thought the elfin slip of a girl more stubborn than any massive ox he’d ever coaxed to plow a furrow.

Picking up his harp, Con spent a few moments tuning it. Then, with his eyes fixed on Enid, he began to play and sing.

“Blackbird, oh, blackbird with your dark silken wings. Blackbird with your beak of gold and your silver tongue. Fly for me to a distant shore and ask there how my beloved does.”

Whenever Con ap Ifan had crooned this ballad during his long voluntary exile from the land of his birth, Enid’s face had always been the one to rise in his mind.

This spring evening, as he plucked his harp by her fire and drank in her slender, dark beauty with a thirsty heart, the words of the second verse took on a more urgent meaning for him.

“One, two, three things are past my skill. One, two, three things I cannot master. How to count all the stars in heaven on a winter night. How to polish the silver face of the moon. How to fathom the mind of my beloved.”

He’d known Enid longer than he’d known any other woman, yet she remained an enigma to him. Perhaps that was part of the spell that had held him in her power for so many years. The woman was a challenge and a mystery wrapped within an enchantment.

As the last note of the song died away, Enid’s face paled to the cast of winter moonlight while her eyes darkened to the bottomless black of the night sky between the stars.

Why?

Perhaps if he could puzzle out the riddle of her, aided by his hard-won knowledge of the world and his pleasantly acquired understanding of women, he could free his heart from her gossamer hold. But did he dare run the risk that she would snare him so tight, he might never want to escape?

Chapter Five

Perhaps her plan wasn’t such a wise one, after all, Enid mused the next morning as she hurried through her usual duties, and prepared to set off fishing with Con. Her last scheme involving him had gone so disastrously wrong. Rather than forcing Con to stay and her father to let them wed, that one night in Con’s arms had cost her what little freedom she’d possessed.

Last night, when he’d stood by her fire and crooned “Blackbird, oh, blackbird,” his gaze had never once left her face, growing more fervent whenever he sang the word beloved.

What was there about blue eyes that made them look so sincere? Could it be the color of the sky on a clear day, or water undisturbed that let one see far and deep?

To how many other women had Con sung those words in the past thirteen years, while she had been nursing a wounded heart, raising their son, and trying to salvage a life for herself and her children out of a marriage she hadn’t wanted? How many other women had he caressed with his candid blue gaze, convincing them and perhaps himself, that the passing attraction he felt for them was love?

She could not afford to be fooled into believing he cared for her. No matter how blue his eyes, how engaging his smile, or how sweet his kisses.

Intuition warned her that this strategy to get rid of Con might turn on her, like a high-strung horse in battle or an untested coracle over swift water. By spending time with him again, trying to lure him into some rash words of commitment, she ran the risk of stirring up her old feelings for Con.

Behind her, Enid heard a familiar jaunty whistle. One that made her breath quicken and her mouth go dry, hard as she willed them not to.

“Are you ready, then, Enid?” Con called. “I feel as though I’ve already put in a full day’s work dancing before your plow. I could do with a few hours out on the water to cool me down.”

The sound of his voice made Enid feel the need to cool down as well. A faint flush prickled in her cheeks and the verge of her hairline grew damp. She told herself not to be so foolish. She was a widow, past her thirtieth year, after all. A mother of three children, not some green girl without the sense to know how much bother a man could be.

This man more than most.

Spinning around to face him, she warned herself not to heed the glimmer in his eyes.

“There’s always plenty to do around a place this size,” she replied in a tart, teasing tone. “Most of all in the spring. But I can spare a few hours to fish with you.

“Come.” She held out her hand to Con. “I’ll show you where we keep our coracles.”

A qualm of doubt passed across his face, but fled as quickly as it came. He reached out to clasp the hand she offered, with the humid grip of a man who’d put in a good morning’s work.

“They make the coracles a little different here than they do in Gwynedd,” she said as they scrambled down the bank to a wide stream that flowed east to join with the River Teme. “It’s to do with the frame, mostly. They handle much the same, I’m told. It’s been that long a while since I netted fish with coracles, I hope I can remember how.”

Con gave her fingers a squeeze. “You mustn’t suppose I’ve had the chance to practice off in the Holy Land all these years. Never you worry. There are some things a body remembers long after the mind believes it’s forgotten. You only need to make a start and not think too hard about what you’re doing, then it’ll all come back to you.”

He couldn’t have tailored an opening for her much better than that. To ignore it would be disdaining a heaven-sent opportunity. Enid thrust aside all her misgivings about this plan.

“You mean like that kiss you gave me yesterday in the washhouse?” She stopped and turned, so Con would have to slam into her. “Did our bodies remember what our minds had tried to forget?”

She failed to reckon with his swift warrior’s reflexes. Con checked his step in midstride, bringing him within a finger’s breadth of her, yet not touching except for the hand she clasped.

“That…could be.” Con’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he thrust his free hand through the tangle of brown curls which spilled over his brow. “I told you I didn’t do it on purpose. I told you I was sorry and that I’d not let it happen again. Can we not just drop the matter? Pretend it never happened?”

“Did I ask for your apology?” Enid lofted an encouraging glance at him as she rubbed the pad of her thumb over the base of Con’s. “Did I demand your assurance it wouldn’t be repeated?”

Her questions appeared to unbalance him as her abrupt stop had failed to do.

“Well now, I don’t know that you did in so many words. But surely…with Lord Macsen coming, and the two of you…”

Enid lowered her voice. “He hasn’t arrived yet. Nothing’s been settled.”

Before Con could summon an answer, she tugged him on down the hill to where three of the light, bowl-like boats rested upside down on the shore. They had frames of ash wood over which reeds had been woven, then made waterproof with a coating of linen soaked in pitch. An admirable little craft, a coracle could navigate the shallowest water, then be hoisted over onto a boatman’s shoulder for an easy walk between streams.