Border Bride

“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.”

Idwal considered and appeared to see the sense in that, even if his clever sister-in-law couldn’t.

Con himself was still firmly on the fence. This would be an ideal opportunity for his talks with Lord Macsen. All he had to do was wait around for the plum to drop into his lap. On the other side of the balance, his pride rankled at the notion of staying where he wasn’t welcome.

From as far back as Con could remember, he’d been blessed, or cursed, with the ability to see both head and tail of a coin at once. For the most part it had been an advantage, helping him make peace between his fellow warriors when they fell out among themselves. It had come in handy on his mission for the Empress, too, letting him see events through the eyes of the chiefs he was trying to pacify. By anticipating their arguments, he’d been able to marshal all the reasons to counter them.

Perhaps he’d been too hasty with Enid—blinded by his own tetchy pride and the old ulcerous wound of his hopeless boyhood longing for her.

“There’s only one wee problem in all this, Idwal.” Con blew out a breath, not certain if he was more exasperated with Enid…or with himself. “I think the lady of Glyneira would just as lief be clear of me.”

Idwal mulled the idea over and over, like an old hound worrying a tough bone.

“No,” he ventured at last. “That’s just…her way. She’s not a…merry lass like my Gaynor. There’s a…sad place in her. A sore spot she fears folks may…poke at…if she lets them too close like.”

He grew more and more agitated with each word, until at last he broke off, slamming the tines of his dung fork against the dirt in frustration. “I must sound…a fool. I’m that bad…with talk now. Words is all riddles to me.”

“Don’t you fret, Idwal.” A qualm of shame gripped Con’s belly. What was his imagined slight compared to this man’s struggle to make himself understood? Or whatever troubles Enid might carry on her slender shoulders? “You talk better sense than lots I’ve heard. It can’t have been easy for any of you at Glyneira since Howell was killed.”

Idwal calmed. “Not bad…for me. I do as I’ve done…all along. Muck out the animals. Watch the gate. Hunt some. Enid has the…running of the place. Wants to keep it…going…till the lad’s of age.”

It would be many years until Master Davy was old enough to lift the responsibility from his mother. No wonder Enid had looked for a strong, canny husband to share some of the burden. And no wonder she shrank from the prospect of a troublesome guest underfoot while she was trying to prepare for her suitor’s coming. Considering some of the mischief he’d gotten up to during their childhood, Enid had good cause to believe he might be more bother than he was worth.

Then and there, Con swore he’d be no fuss to her. He would work his heart out in the next few days to prove his worth.

“Have you another fork, Idwal?” he asked, striding toward the stable. “Two can muck out a barn twice as fast as one. Then we can go scare up some game for the feasting when Lord Macsen comes.”

She must have gotten rid of him after all, Enid decided as the day wore on with not a sign of Con ap Ifan around the maenol compound.

Not that she’d been looking for him, of course.

As she went through the familiar steps of wool dying, Enid swept her thoughts clean of the dreadful fancies that had plagued her. When Macsen ap Gryffith and his party arrived at Glyneira, Con would not be here to meet them.

Con would not set eyes on Macsen’s fosterling, her twelve-year-old son, Bryn, and see the truth he might have guessed sooner, if he hadn’t willfully blinded himself to it.

That her late husband had not been the boy’s father.

The flutter of panic in Enid’s chest eased, but an ache of regret took its place. She would probably never again set eyes on the only man she’d ever loved for she had driven him from her door with harsh words.

She’d had no choice, Enid reminded herself. Con had lain waste to her life once already. She had so much more to lose now than she’d had then.

Her plan to bind her family closer together, safe as downy chicks under motherly wings, would all be for naught. Even if Macsen would still marry her once he found out the secret she’d hidden for so long, she’d be sure to lose Bryn.

The boy was so much like Con—daring to the point of foolhardiness, eager to venture forth into the big dangerous world beyond Powys. If Bryn discovered he had a Crusader for a father, the boy would stick to Con like a burr.

And Con? He’d be just irresponsible enough to permit it, like as not. Imagining fatherhood a great lark without sparing a thought for the responsibilities.

For the first time, Enid understood something of her father’s actions when she’d informed him she could not wed the man he had chosen for her because she’d surrendered her virginity to a young plowboy turned mercenary. At the time she’d thought her father harsh and hateful.

Part of him might have wanted to punish her for challenging his authority and thwarting his plans of a grand alliance, but another part had likely just wanted to protect her in the way she now longed to protect her own children.

“Mam!” As if summoned by her thoughts, Davy came tearing into the wash shed. “Mam, come see. Idwal and the bard have brought meat and fish!”

O Arswyd! For a moment Enid struggled to catch her breath. She should have known it would not be so easy to rid herself of Con ap Ifan. As a boy, he’d deafened his ears to scoldings until all but the most severe physical punishment rolled off his back. His temper might have flared a little when they’d spoken that morning, but Con had never been one to nurse a grudge. His quickness to make up a quarrel had baffled and infuriated her by turns when they’d been young.

How would she ever get rid of a man who refused to take offense and leave? Unless she defied the most sacred traditions of her people by chasing off her unwanted guest at the point of a sword?

“Come, Mam!” Impatient with her delay, Davy grabbed Enid by the sleeve and tugged her into the courtyard.

For a moment, she could barely see Con through the crowd that had gathered around him and Idwal. As Davy towed her toward them, though, the flock of admirers parted.