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Border Bride. Deborah Hale
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“Will gold and glory warm your bed at night?
“Will they tend you when you’re ill, or weep for you when you die?”
Dumbstruck, Con struggled into his breeches, trying to think of something, anything he could say that might convince Enid to have him on his own terms.
For once it was her turn to have the final word.
“I think the world of you. I’d sooner have you for my husband than any lord or prince. If you thought half as highly of yourself as I think of you, you’d have nothing to prove to anyone.”
Without giving him a chance to reply, she closed the door of the wash house, plunging it once again into stifling darkness.
“I have nothing to prove.” Con tried to believe it, but the words rang false in his ears and the empty place inside him gaped wider than it ever had before….
Acclaim for Deborah Hale’s recent titles
THE WEDDING WAGER
“…this delightful, well-paced historical will leave readers smiling and satisfied.”
—Library Journal
THE ELUSIVE BRIDE
“…an absolute pleasure!”
—The Romance Reader Web site
THE BONNY BRIDE
“…high adventure!”
—Romantic Times
A GENTLEMAN OF SUBSTANCE
“This exceptional Regency-era romance includes all the best aspects of that genre….Deborah Hale has outdone herself…”
—Romantic Times
#620 BADLANDS LAW
Ruth Langan
#621 A PERILOUS ATTRACTION
Patricia Frances Rowell
#622 MARRIED BY MIDNIGHT
Judith Stacy
Border Bride
Deborah Hale
Available from Harlequin Historicals and
DEBORAH HALE
My Lord Protector #452
A Gentleman of Substance #488
The Bonny Bride #503
The Elusive Bride #539
The Wedding Wager #563
Whitefeather’s Woman #581
Carpetbagger’s Wife #595
The Love Match #599
“Cupid Goes to Gretna”
Border Bride #619
For my eldest son, Robert, the best birthday present I ever received, who more than deserves a dedication after eight books. Thanks for your patience, sweetheart!
Special thanks to Heidi Hamburg, who knew just what kind of woman Con ap Ifan needed.
Contents
Chapter One
Have a care, now! a small voice whispered in Conwy ap Ifan’s thoughts as he picked his way through the quiet, greening countryside of the ever-shifting border between England and Wales. Watch your back. Stay on guard.
He was a carefree, impulsive fellow by nature. It had taken him many years of mercenary service in the Holy Land and elsewhere to cultivate a sense of caution.
Con had the scars to prove it.
Perhaps he ought to heed that vigilant little voice, now. These borderlands, which Norman folk called The Welsh Marches, were far less serene than they might appear to the casual traveller on a fine spring day.
“Tush!” Con muttered to himself as he scrambled from stone to stone, fording a swift-flowing stream. Between planting and shearing, even Welshmen were too busy to make war at this time of year. And who’d take notice of a lone wanderer on foot, anyhow? Especially one with a bard’s harp slung over his shoulder?
Once again Con congratulated himself on adopting such a clever disguise for this mission to his native land. In Wales, a bard could roam the country at will, with the door of every maenol open to him—always assured a seat of honor by the hearth, a good belly-filling meal, and a warm woolen brychan to roll himself in at bedtime.
When a bard plucked his harp and sang the heroic ballads that were his country’s lifeblood, folk dropped their guard to listen. After the last notes died away, oft as not they’d tip another cup of ale or hard cider and grow talkative. Then Conwy ap Ifan, envoy and spy for Empress Maud, Lady of the English, would listen and weave another thread into his tapestry of intelligence about the Marches.
Not a spy! Con’s sense of honor bridled. At least not in the usual sense of that word. He meant no harm to his countrymen, and never would he put the interests of a Norman monarch above those of a Welsh prince. However, if the ambitions of the border chiefs should