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Border Bride. Deborah Hale
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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.
There was only one fly in the ointment. Coracles demanded a good deal of skill from whoever wielded the paddle. A novice boatman could easily find himself whirling round and round, carried off on a wild ride by the current.
Just as her old passion for Con might do to her if she wasn’t careful, Enid realized with a spasm of alarm. Ah, but she had a good sturdy paddle to help her retain control. One end was the desperate necessity to keep Con away from her son, the other was the painful recollection of what her girlish fancy for him had cost her. The skill to ply that paddle came from the hard-won understanding of how wrong they were for one another in so many ways.
Letting go of Con’s hand, she turned over the smallest of the three coracles and shifted it to the water’s edge.
“Pass me a paddle, will you?” She took her place on the low-slung seat. “Then stand ready to dive in and rescue me if I tip over.”
“You’ll manage fine.” Con winked. “Don’t fret so much. Just be easy and enjoy the adventure.”
“Fine for you to sa-aaay.” Enid squealed when he gave her coracle a gentle nudge into the stream.
For a moment she felt as though she had three left hands all fumbling the paddle. The boat began a dizzy spin. Then Enid stopped thinking so hard about what she must do. Instead she let her hands move as they wished. One end of her paddle dipped into the water, caught, and stopped the coracle turning.
By the time Con was ready to cast off from shore, she had begun to feel the almost-forgotten rhythm drumming in her sinews once again—a quick responsive dance, with the river as her powerful partner.
She