by Hale Deborah
“Aren’t you the clever lass.” Con treated Myfanwy to a fond smile, before raising his eyes to her mother. “What do you say to your daughter’s idea, cariad?”
Enid took a deep breath. “I say I’ve never stopped loving you, Con ap Ifan. I want us to be a family, and if that means following you to the ends of the earth, then I will. Wherever we are together will be home to me.”
“What do you say, Con?” Bryn prompted his father.
Con’s eyes had never glowed with a greater depth of feeling. “I say, my days of wandering and striving are behind me. What I want to do with my life is here. As long as I have my family with me, no place in the great world can compare with our Welsh home.”
Closing the last brief space between himself and Enid, Con swept her into his arms for a kiss so intense it rivaled the heat of the hearth fires.
He stirred from it just long enough to cry, “Now summon the priest before she changes her mind!”
The children joined hands and danced circles around them, hollering “Call the priest! Call the priest!” so loud the bishop in Lichfield might have heard it.
The delicious urgency of Con’s lips on hers and the touch of his hands felt as sweetly familiar as homecoming. Yet somehow Enid knew they would never fail to stir her with a sense of fresh adventure.
Only when she feared her knees might buckle beneath the weight of her desire did she part from Con just far enough and long enough to protest, “No need for haste. We have been a lifetime coming to this, you and I. An hour, a day or a week more will make no difference. You have the best reason in the world to know my mind is not easily changed.”
Catching the end of her long braid, just as he used to do when they were children, Con tickled her cheek. “Your mind, I know, but what of your heart, cariad?”
She lifted his hand to her bosom, so he could feel the joyful rhythm of it.
“For as long as it beats, it will be yours.” The music of love flowed through her, a blithe bouncing melody wed to a deep constant harmony. “Perhaps even longer.”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6027-9
BORDER BRIDE
Copyright © 2002 by Deborah M. Hale
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