A Tale of Thorns and Honey — Kate O'Donnell

                A WELSH CHIEFTAIN'S DAUGHTER, AN ENGLISH     WARLORD AND A LOVE THAT DEFIES THEIR WORLD          
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     Have you ever loved so hard it's like a fist around your heart?  Have you ever had to walk away from such a love, not once but again and yet again? Have you ever been drawn to someone as though by fishhooks in your soul, and, escaping at last, be snared once more?   So it was with Enith and Hugh.
     It is the year 1277, and Llewelyn ab Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, must deliver hostages to Edward of England to guarantee the peace of Llewelyn's chieftains, with them Enith, daughter of Gavin ab Owen.  Among the warlords there to watch the humiliation of the Welsh is Hugh Fitz Alan, one dark eyebrow crooked in appreciation of ab Owen's daughter.  Chin lifting, her gaze meets Hugh's before lowering to the bar sinister on his shield.
     "Who are you, bastard," her eyes demand, "to lift your gaze to a daughter of clan Owen?" 
       Hugh knows who he is.  He's a bastard, yes, but he's also the knight who saved his king's life in the Holy Land.   More, there is little Edward will not grant him should he ask, and he wants, Hugh decides, this haughty-mouthed woman. But Enith has lost five brothers to war and the raidings, and, however hard Hugh's gaze stirs her, she has vowed to never love another man of war, and certainly not an English lord.  Magnificently matched in passion, they are sundered by loyalty, Hugh to the royal cause, Enith to her beloved father and clansmen.  Bitterness and violence rise between them and only grievous loss, an abiding love can unite them.