An Unlikely Match

by Sarah M. Eden

  “Then how did I manage to convince you to take pity on me and host this ghost-condemned gathering with nothing more than a letter?”

  “I am afraid your words were smiling, my dear Nickolas.” She laughed, emphasizing the cheery nature of her lightly lined face. “And you flattered my feminine vanity quite unabashedly. How could I resist? It helped, of course, that you were inviting us to your new Welsh estate. Mr. Davis could hardly resist welcoming his pseudo-nephew to his own homeland.”

  Mr. Davis was excessively Welsh, something Nickolas had realized within thirty seconds of meeting his friend’s father. The gentleman, who had most likely descended from Welsh warrior stock, swelled with pride whenever his native land was mentioned in conversation and took on a very defensive nature should the comments be unfavorable. Nickolas had managed to look entirely pleased with the location of his windfall when he’d mentioned his good fortune to the Davis family.

  “We’ll make a Welshman of you yet, Nickolas,” Mr. Davis had said, slapping him on the back. The gentleman had nodded his approval repeatedly since arriving earlier that day. He’d spoken to Mrs. Baines in Welsh, bringing the first smile to that woman’s face since the house party had been proposed a fortnight earlier.

  Mrs. Davis was as English as they came, hailing from Essex. She had, however, come to love Wales nearly as much as her husband, even agreeing to bestow Welsh names on their children, though choosing names that her relatives would be able to pronounce.

  “I will admit, Mrs. Davis”—Nickolas lowered his voice conspiratorially—“I was not particularly excited about the location of my new home when I first learned of it. I am finding, however, that Wales is growing on me.”

  “Ah, yes.” Mrs. Davis sighed. “It does that.”

  The peaceful quiet of the home was quite suddenly rent by a horrified scream.

  Chapter Four

  Nickolas ran frantically up the stairs toward the source of the disruption, Mrs. Davis hard on his heels. A second cry followed the first, and though less panic-ridden, it was still worrisome.

  He turned down the corridor that led to the guest wing to find all three Castletons gathered outside Miss Castleton’s room, the lady in question enfolded in her father’s arms and appearing quite disconcerted.

  “Calm yourself, Charlotte,” Mr. Castleton instructed his daughter. “What has overset you so entirely?”

  “There was someone in my room,” was the shaky reply.

  Mr. Castleton patted her back. “One of the maids—”

  “No, Papa. Not a maid. Someone . . . someone else.” She motioned toward the open door to the exquisite white bedroom. “By the window. In a white dress. She was . . . f-f-floating!”

  “Floating?” Mrs. Castleton looked shocked, perhaps a touch embarrassed.

  “Floating?” Mr. Castleton echoed his wife, but with a tone far more intrigued and excited.

  “And shimmery.” Miss Castleton’s voice shook more with each word.

  Mr. Castleton turned his eyes toward Nickolas. “Do you have a resident ghost, Mr. Pritchard?”

  The man looked positively gleeful. Nickolas barely refrained from staring. “There is a legend about a ghost at Tŷ Mynydd, I understand,” he answered diplomatically. But Mr. Castleton did not look satisfied with that explanation. “I am not overly acquainted with the details,” Nickolas pressed on. Was the man truly so excited about a ghost story? “Our local vicar, Mr. Evans, will be joining us this evening. He could, I am certain, provide all the details you desire.”

  “Splendid, splendid.” Mr. Castleton put his daughter from him and moved eagerly into the bedchamber she had fled only moments earlier. The man actually rubbed his hands together in anticipation. So much for paternal concern.

  “Are you quite all right, Miss Castleton?” Nickolas asked his delightful houseguest, who still appeared a bit overset.

  She nodded, her eyes wide. It would have been a perfect opportunity to offer what comfort and consolation he could, but with her mother standing beside her, such a thing hardly seemed appropriate.

  “Would you consider your privacy overly invaded if I were to make a quick inspection of your room—with your parents here, of course—to make certain all is well?”

  “I would appreciate that.” Miss Castleton nodded, having already attached herself to her mother rather firmly and still looking very nearly undone.

  Nickolas wondered fleetingly if Miss Castleton was always so chickenhearted. He dismissed the thought as uncharitable, especially when he considered a few tangible benefits of having a ladywife who regularly threw herself into his waiting and comforting arms. He felt certain his smile had grown.

  Feeling rather like a hero worthy of an epic poem or two, Nickolas stepped into the room he’d chosen for his damsel in distress.

  He made a quick visual sweep of the room but found no one lurking in the corners, other than Mr. Castleton and Miss Castleton’s noticeably confused abigail. He certainly encountered not a single person floating about or shimmering.

  Nickolas turned toward the silent abigail. “Did you happen to see what it was that startled your mistress?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir. I had only just stepped out on my way below stairs. I came back when I heard her . . . er . . .”

  Obviously she worried Nickolas would condemn her mistress’s outburst as an excess of sensibility or perhaps a dearth of understanding. He smiled at her, and she blushed, dropping her efforts to explain.

  Nickolas tipped his head to one side, eying the window hangings rather closely. They were white, just as Miss Castleton had described the dress worn by her imagined visitor. And when the sunlight hit them just right, the curtains did seem to shimmer. He glanced quickly at the bottoms of the curtains. As he’d expected, they ended several inches from the floor, as if floating above the ground.

  He crossed to the window. It was the slightest bit open, no doubt the reason for the occasional rustling of the fabric. Nickolas pulled the window shut, convinced that would put an end to their difficulty.

  “I shall ask your vicar about this ghost of yours,” Mr. Castleton declared, peeking behind one of the sheer bed curtains. “Int’resting things, ghosts.”

  Nickolas couldn’t recall ever seeing Mr. Castleton so animated. Ironic that his first positive response from the gentleman was on a topic they saw so differently from one another.

  “I am certain Mr. Evans will be delighted to discuss her with you.”

  Dafydd would be thrilled. He would enjoy crowing over the subject if yet another individual was taking his side.

  Mr. Castleton rubbed his hands again as he left, obviously reluctantly. Nickolas followed him but stopped at the doorway, glancing back into the room. With the way the shadows played across the window hangings, Nickolas could easily see how Miss Castleton could have thought she’d seen someone there, especially if a light breeze had helped further the belief of movement.

  Miss Castleton still stood in the corridor with her hand clasping her mother’s arm, watching Nickolas as he emerged.

  “Did you find anything, Mr. Pritchard?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

  “I believe so. I think the right combination of light and shadows, coupled with a breeze coming through the open window, may have given a very convincing impression of a person floating near the window.”

  “Then, perhaps there was not a ghost in my room at all?” The hopefulness in her tone was unmistakable.

  “That is precisely what I think.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief and gazed at him with what Nickolas smugly interpreted as something akin to hero worship or admiration. He silently thanked the imaginary ghost and the ease with which its lack of existence was explained.

  “Thank you, Mr. Pritchard,” Miss Castleton said.

  He smiled at her. “It was my pleasure. I will leave you to settle in.”

  Mrs. Castleton accompanied her daughter inside the room the moment Nickolas left it.

  “Well done, Nickola
s,” Mrs. Davis whispered. “You smoothed over that potential difficulty and managed to offer at least a half dozen of the famous Nickolas Pritchard smiles. No doubt you have made a conquest there.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  “The wind blows that way, does it?”

  “The wind blows in one direction only, I fear,” Nickolas answered. “Mr. and Mrs. Castleton seldom gave me a second glance before my inheritance. I hadn’t the means to support a wife, you see.”

  “As I well know,” Mrs. Davis reminded him. “And you are not offended at being accepted now only because of your sudden inheritance?”

  Nickolas shrugged, not overly concerned. “I cannot blame her parents for worrying over her future.”

  Mrs. Davis gave him a searching look, as if she didn’t quite believe his declaration.

  Nickolas laughed in spite of himself. “If you wish to be offended for me,” he said, “then I will not discourage you. But I assure you, I am not in the least upset over their shift of opinion. After all, I doubt they disapproved of me personally, only what my circumstances were at the time. And as I disapproved of my poverty as well, I certainly cannot fault them for feeling the same way.”

  Mrs. Davis laughed too. “What an absurd thing to say.”

  “One of my talents, as you know well.”

  They continued companionably toward the sitting room. Nickolas could not imagine being more at ease with his own mother if she had lived beyond his childhood. It was a nice feeling. He hoped his own children would feel the same way with their mother. The thought made him smile all the more.

  “I assume you will receive a jaw-me-dead from your housekeeper over this debacle,” Mrs. Davis said just before they joined their other guests. “She does seem rather unconcerned over your position as her employer and the risk she takes by offending you.”

  “She has learned that I am not easily offended. And, yes, she will ring a very smug peal over my head. You see, I was warned not to house any of my guests in that particular bedchamber.”

  “Were you?” Mrs. Davis looked intrigued.

  “It has, apparently, been previously claimed by our ghost,” Nickolas explained, feeling a laugh emerging again.

  “What a waste of a remarkably beautiful room.” Mrs. Davis appeared appropriately outraged and amused. “I am personally pleased you have chosen to place Miss Castleton there. She will be suitably impressed with your home.”

  Nickolas grinned. “My hope exactly.”

  “Let us further hope, then, that she does not fancy herself in the presence of a ghost in the future. While her father seemed quite excited at the prospect of a specter, I do not think Miss Castleton shared his enthusiasm.”

  “I am not worried,” Nickolas answered. “As there is not actually a ghost, I doubt we shall have any further problems on that score.”

  He smiled anew at the thought of Dafydd sleeping in The Tower. That victory Nickolas would happily and loudly crow over. He felt absolutely certain his house party would be an unmitigated success.

  * * *

  How dare he!

  For perhaps the millionth time during her interminable tenure haunting the remains of her childhood home, Gwen rued the fact that she did not have the ability to inflict painful curses on unfeeling people. Else Nickolas Pritchard—whom she had discovered was as un-Welsh as possible for someone who was a direct descendant of her own very Welsh grandfather—would have found himself suffering all manner of afflictions for that little trick.

  No long-suffering haunt should be expected to float through her own bedroom window and find a stranger there. Unpacking. Settling in as if she had every intention of remaining. It was not to be borne!

  Gwen had not intended to show herself to the poor creature. She’d come into the room fully visible only because she hadn’t been expecting company.

  “A pox on Nickolas Pritchard!” she declared with all the fury she could muster.

  Had he not acted badly enough, inviting so many strangers to her home—without so much as a word to her, mind you! She quickly cast aside the realization that they had not as yet met, and therefore, securing her blessing would indeed have been difficult. Someone blasted well should have said something to her. She was well known to nearly everyone else in and around Tŷ Mynydd. But no one had bothered.

  Then to discover how very English they were, with the pleasant exception of the Davis family, of course. Such a circumstance was not to be taken lightly. Had the English not cost her enough already? Must she now make room for them here? It was all she could do to keep from rattling the walls with her frustration.

  Englishmen were positively dripping from the eaves throughout the rest of the house. But she would not have one in her room. Granted, the young lady seemed amiable enough, even if Mr. Pritchard was intent on making a complete and utter cake of himself over her. Oh yes, Gwen had seen him flash that smile of his at her, had seen how his eyes became half hooded when he looked in Miss Castleton’s direction. It was pathetic, really.

  Gwen sped through the walls until she reached Mr. Pritchard’s suite. She would talk to him herself, demand that he remove the interloper from her bedchamber. If she kicked up enough of a gale, rattled the windows, shook the furniture, that sort of thing, he would likely acquiesce. The recently departed Mr. Prichard had sniveled and whimpered in corners whenever she’d attempted to speak sensibly with him. So she’d been forced to use a more take-charge approach, simply making decisions for him and then insisting he follow through with them.

  Theirs had not been a comfortable coexistence.

  The Prichards were a predictable lot when looked at with a perspective of just over four centuries. On the extreme ends of the spectrum, they produced men who were either hard warrior types or crying babies. There had been one Mr. Cafael Prichard in the eighteenth century whom she’d actually had to knock upside the head with a piece of the family armor, he being one of those ridiculously combatant Prichards. It was a very fortunate circumstance, indeed, that she could kick up quite a wind when need be, as that was her sole means of moving anything.

  Where would Mr. Nickolas Pritchard fit on the scale? His line had broken off of the main family line during Cafael Prichard’s time, Nickolas’s forebear being Cafael’s younger brother, Padrig. He’d married an English lass, much to everyone’s consternation, and hied himself across the border, where he and his had remained until just a few weeks ago. Gwen remembered Padrig well. He had been far more amiable than his brother, more inclined to smile and laugh, which had annoyed his brother and father to no end. She had missed Padrig but had acknowledged he was probably far happier where he was.

  The current Mr. Pritchard had all the family traits mingled in his blood in some combination or another. Gwen had not yet decided where to classify Tŷ Mynydd’s new owner—except to classify him as insensitive, unfeeling, and horrid! Giving her room to a stranger. And an English stranger, at that!

  She was fairly fuming again. Gwen rushed through the closed door of the master’s bedchamber, ready to do battle. She stopped in an instant. Mr. Pritchard was in a semishocking state of dishabille. He was in the process of pulling on a crisp, white shirt but had, thankfully, already donned everything else necessary for the most basic degree of modesty.

  Gwen muttered a very unladylike word, forgetting in her shock to keep her utterance silent.

  Shirt fluttering into place, Mr. Pritchard glanced around the room, brow creased in confusion. Gwen had never been happier to be invisible. Being caught invading a man’s privacy so entirely was not the best way to secure said man’s respect and adherence to one’s suggestions. Not to mention the fact that if ghosts were capable of it, she’d be blushing horribly.

  Bother! No doubt she’d be forced to cosh him upside the head. She so disliked having to be the horribly frightening ghost of Tŷ Mynydd. She had hoped that after enduring the late Mr. Prichard for several decades, the fates would see fit to reward her patience with a master who was far easier to work with at T�
� Mynydd.

  But this Mr. Pritchard, with his inordinate fondness for T’s and his English friends and his complete lack of respect for the bedchamber she’d worked so hard to make perfect, was a specimen for which she found herself entirely unprepared. He unsettled her in ways no one else had. If her instinct proved right, and it usually did, he was neither combative nor cowardly. But there was something distinctly uncomfortable about being near him.

  Mr. Pritchard had turned his attention back to his toilette. His valet reentered the room, hovering nearby with a waistcoat at the ready, while Mr. Pritchard expertly fashioned his neckcloth. Gwen knew she should have left the moment she realized he wasn’t entirely turned out for the evening, but he’d regained his modesty so quickly that the need to step out no longer existed.

  She moved closer, debating whether or not she should speak to him, whether or not she should make herself visible. She’d never waited so long before. Somehow, it didn’t seem like the right moment. The idea, in fact, made her inarguably nervous.

  Mr. Pritchard stopped halfway through the creation of his trone d’amour, a look of confusion on his face. “Did you hear something, Gramble?” Mr. Pritchard asked his valet.

  “Hear something, sir?”

  “Like . . . movement.”

  “No, sir.” The valet glanced around the room anxiously, the way new arrivals often did after learning a ghost haunted the house.

  Mr. Pritchard made a dismissive noise but still appeared unconvinced. He turned his attention back to his cravat. Gwen slowly slipped back out of the room. She wouldn’t approach him yet. But she would have Miss Castleton out of her room by fair means or foul.

  That room was all she had left.

  Chapter Five

  “You are the vicar?” It was as close to a greeting as Mr. Castleton was likely to give.

  Dafydd managed to wipe all traces of amusement from his face, though Nickolas knew him well enough to see the twinkle in his eyes. “I am, sir,” he replied, even as Nickolas arrived at his side to make the appropriate introductions. The moment names had been exchanged, Mr. Castleton resumed his previous line of conversation with his usual abruptness.