An Unlikely Match

by Sarah M. Eden

  “Distractions, you mean.”

  He did not admit to such a motivation but looked quite theatrically guilty.

  “Have you any suggestions?” she asked.

  “Perhaps you have a favorite flower, one particularly hard to find.”

  “Or,” Griffith entered the conversation, “legend might hold that you are more likely to slip into a room if no more than one person is present.”

  Nickolas grinned broadly. “Mr. Castleton would likely avoid the rest of us at all costs. What say you to that bit of deception, Miss Gwen? You would have many people’s undying gratitude.”

  “Why do you call me ‘Miss Gwen’?”

  Her question clearly surprised him. “Is there something you would rather I call you?”

  “Just ‘Gwen’ will do.”

  “If that is what you prefer, then Gwen it is.”

  Quite against her will, she was finding herself inclined to like Nickolas more with each encounter. “Thank you for being so considerate.”

  “I think you will find, Gwen,” he said, “I am a rather likeable fellow, quite willing to be considerate.”

  His smile upended her more than a little. “And I think you will find that I am not such a horrible addition to your household as you likely first thought.”

  “Then perhaps we should agree to be friends and not enemies.”

  The possibility was appealing. “I should like that.”

  He gave her another of his excellently executed bows. “Until dinnertime.”

  “Dinnertime?”

  Nickolas gave her a very ironic look. “I believe we will have a perfectly centered table, Gwen. You are required to appear.”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “The table will likely be ever so slightly off center. I am afraid such a thing will be far too disconcerting. I shall be forced to flee, much to my lasting regret.”

  He chuckled. “I shall explain to Mr. Castleton, though I fear you will quite disappoint him. He will simply have to apply himself to being more precise tomorrow.”

  She nodded and smiled and left the room, more pleased with her situation than she had been in some time.

  Chapter Ten

  Having a ghost lurking about the place was not nearly as bad, nor as odd, as Nickolas would have expected. He’d grown very quickly accustomed to the situation. And, he’d discovered, he rather liked his resident apparition.

  “Quite the house party this is turning out to be,” he said, retaking his seat facing Griffith.

  Griffith nodded. “Soon ghosts will be all the rage at ton gatherings.”

  Nickolas smiled at the idea. “And perfectly centered tables as well.”

  “You do seem to be taking the week’s discovery in stride, having to admit the house is haunted and all.”

  Nickolas relaxed his posture, sliding low in the chair and leaning back lazily. “Gwen has been surprisingly easy to accept. She doesn’t even seem like a ghost, really, except for walking through walls and hovering above the ground and being translucent.”

  “Other than that.” Griffith smiled a little, shaking his head.

  Outside the windows, a breeze rustled the trees. The sky was a deep, clear blue above the rolling green hills. Tŷ Mynydd boasted a view Nickolas felt he’d never grow tired of. Yes, he had certainly done well for himself.

  “You realize Gwen is unlikely to be a quiet member of this household, do you not?” Griffith commented after a long, easy silence between them.

  Nickolas wasn’t overly concerned. “I spent six months when I was twelve living with an elderly distant cousin who was so controlling that every piece of clothing I wore had to be approved by her, right down to my underthings. And at meals, I was required to match her bite for bite. If I survived that, I can certainly put up with a dictatorial ghost.”

  Griffith’s expression turned ponderous.

  “Empty your budget, Griff. What’s on your mind now?”

  “I was only thinking that Miss Castleton seems very . . .” Griffin’s brow furrowed more deeply. “Gwen makes Miss Castleton very uncomfortable still.”

  Nickolas had noticed that. “She’ll grow used to having a ghost hovering about.”

  Griffith didn’t appear confident.

  “It has only been a few days, after all. Miss Castleton will rise to the occasion.”

  Griffith offered no agreement or argument. He took a short sip from his glass of sherry.

  Nickolas knew the slight twist of Griffith’s mouth for what it was. His friend thought he was being thickheaded.

  “You disapprove of my chosen lady?”

  “Not at all.” That he didn’t hesitate was reassuring. “She has a good heart, is of a pleasant disposition. I don’t doubt you’d be happy together.”

  “Then why the warnings over Gwen?”

  Griffith never had been one to rush into answers. He took his time as usual. “Miss Castleton doesn’t strike me as one with a never-ending supply of hidden fortitude. Gwen, however, does. That might be an uncomfortable combination for the two of them, let alone you.”

  Nickolas allowed that possible complication to settle in his mind. “Let us hope, then, that either Miss Castleton will find her footing as mistress of the house, should things work out for the best, or Gwen will be well-mannered enough, when the time comes, to defer to her.”

  “And if neither proves the case?”

  Nickolas allowed a mischievous smile. “Then my wife and I will simply have to come live with you.”

  Amusement lit Griffith’s eyes. “The both of you? In my tiny bachelor’s flat?”

  Nickolas shrugged. “It would be cozy.”

  A quick knock sounded on the door. Dafydd stepped inside, looking excessively pleased with himself.

  “What has you so happy?” Nickolas asked. “Did someone donate new prayer books to the parish?”

  Dafydd crossed to the fireplace. “My joy is of a far more secular nature than that.”

  Nickolas exchanged looks with Griffith. He knew his friend wouldn’t offer the inquiry hovering in both of their minds, so he posed it himself.

  “And that joy would be . . . ?”

  “The weather is fine. The sky is clear.”

  Griffith’s smile turned more than a touch dubious. Nickolas, too, didn’t believe a word Dafydd said.

  “Cut line, Dafydd. The real reason, if you please.”

  Dafydd tossed something to Nickolas. He caught it easily, though it was longer than he’d expected, at least a foot long. He’d spent enough years unable to afford a personal servant to recognize the spoon-like piece of carved bone immediately.

  “A boot horn?” He held the simple contraption up, unsure why his friend had brought him such a thing.

  “For getting your boots back on in the morning. After all, your valet won’t be spending the night in The Tower.”

  Dafydd’s gleeful references to the weather a moment earlier suddenly made sense.

  “With the rain at last gone, you feel I should fulfill the forfeiture of our wager; is that it?”

  Dafydd only smiled.

  “Very well. What do you say, Griff? Want to spend a night in the menacing ruins of an old tower?”

  Dafydd immediately objected. “The terms of the wager didn’t include taking someone with you to hold your hand.”

  “The ghosts in The Tower are that frightening, are they?” Nickolas thought he’d already proven his ability to keep calm in the company of the ethereal.

  Dafydd spoke as he poured himself a bit of sherry. “No one knows for certain if there are ghosts in The Tower. I’ve never heard of anyone actually going inside. Gwen doesn’t even do so.”

  “And you think I’ll turn lily-livered?”

  “What else should he expect from a Sais?” Griffith spoke very matter-of-factly.

  Dafydd laughed out loud. “Are Gwen’s feelings on the English rubbing off on you, Griffith?”

  Griffith answered with nothing more than a look of amusement. He and Dafydd had
become fast friends with an insatiable appetite for good-naturedly baiting Nickolas.

  “Though I have no idea what the word is that you tossed at me, I suspect a gauntlet has just been thrown.”

  “Does this mean you’ll be slumbering in The Tower tonight?” Dafydd asked.

  “Indeed.” Nickolas rose and made quite a show of striking a brave and confident pose. “And I daresay I’ll become a legend for braving the last remaining bits of Y Castell.” He made a valiant attempt at reproducing the odd ending sound he’d heard his staff and Dafydd make when saying the ancient name of the place. It was a sound he’d never heard before, let alone knew how to duplicate.

  The immediate laughter from his Welsh companions testified to the mess he’d made of their native tongue.

  He tried again. “Castell?”

  The men only laughed harder.

  “But I was at least closer, wasn’t I?”

  Griffith stood and slapped a hand on Nickolas’s shoulder. “Don’t worry over it too much. Our people discovered long ago that speaking Welsh is simply one of the many things the English can’t help but get wrong.”

  Nickolas held his hands up in surrender. “Pax, you two. I don’t stand a chance with both of you siding against me.”

  As they made their way from the room, Nickolas’s mind lingered a moment on the misgivings he felt during his conversation with Griffith. Should Miss Castleton accept his suit, surely she would settle in and grow accustomed to Gwen being about. Though Gwen was fearsome at times, she might also prove more accommodating than initial impressions would lead one to believe.

  No. He needn’t worry over all that. Besides, he had a few other things on his mind. Not the least of which was the mysterious remains of the ancient castle. Why did no one go inside? Was it truly haunted? And just what, he wondered, would he find when he went inside?

  Chapter Eleven

  “But it is quite chilly this evening,” Miss Castleton insisted, looking genuinely unhappy on Nickolas’s behalf. She’d voiced so many objections to his fulfilling the demands of the wager that she had begun to repeat herself.

  So Nickolas repeated himself as well. “I agreed to the terms of this wager, Miss Castleton. Surely you would not wish me to act in any way dishonorable.”

  “But it is cold.” She turned pleading eyes to Dafydd, as if begging him to allow Nickolas to cry craven.

  When with her next breath she voiced that very request, it was all Nickolas could do not to reply rather sharply that he would not do anything so disgraceful as to renege on a wager. Dafydd saved him the trouble.

  “Miss Castleton”—he spoke in a voice far more gentle than the one Nickolas had been prepared to use—“your concern does you credit, and I assure you, should the elements conspire to make Mr. Pritchard miserable, he knows full well that I will not consider him dishonorable for postponing the fulfillment of his debt. Indeed, I have complete confidence that he will keep his end of the wager and am not at all concerned over his honor, nor do I fret that he will put his health in peril in order to prove as much to me. There was, after all, no time limit on our wager.”

  “Then you will not force him to remain out there should the weather turn shocking?”

  Dafydd offered Miss Castleton a smile of appreciative understanding. “Certainly not.”

  Nickolas heard Miss Castleton breathe a sigh of relief. There was something very gratifying about having his well-being take on such importance for the object of his matrimonial ambitions. Feeling once more quite in harmony with the world, Nickolas made his departure as dramatically as a soldier off to war and, with his valet following in his wake, made his way out to The Tower.

  Despite being early October, the night was not overly chilly. Oddly enough, in that moment, he appreciated spending much of his adult life pockets to let. He’d learned to do without the luxuries of life, at times to do without all but the necessities. Sleeping on the floor with a mountain of blankets wouldn’t be as bothersome to him as it might be to any number of English gentlemen.

  Gramble, Nickolas’s valet, followed him silently through the heavy wooden door of The Tower without commenting on the strange situation. They both carried an impressive number of blankets along with Nickolas’s personal necessities for the night. Gramble’s proper servant’s demeanor never cracked, as if his employer were doing nothing out of the ordinary.

  The air was colder inside The Tower, owing, no doubt, to the fact that the arrow slits that constituted the only windows in the room had never been filled in with stained glass as so many others had in castles across the kingdom. The room was a circle, the monotony of stone walls and floor unbroken by decorations or furniture of any kind. No doors led off, and Nickolas realized quickly that this level of The Tower was only one room. An upward spiraling staircase was the only way out other than the door that led outside. He wondered if there were any rooms above or if it was purely a battle fortification consisting of nothing but landings on level with more arrow slits and exits to connecting walls that no longer stood.

  Nickolas set his armload of blankets down, and Gramble did the same.

  “Do you require anything else, sir?” Gramble looked as though he doubted anything could possibly make the situation civilized.

  “No, Gramble. Thank you.”

  Gramble bowed and left, not voicing a single objection nor even looking as though he thought Nickolas ought to back out. That was relieving after Miss Castleton’s very vocal insistence that he simply forget he’d given his word.

  Nickolas took a walking tour of the small, empty room, which required all of a few seconds. With a shrug, Nickolas returned to the pile of blankets he and Gramble had brought over and began laying out his bed for the night. Two folded blankets made a soft enough mattress for a single night; the others would keep him warm. All in all, not a bad arrangement.

  He had several candles he’d been obliged to place on the floor as there was no other surface on which they could be left. Despite the rustic arrangements, he could see. He would be warm. His bed was not too hard.

  Nickolas lowered himself to his makeshift bed and pulled off his neckcloth, looking around and imagining the people who long ago must have slept here just as he did. No doubt many of those who’d defended Y Castell during the time of Dafydd’s legend had spent their nights here, preparing for battle.

  Then his thoughts turned to Gwen. She too would have traversed these walls, walked this floor. It was part of the original castle and the home she would have known during her lifetime.

  Once his temper had cooled—that his temper had flared at all still astounded him—Nickolas had come to regret the harsh words he had flung at her when he’d departed her room a few short days earlier. It’s a wonder anyone mourned your passing. It was a spiteful and hurtful thing to say to any person. She hadn’t deserved it, and he shouldn’t have said it.

  He’d wanted to apologize but had been loathe to bring up the unkind words during their otherwise enjoyable discussion that afternoon. If she’d forgiven him for his words, he didn’t want to ruin that by reminding her how horrible he’d been to her.

  He pulled off his house slippers, having forgone his tall boots. Even with Dafydd’s boot horn, Nickolas could not have easily taken his boots off without Gramble’s assistance.

  A pair of woolen socks proved just the thing to keep his feet warm, as Mrs. Baines had told him earlier that evening. She really was a gem of a housekeeper. Despite her obvious opinion that he was sometimes overly thick, Mrs. Baines seemed to have a degree of respect for him. They were mutually fond of one another in a way that seemed to combine their roles as employer and employee with that of a prickly aunt and mischievous nephew.

  “We none of us go near that Tower unless we have to,” she’d further told him. “There’s something not quite right about it. Draws a person toward it but not in a pleasant way. Almost like . . . like . . .”

  “A siren song?” Nickolas had quickly realized the reference was not one Mrs. Baine
s was capable of identifying.

  “Just you be careful, Mr. Pritchard,” she’d said. “Even Gwen avoids that Tower.”

  Why is that? Nickolas looked around the innocuous room. Other than being a bit cold, The Tower seemed rather ordinary.

  Dafydd said The Tower was rumored to be haunted. But while a few people seemed a little afraid of Gwen, no one avoided the house because of her presence. There was a mystery here; he could feel it.

  In that moment, Gwen herself floated into the room through the thick stone wall. Despite having come to terms with her existence, her tendency to simply appear had the unfortunate ability to unsettle him.

  “Good evening, Gwen.” Nickolas managed to make the words seem excessively calm and commonplace.

  “Mr. Pritchard,” she answered, a certain anxiety in her tone.

  “You might as well call me Nickolas. No doubt you have known enough Mr. Pritchards to make the name confusing, otherwise.”

  “But you are the only one with a T,” she answered.

  “Something, I understand, my branch of the family is only barely forgiven for doing.”

  “It is something of a desecration.” She even smiled a little.

  “As much as my being English?” Her conversation is nothing if not diverting. It had been at every encounter.

  “As you pointed out, Mr. Pr—Nickolas—you are at least partially Welsh. I suppose if we ignore the part which is not, you will eventually prove acceptable.”

  There was enough laughter in her voice to soften the impact of her words.

  “So is there a Welsh word for bedroll?” Nickolas asked, straightening the blankets that would eventually serve that role for him.

  “You are, then, planning to remain here throughout the night?”

  Not another female questioning his honor! A gentleman simply did not back out of a wager. Could they not understand that?

  “Indeed, Gwen,” he answered rather frostily.

  “No need to get yourself in high dudgeon, Nickolas,” came the swift rejoinder. “I realize this is all part of some ridiculous bet between yourself and Dafydd. I simply hoped I had misheard the terms.”