Her studying look grew less theatrical and more sincere. “Better even than Miss Castleton’s parents finally acknowledging your existence?”
“They were certainly within their rights to protect their daughter from a penniless fortune hunter.” He’d told himself as much many times.
“You never were any such thing.”
Her fierce defense of him made him smile ever more broadly. “But they did not know that.”
Gwen crossed her arms in front of her, a pointed look on her face. “Then they could not have taken any time to get to know you. I, for one, think such a thing is utterly inexcusable.”
She looked adorably offended on his behalf. He stepped closer to her. “Are you telling me that if you had been confronted with my complete lack of funds, you still would have given me the time of day?”
“You are a wonderful person, Nickolas. No amount of money can buy that.”
He had the strongest urge to kiss her. His lungs constricted painfully as he fought to settle his pounding heart. What he wouldn’t give to be able to hold her in his arms. It was a helplessly frustrated feeling.
He forced himself to produce a light tone. “Before these compliments go entirely to my head, I’ll bid you good night.”
“And a good night to you too, Nickolas.”
“I will instruct the staff to keep this room locked so Mr. Castleton cannot return to disturb you.”
“Thank you,” she said, her smile beyond brilliant. Nickolas’s heart skipped a beat.
“See you tomorrow, Gwen.”
Her smile widened, her eyes shining. She must have been an unparalleled beauty in her lifetime, Nickolas thought to himself, stepping out of the room into the corridor and pulling the door closed behind him.
With a click, he slung the deadbolt into place. Nickolas leaned his forehead against the outside of Gwen’s door.
“What have I done?” he muttered. He was half in love. With a ghost.
* * *
“You look done to a cow’s thumb,” Dafydd said the next morning.
“Done to a cow’s thumb?” Nickolas repeated with a bark of laughter, despite his own heavy heart and mind. “Where did you come across that bit of Town cant?”
Dafydd smiled back. “Do you think no one from Wales has ever been to London?”
“Of course I don’t think that. Griff here is quite the man about Town every Season.”
Griffith looked appropriately diverted by the blatant untruth. Neither of them had ever been in demand amongst London’s elite. “I simply did not realize you had been to Town,” Nickolas added.
“Many times,” Dafydd answered. “I am a Cambridge lad, you know. We wandered down to London now and then.”
“I barely finished Eton, I must admit,” Nickolas said. “Not for want of intellect, I assure you. For want of blunt. The paltry inheritance left me by my loving but impoverished parents only stretched so far.”
Nickolas wasn’t sure why he’d admitted that. Griffith, of course, knew the tale from having been present for most of it. But that part of his history was something Nickolas seldom, if ever, spoke of. He’d enjoyed the academic and social aspects of Eton and had at first felt the loss of his university experience acutely. The sting of it had lessened over the years, though he still felt a stab of regret when he thought back on it all.
“Before this delves into tangents completely off topic,” Dafydd said, “let’s get back to my original observation. You do not look well, Nickolas. Are you?”
“Merely tired,” was Nickolas’s safe response.
He hadn’t slept well, questioning his own feelings as he had through most of the hours he’d spent in his bedchamber. The state of his heart weighed on his mind.
He’d fallen in love with Gwen, with her indomitable spirit, her compassion, her wit and humor. And she was dead. She was even more beyond his reach than Miss Castleton had been before his unexpected inheritance. But he had not, in the days he’d mourned Miss Castleton, felt that loss to the degree he was pained by these realizations about Gwen.
Dafydd seemed to realize there was more Nickolas wasn’t divulging but chose not to pry. “Are the two of you up for a short walk?”
“Always,” Griffith answered.
“As short as the last discovery trek you took us on?” Nickolas forced himself not to dwell on his depressing reflections.
Dafydd smiled. “Not quite so far—just through the churchyard.”
Through the churchyard did not prove an entirely accurate statement. Their journey ended only a few yards from the ancient stone chapel, at the base of a small statue depicting an angel, arms crossed at her breast, face turned upward, an expression in her features that spoke not of the usual joy one saw on the faces of stone cherubim but of such stark fear and sadness it took Nickolas’s breath away. Like the stone at the crossroads, ancient Welsh words were etched in the statue’s base.
“As I doubt you have become literate in Welsh over the past few days, I will translate the inscription,” Dafydd said. “Unless Griffith would like to do the honors?”
Griffith shook his head, intent on circling the statue, his perpetual look of pondering on his face.
“The words, more or less, say, ‘May our gratitude be as undying as she who unwillingly became our war cry. May her forgiveness be as all-encompassing as her protection.’”
A lump materialized in Nickolas’s throat in perfect unison with the formation of a thought in his mind. “This is . . . is Gwen’s . . . grave.” The words came out choppy and strangled. Gwen’s grave. His stomach twisted painfully.
“No,” Dafydd answered unexpectedly. “She died during the siege of Y Castell. And was not buried in the churchyard. No doubt the looming threat of battle required speed rather than ceremony. This statue was erected some five years after her death. Her remains, however, were never moved into the churchyard.”
“Where was she buried?” Nickolas looked once more at the statue. Its expression mirrored almost perfectly a look he’d seen in Gwen’s face before: anguish and sadness.
“No one knows for certain,” Dafydd answered. “Her grave was not marked, no doubt to prevent any opposing forces that breached the walls from desecrating what would have been an obviously recent burial.”
“But why not move her afterward?” It seemed an odd thing for a father to overlook. Dafydd had said Gwen’s father yet lived after his daughter’s death.
“I do not know,” Dafydd said. “That would have been the logical thing to do, but it was never done. This statue was commissioned by her father, and its placement here was overseen by the priest—”
“—Arwyn ap Bedwyr,” Griffith tossed in as he continued walking slowly around the angel statue.
Nickolas, himself, had thought about that infamous priest many times in the days since visiting the site of his disreputable burial.
“Neither man, though both had the power and influence to do so, ever had her remains moved to the churchyard.”
“Could that be why she is still here, as a ghost, that is?” Griffith asked.
The possibility struck Nickolas. “You mean, perhaps she cannot find peace because she was not properly buried or something of that nature?”
“That I cannot tell you,” Dafydd said. “That was not the reason I brought you here to see this.”
“Then what?” Could there possibly be more?
Dafydd motioned them both to the other side of the statue, pointing again at the base. A long crack ran perpendicular to the ground and appeared to have been repaired more than once. Centered in the base of the statue was another inscription, again not in English.
“Translation?” he requested.
“You really ought to learn Welsh, Nickolas.” Griffith chuckled lightly.
Dafydd was more obliging. “‘First of March 1386, to thirty-first of October 1406’ is the first line. Those are her birth and death dates. Below that is the inscription, ‘Herein lies the means by which our peace was steeply purchased
.’”
“These Welshmen had a way with cryptic inscriptions, didn’t they?” Nickolas said, recalling the “Be ye chastised and warned” phrase from the priest’s grave.
“I cannot say I understand all of what is intended to be said in these inscriptions,” Dafydd admitted. “Though I wish I did, for I feel it would tell us more about Gwen.”
Nickolas nodded, feeling the same way.
“I showed you this, not because of the inscriptions, though they are intriguing, but in light of the conversation after dinner last night.” Dafydd motioned toward the first line etched in the base of the statue, the dates. “Gwen dislikes Nos Galan Gaeaf most severely.”
Dafydd’s tone clearly indicated the statement was significant, but Nickolas didn’t know why.
“October 31, Nickolas.” Griffith had apparently made the connection. “Gwen died on Nos Galan Gaeaf.”
“Good heavens,” Nickolas muttered.
“The date haunts her,” Dafydd said. “That sounded like a horrible pun, didn’t it?” He shook his head at his own unintentional wording. “It haunts her because, I believe, hers was not a peaceful passing. Whether she was ill or some awful accident befell her, I do not know. She does not talk about her death. But it is a difficult day for her. To have a celebration planned for that very night, I am certain, is hard for her to accept.”
Nickolas thought of her reticence the night before. Other than her initial objection to what she had foreseen as a night of inconsiderate taunting, Gwen had not participated in the planning. She had not spoken a word. She had avoided the group.
“So what do we do?” Nickolas asked. “Call off the celebration?”
Dafydd shook his head. “Gwen would never ask that of you.”
“Then what?” Nickolas circled the statue again to find himself looking into that grief-stricken face.
“That is something I suggest you ask Gwen.”
Chapter Seventeen
One more week. Gwen stared out the window of her room, feeling the pull of The Tower more strongly each hour. Seven more days and she would have to go up there again. Every year as the day drew closer, she grew colder, more weary, more desperate to escape the fate that had been forced on her. This year, she now knew, would be worse than any that had come before it.
She would be up there on Nos Galan Gaeaf, as she was required to be, listening to the sounds of a celebration. It would be precisely as it had been three hundred ninety-nine years earlier. She would be suffering while the whole world, it seemed, rejoiced.
“Why is it that I always seem to find you staring out windows?” Nickolas asked from directly beside her. She’d not heard him approach, yet there he stood, leaning with one arm against the window frame. He looked out the window just as she did.
Gwen turned her head to look up at him. As usual, a hint of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth and an aura of quiet confidence filled his stance. If she had been more than a wisp of a ghost, Gwen would have thrown herself into his arms. She needed the strength she sensed in him, needed the reassurance of his presence and his touch. But such things were little more than wishes for one such as she.
“That was a rather shaky sigh,” Nickolas said.
Gwen didn’t realize she’d made the rather desperate sound out loud. He gave her a look of such tender understanding, Gwen very nearly sighed again.
“Anything I can do?” he asked.
Her first impulse was to shake her head, but she immediately thought better of it. “Tell me a story,” she quietly requested.
“A story?” He sounded thoroughly surprised, which, she acknowledged, he probably was.
“Something lighthearted, happy. Something that will make me smile.”
“Are you sad, Gwen?” Nickolas’s hand moved momentarily toward her face as if to reassuringly stroke her cheek, but then it dropped back to his side. No doubt he’d remembered he could not possibly touch her.
“A little sad,” she confessed.
“Ah.” He nodded. Gwen felt certain Nickolas had seen through her insistence that the Nos Galan Gaeaf festivities would not disturb her in the least but had been too much of a gentleman to argue with her over it. Neither did he do so again. “Perhaps you would be interested to know that I once fancied myself something of an expert in the area of Arthurian heroics.”
He’d adopted that tone she’d grown to love so very much: teasing and encouraging, as well as decidedly empathetic. Gwen was already smiling, her face turned up toward his.
“When I was seven, I staged a rather daring attempt at slaughtering what I was certain was a dragon that had begun wreaking havoc on the area around my cousins’ house—I was living with them that summer. The dragon sadly proved to be nothing more than a very badly behaved feral cat.”
“Oh, dear.” Gwen lightly laughed. “Cats can be vicious.”
“As I learned to my detriment.” Nickolas held up his left hand. Four very fine, barely visible scars ran across the back of his hand, at least two inches in length. “I tendered my resignation at my own imaginary round table that very afternoon. I did not feel I could be much of a brave knight if I had been bested by a tiny cat.”
Gwen could picture the fair-haired little boy Nickolas must once have been dragging a wooden sword dejectedly away from the scene of his humiliation, feeling entirely defeated. She knew the weight of failure well. So often she’d walked away from her own humiliation, head hung, shoulders slumped, hearing her father’s frustration with her echoing in her mind with every step.
“I am certain you were all that was brave and heroic.” Gwen smiled understandingly.
“I absolutely was.” He still leaned with one elbow against the wall, watching her with what looked like fondness. If her heart yet beat in her chest it no doubt would have sped up at that look. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?” How was it that he managed to make her smile so regularly?
“To tell me a story,” he said. “Surely you had some misadventure or another in your childhood. Don’t tell me you were a perfect little girl.”
A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead. How she would have liked to brush it back, to feel its smoothness between her fingers.
She pulled her gaze away from his hair and focused on his question. “I was far from perfect, I assure you.”
“I am anxiously waiting for your story.”
He was teasing her again. How she had needed him the past four hundred years.
His childhood recollections had brought one of her own to mind. “I decided when I was eight years old that I was going to train to become a warrior.”
“So you fancied yourself a warrior, and I imagined myself a knight.” He chuckled. “It seems we were rather destined to meet someday.”
“I think maybe we were.”
Her sudden serious tone seemed to strike him. Nickolas’s gaze softened, his eyes dropping momentarily to her lips. For just a moment, she wondered what it would be like to be kissed by Nickolas Pritchard. The futility of that idea settled on her like a weight.
“How did your warrior adventure play out?” he asked.
For a moment, she did not understand Nickolas’s question, so thrown off was she by that fleeting glance at an impossible romance. “Not very well, I’m afraid,” she finally managed to say. “I accidentally broke a window, and my father was furious. I had only tried learning to be a warrior to please him, he being quite disappointed at not having a son to whom he could pass down his knowledge. I gave it up after that.”
Nickolas did not laugh or make light of her story. “Though no one could question your fire, dearest Gwen”—the endearment brought a smile back to her face—“I cannot at all picture you as a bloodthirsty warrior. You’re too sweet.”
“I am so grateful you came to Tŷ Mynydd, Nickolas.” She would have laid her head on his shoulder if she’d had that ability. “I have been so very lonely here without you.”
“Can I tell you something I have never told anoth
er soul?”
“Of course. You can tell me anything.” She meant it. Never before had she felt such a close connection to anyone. She would trust him with her secrets, just as she hoped he would trust her with his.
“I have been lonely all my life,” Nickolas said. “At times, I have been so alone it has hurt.”
“Have you felt better since coming here?” She waited anxiously for his reply.
“Infinitely better.” He smiled at her, and she knew in that moment that she’d entirely lost her heart to him.
She laid her hand on top of his, only to have it pass through. A feeling swelled up in her, and if she were still living, it would have been accompanied by a sudden and heartrending bout of tears. She turned away, so entirely frustrated.
“Gwen.”
“I’m sorry,” Gwen whispered, certain he had not appreciated the odd sensation of a ghostly hand passing through his.
“Probably almost as sorry as I am,” Nickolas replied, pulling Gwen’s gaze back to his face. “I would very much like to have held your hand. I’ve wanted to before. But . . .”
“. . . but I am a ghost,” Gwen finished for him.
He didn’t answer immediately. The look on his face spoke frustration as poignant and real as her own. “And for that,” he said, “I am more sorry than I could possibly express.”
Gwen sensed more in his words than sadness at not being able to hold her hand. Hundreds of images flashed through her memory. Remembrances of the countless couples who had called her home their own, of weddings she’d attended, families she’d watched grow in number and in affection. The love she’d seen between so many of those she’d watched be born, grow old, and die would be forever lost to her. And it was a hole in her heart that until that moment, seeing something of those feelings reflected in Nickolas’s eyes, she had not felt so painfully and acutely as she ought to have.
“No one has ever said they were sorry I was dead,” Gwen whispered, feeling suddenly more weary than she had in hundreds of years.
“Not even your father?” he asked in obvious disbelief. Something in her look must have put the lie to that thought. “He seems to have been a rather unnatural sort of father, then, to have not lamented the loss of a beloved child.”
An Unlikely Match Page 13
