“Yes,” Dafydd said, rather tightly. “Nickolas and Miss Castleton are recently engaged.”
Gwen’s eyes swung to Nickolas, locking with them. Dafydd slipped around her and out the door, but Gwen remained. Her eyes shifted only once to glance briefly at Miss Castleton.
“You are engaged?” She spoke in a voice so soft that her words hardly carried.
He couldn’t manage any words but merely nodded.
Gwen looked at him a moment longer before leaving. She did not slip through a wall, nor kick up a whirlwind.
She simply hung her head in a posture of complete, dejected defeat and vanished.
* * *
It was the closest Gwen had come in four hundred years to experiencing physical pain. Feelings, she had learned during her never-ending tenure at Tŷ Mynydd, could be as unendurable as the deepest wound. The emotional blow she had only just received would likely pain her long after a physical wound would have healed.
She sat hovering near the floor in a corner of her room, wishing she had the ability to simply cry. A bout of tears might not erase the pain and misery she was enduring, but it would have been a welcome release.
How could she bear it? She would be forced to watch Nickolas marry, raise his family, love his wife. She, who loved him so very much, would have to endure it all in silence, unable to look forward to any sort of future, unable to escape. His great-grandchildren would walk the corridors of Tŷ Mynydd, and she would be there still, loving him, alone, seeing him in his offspring, thinking of those fleeting weeks once upon a time when he had made her smile, when he had unknowingly laid claim to her heart. She would die a hundred times over and never find a moment’s peace.
A knock broke the silence of the room.
Gwen sighed in mingled frustration and devastation. It was no doubt Mr. Castleton, come to stare at her for hours on end and ask impertinent questions. She kept silent in the hope that he would simply go away and leave her to her own suffering. A moment later, however, she heard a key turn in the lock.
How had the man gotten hold of a key to her room?
Gwen slid into invisibility and kept to her shadowed corner. He would eventually give up. Perhaps by morning, he would have left and she could return to her peaceful solitude.
But it was not the gaping Mr. Castleton who entered her room. It was Nickolas.
“Gwen?” he asked, looking around at the seemingly empty room. He called out to her once more after closing and locking the door behind him. Still, she did not answer. She could not bear the thought of speaking to him, of attempting to act as though her pathetic excuse for an existence had not entirely crumbled when Dafydd told her of Nickolas’s engagement.
He stopped not far from the window, looking around him, his expression one of concern. “I know you are in here.” His voice barely rose above a whisper. “I cannot even say how I know, only that I do.” He paused, obviously waiting for her to confirm his words, casting his eyes about the room. She neither moved nor spoke. Somehow, it was easier that way. “Please don’t hide from me, Gwen.”
His pleading tone nearly undid her. But she found a certain heartbreaking solace in her invisibility. Given time, he would forget about her, forget that she wandered the corridors of the home he shared with his wife and family. All of Tŷ Mynydd would forget. She would simply walk the long-since fallen walls of her one-time home unseen and unheeded and find a quiet corner to spend her days and nights. Time would continue its relentless march until that day’s suffering was little but a memory, held only by herself.
“I am sorry you found out the way you did,” Nickolas said. She knew without further clues that he referred to his own engagement. “I had intended to tell you myself, but . . .” He stopped and took a shaky breath. Nickolas pushed his fingers through his hair. “Sometimes life is terribly unfair, Gwen. If only one of us had been born at a different time, four hundred years earlier or later than we were.”
If she hadn’t been a ghost, Gwen would have wept. Unfair did not even begin to describe how fate had treated her.
“I have never had a family.” Nickolas sat on the edge of her bed just as he had several times before whilst they’d spoken with so much natural ease and friendliness. “I have always wanted one. I have always wanted, if I ever was fortunate enough to have the means to support a family, to have children and a wife and a home. And . . .” Again, he pushed out a difficult breath. “That kind of future, any kind of future, is impossible with a lady who is already dead.”
Despite her determination to remain undetected, the slightest of breezes picked up in the room at the pain his well-intentioned words inflicted.
Nickolas watched the fluttering window curtains with a look of resignation that must have matched her own. “Miss Castleton is a fine lady, kindhearted and good-natured. I believe she will make a good wife.” His gaze broke away from the swaying curtains and moved quickly around the room. Gwen knew he was looking for her. “I have to try to make some sort of a life for myself, Gwen.” A hint of determination entered his tone. He rose to his feet. “I just wanted you to know why. And that . . . that I do care about you. I just can’t . . . I am making the best of a difficult situation and have every intention of being happy. I hope that you can as well. I want you to be.”
Happy? Gwen knew she would not be. In time, she might find some degree of contentment. In the meantime, she would keep her suffering and herself concealed and allow the world around her to move ahead and leave her behind.
Nickolas stood up and walked silently to the door. Over his shoulder he offered a heavy “Good night, Gwen” and was gone, the door locked once more behind him.
It was the way things had to be. He would create a life for himself, and she would fade into memory. In her invisibility, she would find a semblance of escape from the pain of losing him whom she had never truly had to begin with. They had had their last conversation, their last moment of friendly interaction. She had known the joy of his eyes locked with her own for the final time.
“Good-bye, Nickolas,” Gwen whispered into the empty room.
Chapter Nineteen
Gwen hadn’t anticipated losing her sanctuary. The room remained locked, except for the daily dusting the maids continued to undertake. ’Twas not an invasion that drove her from her room but her own memories. The peace and solace she’d once known there had vanished. The chamber reminded her of Nickolas and how much she missed him already, despite only three days having passed without his company.
She avoided the house entirely now. At night she walked the fallen walls of Y Castell, silent and lost. During the daylight hours, when the house teemed with activity, its occupants appearing without warning, she traversed the farthest corners of the estate where no one ever ventured.
But loneliness overtook her on the third day of her exile, driving her to the one person other than Nickolas she would have most liked to have near at hand to soothe her aching heart. She stood at her mother’s headstone on the side opposite her father’s grave. That the two were buried beside one another had kept her away more often than not over the centuries.
Gwen’s own monument stood several rows behind her. She kept her back determinedly toward it.
Nickolas had promised her she could remember the castle in any way she chose. Often over the previous three days, she had closed her eyes and pictured it as whole and strong as it had been in her childhood, the angel statue gone, her mother yet living, and Nickolas himself come as a suitor seeking her hand. She imagined him taking her away from Y Castell before the arrival of King Henry’s troops, before warfare and cruelty robbed her of everything. Inevitably, however, the daydreams dissolved, and reality returned in all its ugliness.
“Oh, Mama,” she said. “Why must fate continually crush me?”
She glanced over at her father’s grave. He who actually deserved the punishment she endured had escaped it all after only a handful of years. She’d once longed for his affection and approval but had found, after the passage of so many pain
ful years, that she could not think of her father without hating him. Gwen decided long ago not to let his memory poison her, so she thought of him as seldom as possible.
Pushing her father firmly from her mind, Gwen once more addressed her absent mother, wishing she could truly talk to her again. “I am so very lonely, Mother. I have no one to talk to, no one to care about me. Another four hundred years of this will drive me mad, and yet there is no escape. Perhaps I could come talk with you on occasion, when I am particularly lonesome. As I sincerely doubt you and Father are in the same location”—heaven hardly seemed the appropriate final destination for him—“I need not worry about him overhearing. This is all his fault, you know. All of it.”
There was no answer beyond complete silence. These would be one-sided conversations, a dissatisfying stand-in for the company of another person.
She allowed her eyes to wander to the distant house, where Nickolas was likely just having his breakfast. Only a week earlier, she would have turned to him for a jovial story to liven her spirits. They would have wandered the grounds or the house and simply talked.
“I cannot recall the last time I saw you in the churchyard, Gwen.”
She spun at the sound of Dafydd’s voice. Her distraction had allowed him to approach unnoticed, without a thought given to whether or not she’d remained invisible.
“Good morning, Dafydd. I had not meant to disturb you. I came to”—she found herself reluctant to admit the purpose of her visit but did so anyway—“visit my mother.”
He did not laugh at the futility of her effort. Something like empathy crossed his face. “No one has seen you these past few days,” Dafydd said.
“The household has been occupied with planning the upcoming festivities. I imagine they have been too busy to notice me.” She managed the lie with a convincing degree of casualness.
Dafydd nodded. “The engagement has only added to the chaos, I’m afraid.”
“Do they seem happy?” Though she strove for a tone of disinterest, Gwen knew she fell quite far from the mark.
Dafydd studied her rather more closely than was comfortable. Understanding dawned in his features. Gwen braced herself, not knowing how he would respond. “You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
She wanted to believe it was compassion and not pity that colored his tone. There would be no avoiding the question, and she could not feel comfortable lying to a man of the cloth on the grounds of a church. “Quite hopelessly, I’m afraid.”
“Hopeless.” He repeated that single word with a nod of understanding.
Hearing him confirm her evaluation of the situation only broke her heart further.
“Will you come to the wedding?” he asked. “You have never missed one in four hundred years.”
She had pondered that very question again and again since learning of Nickolas’s engagement. “The neighborhood will surely notice if I do not make an appearance.”
“That they will,” Dafydd agreed. “And will likely see it as evidence that you disapprove of Tŷ Mynydd’s newest master and his bride.”
Gwen sighed. “I cannot do that to either of them.”
“Then you will subject yourself to the sight of watching the one you love marry another?” An odd mixture of empathy and surprise colored his words.
“Perhaps you ought to warn the ladies to secure their bonnets—the chapel is likely to be a bit windy.” She tried for a joking tone but failed quite miserably.
Neither of them spoke as they stood on that bit of hallowed ground. She knew not what occupied Dafydd’s thoughts. Hers were quite firmly on Nickolas, as they had been so often since his arrival at Tŷ Mynydd. How she loved him! And she would be forced to watch him marry. She would endure that to ensure his acceptance in the neighborhood, to make his life a little easier.
“Might I ask you a question, Dafydd, as a man of the cloth?”
His attention returned to her. “Are you in need of spiritual advisement?”
She nodded.
“You may ask anything you wish.”
“I have thought back on the twenty years of my life, and I cannot think of anything I might have done to warrant four hundred years of penance. Dying young seems harsh enough but would not have been so terrible if I’d been permitted to actually move on. I might have been with my mother all these years.” The wind kicked up by her sadness mingled with the late October breeze. “Why must life be so very unfair?”
“I don’t think any of us understands why good people must pass through so much pain.” Dafydd’s expression seemed to indicate he too had experienced undeserved difficulties. “We simply must learn from them and live the best life we can until our sojourn is over.”
She held her hands out in frustration. “But my sojourn will never be over. My lot is centuries of loss piled atop pain piled atop suffering. There is no end to it.”
Dafydd looked apologetic but offered no words of solace. He likely had none to give.
“Do you know why I avoid the cemetery?” she asked.
“The angel?”
“That statue is certainly a factor,” Gwen acknowledged. “But it is more than that. I look around at all these names, and I envy them. They have found rest. Most, I am certain, have passed on to their reward. Their struggles here are over, and I envy them that. It is not a peaceful feeling to endure.”
“You wish to move on?”
Sorrow cut deeply into her. “More now than ever before.”
“He has truly broken your heart, hasn’t he?”
She allowed herself to begin fading into invisibility. “Life has broken my heart. Irrevocably.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
“Pray for me, Dafydd. Pray for a merciful release from this never-ending anguish.”
A harsh wind whipped at the grounds around them.
“And is there anything you’d like me to tell Nickolas?”
She shook her head. “I think it best to allow him to forget I ever existed.” Invisibility cloaked her entirely as she spoke those final words.
“I will pray for you, Gwen,” Dafydd said, his eyes searching around.
She did not respond out loud but thought, Perhaps God will listen to you.
* * *
Life at Tŷ Mynydd little resembled what it had been a mere few days earlier. Miss Castleton had grown discouragingly quiet even as her mother had grown far more vociferous. There was talk of a Christmas wedding at the Tŷ Mynydd chapel, though Dafydd, who had lost a great deal of his usual outgoing, friendly nature, was being very elusive as to his availability to perform the ceremony. Griffith had taken to silent studies of Nickolas and Miss Castleton, though he never revealed what he was searching for. Mr. Castleton was in a pother over the glaring absence of Gwen, something that weighed on Nickolas as well.
She had not, since the first day of the house party, been so entirely absent. Her presence had always been felt, either in the form of mysterious winds or by an actual appearance. Even on those days when she did not cross paths with one or more of the houseguests, she had been seen at a distance. But four days had passed without a single soul seeing even a fleeting glimpse of her. The maids who tended her room found it empty. The grooms who had nightly seen her walking the now-fallen walls of the ancient castle reported not so much as a hint of her.
“You don’t suppose she has up and left?” Mr. Castleton asked more than once. He’d sounded more annoyed than concerned.
Dafydd had explained to him that Gwen was inextricably tied to Tŷ Mynydd and could not have left. He had hazarded a guess that she simply chose not to be seen. Something in the tone of Dafydd’s voice as he had said as much told Nickolas that the usually social vicar wished he had the ability to disappear as well.
Mrs. Davis seemed to have sensed the sudden weight hanging over the guests and had been making valiant attempts to garner enthusiasm for the upcoming Nos Galan Gaeaf festivities. She met with only minimal success, despite the combined efforts of her family m
embers.
Nickolas tried his utmost not to think of Gwen, to wonder where she might be, to worry about whether or not she had forgiven him. He had grasped at what little hope he had, while it seemed she was left with none at all. She could not escape, could not make her own future. She was, he was absolutely certain, hiding from them all, enduring the pain he felt but doing so utterly alone. Nickolas missed her most especially in the quiet, lonely hours of the night. He would have to exorcise the thoughts of her that continually invaded his mind. It was not fair to self-inflict such torture, nor would it be fair to Miss Castleton for him to enter into a marriage with a disloyal mind and heart.
Nos Galan Gaeaf dawned at Tŷ Mynydd under this newly oppressive atmosphere. Rather than awaking with his mind full of thoughts of the festivities or that night’s masquerade ball, Nickolas couldn’t expunge the reminder that this was the day three hundred ninety-nine years earlier that Gwen had died.
He pulled on a heavy overcoat, it having snowed the night before, and made his way to the stables. He decided in the quiet hours of the morning that he would ride to the churchyard and find Gwen’s statue so he might say his good-byes. He’d been unable to do so with her in person, and with Gwen’s continued self-imposed exile, it seemed unlikely he would.
Dafydd was just leaving the chapel when Nickolas rode up. “All’s well?”
Nickolas nodded, though he wondered if it was truly wise to tell such an enormous bouncer in a churchyard. He half expected to be felled by lightning. “I just needed a little peace and quiet.” Nickolas added to his sins by throwing out another lie.
Dafydd smiled empathetically. “You would not be the first to come here seeking just that.”
“And do these seekers find what they are looking for?”
“That depends on the burdens they are carrying.”
Nickolas mulled that over. His burdens arose from frustration and hopelessness. A walk through a cemetery hardly seemed likely to alleviate that.
“Preparations for tonight’s ball are underway, then?” Dafydd said, his smile seeming a little forced. It had been that way lately. Dafydd had been playing rather least in sight as well. He hadn’t made it to Tŷ Mynydd for dinner the last two nights in a row. It seemed odd that a vicar in such a small community would suddenly be too busy with duties to come for dinner.
An Unlikely Match Page 15
