Nickolas nodded in response to Dafydd’s question.
“The chapel is not locked up,” Dafydd offered.
Nickolas shook his head. “I am too restless for indoors.” And telling far too many lies for the inside of a church.
“The churchyard is always peaceful. Of course, tonight I wouldn’t advise being here.” He even managed a small smile. “Nos Galan Gaeaf, you know. The spirits of the dead walk the earth tonight. Graveyards are generally considered best avoided.”
Nickolas smiled back. “I’ll take my chances this morning.”
Dafydd nodded. “I need to make a walk about the yard myself. The first hard freeze of the year, like we had last night, always seems to topple a grave marker or two. I’d offer to walk along with you, but I could use a little solitude too.”
Nickolas didn’t pry. Though he felt a bit of concern for his friend, he didn’t ask what weighed on Dafydd. He needed the time alone to close a chapter in his life, a chapter that had ended hardly before it had begun.
The angel statue was easy to find but difficult to look upon. The suffering so apparent on the statue cut at Nickolas’s very heart. He’d seen that expression of pain in Gwen’s eyes in the moments after she learned of his engagement. He saw it in the flash of realization that he’d chosen a path in life that did not, could not truly, include her. Did she realize he hadn’t wanted to? Did she know that the choice had ripped him apart? What else could he have done? The life he wanted, the one with her, was nothing but an impossible dream.
He dropped his eyes to the base of the monument, the stone box on which the statue stood.
The inscription, he remembered, spoke of Gwen’s protective role at Tŷ Mynydd. And if memory served, it asked for her forgiveness. That was, Nickolas thought ruefully, ironically fitting. He felt the need to beg her forgiveness himself. Yet it was not his fault that they were separated. It was fate—cruel, unfeeling fate.
He looked once more into the face of the stone angel and could almost picture himself looking at her. “I am sorry, Gwen,” he whispered. “Sorry I was born four hundred years too late. Sorry I am living while you are dead. I am sorry you are alone.”
A few rows away Dafydd was making his inspection of the ancient cemetery, checking the sturdiness of gravestones that had stood for hundreds of years. How many of those people had Gwen watched throughout their lives? How long would she be forced to remain behind while all around her the people she knew passed on? And how was it that heaven or fate, whichever was responsible, could ask such a cruel price of her?
Herein lies the means by which our peace was steeply purchased. The other side of the monument Gwen despised had said that, according to Dafydd.
The price paid for that guarantee was steep, indeed. Those had been Gwen’s words. Again, a price, a purchase. They saved Y Castell. That was the guarantee. Peace, as the monument said.
But what exactly had been the price? Nickolas knew Gwen herself had served as an inspiration to those who’d fought for their home. But what had her father and the priest done that Gwen had condemned? What had they done to “save Y Castell”?
He circled to the back side of the statue, intending to cross the churchyard back to his mount. The trip to Gwen’s monument hadn’t given him the sense of closure he’d been searching for. But he had the sinking suspicion he would not see Gwen again and, therefore, couldn’t satisfactorily conclude this journey.
Another frustrated look at the statue brought Nickolas’s attention to the crack he’d noticed the first time he’d come there. “Dafydd,” he called out over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the crack, which had opened up despite the previous mending. “I think I have found a casualty.”
“A casualty?” Dafydd asked when he’d reached Nickolas’s side.
Nickolas pointed to the crack along the base of the statue.
Dafydd made a noise of acknowledgment. “That crack always reopens this time of year—the freezing temperatures. I’ll have to have the mason look at this when he comes by on his repairing rounds. It is not so bad it cannot be saved.”
Which was a shame, Nickolas thought. Gwen disliked the statue with a passion. Seeing it come down would not, he thought, be something to mourn.
Just then the midmorning sun glinted off something just within the crack at the base of the statue. Nickolas sat back on his haunches and thrust a gloved finger inside, only to find the crack a hair too narrow. His gloves came off, and he tried again.
“What is it, Nickolas?”
“I’m not sure. I saw something. Just inside.”
Dafydd squatted beside him, looking as well. “I see it. Something metal, I’d guess.”
Nickolas nodded and made another attempt. A successful one this time. From inside the hollow, broken base of the statue Gwen’s father and his cohort, the priest, had erected came a single, heavy, centuries-old key.
Chapter Twenty
“Your guests will certainly notice their host is absent,” Griffith said, reminding Nickolas again of his duties.
In one hand, Nickolas held his mask, a plain black one that covered his face around his eyes but, in reality, disguised nothing. His other hand still held the key he’d found in the graveyard that morning. “I cannot shake the feeling that this is something significant,” he said, studying it for the hundredth time.
“I don’t doubt that it is,” Dafydd said. “Though I’d rather not wager on it.”
Nickolas smiled at the memory of their now infamous bet. “You’re suggesting I let this mystery wait until the morning.”
“That would be advisable.” He straightened the cuffs of his formal jacket—they were moments from going down to the ball. Though Dafydd hadn’t cried off, he’d been noticeably lacking in enthusiasm. “Miss Castleton, I am sure, is expecting her fiancé to at least be present at tonight’s ball.”
There was no arguing with that. As a newly engaged man, and the host of the night’s gathering, Nickolas needed to pull himself together and throw himself into his roles. Miss Castleton deserved that consideration at the very least. He suspected she knew he didn’t feel a desperate love for her. She didn’t seem likely to chastise him for being neglectful, but she deserved his attention. Gwen, on the other hand, would have let him know in excessively forceful terms precisely what he was doing wrong. She would have expected his very best in everything he did. She would make him want to live up to those expectations.
A sad, longing sort of smile spread across Nickolas’s face. While he appreciated Miss Castleton’s tenderness, he loved Gwen’s spark of life. Ironic, considering it was utter lack of life that had robbed them of their shared future.
Nickolas shook his head to clear his thoughts. He must learn some discipline where Gwen was concerned. Thinking of her, longing for her, would only bring more heartache. He could be happy with Miss Castleton. He knew he could be. They got along well enough, and she was a good-hearted lady. They would not be deliriously happy, nor would theirs be the love story he might have lived, but they could be happy. Dwelling on thoughts of what could not be would not help nor would it be appropriate.
He slipped the mysterious key into an inside pocket of his jacket and tied his black mask into place. It felt fitting to wear a disguise. He had to hide his feelings, his heartbreak—why not hide his very face? Someday, he told himself, it would not be such a struggle.
Dafydd and Griffith walked at Nickolas’s side as they made their way from his sitting room down to the entry hall at the front of the house. Miss Castleton stood below, talking quietly with Mrs. Davis. It had been decided that Miss Castleton, as Nickolas’s fiancée, would be joining the reception line. She wore a dress of copper that complemented her coloring perfectly, and yet, all Nickolas could muster was a vague feeling of appreciation. He would have to work on recapturing the feelings she had once inspired. Having something now to compare with those feelings, Nickolas realized his impressions of her had rarely strayed beyond appreciation. He realized he’d never truly loved
her.
Somewhere just beyond the weight of his own worries, Nickolas took note of a sharp intake of breath from Dafydd as they first turned the corner to the entry hall and Miss Castleton came into view. She had that effect on people, Nickolas acknowledged. Griffith, however, seemed immune.
When Nickolas glanced at his friend, Dafydd was not looking at Miss Castleton. In fact, he seemed to be pointedly not looking at Miss Castleton. Who was in turn decidedly looking away from Dafydd.
“Have you and Miss Castleton exchanged harsh words?” Nickolas asked under his breath. It would be just one more difficulty heaped on top of the rest if one of his two best friends and his soon-to-be bride didn’t get along.
“No,” Dafydd reassured him, an uncharacteristic sadness in his tone. “No harsh words. I assure you I hold your future bride in highest esteem.”
“Then why do you sound so blasted depressed?”
Dafydd smiled but not happily. What was bothering the man?
Griffith made a pondering noise, now directing the look of examination he’d been using on Nickolas for days at Dafydd.
The arrival of guests pushed all other thoughts to the back of Nickolas’s mind. He had at least met all of the guests before, though some were still very unfamiliar. They were locals and knew that Tŷ Mynydd was supposed to be haunted. They looked alternately intrigued and concerned. Nickolas reassured them and insisted there were no dangerous specters in residence. Indeed, he would have been hard-pressed to prove there were any specters at all. Gwen had not been seen in a week’s time.
Nickolas and Miss Castleton opened the ball with an almost stiff, extremely awkward minuet. A palpable feeling of relief emerged between them when other couples joined the dance. Nickolas attempted to strike up a friendly conversation, but Miss Castleton seemed . . . sad. ’Twas not an auspicious beginning.
* * *
Time was growing short. Gwen could feel the vaguely familiar sensation closing in around her. Another few minutes and she would be forced to go through it all again. Three hundred ninety-eight times she’d endured the fear, the pain, the terror of that night. Her only consolation lay in knowing that while she relived it, she would remember nothing that had happened since that original night. She would be able to hold to the ignorant assumption that somehow she would escape.
Two stories below her room, the ball was well underway. She’d watched the carriages pull up, seen the guests arrive. Nickolas was down there with all of them, dancing with his future bride. What Gwen wouldn’t have given in that moment to have had him there beside her.
“Please save me from this.” Gwen spoke into the emptiness, her heart breaking with her loneliness and helplessness. The only answering sound was that of music floating up through the chill October night.
She would be alone in her suffering, as always.
Slowly, an unearthly fog began to creep into the room. Ghostly remnants of her room as it had once stood materialized around her. Whispers of the heavy furniture of centuries gone by took form in the room. Behind the sheer white curtains she loved so much hung a phantom set of tapestries, the very same that had hung there on the last night of her life. The night’s transformation had begun. She would forget everything soon. She would not recall four hundred years of quiet and attempts at healing. She would not remember the fortified castle slowly giving way to the peaceful house that now stood. She would not remember the victories the next hours had ensured.
She would not remember him.
“Oh, Nickolas,” Gwen whispered in anguish. “Please help me. Do not leave me to face this alone.”
The fog grew thick and heavy around her. From across the chasm of centuries, her father called out to her.
“Gwenllian,” his booming voice echoed in the vast emptiness. In his precise and rumbling Welsh, he added the words her tender heart, desperate for his love and affection, could not resist: “Come, dear girl. Your dadi is in desperate need of your company.”
“I am coming directly, Father,” she answered, smiling at his kind words. If only he could be thus always!
In the back of her mind a memory nagged: a pair of merry blue eyes and fair hair. A name hovered unidentifiably on her lips, only to fade into nothingness. And why she longed for him, she couldn’t remember.
Her father called to her again, and she hastened to obey.
* * *
A collective gasp sounded around the ballroom. Nickolas knew without even looking that Gwen had made an appearance at last. He told his heart to settle even as it began to beat ever harder. He hadn’t seen her in a week, a week that felt like a lifetime. But would seeing her again be soothing or torturous?
Several of the guests moved anxiously to one side or the other, opening up Nickolas’s view of Gwen moving gracefully across the ballroom. She appeared to be walking quickly, lightly, though her steps made no sound.
Gwen’s face turned so she looked directly at Nickolas but did not, somehow, appear to see him. She was smiling, a different sort of smile than he had ever seen her wear. The weight of sadness that she forever carried with her had vanished. She appeared lighthearted, free, unburdened. There was such innocent joy on her face.
Nickolas stood stunned, speechless. A need, almost desperate, rose up in him to see that look on her face always. That look of hopeful happiness belonged to her. It was, he knew without being told, an expression that once came naturally to her.
He opened his mouth to say something, anything, that might halt her long enough for him to memorize her countenance. She seemed oblivious to the stares of the pressing crowd. Gwen continued her joyous half run.
An instant too late, Nickolas realized he stood directly in her path. Before he could even formulate a thought of stepping aside, she passed directly through him, filling every inch of his body with a soothing warmth, only to leave him cold as she continued past.
Shock and worry filled the faces of the crowd. Miss Castleton inquired after his well-being from directly beside him, as a fiancée ought, but Nickolas’s attention remained riveted on Gwen. She had passed through the back wall of the ballroom and was headed, if his bearings were correct, directly toward The Tower.
“Something is not right, Nickolas.” Dafydd’s whisper barely penetrated his thoughts.
Frenzied conversations echoed all around. Only then did Nickolas truly look at his surroundings and discover his guests were waist-deep in a thick, eerie fog. Glancing out the windows, Nickolas could see the grounds of Tŷ Mynydd swathed in the same other-worldly haze.
Through the windows, he stared after Gwen. She was indeed making her way to The Tower, a lightness to her step that did not at all match her destination. Nickolas remembered all too well the feeling he’d fought on the stairwell of that tower. He could recall with perfect clarity the suffering on Gwen’s face as she’d endured that place at his side.
“He should not have been here alone,” she’d said. And she was doing just that. Going to The Tower. Alone.
A few of the guests were making their way out, thanking him for an enjoyable evening but claiming they were tired or had a long journey ahead of them. He knew, however, they were simply unnerved and were escaping. He was too concerned to do more than offer cursory adieus.
“Dafydd. Griffith.”
“You’re going after her,” Griffith said, obviously not needing an explanation.
“I have to. She did as much for me.”
His friends nodded. Nickolas pulled an overcoat on and cast aside his black mask.
“You will stand watch over the guests?” Nickolas asked them, buttoning his coat against the cold.
“Of course,” Griffith said.
“Be careful, Nickolas.” Dafydd spoke with almost unnerving somberness. “Gwen would not fear that place if there were not a very good reason.”
He nodded and began his trek across the heavily fogged landscape.
“God keep you, Nickolas Pritchard,” Dafydd’s voice echoed after him.
“I certainly hope
He does,” Nickolas muttered to himself and trudged determinedly toward The Tower, which glowed brighter than he ever remembered seeing it.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Have you seen my father, Taffy?” Gwen asked, watching the man lug a bundle of swords down the long, narrow passage leading to the base of the east tower. She had not yet accustomed herself to living in a castle under siege. Her heart pounded at the thought of the army gathering across the meadow outside the castle walls.
“He’s up to the east tower, Miss Gwenllian,” Taffy replied. “In an odd mood, he is. Grumbling and stalking around.”
Gwen nodded her understanding. The arrival of King Henry’s troops had dampened everyone’s spirits but had noticeably worried her usually unflappable father.
“He called out for me across the courtyard,” Gwen said. “He did not sound put out with me this time.”
“Then you’d best go find out what it is Master Cadoc wants,” Taffy suggested. “Might be important.”
Gwen agreed and continued her quick walk toward the tower. Everything seemed important these past forty-eight hours. Y Castell was in a constant state of agitated activity. Weapons were gathered and sharpened. Fortifications were reenforced. Gwen wondered at times if their efforts would do any good. They were vastly outnumbered.
But Father would scold her for such thinking. He had been insistent they would be victorious. Still, something lurked in the back of his eyes that worried her. Despite his confident words and demeanor, her father was afraid.
Gwen hurried her steps, hoping to prove something of a comfort to him. He would have some task or another for her to perform, and she would, as always, do it with enthusiasm and anxiety, hoping this time she would receive his full approval.
The bottom of the east tower teemed with activity. At least half of the castle’s gathered population must have been wandering in and out of the single door and up and down the stairs to still other passageways and parts of the fortified castle walls. Gwen greeted them as she passed. The crowd’s nervous solemnity made Gwen uneasy. She hated the thought of war but knew it lurked just outside the thick stone walls.
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