All Hallows' Eve Collection

by Sarah M. Eden

  The ghost shook his translucent head, not in refusal or denial but in growing irritation. Could ghosts be reasoned with? Burke was not at all sure, never having made the attempt himself.

  Burke knew Dafydd Gam— if this spirit was, indeed, the famed Welshman— had been married. Many 15th-century marriages were arranged, so his might not have been a romantic connection. But love was universally understood. “Surely you can appreciate the urgency of winning a woman’s regard.”

  The ghost’s eyes turned downward. In a quiet, sad voice, he repeated, “You must not take what is not yours.”

  Somehow Burke knew the remark was not directed at him. The phantom had addressed the censure at himself. There was a self-defeat to the moment that did not at all fit the character of a man who had been almost ruthless in battle, never shirking from a fight or a challenge.

  “No, one must not take something that belongs to another,” Burke said. He threw caution to the wind. “Including another person’s name.”

  That brought the ghost’s eyes to him once more, but not in anger or shock or fear. A painful hope filled his features.

  “You aren’t Dafydd Gam, are you?”

  The ghost sighed but neither nodded nor shook his head. Was he forbidden from doing so? Was this some form of punishment?

  Burke rose and walked slowly toward him. “Can you tell me who you are?”

  The ghost simply watched him, quiet and still, but with an intensity that set the hairs on Burke’s neck on end.

  “If we could sort out the mystery of who you are—” He didn’t finish the question; he didn’t need to. Everything about the apparition suddenly turned pleading.

  The ghost’s identity was tied to his imprisonment in this garden, perhaps even to his pet phrase. He was trapped, both physically and linguistically.

  “Oh, no.” Enid, apparently, had awoken. “You promised.”

  Burke turned back to face her, ready to apologize, though he wasn’t at all certain what vow he’d broken. She, however, was not looking at him. She stood and walked right past him, directly to the ghost.

  She plopped her hands on her hips. “Dafydd Gam. What is the meaning of this?”

  “He is not Dafydd Gam,” Burke said.

  “Of course he is.” But doubt entered her tone. “Isn’t he?”

  “We’ve had something of a conversation,” Burke explained, “and I am convinced he is not the legendary cohort of Henry V. I am further certain that his extended sojourn in your garden has been pressed upon him, only to be ended when someone discovers his actual identity.”

  Enid stepped closer to the still-silent specter. “Is this true?”

  Again, no nod, no shake of the head. Yet, somehow the answer was conveyed.

  Enid pressed a hand over her heart. “Oh, you poor soul. Have you waited all this time for someone to solve your mystery?”

  “I believe he has.”

  She turned fully back to Burke, clasping his hands and looking earnestly up into his face. “We must help him, Burke. We must.”

  How could he possibly refuse? “It might take time.”

  “I do not mind if you don’t.”

  “I would not mind in the least.”

  “He has always been Dafydd Gam.” Mr. Pryce was struggling to accept the change in his family specter’s identity. “Who else could he possibly be?”

  That was precisely the question Burke, Enid, and Trevor had been attempting to answer for six hours now.

  “Have you come upon anything?” Enid asked her brother.

  He looked up from the genealogical pages of the family Bible. “The only names in here match those buried in the churchyard. None of them ought to be wandering the earth for all eternity.”

  Enid leaned her chin into her upturned hand. “Perhaps he isn’t a Pryce.”

  “Perhaps not,” Burke said, “although it would have explained his presence on your family estate.”

  “The garden hasn’t always belonged to the estate,” Mr. Pryce said from his position near the fireplace. “It was part of Grandfather’s mother’s dowry.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. Burke caught Enid’s eye and saw that she, too, understood the significance of that tidbit.

  Trevor bent over the family Bible once more. “I assume this was your paternal grandfather.”

  “Of course.”

  “He was married to—” Trevor pulled out the final syllable as his gaze slid over the page. “—Mair Bleddyn. So, the Bleddyn family likely first discovered our ghost.”

  “I can’t say the land was the Bleddyns’ as long ago as the Last War for Independence.” Mr. Pryce was managing to be both a help and a hindrance.

  “Are there still Bleddyns nearby?” Burke never had been able to let a mystery go unsolved. “Perhaps we could ask them.”

  That suggestion set off a chain of events. Over the next few days, they visited the Bleddyn estate, only to be sent to speak with the Rhyses, who suggested they look over the parish records. When they found very little there that dated back far enough, the vicar proposed they talk with the butcher, who shared a great many diverting tales, none of which were particularly pertinent. They returned to the Pryce home with as few answers as they’d had before.

  “What if we are never able to discover his identity?” Enid’s enthusiasm hadn’t waned, but she had grown increasingly less certain of their success. “The poor man will be trapped in our garden for eternity.”

  Burke reached across the carriage and took her hand, something she had permitted him to do more and more often of late. “We will free him somehow.”

  “But no one can tell us anything of these lands four hundred years ago.”

  Her downcast expression was rather more than he could bear. “Please, do not lose hope. We have not exhausted our resources yet.”

  Trevor chuckled lightly. “If you’re trying to perk the girl up, you’d best do it properly. Slip across the carriage and sit beside her. I’ll not tattle.”

  Burke literally jumped at the opportunity. He sat next to her. Emboldened by the welcoming smile he received, he raised her hand and pressed a light kiss there. “If we cannot sort the mystery out here, I have access to a great many records and writings at Cambridge, some of which are quite old and rare. We might even convince your brother to undertake a similar search at his university, inferior as it is.”

  Trevor grinned as he shook his head.

  Enid did not share their lighthearted mood. “You are leaving?”

  Though hers was not a tone of heartbreak, she did sound genuinely disappointed. That was a good sign. “I need to return to Cambridge. I have classes to teach and students who are depending on me. Not to mention a dog I sincerely hope has missed me.”

  “Yes, you mustn’t neglect the dog.” Her teasing tone was rather strained.

  “He is being looked after, but I can only trespass upon my neighbor’s hospitality for so long, just as I can only press upon your family’s generosity a short while longer.” He let that hover in the air between them, knowing that if she asked him to stay or told him her affection for him would make his departure a misery, he would find any excuse to remain.

  “You will send word if you discover anything?”

  That was her concern? He, too, wished to free the ghost trapped in her garden, but he’d thought she might at least express some wish for him to remain, or, at the very least, some real regret at the necessity of his departure.

  He nearly asked, nearly confessed his own regrets. But tender feelings were regarded as such for a reason: they were, by definition, tender. That risk was real and personal, and the undertaking was anything but simple. “If I find any information, I will be certain to pass it along,” he said.

  They spent the remainder of their ride in silence, sitting side by side, but not touching and not looking at each other. Perhaps there’d simply not been enough time for her to grow fond of him. Perhaps she’d simply not been interested enough to try.

  What do I
have to offer, really? A life of economy. An exalted family I am rather estranged from. Years of listening to me wax poetic about events and people who passed hundreds of years ago.

  They were having a diverting adventure, nothing more. And he was her friend, nothing more.

  He could not have felt more alone if he had been a ghost trapped inside a botanic prison.

  Chapter Seven

  “This is tragic.” Mother dropped dramatically onto the fainting sofa in the sitting room.

  Enid had expected the news of Burke’s imminent departure to be taken badly by her mother, but she’d not anticipated the tears. “He promised to write if he finds anything helpful in identifying our ghost.”

  “He promised to write? To write?” Mother could not possibly have sounded more appalled. “Enid, I thought you’d won more of his regard than that.”

  “It seems you thought wrong.” We both did. She kept her expression as unaffected as she could manage. “We have enjoyed a diverting interlude, not unlike my time in Bath.”

  None of the gentlemen there had proven interested, either. But, then again, none of them had proven interesting, so their apathy hadn’t wounded her.

  “But Mr. Kennard seemed so perfect for you. You share the same odd sense of humor. Though his connections are among the best in the kingdom, he did not turn up his nose at our comparatively low station. And he loves Wales. You would likely have returned again and again after you’d married.”

  Had Enid been eating anything, she would have choked. “You have made a very big leap from ‘he might be intrigued’ to ‘he intends to marry me.’ Nothing even tiptoed close to that.”

  “But it might have.” Mother closed her eyes, as if unable to endure the sight of anything whilst in such deep mourning.

  Trevor wandered into the sitting room. “Burke suggested I visit him in Cambridge this winter. He offered to introduce me to James Donn.” Mr. Donn must have been someone in the world of botany for Trevor to sound so gleeful at the possibility of making his acquaintance.

  Mother was suddenly alert. “You must take your sister with you. She can meet this James Whomever, and then she can visit with Mr. Kennard.”

  Good heavens, this was quickly growing ridiculous. “Mother, I cannot visit a single gentleman, not even in the company of my brother. You know that.”

  “Desperate times—”

  Trevor, bless his soul, took matters firmly in hand. “If Enid wishes, I will speak highly of her frequently and enthusiastically throughout any visit I make to Cambridge. I will even issue an invitation to Mr. Kennard for a visit here, if that meets with everyone’s approval. But I will not destroy my sister’s reputation, or my friend’s. We, none of us, are that desperate.”

  Though she appreciated Trev’s support, Enid couldn’t entirely agree with his sentiment. She felt that desperate. Perhaps not to the point of destroying her good name but of doing something to keep a grip on her last threads of hope.

  “I mean to take a turn about the gardens,” she told the others. “I will not be gone long.”

  “But Burke is likely to depart at any moment.” Trev kept his voice low, allowing their conversation to be a private one. “You will not have the opportunity to bid him farewell.”

  She scarcely had the strength to prevent her shoulders from dropping in defeat. “I know,” was all she could manage.

  He seemed to understand. “I am sorry more didn’t come of this past week, Enid. I truly am.”

  He was giving her the same look one might give an ailing puppy.

  “I will recover from my disappointment. It stems, after all, not from losing something I already had but from the pangs of unrealized possibilities.” She told herself that would translate to less pain and a shorter duration of it. The consolation was an extremely small one. “I will recover.”

  He accepted her brave words, though he didn’t appear to entirely believe them. “Should you come across our troublesome ghost, see if you can’t convince him to scratch his name in the dirt or something equally helpful.”

  “I will.”

  The garden, however, was empty when she stepped onto its winding path. Not even the breeze joined her there. Fitting.

  She forced her thoughts to dwell on the late summer flowers, the number of weeks remaining until autumn, the vaguely remembered aroma of the bakery she’d walked past many times in Bath, anything other than Burke and his smile and his company. And his desertion.

  The garden sat at the back of the house, but the road leading visitors away from her home ran directly past the garden’s far edge. Cruel fate conspired against her once more, as she found herself within sight of that very road just as Burke, atop his bay, rode away.

  He didn’t look back.

  She didn’t call after him.

  As he disappeared from view, she sighed. “I wanted him to stay.”

  “You must not take what is not yours.”

  Enid didn’t turn at the sound of the familiar voice. Indeed, she’d never before been less pleased to be visited by the family phantom. If he had only stayed away as she’d asked him to, Burke might still be there, watching for the ghost he’d come to meet.

  “I hadn’t meant to claim possession of him,” Enid told her visitor without looking at him. “I know full well he is not mine, just as I am not his.”

  “You must not take what is not yours.”

  She pulled a breath in sharply. “I know. You have told me that all of my life. I have taken nothing. I am claiming nothing. Now, please, leave me be.”

  “You must not—”

  “Stop saying that.” She spun about, facing the ghost at last. “I only wished for his company, to claim the tiniest bit of his affection, but it is not mine. I cannot have it. You need not continually remind me of that.”

  In the face of her quickly hardening tone, his ghostly expression softened, and his tone followed suit. “You must not take what is not yours.”

  He’d never emphasized that particular word before.

  “Not take. But— But I might ask, is that what you are attempting to tell me? That forcing him to give me his affection could never work because it is not mine to take?” She wasn’t entirely certain she was making sense, but a bubbling sensation had begun inside, and she couldn’t stop her thoughts from chasing one another in this new direction. “Or— Or perhaps you are saying that he could not make claims to my heart because he did not know that it was his already.”

  Something resembling a smile touched the ghost’s face.

  She had struck upon the message he’d meant to convey. “I should tell him how I feel while I still can. But he has gone already. I will never catch him now.”

  The specter’s almost-smile became an unmistakable one. A gust of chilled wind rose on the instant, followed immediately by the fall of rain.

  “You mean to delay him?” She couldn’t say just how the ghost was controlling the weather, only that she had been handed an opportunity, and she meant to take it.

  Burke stood beneath the overhang at the blacksmith shop, watching a typical Welsh downpour. The rain had begun quite suddenly, and he’d been left with little choice but to seek refuge.

  Mr. Jones joined him there after a time. “This here is a wet rain.”

  “Is there any other kind?” That earned him a laugh, as though he had been the one to say something ridiculous.

  “Legend has it, when Aberedw Castle was being built, the rain fell so long and so hard and so wet that the builders simply floated the stones directly where they meant to place them.”

  Jones seemed to be forever weaving a tale. Burke was glad of it. He needed the distraction. His heart, he knew, had been left behind in a certain garden beside a certain house where a certain young lady lived.

  She hadn’t even been on hand to bid him farewell. Had he meant so little to her that she could not spare even a moment for his departure? Even passing acquaintances generally offered a “Godspeed” when one or the other was beginning a journe
y.

  “Did you ever discover the identity of our ghost?” Jones asked. “It’s an odd thing no longer thinking of him as Dafydd Gam. A bit of a blow to the local pride, in fact.”

  “We didn’t.” The failing felt more personal than it should have. He did not, after all, hail from this part of the country and had no direct interest in local matters. But he’d disappointed Enid, and that pricked at him severely. “It seems he may be tied to that garden a bit longer.”

  “Legend has it, those spirits who don’t manage to leave this world are trapped here because the weight of their regrets prevents them from floating upward.”

  “Perhaps he took what was not his.”

  Jones nodded. “That is all he ever says to anyone.”

  The rain was coming down in sheets and creating deep, wide puddles in the road. Burke likely wouldn’t get far that day. “Perhaps the ghost regrets not leaving in a timely manner to avoid uncooperative weather.”

  “I think you struck nearer to the truth with your first guess, that he’s a thief regretting his crimes.”

  But that didn’t sound right to Burke. “I can’t imagine such a thing weighing him down for hundreds of years.”

  “Then maybe he was a would-be thief who regrets not seizing an opportunity when it arose all those hundreds of years ago.” Jones took one last look at the downpour before returning back to his forge.

  Could the ghost truly be regretting not stealing something, when he’d spent so long warning others not to? Perhaps it hadn’t been a warning, but a repetition of something he’d been told during his lifetime, perhaps the very words that had prevented him from taking whatever it was he’d let be in the end.

  Burke stayed near the open doorway but turned back to face the blacksmith. “Of all the things you call yours, which would you most regret if you could not claim it?”

  Jones stopped with his forging iron aloft. “No need to even give it thought, Mr. Kennard.” After two more blows, he continued. “If I hadn’t claim to my Molly’s heart, to being her husband, her love, her friend, that’d steal all the joy from my life. I’d regret that with my every breath.”