An Unlikely Match (12 page)

“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. Baines 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.”

“I will spend the night here,” Nickolas confirmed. “Dafydd would not have backed out if he had lost.”

“How long are you required to remain here?” She seemed to grow more nervous with each passing moment.

“Until morning,” Nickolas replied, wondering at her agitation.

“Until dawn?”

“I suppose.”

“Then I beg of you, please, leave at the very first rays.” Her agitation became more apparent. “This is not . . . it isn’t—”

“What in the world is that?” Nickolas inadvertently cut off her words when he caught sight of a dim glow emanating from somewhere above the stairwell. It instantly put him in mind of the light he’d seen in The Tower’s upper windows a few nights before.

He heard something like a dismayed moan from Gwen. Nickolas’s eyes flew back to her. Her focus was on the stairwell as his had been.

“What is it?” He instinctively felt that she knew.

“Is there no other way to fulfill your wager?” She sounded almost desperate on his behalf, still looking unblinkingly up the stairs.

Nickolas shook his head, not feeling offended as he had momentarily been after Miss Castleton questioned his fulfilling his debt. Gwen seemed to understand how a true gentleman lived his life. He did wonder at the reason for Gwen’s objection.

She looked back at him, and Nickolas saw something in her eyes he hadn’t been expecting: fear. She who had the maids quaking was afraid of something. If he didn’t miss his mark, it was something up those stairs.

“This is a dark place, Nickolas,” she said pleadingly. “Horrible things have happened here. It will eat away at you, fill you with cold and darkness. Do not stay any longer than you must.”

Normally, Nickolas would have laughed at such a dramatic speech, but the look in her eyes, the pain so evident in her face, lent her words a degree of conviction that completely erased any sense of theatricality.