An Unlikely Match (18 page)

Chuckles echoed behind him as Nickolas continued his trek across the room.

“There must be someone else you could call on,” Mr. Castleton implored, his tone indicating he’d made this request unsuccessfully before. “Someone who might be prevailed upon to make a brief appearance. It is to be a celebration of your kind, after all.”

It was the “your kind” that had been the proverbial straw on the camel’s back, Nickolas realized later, after Mr. Castleton had been helped back to his feet and the nearby furniture put back to rights. Gwen had disappeared without a sound beyond the gust of wind that had knocked Mr. Castleton onto his exceedingly ample backside. But the look on her face hadn’t left Nickolas’s mind. She’d been hurt by Mr. Castleton’s words. Deeply hurt. And Nickolas felt shaken by it, as if he were to blame for her suffering.

Nickolas walked out with Dafydd when that gentleman was ready to depart for the night. “Do you have a minute tomorrow when you could come to the vicarage?” Dafydd asked as they approached Nickolas’s carriage, which was waiting to take him back to that exact location.

“Certainly. I’ll head in that direction in the morning.”

“Excellent.” Dafydd sounded distracted, his expression far off.

“Are you excessively lonely, or is there a reason for my visit?” Nickolas inquired, trying to recapture the lighthearted feel of their earlier association.

Dafydd did smile at that. “There is something I think you need to see. Especially in light of tonight and the upcoming ball.”

“In regard to Gwen?”

Dafydd nodded. “Our discussion at the crossroads has stuck with me, has made me think more on what little I know of her.”

Nickolas understood that. He had thought a lot about her as well. And wondered about The Tower. About her father. About the fallen priest.

“Shall I extend the invitation to Griffith? He’s been puzzling this over as well.”

Dafydd nodded and stepped inside the carriage. “I will see you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” Nickolas acknowledged.

He stood there in the courtyard for a moment after the carriage rolled out of view, his mind full. There were too many possibilities to guess at what Dafydd wanted to show him. Nickolas hoped it would shed light on his very mysterious, very permanent houseguest. He’d had his first hint at her inner sadness while climbing the stairs of The Tower. Their conversation the next day had only solidified that impression—she seemed unhappy and lonely, and she’d been playing least in sight since then.

The pain in her eyes that night had been almost palpable. Nickolas desperately wanted to ease that suffering. How he’d wanted to hold her hand only a few days earlier! But there was nothing of flesh and blood about her, thus no way to offer comfort through touch. He could not dry her tears, though thinking back, he wasn’t sure she’d shed any. Was that a lack of emotion? Or was she simply unable to?

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught Nickolas’s attention. Upward his eyes moved, settling on something white and billowy, floating high above the ground. It was Gwen, walking perfectly level, as if on an invisible wall. Her hair and skirts fluttered furiously in a breeze that did not affect a single nearby tree.

It is said that at night she can be seen walking high above the ground, where the castle walls once stood, standing guard over her home.
Dafydd’s retelling of Gwen’s legend came back to Nickolas’s mind. She was walking those walls. Alone.

He watched her a moment longer, his heart growing heavy at the sight of her. More and more, his suspicion that she was lonely took seed in his mind. What must it be like, he wondered, to remain behind when one’s loved ones were long since passed away?

He shook his head, feeling helpless and frustrated, and turned to go back inside. If only he could hold her hand in his, offer her the comfort of that simple gesture and words of reassurance. But anything he said would be hollow and pointless.

Nickolas glanced over his shoulder one last time. She continued to walk, though the temperature dropped. Could she feel the cold? he wondered. He hoped not. He hoped that if she did, Gwen would return inside. If only Mr. Castleton would stay out of her room and leave her that single source of comfort.

It might, in fact, be a very good idea to check to make certain no one was invading the sanctuary of Gwen’s room.

Chapter Sixteen

“Mr. Castleton.” Nickolas ought not to have been surprised to see the man standing eagerly in the middle of Gwen’s room. But he’d let himself hope that Mr. Castleton’s earlier run-in with Gwen would have sated his appetite for ghostly encounters.

“She enters through the wall,” Mr. Castleton informed Nickolas without bothering with any of the civilities that usually accompanied a greeting. “It is amazing to watch. I never tire of it.”

“I think, Mr. Castleton, she may tire of having an audience,” Nickolas countered as gently as he could manage through his growing frustration. He did not wish to offend the man, simply to send him on his way for the night.

“Nonsense, m’ boy.” Mr. Castleton turned back toward the room’s exterior wall, no doubt anticipating Gwen’s return.

Obviously, he needed a new tactic. “With the upcoming ball,” Nickolas said, trying to sound convincing, “I think Gwen might be inspecting the ballroom.”

Mr. Castleton’s eyes grew wide in anticipation.

“Perhaps if you hurry, you can see her slide through a wall or two.” The temptation was likely more than the poor gentleman could resist. A moment later, in fact, he scurried from the room.

Nickolas shook his head at the retreating back of their resident ghost chaser. How Mr. Castleton must drive his family mad a great deal of the time. For just a moment, Nickolas actually felt grateful to have no family of his own. If nothing else, that saved him the difficulty of troublesome relations.

Nickolas pulled his set of keys from his jacket pocket, fumbling for a minute before coming across the skeleton key to all the bedchambers. It did not take a great deal of imagination to picture Mr. Castleton hurrying back once he failed to locate Gwen in the ballroom. Nickolas stepped into the doorway, intending to close it behind him and lock Mr. Castleton out, but he stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

He ought to go. He ought to leave Gwen’s room empty and quiet, but he wanted to see her, to know that she was well, that whatever had bothered her during the evening’s discussion no longer upset her.

Though many found her fearsome and frightening, Nickolas had seen compassion in her that he’d seldom found in others. Hadn’t she remained in The Tower with him during his sojourn there despite her own suffering? Hadn’t she offered compliments to Miss Castleton despite that young lady’s initial, though unintentional, invasion of Gwen’s own refuge?

Gwen was the kind of lady any gentleman would admire. Or
had been.
Nickolas wasn’t sure precisely how to refer to her, whether the present or the past was the accurate approach. She had lived long ago but was there in his house still.

Whatever the syntax, he did admire her. He came to the sudden but irrefutable realization that he admired Gwen more than any other lady of his acquaintance. They’d spoken at some length in The Tower before exhaustion had overtaken him. It was that conversation, coupled with many others, and his own observations of her and what he’d learned of her from others that had solidified his good opinion of her. But not until that moment, standing alone in her safe harbor, did he realize how much he’d come to care for her.

It was something of a jolt. Although he acknowledged Miss Castleton’s good heart and fine looks and recognized that his favored houseguest was a good person at heart, Nickolas could not remember ever thinking as highly of her as he already did of Gwen.

But what good can come of that admiration
? Nickolas asked himself. There was no future to be had with a ghost. There could be no happy ending to an attachment with a lady who was already dead.

When Gwen floated into the room by way of an outer wall in the next moment, Nickolas could barely summon a smile, so suddenly depressed were his spirits.

“Nickolas!” she blurted in obvious astonishment at his presence.

“I have sent Mr. Castleton on a mad dash about the house,” he managed to say.

“You are very good, Nickolas.”

He shrugged. “I cannot help myself.”

Another of her brilliant smiles crossed her face. She did not produce them often, but when she did, Nickolas was irresistibly drawn to her. He stepped back inside, closing the door behind him, locking it so Mr. Castleton could not return.

“Your household seems on the verge of utter disruption,” Gwen said.

“The festivities, you mean?” He did not attempt to pronounce the name of the Welsh holiday, knowing his accent was atrocious.

“Balls and gatherings have never failed to turn Tŷ Mynydd upside down.”

Nickolas leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the window by which she stood. “You’ve been around for a great many of them, I imagine.”

“Four hundred years’ worth.” Her lips turned up in amusement.

“I’ve been to a few balls that seemed to last four hundred years.”

She laughed. He’d come to truly enjoy that laugh. “I should warn you now: I never make an appearance at balls. I rather despise being put on display, and it always seems such a shame to wreak havoc on an event that requires so much effort and planning.”

He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Yet you made quite an appearance at this house party.”

“You deserved that, and you know it—you and your skepticism.”

He chuckled. “I certainly saw the error of my ways.”

She moved closer, skewering him with a theatrical look of scrutiny. “And you cannot honestly say you aren’t secretly pleased that I disrupted your party.”

Nickolas shook his head. “You are the best part of this very welcome inheritance of mine.”

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?”