An Unlikely Match (2 page)

The adjoining chamber to his own, Nickolas ascertained, was for his future wife. He smiled at that. If he had his way, it would not be empty long.

He followed the corridor, which quite haphazardly rose or dropped a step without warning and, he felt certain, did not run precisely straight. There were other bedchambers as well. The family rooms, no doubt. Up a flight of stairs, he discovered, quite by accident, the nursery. Down another oddly located staircase, he found another corridor with more bedchambers, likely meant for guests. One, in particular, drew his attention.

It was decorated almost entirely in white. Lacy white curtains draped the bed tucked into an alcove. The coverlet was white as well, with tiny flowers embroidered along the edge. The windows were curtained in sheerest white. A vase with—what else?—white flowers sat on an end table.

It ought to have been an overwhelming sight, far too white and colorless. Instead, the effect proved breathtakingly beautiful. Nickolas stepped inside. He didn’t speak a word and found himself working to not breathe any more loudly than absolutely necessary. The room felt more like a church than a bedchamber, as if one ought to be reverent and respectful within its walls.

He walked to the window, watching the scenery through the translucent curtains. The window rather artistically framed the lone stone tower, which appeared not as far distant as it had seemed when he arrived that afternoon. Something about the landscape at Tŷ Mynydd was appealing in its wildness.

Perhaps it was the heretofore unacknowledged drops of Welsh blood flowing through his veins, but he felt almost as if he had lived at Tŷ Mynydd his entire life instead of only a few hours. It felt like home in a way no other place ever had. He had no memories of the home where he and his parents had lived until their deaths when he was six years old. He had been shipped from one relative to another after that until he began at Eton. He’d always been a stranger wandering through the world without a place where he truly belonged. Looking out over the untamed hills surrounding his inherited house, Nickolas felt like he’d finally found his corner of the earth.

A scream brought Nickolas back to the present. He turned toward the doorway, from whence the scream had come. Something about it wasn’t the least bit unnerving, almost like hearing a child squeal during a game of hide-and-go-seek.

Sure enough, the producer of said scream was a chambermaid who couldn’t have had more than fifteen years in her cup. He waited. If she was anything like the young, barely-out-of-the-schoolroom misses he had more than once been assigned to sit beside, she would soon begin a high-pitched, fast-paced, frantic explanation of whatever it was that had discomposed her.

Five. Four.
Nickolas counted silently, anticipating what was, no doubt, coming.
Three.
He heard the poor girl take a deep, shaky breath, her eyes still opened wide.
Two. One.

Right on cue, she began her explanation, which came out at precisely the pitch he had anticipated but in Welsh. The only word he recognized was
Gwen
. It proved more than enough to pique his curiosity.

He raised his hand to cut off her ongoing monologue. “I am afraid my Welsh is a tad rusty.”

“Rusty?” she repeated, obviously entirely confused.

Nonexistent
would probably have been a more accurate adjective. “I would appreciate if you would repeat—no,
summarize—
what you’ve just told me. Preferably in English.”

She looked shocked. How many people would berate him over his lack of fluency in the native tongue of an area in which he’d never set foot before that very day?

“Of course, Mr. Pritchard.” The chambermaid curtsied. “I only said you were in
her
room, sir. No one ever comes into
her
room. Except, of course, for when we dust and put out the flowers.
She
doesn’t like having anyone in
her
room
.
We know better than to make
her
angry.
She
can be scary, sir. Leastways, I think
she
is. The late Mr. Prichard did too. Most people do. And right wise of them, I say.
She
can be scary, sir. Especially to people
she
doesn’t like.”

So much for a summary. He wasn’t entirely convinced the translation wasn’t a few sentences longer than the original version.

“So
she
doesn’t like people in
her
room,” he repeated, amused in spite of himself. Who was this she? He had a very strong suspicion it was Gwen, whose full name he still refused to even attempt to repeat. Mrs. Baines had, after all, referred to Gwen as
she
and
her
with that same ominous emphasis. It seemed this local dictatress had been a regular visitor at Tŷ Mynydd.

“No,” the maid replied, drawing out the vowel, her eyes and mouth forming perfect, wide
O
’s.

It is a lovely room
, he thought.

He took another look at the bedchamber as he made his way to the open door. It was astonishingly lovely, in fact. Nickolas fully intended to host a house party as soon as arrangements could be made. The first invitation, he would send to the Castletons. With their home far off in Norfolk, the family would need accommodations at Tŷ Mynydd. Should the delightful Miss Castleton and her family accept the invitation, this beautiful bedchamber would be perfect for her.

“And
she
is rather frightening, is she?” He didn’t look at the maid while he spoke so she wouldn’t see his amused smile. He didn’t want the poor girl to think he was laughing at her.

“Yes, Mr. Pritchard, sir.”

An eerie feeling slipped over him, like a droplet of ice-cold water running down his back, between his shoulder blades. It was an unusual experience for him. He generally looked at the world through, as he’d been told many times, rose-colored spectacles.

“What makes
her
frightening?” He glanced back at the maid, who still hovered just outside the doorway.

She appeared startled, confused by his question. Then, in a voice that indicated she thought he ought to have known as much, said, “
She
is a ghost.”

Chapter Two

Gwen hovered in a corner of her room unseen, undetected. She did not care to make herself known to this new Mr. Pritchard. Not yet. Such hesitation was unusual for her. The few times Tŷ Mynydd had passed to someone who had not grown up within its walls, she had made a point of introducing herself, with varying degrees of intimidation, to the new occupants within a few moments of their arrival. This Mr. Pritchard, who made an abominable hash of spelling his surname, unsettled her.

Yet, she was inordinately pleased that he liked her room. She could not read minds, contrary to some of the more colorful legends surrounding her four-centuries-long sojourn on the grounds of her family’s estate and, therefore, could not be completely certain that Mr. Pritchard was pleased. But she’d seen the gentle smile that had played on his lips when he’d taken his first glimpse, and she’d been unable to prevent an answering one from appearing on her own face.

She was excruciatingly fond of her bedchamber.

In the days when her father had been master of Y Castell, as Tŷ Mynydd had been called during its years as a fortified castle, her bedchamber had been decorated in the heavy brocades and dismal tapestries considered fashionable in the early fifteenth century. She, however, had found them depressing. They weighed down the room, leaving it dark and disheartening. Her father had left the room in that state of dreariness after her death.

When her father died a few short years after her, her uncle had not permitted anything in her bedchamber to be changed, just as her father hadn’t, in continued deference to her memory, or some such rot. If he had truly wished to honor her abysmally short life, he might have consulted her on the proper ways in which to do it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been available for a discussion. But, alas, the dearly departed are seldom asked for input in the matter of their own commemoration.

Her uncle’s son, her very maudlin cousin Bedwyn, had inherited his father’s estate and had adhered to the same ridiculous notion that leaving her bedchamber in a perpetual state of dreariness would make her feel more appreciated. Gwen had never told the two men how very much she would have preferred a drastic and all-encompassing change. Uncle Dilwyn had been deeply affected by the losses in his family, and Gwen had judged it best to simply let him be. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the rest of eternity to work out the matter of her oppressive bedchamber. And Cousin Bedwyn grew teary every time she spoke to him.

It really was something of an embarrassment. Her father had been a warrior, though that had led to its own set of problems. She herself had possessed a legendary degree of calm self-possession in the face of drastic, often dangerous circumstances. But Y Castell, for which she had sacrificed so much, had passed into the hands of a bunch of milksops. It had been rather mortifying, actually.

Thankfully for the family name, which at the time was still excessively Welsh, Bedwyn’s son had inherited a bit more fortitude than his father. He had grown up at Y Castell and knew Gwen well. So it had been an easy thing to suggest, rather insistently, that her room needed to be redecorated. It had taken nearly a century and an alternating mixture of threats and buttering up, depending on the current master and mistress of her family home, before her room had become what it was then. The soft white had given the room an open, airy feel. It was the only room she was truly at home in.

Most of the original castle had long since crumbled or been demolished. Bits of it remained, cobbled together with the rest of the house. Only The Tower remained intact. Ghosts, Gwen felt certain, were not supposed to shiver, but the mere thought of The Tower made her do just that. It was the one place in all of Tŷ Mynydd she hated.

Perhaps it was the ever-present irony of her very existence that dictated that her room, her refuge, should afford such an unimpeded view of The Tower, which was a place of immense horrors for her. It stood as a stark reminder of that awful time four hundred years earlier. The air inside The Tower still felt suffocating.

Gwen’s thoughts turned to the new Mr. Pritchard. It certainly was an abomination the way his family had altered the name. Prichard was bad enough, being a mangled version of “ap Richard,” the original, proud Welsh surname her loved ones had borne. But to add that superfluous
T
was tantamount to desecration.

He would bear watching, Gwen told herself. Very close watching.

* * *

A fortnight at Tŷ Mynydd convinced Nickolas he now resided in the most superstitious neighborhood in all the world. His entire staff spoke of “the ghost” with every indication of conviction. Several of the neighboring gentlemen had called on him since his arrival, and he, in turn, had called on their families. It seemed, if the frequency with which the topic arose was any indication, that his neighbors firmly believed in this apparition as well.

“Have you not seen
her
, then?” Mr. Dafydd Evans, the vicar, asked as he and Nickolas spent a leisurely evening in the Tŷ Mynydd library precisely seventeen days after Nickolas’s arrival at his new estate.

Et tu, Dafydd?
Nickolas silently paraphrased Julius Caesar. They had struck something of an instant rapport when the young vicar had first called, and they were already on a first-name basis. After much practice and a great deal of amused laughter, Nickolas had finally learned to properly pronounce the poor man’s name:
Dav-ith.

Nickolas knew instinctively that they would be lifelong friends. Already, he’d spent several afternoons at the vicarage, and Dafydd had passed several evenings at Tŷ Mynydd. It was good to have a friend in the neighborhood. Even if that friend apparently had absurd ideas about ghosts.

“I cannot say that I have seen
her
,” Nickolas replied with a smile. “I hear very contradictory accounts of
her
. I am not at all certain what to think of the ghost I seem to have inherited.”

“You do not believe she is real.” Dafydd smiled, a look of near pity on his face.

Dafydd was within a year or two of Nickolas’s own age. His smile made him appear even more youthful and even less like the starchy curate he remembered from the eighteen months he’d spent with a cousin of his late mother. That man had spent an hour each and every Sabbath warning the congregation of their inevitable arrival in the depths of perdition. The entire parish, it had seemed, was beyond redemption. Nickolas had spent most of those sermons imagining himself off on some adventure or another. He was one of the few congregants who escaped Sunday services without indigestion.