An Unlikely Match (21 page)

“Which must be the reason for the loneliness you spoke of before.”

It was, indeed. “After my parents died, I never truly had a family again. I wanted one more than anything else in my whole life.”

“It is a hard thing to be alone in this world.”

Others had expressed similar sentiments. From Gwen, however, it held greater significance. “You and I have known a great deal of loneliness, haven’t we?”

She nodded and sighed. “Far too much.” Some of her sadness lifted. “But less now. I am not so lonely with you here.”

“The feeling is mutual.” Nickolas reached for her hand, but his fingers met only empty air. He clasped his hands behind his back, knowing the temptation to touch her would not dissipate, despite the illogical nature of that inclination. The more time he spent in her company, the more he longed for her.

“When you were eleven . . .” Gwen prodded, reminding Nickolas that he had been telling a story.

“When I was eleven”—he gave her a grin—“I decided I would make my fortune as an inventor.”

Gwen appeared appropriately amused. “What did you invent?”

“I
attempted
to invent a great many things. My first failure involved a combined knife and fork, which, it turns out, is impossible to actually use.”

Her little giggle made his heart jump in his chest.

“I next tried my hand at designing a clothes horn.”

“What is a clothes horn?”

Nickolas could not have asked for a more gratifyingly curious response. “I imagined a stick of some kind that a gentleman could use to get his own jacket on, no matter how ridiculously tight fashions became.”

“And did every valet in the county rise up in fear for their positions?”

He shook his head. “Trust me, they had nothing to worry about. I could not manage to perfect the idea.”

“How many other ideas did you work on?”

“Scores.”

Gwen grinned at him. “And never made your fortune.”

Nickolas chuckled. “Obviously not.”

“I should have liked to have known you as a boy.”

He clasped his hands more tightly behind his back, the urge to wrap his arm around her misty shoulders almost overwhelming. “But I have told you only the amusing moments of my younger years. You likely would have found my troublemaking and moments of self-pity quite trying.”

“I would have loved every part of you,” she whispered.

That declaration left him utterly speechless. How perfectly she’d expressed the very feelings surging through his heart. He couldn’t imagine not loving everything about her.

He opened his mouth to tell her as much but found the words caught. What could be gained by confessing how deeply he’d come to love her? Nothing could come of his feelings. There could be no future. He would only burden her by admitting the state of his heart when the situation was, when it came down to it, utterly hopeless.

Chapter Eighteen

“The masquerade should be quite lovely,” Miss Castleton said to Nickolas as they walked through the gardens behind the house.

Mr. and Mrs. Castleton had insisted on the excursion. They had, in fact, arranged several such private moments between the two over the course of the house party, ranging from morning rides to leisurely walks to afternoon picnics. More than once, Dafydd had been obliged to give up his conversational partner so that Nickolas could indulge the Castletons.

“I think it will be,” Nickolas answered. “There will be quite a large number of guests, though not so many as to make the hall too crowded.”

Miss Castleton smiled in her sweet way, and Nickolas found himself smiling in return. He had a certain fondness for her, though he could not, in any honesty, describe his feelings as surpassing, rivaling, or even coming close to those he felt for Gwen. But Gwen, as he had to continually remind himself, was an unobtainable wish. She was dead, a ghost wandering the corridors of his home. There was no future between a man yet living and a lady dead for nearly four hundred years. It was a frustrating and impossible situation, but one he would have to learn to live with. Nothing else could be done.

“This is a beautiful area of the country.” Miss Castleton looked around her in obvious admiration of the countryside. “Mr. Evans says that the Tŷ Mynydd valley is a very good representation of the beauties of Wales.”

“I understand that is true,” Nickolas said. “It would be enjoyable, I think, to see more of Wales.”

“I agree.” She smiled in a friendly manner. “My parents hope to return here again and again over the years.”

“Do they?” Nickolas forced a swallow.

Mr. Castleton had hinted at those very intentions only the day before. He had more than hinted at a great many other things, including the expectations Nickolas’s invitation had given rise to in all of their hearts and minds. He had not, he knew, kept his interest in Miss Castleton a secret before his inheritance, and his pointed attentions since would simply have reaffirmed his intentions.

He might, if he tried, be able to extricate himself from making the offer that was obviously expected of him. It would not precisely be gentlemanly of him, but if he’d had any hope of making a future with the woman he loved, he would have managed it.

What would be the point, he’d asked himself repeatedly the night before. He’d be going through life essentially as a widower, a man who’d lost the woman he loved. Except that he’d never actually had her—she’d died long before he was born. He’d find growing frustration in her companionship and, he knew, would regret the loss of children and a family.

What hope did he have? Gwen was lost to him. He did not wish to live out his life alone.

The Castletons expected an offer to be forthcoming. A gentleman did not knowingly, and he had to admit he’d known he was doing so, raise expectations in a gently bred young lady without fulfilling those expectations. And when said gentleman had no hope of a life with the woman he loved, making a life with a woman he at least liked and who seemed to like him in return was about as promising a future as he could hope for.

“Are you fond of me, Miss Castleton?” The question did not seem to catch her off guard.

“Of course I am, Mr. Pritchard.”

“And you do realize why your parents have been throwing us together so determinedly, do you not?”

She smiled a little shyly and nodded.

“And you do not object to their reasons?”

“I do not, Mr. Pritchard.” Why did that answer feel like a lead weight instead of the reassurance it ought to have been?

A man ought not to make a proposal in a spirit of resignation. There seemed little choice and even less hope.

“Would you do me the honor, then, Miss Castleton, of becoming my wife?”

She nodded once more and smiled a little.

As simply as that, their futures were decided. Nickolas couldn’t help but notice that neither of them appeared overly happy about it.

* * *

For once, Mr. Castleton held every eye in the room for a reason other than that he was making a spectacle of himself. He stood in the midst of the assembled guests in the drawing room after dinner and made it known that he had an announcement to make.

The butler had been forewarned and stood, Nickolas knew, just outside the door with champagne at the ready. Mr. Castleton looked ready to burst and, for the first time, seemed to have forgotten all about Gwen. Mrs. Castleton was already dabbing at her eyes. Miss Castleton, Nickolas noted with some dissatisfaction, looked rather more pale than usual.

Mr. Castleton finally spoke. “It is my pleasure to announce that my daughter, Charlotte, has received an offer of marriage from our host, Mr. Nickolas Pritchard, and that she has accepted him.”

Exclamations of happiness, if not surprise, could be heard around the room as the butler entered with champagne ready to be distributed. Miss Castleton received hugs from the female guests. Nickolas received a few hearty slaps on the back.

“Are you sure about this?” Griffith asked in low tones.

Nickolas nodded, though he couldn’t be certain the gesture was convincing.

Griffith hesitated a moment, studying him. “Then I am happy for you.” He smiled his congratulations.

One expression of happiness was notably absent, and Nickolas found himself unable to account for it.

Still seated and seemingly in a state of shock, Dafydd looked almost ashen. The smile that always seemed to lurk just under the surface was entirely missing. Even as Nickolas watched, the ever-amiable vicar seemed to pull himself together once more. He rose slowly and crossed to Nickolas.

“Congratulations,” he said, his tone a bit halfhearted. “Miss Castleton is a fine lady.”

“She is.”

Dafydd offered nothing more than that. He bowed quite correctly to Miss Castleton but said nothing. She avoided his gaze, much as she had the first time they’d met, though Nickolas realized she hadn’t done so in the weeks that had followed. In fact, they had seemed on friendly terms, often seen sitting near one another or engaged in light conversation.

Nickolas did not attend very closely to the toasts being made in his and his affianced bride’s honor. His eyes followed Dafydd, who was making a somewhat hasty retreat. A moment before Nickolas’s friend reached the door, Gwen came through it. Nickolas could barely make out their words over the voices around him.

“A celebration?” Gwen asked, looking confused.

“Yes,” Dafydd said, rather tightly. “Nickolas and Miss Castleton are recently engaged.”

Gwen’s eyes swung to Nickolas, locking with them. Dafydd slipped around her and out the door, but Gwen remained. Her eyes shifted only once to glance briefly at Miss Castleton.

“You are engaged?” She spoke in a voice so soft that her words hardly carried.

He couldn’t manage any words but merely nodded.

Gwen looked at him a moment longer before leaving. She did not slip through a wall, nor kick up a whirlwind.

She simply hung her head in a posture of complete, dejected defeat and vanished.

* * *

It was the closest Gwen had come in four hundred years to experiencing physical pain. Feelings, she had learned during her never-ending tenure at Tŷ Mynydd, could be as unendurable as the deepest wound. The emotional blow she had only just received would likely pain her long after a physical wound would have healed.

She sat hovering near the floor in a corner of her room, wishing she had the ability to simply cry. A bout of tears might not erase the pain and misery she was enduring, but it would have been a welcome release.

How could she bear it? She would be forced to watch Nickolas marry, raise his family, love his wife. She, who loved him so very much, would have to endure it all in silence, unable to look forward to any sort of future, unable to escape. His great-grandchildren would walk the corridors of Tŷ Mynydd, and she would be there still, loving him, alone, seeing him in his offspring, thinking of those fleeting weeks once upon a time when he had made her smile, when he had unknowingly laid claim to her heart. She would die a hundred times over and never find a moment’s peace.

A knock broke the silence of the room.

Gwen sighed in mingled frustration and devastation. It was no doubt Mr. Castleton, come to stare at her for hours on end and ask impertinent questions. She kept silent in the hope that he would simply go away and leave her to her own suffering. A moment later, however, she heard a key turn in the lock.

How had the man gotten hold of a key to her room?

Gwen slid into invisibility and kept to her shadowed corner. He would eventually give up. Perhaps by morning, he would have left and she could return to her peaceful solitude.

But it was not the gaping Mr. Castleton who entered her room. It was Nickolas.

“Gwen?” he asked, looking around at the seemingly empty room. He called out to her once more after closing and locking the door behind him. Still, she did not answer. She could not bear the thought of speaking to him, of attempting to act as though her pathetic excuse for an existence had not entirely crumbled when Dafydd told her of Nickolas’s engagement.