“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.
“What sort of horrible things?”
Gwen closed her eyes, shaking her head repeatedly. The glow up the stairs increased in intensity.
“There is something up there.” He moved toward the stairs.
“Nickolas, don’t.”
“I saw The Tower glowing a few nights ago,” he said as he took the first few steps. “I need to know what is causing it.”
“Please, Nickolas.” She suddenly appeared in front of him. “Stay on the lower level. There is nothing up there but pain.”
But curiosity had ever been Nickolas’s besetting sin. He pushed on, determined to investigate the source of the odd glow.
Gwen put out a hand as if to hold him back. But not being corporeal, her ghostly hand simply disappeared inside his chest. It was the oddest sensation, almost like warm water trickling slowly inside. The warmth was concentrated, precisely the size of her hand, and didn’t spread or radiate.
She pulled her hand back almost the instant it passed through him, her look one of embarrassment and frustration. Gwen even glanced at her hand as if it had somehow failed her. Nickolas looked at her hand as well, missing instantly the warmth it had created. He seemed to be growing colder.
“I wasn’t intimidated by all the chaos you caused in the house, Gwen. Going up these stairs to investigate isn’t going to overset me.”
But she didn’t move. Gwen just watched him, concerned and undecided. He knew perfectly well he could simply walk through her—she had inadvertently demonstrated her own less-than-solid state. But that felt tantamount to running the poor lady over. And there was something unnerving about the thought of feeling that deep, concentrated warmth pass completely through him.
“You are determined to go up?” Gwen asked quietly.
“Quite.”
“Then I will go with you.”
“Do you think I need protection?” Nickolas smiled mischievously.
The tiniest hint of a smile broke the solemnity of her features but just as quickly slipped away. “I imagine you will need someone to drag your lifeless body back down the stairs.”
Nickolas started to chuckle but then noticed Gwen didn’t appear to be joking.
“Is there someone dangerous up there?” Nickolas asked, suddenly alarmed.
“No. Not dangerous.”
It took but a moment to realize what Gwen had implied if not outright told him. “But there is someone up there.”
There was someone in The Tower. But who? Who was Gwen protecting, for it certainly seemed that way. He could not have an interloper hiding away on the grounds of Tŷ Mynydd. And despite Gwen’s reassurance, Nickolas wasn’t convinced the intruder wasn’t dangerous. Why else would he be hiding?
Perhaps Gwen wasn’t protecting the intruder but protecting him from whatever threat was up those stairs.
Nickolas gave her a look of warning so she would have a chance to move or glide or whatever she meant to do to get out of his way. She seemed to understand the unspoken message and began floating up the stairwell, keeping pace with Nickolas. And she didn’t seem happy about it.
Higher and higher they climbed. A deep, penetrating cold seeped into Nickolas’s body. But the air didn’t seem to change, and his breath didn’t form clouds in front of him the way it usually did when the air was chilled. This cold was different. Icy fingers wrapped around his chest, squeezing his lungs, making each breath harder to take than the last.
His ascent slowed, and his legs seemed to cramp as cold penetrated his muscles and bones. Around him, the glow grew but brought no warmth.
Gwen remained close to him but with anxiety written on her face.
“Gwen?”
She looked at him, her eyes filled with piercing pain. “This is a horrible place, Nickolas.” But she did not hang back, did not abandon him as he continued his climb.
The cold grew with each step. He slowed. Indeed, Nickolas could tell he was hardly making any progress at all. Up ahead, the ethereal glow around them illuminated a door across the landing to which the winding stairs led. The sight of it, for reasons he could not explain, made his heart pound unpleasantly, almost as if he were seeing something imminently threatening.
At least a dozen steps separated him from that door, but Nickolas found he couldn’t move any farther. The cold had turned to freezing pain, and his lungs felt near to collapse. He leaned against the side of The Tower. A cold sweat trickled down his forehead.
Gwen hovered just in front of him, blurring his vision of the door he felt pulled toward, even as his conviction that it was best avoided increased. “Please turn back, Nickolas,” she said. “You are a good person. This is no place for someone like you.”
“What happened here?” He gasped, his lungs still frozen and painful. “Why are you so afraid?”
“It was wrong,” she said. “What they did. The spirit of it lingers here still. It’s . . . it’s evil.”
And somehow, that was the right word for it. Evil.
“Please turn back,” she said again. “You are brave to have come this far. No one else ever has. But please, Nickolas, please go back.”
“I’m not sure I can.” What possessed him to admit as much, Nickolas couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the poignancy of her own candidness.
“Are you unwell?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice.
“It is so cold,” he said.
Gwen looked back at the door above them and seemed to shudder as if she felt the cold as much as he did. “You must go back down.”
Nickolas agreed, seeing the wisdom in her suggestion, even if he did not understand the logic. He could not say why it was so cold at the top of the stairs, but he’d been warmer, less crippled on the ground level. He needed to get back there.
One step at a time, he climbed back down, the warmth in his body returning only slightly. He staggered once, and Gwen, seemingly automatically, reached out to help him, only to pull her arms back when she recognized her own inability to offer aid. Again that look of embarrassed frustration crossed Gwen’s face.
Ni
ckolas was still shivering as his feet reached the lower level of The Tower. He staggered to his bedroll, dropping onto the folded blankets, exhausted. Something was very wrong at the top of The Tower. He pitied whoever Gwen believed resided up there. Those thoughts were, however, fleeting. He was too cold, and his lungs hurt too much for meditating on what had happened.
A quick, sudden wind blew his pile of blankets over him, bringing a modicum of warmth back to his body.
“Thank you, Gwen,” he said, curling into a ball like a tiny child.
“Please don’t go back up there,” Gwen whispered.
“I don’t plan to.”
She sat on the floor beside him, to the extent a ghost can sit—it was something of a hover in a seated position.
“Do you promise me you won’t go up?”
He looked across at her, struck by the tears he heard in her voice. Her eyes darted back toward the stairwell, which still glowed ominously. Such stark fear and anguish filled her expression. If he weren’t frozen to the core, he’d have reached out to her. Then again, he could not have actually touched her.
Nickolas pulled the blankets up more tightly around his neck, praying the painful chill would ease. “Afraid you’ll have to come claim my lifeless body?” He tried to joke despite his chattering teeth and the continued oppressive influence of his trip up those stairs.
“Please don’t joke about that.” Her tone was so small, so pained, he couldn’t bring himself to tease any longer.
“I won’t go up again,” he told her. “In fact, I plan to avoid this place entirely.”
The tiniest of smiles touched her face, an obvious show of relief. “That is wise. I avoid it myself.”
“You need not have come, Gwen.”
“Few people have come here over the centuries,” she said. “I have never allowed any of them to do so alone. No one should ever have to be here alone. Not ever.”
Though he could not say precisely in what way, he knew that statement was significant. Gwen’s history was tied to this place. She refused to force any person to remain in its walls alone, and he would, so long as he was master of Tŷ Mynydd, see to it that she was never again forced to enter The Tower.
Chapter Twelve
“Nickolas.”
It was a soft, distant whisper. Sleep began its slow retreat. Nickolas opened his eyes a sliver. He saw a face that he vaguely knew had haunted his dreams, though he couldn’t quite place the delicate features. Of its own volition, his hand reached out to touch the face he couldn’t tear his half-asleep eyes away from.
He cupped his hand to caress her cheek, but his fingers met nothing but soft, warm air as they slipped into the translucent absence of flesh.
“Gwen.” He whispered his sudden understanding.
Her eyes dropped in seeming embarrassment. Nickolas pulled his hand back, feeling unexpectedly disappointed. He sat up and looked around, only just beginning to remember where he was: the bottom of The Tower, under a pile of blankets.
“It is dawn,” Gwen said quietly. “You should go now.”
“You were here all night,” Nickolas muttered in amazement.
Gwen had been noticeably disturbed by their abbreviated climb up the stairs. Long after Nickolas had regained his warmth under his pile of blankets but had not yet settled into sleep, Gwen continued to “sit” on the ground near him, anxiety written on every feature of her face. Her eyes had shifted repeatedly to the glowing stairwell.
Her suffering had been obvious, but she had, it seemed, remained there throughout the dark, quiet hours of night while he slept. Almost like she’d been guarding him the way she was supposed to have guarded her home from attack all those centuries ago.
“It is time to go,” Gwen insisted, just as a knock on the heavy wooden door leading outside echoed around the room.
“Nickolas?” Dafydd’s laughing voice barely penetrated the door. “Did you make it?”
Nickolas pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the door. He was wrinkled from head to toe, his hair, no doubt, hopelessly mussed. He pulled open the door, secretly enjoying the shock his appearance would probably give.
Dafydd, however, simply laughed. “That bad, was it?”
Griffith, standing there as well, grinned in obvious amusement.
Nickolas managed to summon a smile he didn’t particularly feel. “I’ll be glad to be back in my own bed.”
“We’ll give you a hand with your blankets.” Dafydd stepped inside but froze only a few feet from the doorway.
Nickolas followed Dafydd’s eyes to where Gwen floated, watching them.
“Have you been in here too?” Dafydd asked her.
She nodded. “This is not a good place, Dafydd. He ought not to have been required to be here.”
Dafydd crossed to Gwen, the concern on his face obvious. “But you never come to The Tower.”
She returned his gaze, eyebrows knit, still looking anxious. “He should not have been here alone,” was the almost inaudible reply.
Dafydd studied her more closely. “It really is as bad as you say, then?”
“It is far worse than any of you could possibly guess.” She seemed to pull herself together again. “Now help him gather his things so he can leave.”
Somehow, Nickolas didn’t feel it was a curt dismissal but rather further evidence that Gwen, who many described as fearsome and who had more than once come across as prickly, was concerned for his well-being.
Silently, they grabbed the pile of blankets and Nickolas’s discarded personal effects and made their way to the door.
“Dafydd.” Gwen’s voice met them before they left.
They all looked back.
“No more wagers involving The Tower.” Her gaze shifted from him to both Nickolas and Griffith. “From any of you.”
Dafydd smiled empathetically and nodded. Griffith added his silent agreement. Somehow, Nickolas knew Gwen didn’t need his consent. He had no intention of ever coming back to that place, nor would he force anyone else to do so.
They began their walk back toward the house. A rush of wind passed them. Nickolas knew it was Gwen fleeing The Tower.
“If I had known our wager would mean Gwen would force herself to spend the night in The Tower, I would have chosen a different forfeiture,” Dafydd said with something like a sigh in his tone.
“She was decidedly unhappy there.”
“I have never known her to spend any time in The Tower,” Dafydd said. “She has always given it a very wide berth. When I was a child, even, she would not permit any of the local children to play in it or near it. Some she resorted to frightening away from it, despite the fact that she strongly objects to frightening children.”
“That is a very strong dislike of the place,” Griffith said. “Not one to be taken lightly.”
“And entirely warranted,” Nickolas said wearily. He remembered all too well the chilling pain he’d experienced on the stairwell, remembered the fear in Gwen’s eyes, the sense of near doom he himself had felt.
Dafydd, Nickolas realized, was watching him closely, a look of concern and curiosity on his face. “Did something happen there last night, Nickolas?”
Griffith’s gaze had locked on him as well.
He did not, at first, answer. How could he possibly explain what he’d felt? How did one convey that sort of inexplicable experience?
“Do either of you believe in evil spirits?” It was an abrupt opening to the subject, but he could not think of another way of beginning.
Only a fleeting look gave away Dafydd’s surprise. “The Bible certainly makes mention of demons and evil spirits.”
Leave it to a clergyman to set one’s mind at ease by means of holy writ. “Not that kind of spirit.” Nickolas smiled at the relief he felt when Dafydd didn’t immediately dismiss his question or laugh outright. “I mean, do you believe that . . . that a place can have a spirit, a feeling, about it?”
“As in, a chapel feeling peaceful?”
“I
suppose.” Nickolas shrugged. “Except, a . . . a . . . bad feeling.”
Griffith entered the discussion. “I have heard soldiers recounting how the site of a past battle can have an unsettling feel about it.”
“Have you ever known a place to have an evil feel?” Nickolas pressed, looking between his two friends.
“Evil?” Griffith seemed to think a moment before shaking his head. He watched Nickolas, a look of anticipation on his features.
Dafydd hadn’t answered at all.
Nickolas glanced at him, half expecting a look of dismissal or mockery. But Dafydd seemed more thoughtful than anything else. They were nearly to the house. Nickolas wondered if Dafydd meant to answer his question or if he was simply ignoring it. He felt foolish enough having broached the subject. He was beginning to regret it.
“The Tower feels that way?” Dafydd eventually asked.
Nickolas nodded. “The feeling grows as one ascends the stairs.”
Again, Dafydd fell silent, his feelings, for once, hidden behind an unreadable mask. Griffith looked as confused as Nickolas felt.
Two footmen met them at the door, taking the blankets from them. Just as Nickolas lifted a foot to step inside, Dafydd stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You need to see something.”
* * *
“The middle of nowhere,” Nickolas answered after Dafydd asked him if he knew where they were.
Dafydd laughed, but looking around, Nickolas couldn’t help thinking he’d given a rather apt description. The three of them had walked to the north property line of Tŷ Mynydd and stopped at what looked to Nickolas to be a place of absolutely no significance.
“Until approximately three hundred years ago, this was the path of a road that ran along the Tŷ Mynydd property line. A second road crossed this one only a few yards from where we are now.”
Nickolas nodded his understanding, assuming there was another reason they’d come to that particular spot besides a discussion of centuries-old roads.
“I can see you think I am absolutely daft to have brought you here.” Dafydd chuckled.
“Are you daft?” Griffith asked.
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