“It is a horrible place,” Gwen whispered.
“I am beginning to understand that,” he answered quietly. “Which makes me wonder all the more why you stayed there last night. As I told you, you didn’t have to.”
She’d stayed because she couldn’t bear the thought of him in such an evil place. She’d worried that he’d try to go up the stairs again and something horrible would happen. She had wanted to protect him, as she did the house and yet, not at all as she did the house. Just being near him as he slept had afforded an unexpected amount of satisfaction and pleasure. Her fingers had itched almost unbearably to reach out and touch him.
“I have a feeling, Gwen, that you stayed there for my sake.” Nickolas smiled at her, not the laughing, teasing smile she saw so often but a compassionate, understanding, comforting smile. “And I thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And thank you for not strangling Mr. Castleton.” The twinkle returned to his eyes. “Tempting as I am sure it is. That would certainly put a damper on my first house party.”
“I will attempt to restrain myself.” Gwen smiled in reply.
“And I will attempt to restrain Mr. Castleton. I think his family would be distraught if he met an untimely end.”
“Most families would be.” She fought down the reminder that not all families mourned the death of a family member. The Castletons did not seem that heartless. “Miss Castleton appears to be a kindhearted young lady.”
“She is.” Something about the tone of his response made Gwen bristle. “Miss Castleton is universally admired.”
Gwen looked more closely at him and instantly wished she hadn’t. A certain amount of interest showed in his expression as he spoke about Miss Castleton.
“She is considered quite a diamond, in fact,” Nickolas continued. “Well mannered. Good family. Precisely what a gentleman most hopes to find in a lady.”
Nickolas looked almost as if he were trying to convince himself of the well-deserved praise he heaped on Miss Castleton. Gwen gave little heed to the seeming contradiction. The list was certainly long enough, and Gwen had no doubt Miss Castleton deserved every accolade. But she had to fight a surge of unexpected emotion: the same feeling that all but consumed her whenever the staff served pheasant at dinner and she was forced to smell it but could not eat it. She felt suddenly, entirely, and inexplicably jealous.
“And she is also quite pretty,” Nickolas added.
“Yes. She is.” Miss Castleton was pretty. And unlike Gwen, Miss Castleton wasn’t devoid of color, very nearly transparent, and not alive.
Nickolas made another of his deep-in-thought noises, though this time not as theatrically as before. He truly was pondering something. Gwen refused to think about what that something might be.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Gwen?” Nickolas asked, breaking abruptly from his reverie. “Besides doing my best to dampen Mr. Castleton’s enthusiasm.”
“If you can accomplish that much, I will be grateful.” She floated away from the window and Nickolas, telling herself he had every right to praise Miss Castleton.
“Are you certain?” he asked from behind her. “You seem less enthusiastic than earlier. Has something upset you?”
She couldn’t remember the last time someone felt like her concerns, her feelings, her needs were truly important. Such treatment of a ghost was, she supposed, understandable—few people, if any, realized she had feelings and needs despite not having a body—but even in life she’d been pushed aside and disregarded.
Despite his kindhearted inquiry, Gwen couldn’t bring herself to tell Nickolas what had upset her. How could she tell him she wished he thought she was precisely what he’d always hoped to find in a lady? How could she tell him that she enjoyed their conversations and that this latest reminder that she was a dispensable, overlooked part of the house made her feel even more lonely?
She couldn’t.
“No, Nickolas,” she answered before sliding through a wall and back outside the house. “There is nothing else you can do for me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mrs. Castleton organized a picnic the following afternoon for “the young people.” She declared it a fine opportunity for becoming better acquainted. She gave Nickolas explicit instructions to look after her daughter during the outing, though she assured him of her utmost faith in his trustworthiness. She was also sure to add that the presence of a vicar must certainly add to the respectability of the idea.
He, Miss Castleton, Griffith, Alys, and Dafydd were shooed from the house with enthusiasm.
“You said you hoped the house party would provide ample opportunity for furthering your acquaintance with Miss Castleton,” Griffith said as they walked in the direction of the chosen meadow. “It seems you are to have your wish.”
“In spades,” Nickolas added. He’d been granted her company for a walk in the gardens but a few days earlier. Now they were to have a picnic without any true chaperone beyond a vicar who was, himself, young and unmarried.
“Have you discovered Miss Castleton is not to your liking after all?” Griffith asked.
Nickolas shook his head. That was not the issue at all. He liked Miss Castleton as much as he ever had. She’d proven herself every bit as congenial and sweet tempered as he’d believed her to be. “I like her very much indeed.”
Griffith made a sound of contemplation, one that had on any number of occasions annoyed Nickolas to no end. That particular sound often preceded an evaluation of what Griffith perceived as his inner thoughts and motivations. Nickolas spared himself the lecture and moved swiftly to help Alys spread out the picnic blanket.
Dafydd had been charged with carrying their meal. He set the large basket on the blanket and opened the top. Miss Castleton knelt down before it, helping pull the various dishes out from inside. It was to be a very informal picnic, without the servants and serving tables one often saw at more impressive outdoor entertainments in the ton.
Nickolas took a seat on the blanket and leaned against an obliging tree. Griffith’s question repeated in his thoughts. Have you decided Miss Castleton is not to your liking after all?
He watched the lady he’d quite particularly invited to the house party as she set out the afternoon’s meal. She guided Dafydd in the placement of each dish but did so with a graceful gentility, smiling her gratitude at his help. A more kindhearted lady he would be hard-pressed to find. As he’d told Griffith, he liked Miss Castleton very much. But, he admitted to himself, he’d lost a bit of his enthusiasm for her company.
“Coconut macaroons?” Dafydd asked, pulling yet another dish from the basket.
Miss Castleton nodded. “Mother had them included especially for me. They are my favorite.”
Dafydd smiled. “They happen to be my favorite as well.”
Nickolas leaned his head back. He needn’t worry that Miss Castleton would be neglected. Dafydd knew how to be a gracious neighbor. Though he’d seen a grand amount of food emerge from the large basket Dafydd had lugged to their chosen spot and every guest other than Mr. and Mrs. Davis and Mr. and Mrs. Castleton had come on the outing, Nickolas couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.
Alys was busy gathering a late-season flower of some sort that Nickolas had seen growing in various spots on the estate. Griffith seemed content to sit quietly, watching clouds wander across the sky. Dafydd and Miss Castleton had the meal nearly all set out. It was, by all accounts, a picturesque arrangement. So what exactly was nagging at him?
He knew the answer in the very next moment. His gaze fell on Gwen, not far in the distance, walking the long-fallen walls of her ancient home. The day felt incomplete because, until that moment, he’d not seen her.
* * *
After the passage of hundreds of years, Gwen no longer found it odd that the unseen walls of the one-time castle still felt solid beneath her feet. She walked them, looking out over the wild and untamed land that surrounded her home. Somet
imes she thought of those she’d once known as she wandered about in solitude. That day, however, her thoughts were of the present and the man she had come to care for deeply.
She looked back over her shoulder when she realized the sound of his voice calling out to her wasn’t merely her imagination. There he stood, gazing up at her from not many yards away. His smile never failed to warm her heart.
“Good day to you, Nickolas,” she answered back.
“Are you on official guard duty just now, or do you have time to come sit with us?”
She looked just beyond him to what appeared to be a small picnic gathering. Gwen hadn’t been on a picnic since before the last Mr. Prichard’s time as master. He’d been a bachelor his entire adult life, and something of a hermit at that.
Gwen stepped from the spot where the castle wall had once stood and, as she discovered was always the case, slowly floated down to the ground. Nickolas walked toward her, meeting her partway.
“Does this mean you’ll join us?” He seemed so very hopeful. She loved that he wished to have her around. Perhaps she wasn’t as dispensable to him as she feared.
She eyed the impressive spread of food already laid out on the blanket. “I can’t actually eat, you realize.”
“Oh, but that was my plan all along. If I invite guests who don’t eat, I get to eat their portion.”
Gwen smiled at that. “That is a bit devious, Nickolas.”
“I believe the word you meant was ingenious.”
They joined the others at the blanket. While Miss Castleton didn’t seem entirely at ease in the presence of a ghost, she no longer grew alarmingly pale.
“Good afternoon, Gwen,” she offered, every inch the perfect hostess.
“I hope you do not mind that I’ve joined you.” Gwen knew the appropriate protocol required an invitation.
Miss Castleton dismissed the objection with a simple smile and a soothing word of welcome. Everything a gentleman wishes for in a lady. She could see why Nickolas felt that way.
“Besides,” Dafydd added, “this picnic is supposed to be for ‘all the young people.’ We couldn’t very well leave you to spend the afternoon with the parental set.”
“Never mind that I am several centuries older than anyone in ‘the parental set,’” Gwen answered dryly.
The group laughed at that, just as she had intended them to.
Nickolas sat near a plate of sandwiches. Gwen opted to sit nearby but not directly at his side. If he was on the picnic in order to further his suit with Miss Castleton, distance seemed more than called for.
The meal was casual and decidedly friendly. Gwen joined in the conversations, all the while watching the others.
Alys and Griffith behaved just as a sister and brother always seemed to. There was a decided fondness behind their needling of one another. Knowing smiles filled with history counterbalanced the looks of annoyance they occasionally threw at one another. Gwen had been in the company of Alys Davis a few times over the course of the house party and had seldom heard so much as a peep out of her. But her brother managed to pull entire sentences from her.
Gwen missed that feeling of family. A few of Tŷ Mynydd’s masters and mistresses had included her in their family circle as something resembling a distant relative. But not since her mother’s passing had she truly felt the close connection so obvious between the Davis siblings.
She glanced at Nickolas. He smiled at her.
“Griff used to complain all the time about his ‘obnoxious little sister’ when we were kids. They do get along better now than they did then.”
Apparently, Nickolas had noticed her watching the brother and sister. “I was actually thinking how much they seem to like each other and how nice it must be to have family.”
Nickolas’s expression turned wistful. “I don’t think anyone appreciates the appeal of family as much as those who don’t have one.”
How perfectly he’d articulated what she felt. She let her eyes wander back to the others. Perhaps they would all accept her into their circle and she need not be quite as alone as she had been over much of the past four hundred years. With Nickolas there, she would once again feel she had someone who cared about her.
“Are those chrysanthemums?” Miss Castleton asked, her gaze traveling off in the distance.
“I honestly have no idea,” Nickolas answered.
Gwen had to smile at his ignorance. “They are, indeed, chrysanthemums.”
“May I pick some, Mr. Pritchard?” Miss Castleton looked infinitely hopeful.
“If Alys can pilfer my wildflowers, you certainly can.”
Alys gave Nickolas a look of annoyance not unlike the ones she’d given her brother. Gwen wondered if Nickolas knew how much his connection to the Davises resembled that of family.
“Will you come with me, Dafydd?” Miss Castleton asked.
Dafydd assured her he would enjoy the outing. He offered her his hand to help her stand. They walked off arm in arm toward the clump of flowers, their conversation friendly and cheerful. Gwen hadn’t been jealous of such things in all the years she’d spent as a ghost, but she felt more than a twinge of it then. She would love to walk with her arm in Nickolas’s or to simply hold his hand.
“Dafydd and Miss Castleton seem to get along well,” Griffith said to no one in particular.
Gwen looked at Nickolas, wondering what he thought of the closeness she saw between the lady he’d told her he greatly admired and his bachelor friend.
“A good thing too.” That was not the response Gwen would have expected. Had she read too much into the situation? “It would be terribly awkward if they despised each other.”
Griffith popped a macaroon into his mouth and made no further comment. But Gwen saw in his ponderous expression that he was just as puzzled by Nickolas’s lack of concern as she was.
Perhaps he was not as serious in his pursuit of Miss Castleton as everyone believed. A bubble of hope grew inside at the thought. Of course, he might simply be convinced Dafydd and the young lady were no more than friends and posed no threat to his courtship of her.
How she hated even thinking of Nickolas and Miss Castleton in those terms. Gwen thought she’d seen in his face, heard in his voice, that he cared for her. He sought her out. He smiled when their eyes met from across the room. He treated her with a tenderness she didn’t think she’d misinterpreted.
A small voice in her thoughts insisted she was the reason Nickolas no longer paid such pointed attention to his beautiful houseguest. He did still walk around the gardens with Miss Castleton, and they were often thrown together in the evenings after dinner. But Gwen hadn’t seen the same fondness in his eyes that had once been there when he looked at Miss Castleton.
Rather, she thought she saw it when he looked at her.
She held back a small smile. Perhaps, with him there, she would no longer be so entirely alone.
Chapter Fifteen
“And how are we to be entertained tonight?” Nickolas pulled Mrs. Davis aside upon entering the drawing room after dinner several nights after his sojourn in The Tower. “You have been very tight-lipped about your plans, I will have you know.”
She smiled mischievously. He’d seen that exact expression on Griffith’s face more times than he could even remember when they were lads—and always before they’d undertaken some ill-formed scheme or another. “As soon as we are all assembled,” Mrs. Davis said.
Nickolas glanced around the room.
Mr. and Mrs. Castleton sat near the pianoforte. Alys and her father were in conversation beside the fireplace. Griffith had taken up a book. Dafydd and Miss Castleton appeared to be enjoying a lighthearted conversation.
“Are you waiting on Gwen, then?” Nickolas asked.
“Indeed.”
A moment later, Gwen floated into the room looking decidedly uncomfortable but determined just the same.
“Miss Gwenllian.” Mrs. Davis greeted her first. Nickolas couldn’t say Gwen’s proper given name, no ma
tter how hard he tried. Mrs. Davis had no difficulty, despite not being a native speaker of that difficult tongue.
Gwen smiled at their hostess, and Nickolas was struck by the beauty of that gesture. He had always considered Gwen beautiful, despite her pallor—she could not help that, after all—but her smile stole his breath.
“I received your note,” Gwen said to Mrs. Davis.
“I hope I was not too presumptuous,” Mrs. Davis answered.
“Not at all.”
Nickolas very nearly laughed out loud when he considered the absurdity of the situation when viewed from an outside perspective. They were all conversing quite naturally with a ghost. He’d never have believed it possible only a few short days earlier.
“I have had an absolutely wonderful idea for the final days of this gathering and wish all of your input,” Mrs. Davis announced to the room.
She had everyone’s attention.
“The last day of October is Nos Galan Gaeaf, and I believe we ought to hold a gathering of sorts. A small festival, if you will.”
“Nos Galan Gaeaf?” Nickolas asked, the words as unfamiliar as nearly every other Welsh phrase.
“The last day of the year, according to the ancient calendar,” Dafydd explained. “The celebration is a very old folk tradition.”
Nickolas knew Dafydd was fond of tradition and proud of his Welsh heritage, so why did the suggestion seem to make him uneasy? Indeed, his eyes kept darting to Gwen, a look of nervous anticipation on his face.
Gwen’s look proved far more worrisome. Nickolas recognized the spark in her eyes even before he noted the breeze ruffling his guests’ hair. He held his breath, ready to intervene.
“I am to be your Ladi Wen, then?” Gwen asked, her voice tight with an emotive mixture of anger and offense.
What, Nickolas asked himself, was a “Ladi Wen”? He looked between Dafydd, who appeared a little offended as well, and Griffith, who seemed as confused as Nickolas.
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