His heart dropped. “But I love her.”
Griffith gave him a look of empathy. “I know. You may have to resign yourself to being grateful she is alive, even if you must be a stranger to her. If she never regains the past four hundred years of memories, she might never allow you near her.”
He did rejoice for Gwen. She lived and had escaped the cruel machinations of her father and the priest. But in giving her that gift, he’d lost her. The woman he loved saw him as nothing more than a sworn enemy. She might never learn to forgive him. Even in his relief at her release, he felt utterly desolate.
* * *
Nickolas awoke near dinnertime the next evening. He’d returned to the house exhausted and physically spent. He had gone to his rooms by way of Gwen’s but allowed himself only a fleeting glimpse. He knew if he went inside, the weight of all that had happened, the feeling of loss, would overwhelm him. He would simply collapse in there, unable to summon the strength, physically or mentally, to leave her place of solace and refuge.
He had reached his bed and fallen on top of it, fully clothed, and slipped into a fitful sleep. Again and again, the night’s events replayed in his dreams. He felt Gwen in his arms once more, relived that moment of euphoria when he realized she was alive, that he hadn’t lost her after all, only to come crashing back to the moment she fled.
He dressed with care and shaved before making his way with reluctant determination to the drawing room to face his guests. There was much they would need and want to know. He would do his best to tell them what he could. He decided before entering the room that he would not tell all. Mr. Castleton, at the very least, could be counted on to dog Gwen’s heels if he knew a former ghost, something Nickolas doubted anyone had ever heard of, was in the vicinity. He would have to tell them something though. Nickolas wished he’d thought to consult Dafydd and Griffith first so they could concoct the same story.
He came across Griffith not long after emerging from his room. Did he look half as tired as Griffith did?
“I wondered if we’d see you at all today,” Griffith said. “How are you getting on?”
“Terribly.” But he managed a halfhearted smile.
Griffith walked with him a pace or two. “I spoke with Dafydd this morning.”
“And?” Nickolas was anxious for news of Gwen.
“He is busy with a houseguest at the moment.” The comment was pointed enough to be clear. Dafydd had found Gwen, and she was safe at the vicarage.
Nickolas breathed a sigh of relief as that weight lifted from his mind. “How is his houseguest adapting to . . . everything?”
“He said she is overwhelmed and confused.”
Poor Gwen.
“But he also told me she seems less terrified. She is coming to trust him a little.”
Gwen was learning to trust Dafydd, but could she ever trust him, an Englishman like those who’d attacked her home? If she never remembered him, would she give him a chance to show her he was different?
“I thought you would like to know she was safe,” Griffith added.
Nickolas nodded and thanked him.
“For what it’s worth to you,” Griffith said, “I’m holding out hope that everything will work out for the best.”
“I am attempting to do the same.”
Griffith tipped him a laughing smile. “This is Wales. Extraordinary things happen here every day.”
Nickolas was grateful for the reason to smile, if only briefly. He felt minimally better as he continued, alone, down the corridor.
Several doors before the drawing room, the sound of quiet weeping caught his attention. He peered inside the room and saw, to his surprise, Miss Castleton with her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
“Miss Castleton?” he asked, disturbed by her obvious suffering. He may not have felt a passionate love for the young lady, but he did care about her feelings.
She looked up at him. Nickolas could see this was no minor distress. She had the look of one who was weeping her very heart out.
“Oh, Mr. Pritchard!”
Nickolas crossed to where she sat wringing a thoroughly drenched lacy handkerchief. He offered her one of his larger, more utilitarian squares of linen. “What has upset you, Miss Castleton?” he asked, disturbed by the sudden realization that he was not entirely sure what her first name was. Carol? Charlotte?
“Forgive me, sir. I am not usually such a . . . a . . . goose!” She looked nearly exasperated with herself, the tiniest bit of amusement showing through her obvious distress.
Nickolas had to smile at that. She was showing a little backbone, something she did not always do.
“It is only that . . . that . . .” She sniffled. Nickolas very much feared the floodgates were about to open once more. “He didn’t come back when you did. He hasn’t been here at all today. I am so worried that he is hurt or ill or upset. It isn’t like him to not even send his regrets when he doesn’t join us.”
Nickolas tried to make sense of the rambling explanation. “He?”
“Dafydd,” she cried. “You look so very worn out after whatever happened last night. What if he, too, is suffering? He is there all alone with no one to look out for him. His cook scarcely counts. She doesn’t love him the way—”
She stopped so suddenly and turned so ridiculously red that Nickolas had no difficulty finishing her sentence on his own. Miss Castleton was in love with Dafydd. Just as Nickolas was in love with Gwen. So why in heaven’s name were they marrying each other?
Further speculation brought a second realization crashing in on him. Dafydd had been withdrawn and unhappy ever since Nickolas’s engagement to Miss Castleton. Hadn’t the vicar left rather abruptly the night of the announcement? Those two had spent a great deal of time together previous to the betrothal and almost none since, though Nickolas could recall both glancing in the other’s direction repeatedly whenever they were in company.
“Miss Castleton.” He squared his shoulders and rose from the sofa. “Will you accompany me on a short walk?”
She nodded but looked nervous. What woman wouldn’t be anxious to face a fiancé to whom she had very nearly blurted out her love for another man?
The butler and Miss Castleton’s abigail were duly summoned, Miss Castleton clothed against the cold outdoors, and a message dispatched to Mr. and Mrs. Castleton that their daughter and her intended were going for a quick turn about the grounds.
A few minutes later, Nickolas knocked quite anxiously on the door of the vicarage.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Mr. Pritchard,” Miss Castleton anxiously whispered. “Oh, why have you brought me here?”
“You may thank me prettily at the end of the evening, Miss Castleton. I am about to save all of us from misery.”
“I—”
Whatever response she might have made was cut off when Dafydd himself opened the door. His words were likewise muted when his eyes fell on Miss Castleton. The look of love reflected in both pairs of eyes made Nickolas roll his own at their collective stupidity.
“We have all been deucedly foolish,” Nickolas declared, pushing past Dafydd and into the warm confines of the tidy vicarage. “Do not leave the poor lady out in the cold,” Nickolas chastised when he noticed Dafydd remained frozen in place, looking longingly into the eyes of the lady he obviously adored.
Dafydd seemed to remember himself then and ushered her inside. “I really ought to reprimand you for your language,” Dafydd said to Nickolas.
“You being the staid vicar and all?” Nickolas raised an ironic eyebrow.
“Precisely.” Dafydd almost smiled. “But I confess my curiosity has overcome my better judgment, and I am simply going to ask you what this is all about.”
“Miss Castleton is in desperate need of rescuing.” The knowledge that he was about to escape what would probably have been a relatively happy marriage to a kind and good lady proved surprisingly uplifting.
“Rescuing?” The look of concern that ins
tantly entered Dafydd’s eyes removed every last doubt Nickolas had.
“She is on the verge of being whisked off to a life of utter misery at the hands of a man who neither deserves her nor adequately appreciates her.”
Dafydd looked amusedly confused. Miss Castleton simply looked confused.
“It is up to you to save her, Dafydd, and up to her to allow herself to be saved. I, of course, am far too much of a gentleman to contemplate anything so vulgar as backing out of an obligation.”
“Save her?”
“You are aggravatingly slow this evening, Dafydd. Sweep the poor damsel off her feet and save her from a fate worse than death. I am perfectly ready to be heartlessly jilted.”
Sudden understanding dawned in Miss Castleton’s eyes. Her expression grew unmistakably hopeful as she looked up at Dafydd, who was smiling rather triumphantly. He snaked an arm around Miss Castleton in a move so smoothly possessive Nickolas couldn’t help but be impressed.
“I will leave you two to work out the details of your daring deed,” Nickolas said, feeling more like himself than he had in some time.
“Wait, Nickolas.” Dafydd stopped him before he’d even moved. “While I . . . um . . .” He cleared his throat and even blushed a little. Nickolas actually laughed out loud. “What I am trying to say is, would you be the superbly mannered gentleman I know you to be and see if my guest, in the back sitting room, is in need of anything?”
Instantly, Nickolas was on the alert. He knew the hinting look in Dafydd’s eyes. He left the soon-to-be-engaged couple and moved swiftly toward the back of the vicarage. His steps, however, slowed as he approached the door.
She likely wouldn’t recognize him, might even be afraid of him still.
But a thought registered in the very next instant. He was free! Just as she was. If he had to court her all over again, he would be more than willing. He would be happy to, in fact. He simply must determine his behavior by following her lead. If she was skittish, he would go slowly. If she was feeling more herself, he could flirt and tease and compliment as he had before. How he hoped for the latter, for both their sakes.
Nickolas knocked on the door. Welsh words he hoped meant “come in” answered. He slowly opened the door, shutting it softly behind him as he stepped inside. His eyes found Gwen at the window.
Her hair hung loosely behind her, cascading in waves of deepest red. Dafydd had somehow managed to procure her a new gown in an awe-inspiring shade of green. He moved quietly to where she stood, still gazing out at a view of Tŷ Mynydd in the distance.
“Hello, Gwen,” he said softly.
She looked up at him. Nickolas’s breath caught in his lungs. Gads, she was beautiful. Stunning. And completely confused.
“I think I should know you,” she whispered in English and shook her head. “But I can’t . . . quite . . .” Her eyes returned to the scenery lit by the last traces of sunset. “It is all very frustrating.”
“I would imagine so.” He laid his hand slowly on top of hers, giving her time to pull away if she wished. But her hand remained in his, a frisson of awareness passing upward through his arm at the contact he’d tried to achieve so many times without being able to. “Do you remember nothing?”
“Very little,” she said. “Only snatches here and there.”
“And Dafydd, er—” She did know that was his name, didn’t she?
“My host,” Gwen finished for him.
“Yes. Has he explained any of this to you?”
“He has tried.”
She looked up at him once more. It was all Nickolas could do to keep from folding her in his arms and kissing that sweet little mouth. But as she still didn’t know him from Adam, it hardly seemed the time.
“He informed me that I was dead for nearly four hundred years and had terrorized the neighborhood quite mercilessly. I am further informed that this is the year 1805, the King is quite irretrievably mad, the country is at war with France—something that is not difficult to believe—and that Wales is, and has been for some time, quite decidedly reconciled with England.” She took a deep, obviously fortifying breath. “It is a great deal to take in at one time.”
“I can understand that.” Nickolas felt his smile growing. This was his Gwen. So determined in the face of adversity.
“But then, he also told me he is the vicar, which I have a very difficult time believing. I keep seeing him, in my mind, as a little boy quite happily disrupting Sunday services.” Gwen shrugged. “He says he finds my selective memory very lowering.”
Nickolas laughed. Yes. This was his Gwen.
Something in his laugh caught her attention, and she turned to fully face him. “I do know you,” she said, though her brow was still furrowed with confusion. “But I don’t remember how.”
“Allow me to replenish that unreliable memory of yours,” Nickolas said, pleased to see a smile growing on her lips. “I, whom you have more than once denounced for being too English, inherited Tŷ Mynydd from a distant cousin and came here with every intention of living the boring and uneventful life of a typical landowner. This would have been quite easily accomplished, except I soon found that my home housed a most mischievous and vexing ghost.”
“Mischievous and vexing?” Gwen said, a teasing aspect to her tone. “That does not sound like anyone I remember.”
But do you remember me? he silently wondered. “You declared war on my entire household, I will have you know. Going so far as to take possession of the pianoforte to pound out—”
“A Welsh battle anthem,” Gwen finished for him, obviously surprised that she remembered.
“Precisely. But then my charm and wit won you over, and we stopped being enemies.”
“Did we?” She watched him closely. Nickolas fervently hoped she had begun to remember him.
“You forgave my tendencies to be English and to misspell my last name, and I forgave your tendency to terrorize my houseguests,” Nickolas added.
“Especially the one who stared at me all the time,” Gwen said almost to herself, her gaze returning to the window.
“Especially him. And I was forever finding you gazing out of windows.”
Again, she spun to face him. “You’ve said that before.”
Nickolas nodded.
“And you do not speak Welsh,” she added.
“Sadly, no. Though you told me, once upon a time, that you might be able to forgive that flaw in me, especially in light of the fact that my ancestry could be traced back to good Welsh stock. One could, you decided, simply overlook the other side of my family.”
Her eyes narrowed in concentration. He could feel her studying him. Nickolas squeezed her hand, still held in his own, willing her to remember him. He would court her for as long as it took, but he was praying for a quick resolution. Patience did not come easily when all he wished to do was hold her and kiss her as he never could before.
Gwen’s eyes dropped to the hand holding her own. She studied it as intently as she had his face. Her other hand lightly touched the back of his, her fingers running along the barely visible scars that ran the length of it.
“The dragon turned out to be a cat,” she whispered. “Thus ended your career as a valiant knight.”
“Yes, Gwen.” She remembered the story he’d told her. He himself only recalled having done so because she mentioned it.
Her face turned back up to his, her eyes wide with something akin to amazement. Quite suddenly, there were tears in her eyes. He braced himself. She was crying. What had he done?
“Nickolas,” she whispered.
His arms were around her so fast Nickolas wasn’t sure she realized what had happened. “Oh, my darling,” he breathed against her hair. “Please say you remember me now.”
“Nickolas.” She simply repeated the whispered name.
He held her tighter, his hands reveling in the solidity of her. He listened to each breath she took, memorized the unique flowerlike scent of her hair. My Gwen, he repeated over and over in his mind.
She was real, and she was in his arms.
Gwen suddenly stiffened, and Nickolas felt himself panic. “Gwen?”
“Oh, Nickolas,” she said, her tone one of absolute sorrow. “You . . . You are . . .”
“What is it, Gwen?” He reached out and stroked her cheek, but she pulled farther back.
“You are engaged,” she said, her face suddenly very pale again. “I only just remembered, or I never would have . . . I would not have . . .” Where she had been pale a moment before, she was now blushing quite adorably.
“Would not have flung yourself at me?”
“Flung myself?” Oh, she hadn’t lost any of her fire, that was for sure and certain. Obviously, his descriptive verb choice didn’t meet with her approval. Nickolas very nearly laughed in awed amazement at the spark in her eyes. Heavens, he loved this woman! “I have never flung myself at a man in all my life . . . or death, for that matter. I will have you know, I—”
Her words of chastisement were abruptly and pleasantly cut off by the simple act of placing his fingers lightly over her lips. His blood pumped fast in his veins.
“Have a little sympathy, my dear,” Nickolas said. “I have only just been quite cruelly jilted. I am not certain I will ever recover from the shock. Could you not be a little more sympathetic? Soothe my battered soul or something of that nature?”
“Jilted?” she said from beneath his word-muffling fingers.
“Most cruelly.” Nickolas shook his head as if shocked by what had occurred. He allowed his hand to drift along her jaw, slide below her ear, and come to a rest at the back of her neck. His other hand slid around her waist, drawing her closer to him. “I am in sore need of consolation.”
“Miss Castleton really did release you from your engagement?” Gwen closed her eyes, breathing less steadily than before. He found it quite gratifying to see that she was not indifferent to his touch.
“She is going to marry the vicar,” Nickolas said, lightly pressing his lips to her forehead as he spoke. It wasn’t a kiss but affected him deeply enough that it might have been. Part of him refused to believe he actually held her in his arms. Only twenty-four hours earlier, such a thing would have been impossible to even imagine. “And I am going to marry the ghost.”
An Unlikely Match Page 19