Chapter Six
Asecond afternoon passed without a single sighting of anyone no longer living.
Burke had expected his stop in Brecknockshire to be a quick one, a few hours at most, and yet he wasn’t the least put out.
Mr. Pryce had allowed him to peruse his small library in the hope of finding something expounding upon the history of their ghost. Mrs. Pryce, though clearly awed by Burke’s exalted connections, had, nonetheless, not treated him any differently than she had when he’d first arrived.
He and Trevor had passed a late evening sharing tales of academic woes and explaining, with a level of detail only a fellow scholar could appreciate, their individual areas of expertise.
Trevor had joined them on an impromptu picnic.
Enid had, during Burke and Trevor’s admittedly long discussion of least favorite subjects in school, drifted off to sleep, curled into a C on the picnic blanket.
Trevor had eventually wandered to the far side of the gardens to examine a tree he found particularly intriguing, he being a botanist.
Burke leaned back against the trunk of a nearby tree— one apparently too dull to capture Trevor’s attention— and took a moment to let the idyllic nature of his current situation settle over him.
Wales truly was a magical place.
His gaze drifted, as it so often did, to Enid.
He’d despaired of ever meeting a lady like her, one who eschewed false pretenses and who exuded such a love of life.
His income was insignificant, the Mouldsworth estate and fortunes being very tightly held in entailment.
Unlike the rest of his family, he was not willing to crush himself under piles of debt in order to live exorbitantly.
Most young ladies of the ton would consider him inarguably ineligible.
But Enid lived a quiet and, by the standards of the gentry, simple life.
She, having a brother in Burke’s precise circumstances, understood the principles of economy.
If any lady might be willing to consider him as a prospective suitor, she might.
Lud, he was getting far ahead of himself. “One would think I was on the verge of dragging her off to Gretna Green at any moment.”
“You must not take what is not yours.”
Burke’s head jerked in the direction of the stern voice. There, translucent, menacing, and plain as day, stood a ghost. An honest-to-goodness ghost.
A ghost.
He’d not entirely dismissed the possibility that the specter was real but was still entirely unprepared for coming face-to-face with one.
“Good afternoon.” The rote greeting felt utterly ridiculous in that moment. His thoughts were too jumbled and circling in too many directions for clear thinking.
He’d formed in his mind an image of how he believed Dafydd Gam had looked, and the specter did not resemble that imagining at all, and not simply because this Dafydd Gam was not solid.
The original Gam had received that name in reference to a problem with his eyes, though there was some debate as to whether that something was a squint, eyes that crossed, or an eye that was missing.
There appeared nothing out of the ordinary in the ghost’s eyes.
Surely the Pryces’ predecessors would have known this about the well-known historical figure.
Burke had assumed that aspect of his person had been their means of identifying the ghost as the famous Welshman.
That riddle, however, slipped to the back of his thoughts, another one taking its place. You must not take what is not yours. Had he been accused of plotting to kidnap Enid? He supposed he had hinted at that.
“I meant my comment about Gretna Green in jest,” he told the ghost. Ghost. Good heavens. “I don’t actually intend to run off with her.”
The ghost set his fists on his hips and glared at Burke with unmistakable doubt.
“I swear to it. Indeed, I cannot imagine she would go with me even if I asked. I’m not at all certain she will allow me to return here again.
” And once she knew he’d seen her garden ghost, Enid would consider Burke’s business in Brecknockshire as complete.
He’d have no choice but to leave without having earned even the smallest bit of her regard.
He could not allow that to happen.
“I don’t suppose you could be persuaded to keep out of sight for another day or two?”
The apparition threw his hands upward, gaze following suit. Apparently he found Burke’s request particularly annoying.
“I am only asking for a few days,” Burke said. “You needn’t even stay away altogether, only whilst Enid and I are together. So long as she doesn’t know I’ve seen you, I won’t have to leave.”
The ghost shook his translucent head, not in refusal or denial but in growing irritation. Could ghosts be reasoned with? Burke was not at all sure, never having made the attempt himself.
Burke knew Dafydd Gam— if this spirit was, indeed, the famed Welshman— had been married. Many 15th-century marriages were arranged, so his might not have been a romantic connection. But love was universally understood. “Surely you can appreciate the urgency of winning a woman’s regard.”
The ghost’s eyes turned downward. In a quiet, sad voice, he repeated, “You must not take what is not yours.”
Somehow Burke knew the remark was not aimed at him. The phantom had directed the censure at himself. There was a self-defeat to the moment that did not at all fit the character of a man who had been almost ruthless in battle, never shirking from a fight or a challenge.
“No, one must not take something that belongs to another,” Burke said. He threw caution to the wind. “Including another person’s name.”
That brought the ghost’s eyes to him once more, but not in anger or shock or fear. A painful hope filled his features.
“You aren’t Dafydd Gam, are you?”
The ghost sighed but neither nodded nor shook his head. Was he forbidden from doing so? Was this some form of punishment?
Burke rose and walked slowly toward him. “Can you tell me who you are?”
The ghost simply watched him, quiet and still, but with an intensity that set the hairs on Burke’s neck on end.
“If we could sort out the mystery of who you are—” He didn’t finish the question; he didn’t need to. Everything about the apparition suddenly turned pleading.
The ghost’s identity was tied to his imprisonment in this garden, perhaps even to his pet phrase. He was trapped, both physically and linguistically.
“Oh, no.” Enid, apparently, had awoken. “You promised.”
Burke turned back to face her, ready to apologize, though he wasn’t at all certain what vow he’d broken. She, however, was not looking at him. She stood and walked right past him, directly to the ghost.
She plopped her hands on her hips. “Dafydd Gam. What is the meaning of this?”
“He is not Dafydd Gam,” Burke said.
“Of course he is.” But doubt entered her tone. “Isn’t he?”
“We’ve had something of a conversation,” Burke explained, “and I am convinced he is not the legendary cohort of Henry V. I am further certain that his extended sojourn in your garden has been pressed upon him, only to be ended when someone discovers his actual identity.”
Enid stepped closer to the still-silent specter. “Is this true?”
Again, no nod, no shake of the head. Yet somehow the answer was conveyed.
Enid pressed a hand over her heart. “Oh, you poor soul. Have you waited all this time for someone to solve your mystery?”
“I believe he has.”
She turned fully back to Burke, clasping his hands and looking earnestly up into his face. “We must help him, Burke. We must.”
How could he possibly refuse? “It might take time.”
“I do not mind if you don’t mind.”
“I would not mind in the least.”
***
“He has always been Dafydd Gam.” Mr. Pryce was struggling to accept the change in his family specter’s identity. “Who else could he possibly be?”
That was precisely the question Burke, Enid, and Trevor had been attempting to answer for six hours now.
“Have you come upon anything?” Enid asked her brother.
He looked up from the genealogical pages of the family Bible. “The only names in here match those buried in the churchyard. None of them ought to be wandering the earth for all eternity.”
Enid leaned her chin into her upturned hand. “Perhaps he isn’t a Pryce.”
“Perhaps not,” Burke said, “although it would have explained his presence on your family estate.”
“The garden hasn’t always belonged to the estate,” Mr. Pryce said from his position near the fireplace. “It was part of Grandfather’s mother’s dowry.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Burke caught Enid’s eye and saw that she, too, understood the significance of that tidbit.
Trevor bent over the family Bible once more. “I assume this was your paternal grandfather.”
“Of course.”
“He was married to—” Trevor pulled out the final syllable as his gaze slid over the page. “—Mair Bleddyn. So, the Bleddyn family likely first discovered our ghost.”
“I can’t say the land was the Bleddyns’ as long ago as the Last War for Independence.” Mr. Pryce was managing to be both a help and a hindrance.
“Are there still Bleddyns nearby?” Burke never had been able to let a mystery go unsolved. “Perhaps we could ask them.”
That suggestion set off a chain of events.
Over the next few days, they visited the Bleddyn estate, only to be sent to speak with the Rhyses, who suggested they look over the parish records.
When they found very little there that dated back far enough, the vicar proposed they talk with the butcher, who shared a great many diverting tales, none of which were particularly pertinent.
They returned to the Pryce home with as few answers as they’d had before.
“What if we are never able to discover his identity?” Enid’s enthusiasm hadn’t waned, but she had grown increasingly less certain of their success. “The poor man will be trapped in our garden for eternity.”
Burke reached across the carriage and took her hand, something she had permitted him to do more and more often of late. “We will free him somehow.”
“But no one can tell us anything of these lands four hundred years ago.”
Her downcast expression was rather more than he could bear. “Please, do not lose hope. We have not exhausted our resources yet.”
Trevor chuckled lightly. “If you’re trying to perk the girl up, you’d best do it properly. Slip across the carriage and sit beside her. I’ll not tattle.”
Burke literally jumped at the opportunity.
He sat next to her. Emboldened by the welcoming smile he received, he raised her hand and pressed a light kiss there.
“If we cannot sort the mystery out here, I have access to a great many records and writings at Cambridge, some of which are quite old and rare. We might even convince your brother to undertake a similar search at his university, inferior as it is.”
Trevor grinned as he shook his head.
Enid did not share their lighthearted mood. “You are leaving?”
Though hers was not a tone of heartbreak, she did sound genuinely disappointed. That was a good sign. “I need to return to Cambridge. I have classes to teach and students who are depending on me. Not to mention a dog I sincerely hope has missed me.”
“Yes, you mustn’t neglect the dog.” Her teasing tone was rather strained.
“He is being looked after, but I can only trespass upon my neighbor’s hospitality for so long, just as I can only press upon your family’s generosity a short while longer.
” He let that hover in the air between them, knowing that if she asked him to stay or told him her affection for him would make his departure a misery, he would find any excuse to remain.
“You will send word if you discover anything?”
That was her concern? He, too, wished to free the ghost trapped in her garden, but he’d thought she might at least express some wish for him to remain, or, at the very least, some real regret at the necessity of his departure.
He nearly asked, nearly confessed his own regrets. But tender feelings were regarded as such for a reason: they were, by definition, tender. That risk was real and personal, and the undertaking was anything but simple. “If I find any information, I will be certain to pass it along,” he said.
They spent the remainder of their ride in silence, sitting side by side, but not touching and not looking at each other. Perhaps there’d simply not been enough time for her to grow fond of him. Perhaps she’d simply not been interested enough to try.
What do I have to offer, really? A life of economy. An exalted family I am rather estranged from. Years of listening to me wax poetic about events and people who passed hundreds of years ago.
They were having a diverting adventure, nothing more. And he was her friend, nothing more.
He could not have felt more alone if he had been a ghost trapped inside a botanic prison.