Page 1 of To Swoon and to Spar
Prologue
Trethwick Abbey, Cornwall, April 1818
It was a dark andstormy night—or, rather, it should have been.
In reality, it was a sunny, breezy afternoon—one of those mild April days that truly felt as though summer were properly on its way. It had been a wet, cold winter, and Penvale had more than once wondered why, precisely, he’d thought it wise to leave London to return to Cornwall inJanuary,of all months.
Today, however, he could not help thinking that the atmosphere would be well served by some of the bleak, stormy weather for which his ancestral home was so famed. Because he—Peter Bourne, seventh Viscount Penvale, owner of one of the oldest stately homes in all of England—was ghost-hunting.
Penvale didn’t really believe in ghosts, of course. He was a practical man, not given to flights of fancy. There was simply no chance that a house—and certainly nothishouse—could be haunted.
And yet here he was.
“Did you hear that?” his wife asked.
Penvale turned slowly, surveying their surroundings. “I did,” he said, squinting into the gloom. It might have been a sunny afternoon,but they were in one of the unused bedrooms on the third floor, the curtains drawn to prevent any light from entering, the furniture still covered to ward off dust, and this all lent an eerie, lonely mood to their activities.
The household staff was in the process of airing out these rooms in preparation for a house party they would be hosting in a couple of weeks’ time. Penvale’s sister and brother-in-law and closest friends would be staying with them for a fortnight, taking in the sea air, enjoying long walks along the scenic cliffs atop which Trethwick Abbey was perched, and generally savoring all the comforts the estate had to offer.
Penvale thought a haunting might cast a bit of a pallor on the proceedings.
“I think it came from the wardrobe,” his wife continued uncertainly, her large blue-violet eyes mirroring some of his own unease.
A moment of silence.
“The wardrobe,” Penvale repeated, casting a wary glance at the piece of furniture in question, a hulking presence in one corner. “Well, I suppose I should check inside.”
“Yes,” his wife agreed.
Neither one moved.
“Penvale?” she prompted.
“Yes, of course,” he said, taking a few steps toward the wardrobe; no sooner had he made it halfway across the room, however, than there was another ominousthump,this one coming from the opposite wall.
Penvale paused. “That,” he pronounced with great certainty, “did not come from the wardrobe.” He turned back to his wife, noticing that she’d gone paler.
“No?” she ventured, her voice more hesitant than he’d ever heard it.
“No,” he said more firmly, advancing on her slowly. Her eyes werefixed on his face as he approached, close enough that he could detect the fresh citrus scent that always clung to her skin.
Then, without warning, the silence between them was shattered by an earsplitting, unearthly scream.
And the candle in his wife’s hand flickered out.
Chapter One
London, three months earlier
Penvale had known nothing goodcould possibly come from his butler’s appearance at the study door before the man even opened his mouth.
To begin with, it was not yet noon, and Penvale’s friends weren’t the sort to call on him this early. Some—his sister, for one—had adopted the fashionable practice of sleeping late, and the others were so smugly, happily married that there was little temptation to stray far from home until considerably later in the day. Penvale was in the habit of morning exercise—a swim in the warmer months, a walk or a ride in the winter—and then a couple of hours spent in his study, with a general understanding between him and his staff that he was not to be disturbed. But the wary look on his butler’s face informed him that whatever was about to come out of Smithers’s mouth was not likely to improve his morning.
“My lord, your uncle is here to see you.”
Penvale swore. His uncle was his father’s younger—and only—brother, but the two men had been estranged for years prior toPenvale’s father’s death, and every interaction Penvale had ever had with his uncle had led him to believe the man an utter ass.
“Thank you, Smithers,” he said wearily, resisting the temptation to allow his head to drop to his desk. “You may show him in.”
