Page 10 of To Swoon and to Spar
“Warn me of what?” Penvale asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral; he could tell that his uncle was trying to get some sort of reaction out of him.
“The fact that the house you just paid me so handsomely for”—here, his uncle paused dramatically; Penvale kept his eyes resolutely fixed ahead, refusing to humor this fit of theatrics—“ishaunted.”
Penvale snorted. “You cannot be serious,” he said. “What did you actually want to speak to me about?”
“You may laugh now,” his uncle said dramatically, “but you’ll change your tune soon enough, once you arrive. I thought you should be prepared.”
“Uncle,” Penvale said, with what he felt was admirable patience, “I know that you do not truly believe that the spirit of the fourth viscount is lurking in the wine cellar, so why don’t you tell me what this is actually about?”
“There have been… problems,” his uncle said. “Missing objects that turn up in an entirely different place than where they belong. Strange noises at night. A figure in white seen rounding a corner in a darkened hallway but never coming close enough to touch. I found something that looked like a bloodstain on my bedspread one night, and—” Here he broke off with a shudder; Penvale, certain that this was for dramatic effect, refused to ask him to finish the sentence.
“I shall be on my guard,” he said dryly, wondering if this was his uncle’s idea of an elaborate joke.
“I can see that you think this is my final trick—convincing you that there is something unnatural afoot. But,” his uncle said, taking a step closer, “my trick was convincing you to marry Jane and take this house off my hands. I’m well aware that you could have paid a higher price for it, but I consider myself well rid of it. It’s your problem now—and so is Jane.”
Penvale’s irritation was simmering beneath the surface, but he refused to allow his uncle to see it; he’d never been one for unnecessary displays of emotion, and he was generally slow to anger, difficult to provoke. He wouldn’t let his uncle be the one to cause him to act otherwise. “Describe the viscountess that way again,” he said, his voice mild, “and I’ll ensure you’re not admitted to a single drawing room in London.”
This was not an idle threat—his own title would do a lot of the work for him if he truly wished to see his uncle cast out of polite society, and he was certain that Diana could do the rest. His uncle seemed to recognize this truth, because his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing more.
“Good day, Uncle,” Penvale said, offering a curt nod as he turned to head back in the direction of Bourne House. “Let’s try to avoid meeting any time in the remotely near future, shall we?”
He walked away before his uncle had the chance to reply.
Penvale and Jane’s leave-taking the following morning was achieved with significantly more fanfare than either one of them might have desired.
“I wish I were an only child,” Penvale said gloomily as soon ashe walked out the front door of Bourne House to find his sister and friends assembled at the bottom of the steps.
“That’s the spirit, brother dearest!” Diana said cheerfully. It was a sunny day at last, and Diana—who did not believe in bonnets but made an exception for elaborate hats—was smiling at him from where she was tucked under Jeremy’s arm. She was wearing a wool gown of a vibrant blue, complete with a matching fur-lined pelisse and hat.
“We couldn’t let you vanish into the Cornish wilderness without saying our proper farewells,” Audley said darkly, but there was a twinkle in his eye, and Violet was dimpling beside him.
Penvale turned, realizing that he’d been so busy projecting an air of weary resignation at his friends that he’d forgotten about Jane. He found her hovering in the doorway, frowning at the scene below. Penvale took quick steps toward her and offered her his arm. “Are you ready?” he asked her in an undertone.
Those vivid eyes of hers were fixed first on his friends assembled in the street and then, apparently, on his cravat. “Why are they here?”
He heaved a sigh. “Because it’s what they do.” He leaned closer. “It’s their way of showing affection, but I can’t let on that I know that, or it will only encourage them.”
She glanced up at him, their eyes locking for a second. “They’re displeased you’re leaving.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” he said, then paused. “Well, yes,” he allowed. “But they’re pleased that Trethwick Abbey is mine again, even if it means not having me at their beck and call at all times.”
He’d said it jokingly, in an attempt to lighten her strangely heavy mood, but her expression remained somber. “You needn’t make excuses for them—it’s not a bad thing, having friends who care for you.” She reached out and took his proffered arm. “Shall we?”
The next few minutes were a flurry of well-wishes and promises to visit: “As soon as the roads clear of mud this spring, we’ll be there, whether you want us or not!” was Diana’s way of saying farewell, which sounded more like a threat than a promise. By the time they were safely in Penvale’s carriage, tucked under blankets with warm bricks to ward off the chill, he was feeling slightly weary from the whirlwind. He loved his friends, but they could be a bit much at times—one of the reasons he’d always been perfectly content to trail along in their wake rather than leading the charge into whatever their latest adventure might be. He glanced across the carriage at Jane, who was seated opposite him, and he froze; if he’d been a bit drained by his friends’ exuberant farewell, she looked positively exhausted. Her face was drawn, and she leaned her head against the seat back, her eyes shut.
Penvale relished the opportunity to study her for a moment, unobserved. With her eyes closed, she looked younger. Shewasyoung, he thought—one-and-twenty was not young to be married, but the fact that she’d never had a proper Season and was freshly arrived from the country without ever having mingled in fashionable society made her seem younger than Diana and her friends had at the same age. By the time Diana was twenty-one, she’d already been wed and widowed and was mistress of her own home, subject to no one’s whims but her own. Jane, however, had been handed from one man to the next like a cow bartered between farmers.
Her eyes fluttered open, catching him once more in that vivid gaze—for approximately half a second before her face creased into a frown. He wondered if he should begin taking offense to the fact that she seemed to frown whenever she saw him.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked, her eyes skittering off him to focus on something outside the window. The carriage had begunmoving, jostling slightly as it rolled along, and through the window, Penvale could see a series of Mayfair mansions flashing by. “You look like a deer.”
“Adeer?” Penvale asked, indignant.
“You are familiar with them, I assume?” she asked. “Despite the fact that you’ve spent so much time in town? Long of leg, brown of hair, round of eye?”
“I know what a bloody deer is, thank you. I’ve simply never been compared to one.”
“There’s a first time for everything, I suppose,” she said, watching London pass by out the window, but she turned away after a moment, rummaging in the valise she’d insisted on bringing with her into the carriage, separate from the rest of her luggage. After a few seconds of searching, she triumphantly extracted a well-used copy of a book whose title Penvale couldn’t make out; he noted numerous dog-eared pages and worn lettering on the spine and concluded that this was not Jane’s first time reading this particular volume.
