Page 14 of To Swoon and to Spar
“Did you wish to go to your room to rest this afternoon?” he asked Jane.
“Because sitting in a carriage is so exhausting.”
“Ah, Jane, you do sweeten any conversation,” he said amiably; he might have the world’s most ill-tempered wife, but he wasn’t going to allow her to sour his mood this evening. He washere,at Trethwick Abbey, realizing a dream that had been years in the making.
Today was a glorious day.
“My lady,” came a sharp voice, and Penvale turned to see Jane looking inquiringly at a woman of middling years who was wearing a perfectly pressed apron and demure lace cap. Her brown skin was faintly lined, and there were streaks of gray evident in her dark hair, but her gaze was alert and wary. Penvale surmised that this was the housekeeper—a different woman than the one who had held the position in his boyhood.
“Yes, Mrs. Ash?” Jane asked, her voice gentler than it normally was.
“The… mysterious events,” Mrs. Ash said ominously. “They have resumed once more.”
“What do you mean?” Jane asked, frowning; she cast a quick half-glance over her shoulder, as if hoping Penvale hadn’t heard.
“Several members of staff have reported hearing odd sounds,” Mrs. Ash said, a hint of ghoulish pleasure evident in her voice. “Strange moans—one could almost mistake them for the howling of the wind, except we’ve heard them on perfectly still nights. One of the maids heard a baby crying. There were footsteps overhead, coming from a room that’s been closed up for years, no signs of footprints in the dust when we went to investigate.”
Penvale’s brow furrowed as he listened; this, undoubtedly, was what his uncle had meant by his rather peculiar warning back in London. Apparently, he hadn’t been fabricating it entirely.
“Mrs. Ash, is it?” he asked, stepping forward, feeling that he shouldtake this situation in hand. She nodded, unblinking, her expression cool. She offered the shallowest of curtseys. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” Penvale continued, offering her a bland smile, “and my uncle mentioned something similar to me before I left London. I hope you and the other servants have not been too distressed.”
“One of the housemaids has threatened to quit, my lord,” Mrs. Ash said, any hint of warmth that had been present in her manner toward Jane now entirely absent. Penvale supposed the household staff must be somewhat uncertain about his arrival, having no notion of what sort of employer he would prove to be. “And,” she added, “the lads don’t like to let on that they’re frightened, but everyone is on edge.” She spoke the words almost as a challenge.
“I’m sure they are,” he said slowly, his mind working. Privately, he thought it likely that one of the “lads” was behind this series of events—though for what purpose beyond frightening the housemaids, he couldn’t guess. “Now that Lady Penvale and I are home, I would be more than happy to investigate. We can’t have any housemaids quitting, after all.”
“Indeed, my lord,” Mrs. Ash murmured, not sounding convinced that he would be able to solve this puzzle. “Shall I show you the house?” she asked more briskly. “We weren’t certain when you’d be arriving, or I’d have had the staff waiting to meet you out front.”
“There’s no cause for that,” Penvale said, following the housekeeper as she set off through the high-ceilinged entrance hall, Jane at his side. “It’s a freezing day, I wouldn’t want them to all line up in this weather to greet us.” He felt Jane’s eyes on his face for a fleeting second, but when he glanced down at her, she was looking away.
As they went from room to room, Penvale spotted a familiar piece of furniture here, a portrait there. He could fault his uncle for manythings, but he appeared to have been a fairly scrupulous caretaker of the house, and he had employed a competent staff—there were no worn cushions or faded wall hangings or dusty shelves to be seen. Casting a sideways glance at Jane, listening intently to Mrs. Ash, he wondered how much of her own touch could be seen here. Had she taken a hand in the running of the house?
…and through here we have the library,” Mrs. Ash said as they approached the end of a hallway on the second floor.
Penvale sensed a change in Jane as soon as they walked through the doors—she straightened a bit, and when he looked at her, he saw a certain brightness in her eye and eagerness in her expression that he had never witnessed when she was looking athim.
He surveyed the room before him: Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, and large windows offered dramatic views of the crashing sea. A set of French doors led out onto a narrow terrace; Penvale had a sudden recollection of his mother watching the sun set over the ocean from that spot. He swallowed at the thought.
Even on a bleak day, there was plenty of natural light, and a fire burned in the large stone fireplace dominating one wall, an emerald green chaise occupying pride of place before the fire.
Another flash of memory: Penvale’s father seated on that chaise, Penvale tucked up close beside him, his father’s soothing voice reading to him from one of the countless leather-bound tomes that filled the shelves.
Penvale shook his head, brushing the memory aside like cobwebs.
…Miss Spencer—Lady Penvale, I mean—has ordered some novels of her own for the collection,” Mrs. Ash was saying. “She spends the most time here, so if you are looking for a specific book, she is the one to ask.”
Penvale cast a considering glance at his wife, who, as ever, did not seem terribly delighted by the prospect of any prolonged conversation with him. It was fortunate that Penvale had never spent too much time worrying over what people thought of him—he had his friends, who tolerated him with good humor; he had his sister, who had threatened to physically harm him on numerous occasions but who, deep down, was quite loyal; and, when he wanted it, he had female companionship. All these connections allowed him to proceed in the course of his life without finding himself taxed by undue emotions or worries. But had he been a man more given to such concerns, he suspected that Jane’s blatant disinclination to be in the same room with him would have begun to sting a bit.
These thoughts were prevented from becoming too morose, however, because at that moment there was athumpagainst the windows.
Penvale, Jane, and Mrs. Ash turned in unison, just in time to see something dark and feathered drop like a stone.
“Just a bird blown into the glass,” Penvale assured the housekeeper, who had a hand pressed to her chest.
“It’s not terribly windy,” Jane said, frowning at the window.
“And Cornish birds are accustomed to wind,” Mrs. Ash said solemnly, her gaze fixed on the window as if she’d just seen a harbinger of her own death.
“It likely didn’t see the glass, then,” Penvale said. Privately, he could not help but wonder whether Jane’s affection for Gothic novels had spread like a disease among the household staff, if this was how they reacted to a stunned bird.
