Page 20 of To Swoon and to Spar
It was only then, staring into the crackling fire in the silence of the room, that he realized it had been entirely one-sided as far as exchanging confidences went. Jane had glimpsed a side of him that he didn’t often show, while he was none the wiser about the person who lurked beneath her scowls.
And it was with a faint pang of unease that he realized that he was actually growing curious to learn who, precisely, that woman might truly be.
Chapter Seven
It was a particularly drearyevening, and all was right in Jane’s world. She was tucked up in the most worn armchair before the fireplace in the small sitting room attached to her bedroom, a book in hand—this one, written by “A Lady of Ill Repute,” was very lurid indeed—and she was just contemplating ringing for a cup of warm milk from the kitchens when, without so much as a knock in warning, the door that connected her suite of rooms with Penvale’s opened, and he poked a very irritated head around it.
“What was that?” he demanded.
Jane turned a page of her book. “What was what?”
Penvale regarded her with incredulity. “Thenoise,” he said after a moment’s silence. “It sounded like someone just dropped an elephant upstairs.”
Jane turned another page despite not having read a single word on the previous page. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Penvale—who by this point was craning his head up at the ceiling as if expecting the answer to materialize there—cast a doubtful look at the walls, which were papered in a delicate blue toile. “I suppose the walls are fairly thick,” he conceded.
“And if you heard a noise directly above your room, there’s no reason at all that I should have heard it,” Jane added, hoping her voice sounded coolly rational. Of course she had heard it—the walls weren’tthatthick, and his elephant comparison had not been entirely inaccurate—but she had already decided not to seem too eager to believe there was something strange afoot, lest Penvale grow suspicious. She had already learned from the experience with her former guardian that she needed to be careful not to take things too far. It was all a rather wearying balancing act—no one had told her that enlisting the help of the household staff of a country estate to stage an escalating series of supposedly supernatural events was so exhausting.
She really should ring for that warm milk.
“I am going to find out what the devil is going on,” Penvale announced.
Jane did not have very much experience with the male sex, but what she had gleaned from her reading had informed her that they did seem to have an unnatural fondness for plunging headfirst into every situation, determined to get to the bottom of whatever was afoot. To Penvale’s credit, Jane was forced to admit that this did not seem to be his habit, but his usual calm rationality had apparently deserted him.
He even looked a bit disheveled. This was rather shocking; in her entire acquaintance with him, she had seen him look untidy only on the morning she had flung a damp cloth at his head. And even Jane was forced to concede that he could not be entirely blamed for that under the circumstances. But just now he was standing before her in a shirt and breeches, a dark blue banyan clearly tossed on at the last minutefor propriety’s sake; even with it, Jane could see quite a bit more of his chest than was strictly proper. And his hair—that peculiar hair of his, not quite blond or brown but somewhere in between—was ever so slightly mussed.
The sight of him like this felt more intimate than it should. Jane felt as though she were catching a glimpse of a version of him that she had no right to observe.
“Jane?” Penvale asked, and there was something in his tone that made her think this was not the first time he’d said her name.
She blinked, realizing she’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d been staring at the sliver of his bare chest visible to her for at least a minute.
“Jane,” he repeated, amusement evident in his voice this time, and she quickly pulled her gaze upward to meet his.
“I’ll come with you,” she said, chiefly to say something before he had the chance to. She rose, only belatedly remembering that she had no dressing gown at hand, though considering that her nightgown had all the seductive appeal of a nun’s habit, she supposed it was not too much of an impropriety.
Penvale’s thoughts apparently lay along similar lines. “Do you own any nightgowns that don’t look like… that?” he asked.
“Like what?”
“Like their specific objective is to ward off anyone of the male persuasion who might wish to become better acquainted with their wearer?”
“This nightgown’s wearer, as it happens, has no interest in getting ‘better acquainted’ with anyone,” Jane said, though this was perhaps notentirelytrue. Her eyes flicked back to the sliver of his bare chest.
“Well, if she wears it often enough, she won’t have any worries on that score,” Penvale said, but there was something in his expression that made her think he didn’t really mean it.
Her skin prickled under his regard, and she did with this sensation precisely what she did with any other feeling that she didn’t completely understand: She ignored it.
“Shall we?” she asked.
“Wait a moment,” he said, and crossed to the mantel, where he picked up the rather heavy-looking candelabra that sat there.
Jane frowned. “Do you think you’ll need a weapon?” she asked. This could be a good or bad sign, depending—she wanted him to be uneasy, after all, so his desire to arm himself seemed promising. On the other hand, her aim was for him to think that the source of Trethwick Abbey’s trouble was supernatural in origin, and while Jane was certainly not an expert, she didn’t believe that blunt force was effective against ghosts.
“No,” Penvale said dryly. “I think we’ll need light.” He cast a significant look out the window to the dark sky. “As it is night, you understand.”
“Right,” she agreed a bit feebly.
