Page 22 of To Swoon and to Spar
Penvale did not seem to find her silence odd. He set his cup down with a clatter and asked, “Do you still wish to help me search the house?”
Jane, avoiding his eyes, merely nodded.
A quarter of an hour later, they were wandering through a series of empty bedrooms on the third floor, Penvale having suggested they begin at the top of the house and work their way down. The attic had offered little of interest, being largely empty; Penvale had looked around the room with a poorly concealed eagerness that soon faded upon taking in its bare state, and Jane had filed this away in the growing mental compartment in which she kept all the things about her new husband that she did not yet understand.
Now they wandered through room after room full of furniture covered by sheets. Mr. Bourne had not been fond of entertaining, and Jane thought it likely that the last time these rooms had been occupied was when the previous viscount and viscountess were still living.
“We’ll need to air these out before we host in the spring,” Penvale said, recalling Jane from her thoughts with an unpleasant jolt.
“Host,” she repeated slowly, mentally cursing; she’d been attempting to put Penvale’s sister’s promise (or, as Jane viewed it, threat) out of her mind.
“Yes, host,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder at her. “You haven’t forgotten my friends were planning to visit?”
“Of course not,” Jane said. Wishfully attempting to ignore it, more like. “Do you know how long they intend to stay?”
“It’s not as though I’ve sent them an invitation and planned a full itinerary.” There was laughter evident in his voice, and Jane stiffened at the sound. It was too familiar from her years at school, when she could never say the right thing or act the right way.
“Why don’t you go visit them in town once the Season begins?” she suggested desperately.
“Trying to get rid of me so soon, dear wife? I’m wounded.” Some of the laughter faded from his voice when he caught sight of whatever was written upon her face. Jane frowned slightly, not comfortable with the thought that he’d gleaned some of her discomfort from her expression.
“Did you dislike them so much, then?” he asked her more quietly. “I know they can be a bit overwhelming at times—bloody irritating, too—”
There was something in his voice, some forced lightness, that told Jane her response was more important to him than she might have expected.
“I didn’t dislike them,” she blurted, which was true, for the most part—there had been an awful lot of them, but they’d seemed kind enough and genuinely fond of Penvale. Strict honesty, however, compelled her to add, “Your sister is a bit… difficult.”
The lines around Penvale’s mouth deepened, almost as if he were suppressing a smile. “Diana can be charming when she wants to be and quite lethal otherwise.”
Jane hesitated. “She seems protective of you.”
This earned an eye roll. “Now that she and Jeremy have settled down to matrimonial bliss, she was hoping I would be her new project.”
“Oh.” Jane strove to keep her voice neutral before adding, “I take it marrying your uncle’s ward solely to purchase a house that should have been yours to begin with was not precisely what she had in mind.”
“No,” Penvale said bluntly. “But quite frankly, I don’t really care. Diana has her life, and she’s very happy now, and I’m happy that she’s happy, but she can’t always understand that what makesherhappy and what makes other people happy aren’t necessarily the same thing.” He turned, gesturing at the dusty, gloomy room, and at the view of the windswept hills visible through the windows lining one wall. “Diana would go mad somewhere as remote as this, far away from parties and gossip and her friends—from all the entertainments of town.”
“And you won’t?” Jane asked skeptically. He hadn’t been in Cornwall long, and they had the rest of a lonely winter ahead of them.
“I won’t,” he said simply.
Jane felt a trickle of unease at the quiet determination in his voice. She had spent so much time worrying abouthowshe was going to frighten him away that she’d not paused to consider whether it was right of her to do so.
“And so,” he continued before she could ponder this further, “I want to host my friends here—show them the place I’ve talked about for so long. Prove to them that it was worth it.”
Jane did not think of her husband as a terribly expressive man. She had initially thought him a typical society gentleman—or, rather, what she imagined such a man to be: overly polished, idle, entirely lacking in substance. However, the more time she spent in his presence, the more she came to realize that her assessment wasn’t quite right. But he was not prone to showing great feeling, so to see him animated when he spoke of Trethwick Abbey—well, she took notice. In that moment,he did not at all resemble the gentleman she had met in that drawing room in London.
And then, belatedly, his words registered.
Prove to them that it was worth it.
Itbeing her marriage, her presence here at what was now his house, not hers. It had never been hers.
“Fine,” she said in her frostiest tone, because she had learned long ago that safety lay in that voice, the one that made her sound cold and unapproachable and distant. The one that hinted at nothing of what she might actually feel. “We will host them, then, in the spring, once it’s warmer and the roads are passable.” She glanced up to meet his eyes. “I expect you’ll want to visit them in London, too?” Having been raised in the countryside in a family of a lesser status than Penvale’s, she was not entirely certain what gentlemen did during the Season, if they were not in the market for a wife. It occurred to her that Penvale, as a viscount, must have a seat in the House of Lords, and—with a certainty that would have shocked her a fortnight earlier—she was suddenly sure that he attended sessions of Parliament. She was coming to realize that he was not the sort of man to neglect a responsibility.
“Yes,” Penvale said a bit distractedly, having resumed his thorough inspection of the room—a fruitless one, as Jane well knew, since there was nothing here that might tip him off as to what was truly afoot. “I expect I’ll want to spend some time in town. Parliament will be in session, and I’ll want to meet with my man of business, stay at Bourne House…”
Live his real life,Jane thought but did not say aloud. She did not know whether he used the singular when discussing these plans out of habit or specific intent—not that it mattered to her either way. Shehated London and was perfectly content to be left to her own devices in Cornwall.
