Page 42 of To Swoon and to Spar
“Typical Diana,” he muttered, running a hand over his face. “She couldn’t just wait for a bloody invitation.”
“Shall I send invitations, then?” Jane asked, striving for a neutral tone. She couldn’t bear for him to realize just how uncomfortable she found the thought of playing hostess to his sophisticated London friends, even if some part of her—buried deep within—had grown rather intrigued by the idea of observing her husband in the company of those who knew him best.
Because the fact was, the more time she spent with Penvale, the more she wanted to know about him. She found herselfcuriousabout him in a way she had never been curious about anything else, unless she counted the house she lived in. When she had first arrived at Trethwick Abbey, eighteen years old and newly parentless, a single trunk of possessions to her name and nothing to occupy her time, she had spent days wandering the halls of the house, familiarizing herself with each room, each hidden staircase, each tapestry that concealed a door. This practice had been quite useful, as it turned out; who knew that haunting an old manor house would require such familiarity with secret passages?
Now she felt the same urge with Penvale, who was not a static, unmoving, immutable building she could wander through slowly, but someone who himself was undoubtedly changing every day that he spent here, and she felt a sudden piercing ache to know him better, to witness those changes herself, rather than from a remove.
And she could not help but think that if she wished to know her husband better, knowing his friends better was not a bad way to go about that endeavor—those noisy, cheerful friends she had found so intimidating in London.
“Yes,” Penvale said slowly. “To Diana and Jeremy, of course, and Audley and Violet, and Belfry and Emily. West and Lady Fitzwilliam, too.”
Jane frowned. “Have I met those friends?”
Penvale, who had been staring thoughtfully into the middle distance, glanced at her with faint surprise, almost as if—Jane thought grumpily—he had forgotten that he hadn’t been speaking to himself. “They were at the wedding, you were introduced—don’t you recall?”
“There were an awful lot of people there,” Jane said testily.
“Jane.” Penvale’s voice was amused. “There were a dozen people at most.”
“Well, it felt like more at the time,” Jane said, glaring at him. She deliberately laid the letter opener—which she belatedly realized she still clutched—on the table before her plate, hoping her message was clear:Irritate me further, and I will stab you with this.
“West is Audley’s brother.” Penvale leaned back in his chair, still looking faintly amused and seeming unconcerned for his own safety, which Jane thought was a bit overly confident of him, given her mood.
At his words, Jane conjured a memory of a tall, serious-looking man who bore a strong resemblance to Violet’s husband. “He had a walking stick?” she asked uncertainly.
Penvale nodded. “He was in a curricle accident several years ago—one that killed Jeremy’s elder brother, the previous marquess. West broke his leg badly, and then a fever set in—they weren’t certain he’d survive.”
“Oh,” Jane said. She’d never been good in moments like these, when it felt as though some sort of response were required, one that needed a bit more social skill than she possessed.
Penvale, fortunately, did not seem to notice her awkwardness.“Lady Fitzwilliam was at the wedding, too, though, from what I recall, she took particular care to ensure that she was as far from West as possible the entire time.”
Jane thought again. “She was a… redhead?”
Penvale laughed. “No, that was Belfry’s sister. We may as well invite her, too—add the Earl and Countess of Risedale to your list,” he said a bit imperiously, as if Jane were his secretary. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Lady Fitzwilliam—you’ll hear Diana and her friends call her Sophie, and I’m sure she’ll give you leave to do so as well—is an old flame of West’s, and I’m fairly certain my sister is hell-bent on matchmaking the pair of them. If we don’t invite her as well, Diana will never let me hear the end of it.” He said this with the tolerant affection of an elder brother.
Jane’s head was beginning to spin a bit at the litany of impressive titles he’d just rattled off. “All right,” she said, her heart thumping in her chest at the thought of a house party of this size. She held up her fingers one by one as she recited the names back to him. “Lord and Lady James, Lord and Lady Willingham, Lord and Lady Julian, Lord and Lady Risedale, Lady Fitzwilliam—” She looked at him inquiringly.
“Bridewell,” he supplied.
“Lady Fitzwilliam Bridewell, and We— Sorry, what is West’s actual name? What is that a nickname for?”
“His courtesy title. He’s the Marquess of Weston.”
“And the Marquess of Weston,” she said, holding up a final finger. “Anyone else?”Please, let there be no one else.
“Belfry’s brother, perhaps—the Earl of Blackford.”
Jane frowned. “Then our numbers will be uneven.” She tried to keep a hopeful note out of her voice.
Penvale cast a long-suffering look at the ceiling. “Let’s invite Lady Fitzwilliam’s younger sister, then. Sophie is the eldest of several, and the middle sister was widowed a few years ago—no doubt she’ll be glad of a change of scenery, now that she’s out of mourning.”
Jane suppressed a sigh with some effort. “What is this sister’s name?”
Penvale paused for a long moment.
“Penvale! You want to invite her to our house party, and you don’t even know her name?”
“Sophie has a lot of sisters,” he said defensively. “Four, I believe. And they’re all married now, so I struggle to remember their… Ah!” He snapped his fingers triumphantly. “Mrs. Brown-Montague. She married the younger son of a viscount, if I recall correctly—he was in the army. Died at Waterloo, I believe.”
