Page 52 of To Swoon and to Spar
“My bootmaker will be appalled when I’m next in town,” he informed her. “I’ve never gone through a pair so quickly in all my life.”
“That is because you were an indolent, useless sloth,” Jane retorted. Lately, she had taken to being deliberately provoking and was continuously nettled when all he did was grin at her by way of reply. It was a boyish grin, one that made him look several years younger and gave Jane the uneasy feeling that he knew precisely what she was doing.
And whatwasshe doing?
A voice at the back of her mind told her, in smug, superior tones, that she was trying to keep Penvale at as much of a remove as possible, lest she find herself weakening toward him once more—her mind had lingered upon that kiss in the library far more often than was wise—or perhaps even admitting to herself that a lifetime spent sharing this house with him would not be so terrible a fate after all.
But Jane had come too far to allow such thoughts to hold much sway, so she pushed them firmly from her mind. It was time to become a ghost.
Penvale was not, as a rule, an overly observant man, which was why he was puzzled to find himself so utterly convinced, in the days that followed, that something was amiss with Jane.
Recently, she had been strange around him, and he couldn’t work out why. He’d been busier than usual, it was true; as the weather had improved, he’d found himself spending long days out of doors, working alongside his tenants in the sunshine. All anyone could speak of was the uncommonly warm and sunny spring they were enjoying, and he was soaking up every moment of it. Here he was, home at last, toiling away outdoors, always a problem to solve or complaints to hear. It was precisely what he’d dreamed of.
And yet, as the days passed and Jane’s strange manner toward him continued, even the long, tiring hours he spent outdoors were not enough to lull him to sleep at night with a blissfully blank mind. Instead, he lay awake long past midnight, staring at the darkened canopy above his bed, trying not to reflect on the fact that he occasionally caught himself thinking longingly of the nights Jane had spent sleeping next to him. Nights when he’d barely been able to snatch any sleep at all, what with all the wailing and window banging and various other absurdities. There was no excuse whatsoever for thinking back upon those nights with anything approaching longing.
And yet.
Now Penvale found himself lying awake, and it was more pleasant to reflect on Jane—this curious, mercurial creature he had married—than it was to dwell upon the other thoughts that weighed heavily on his mind. Namely, the fact that he had all the things he once thought he wanted above all else—and yet… he still felt dissatisfied.
Penvale had spent the entirety of his adult life convinced that if he could just accomplish thisonething—reclaiming Trethwick Abbey, his birthright, the place he belonged—then everything else would fall into place. And yet here he was: He had Trethwick Abbey; he’d even married, as he was expected to do.
And he still felt as though he were waiting for something.
He was slowly coming to realize that the house was not enough. Managing the estate brought him a sense of purpose, of intention, that he relished—but it was not enough on its own. Within a few weeks, his friends would arrive, happy in their marriages, secure in the affections of their spouses, and God damn it, but Penvale was jealous, and he was furious with himself for feeling this way, and for the first time in his life, the person he naturally thought first to turn to regarding a matter of great import wasn’t Audley or Jeremy, it wasJane,of all people. At some point, he’d grown accustomed to her presence, her willingness to listen to whatever happened to be on his mind, even if she often responded with a sharp word. He’d stopped minding her sharp words, he realized.
It wasn’t so odd that he should think to unburden himself to Jane first, he reasoned—she was there, across the breakfast table in the mornings, in the library on rainy afternoons, a mere room away at night. He’d grown used to having her around, was all. Helikedhaving her around. It was nothing more complicated than that.
But Jane was the very person he couldn’t speak to about this.
Not when she was, he suspected, trying to be rid of him.
He wasn’t certain of this—he wasn’t certain of anything about Jane, maddening creature that she was—but the more he thought about the ghost and how its presence had so neatly chased away his uncle, the more he thought it would be just like Jane to employ said ghost to be rid of the husband she’d never wished to marry in the first place.
As luck would have it, this suspicion was strengthened not ten minutes later, when he was yanked from his thoughts by the decidedly odd occurrence of a ghost materializing in his room.
Penvale was lying abed, still miles away from anything thatapproached restful slumber, when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a flicker of white. He turned his head sharply but saw nothing other than complete and total darkness; it was a cloudy night, and there was little light coming into the room, even though the curtains were only partially drawn. He sat up in bed, wishing he were wearing something more than his drawers. He stared into the darkness for a long moment, not seeing anything, and then, once more, there was that bloody unearthly moan.
Penvale sprang out of bed, silent as a cat; it sounded as though the moan had come from directly behind him, and he spun around, feeling like a madman as he stared at the wall, his heart pounding in his chest. In that moment, he thought quite longingly of the silent and unhaunted walls of Bourne House in London, and wondered if country living was really all it was cracked up to be.
He stood there for long enough, shivering and staring, that his heart had time to return to something approaching its normal pace, but then, again—
“Oooooaaaaaahhhhhoooooooohhhhhh.”
This time, the noise was more distant, but it was distinct enough that Penvale was certain its source was nearby. He seized the nearest article of clothing to hand—the breeches he’d tossed on a chair hours earlier, his valet already having been dismissed for the evening—and raced for the door, bursting out into the hallway outside his bedroom to find… nothing.
He stood there, staring first left, then right, and just as he was preparing to pick a direction at random and hope for the best—
“Ooooooohhhhhhhaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.”
The moan came definitely from his left, the eastern portion of the house, and Penvale took off at a run, skidding around a corner just intime to see a flicker of white vanishing around the corner at the far end of the hallway. He set off in hot pursuit as she—whoever she might be, this ghostly figure in white—led him on a merry chase, around corner after corner, down hallways, up a flight of stairs, until at last Penvale rounded a final corner he had seen the flicker of white skirt pass around mere moments earlier—
And he skidded to a halt.
He was in the gallery, which stretched along the entirety of the southern side of the house on the third floor. And it was empty. He turned in a circle, feeling as though he were losing his mind—there were no doors, barring the one he had just careened through, only walls full of framed paintings and portraits, a few marble statues occupying some of the vast expanse of floor.
There was no one else here.
This was it. He’d finally lost his mind. All this time in a house perched upon a godforsaken cliff, surrounded by those damned moors—he’d lost it. He probably needed to return to London and seek medical attention. Diana would be positively gleeful; he was never going to hear the end of it…
