Page 55 of To Swoon and to Spar
As if on cue, her candle’s flame was extinguished.
“Blast,” she muttered. The sound had jolted her, causing the candle to flicker—a perfectly rational accident, albeit one that felt a touch melodramatic in the moment.
“For Christ’s sake,” Penvale said at once, and with a sharp motion, he reached out to seize the candle from Jane’s hand. “We’re going, all right?” he announced to the room at large as he ushered Jane through the door. They made their way downstairs—at the second-floor landing, Jane paused as if to return to the library, but Penvale urged her onward, and before she quite realized what was happening, Crowe was opening the front door for them, and Jane found herself blinking in the warm spring sunshine.
Penvale was not done walking. Instead, he took Jane’s hand and tugged her along as he made his way around the house and toward the cliffs overlooking the sea. It was only when he began picking his way down the slope that led to the cliff path that Jane drew him to a halt.
“Wait a moment,” she said, reaching up to push a lock of hair from her eyes that the wind had pulled loose from her coiffure. “Where are we going?”
Penvale turned to face her, his expression some mixture of impatience and frustration and devilish amusement all at once. “To the cove.”
“The cove,” Jane repeated. “For what purpose?”
He reached out and took her hand again. “To do what I always do when I need to think. I’m going swimming.”
“You cannot think I’m going to get in that water,” Jane said for at least the third time since they’d left the house. Penvale, busy removing his boots and shrugging out of his waistcoat, did not respond immediately.
He turned to face her, his hands going to the placket on his buckskins. “I didn’t say you had to,” he said, opening the placket and beginning to tug his breeches down. He saw Jane’s eyes drop to his hands, and then flick back up to his face, where they stuck so resolutely that he thought she must be exercising a considerable amount of will to keep them there.
He kicked aside his breeches, standing before her in his smalls. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, the wind was cool, and gooseflesh rose on his arms. “And I understand if you’re too frightened…”
He trailed off deliberately, and something in her eyes flashed.
“Don’t try to bait me,” she snapped. “Do you think I’m a child who would fall for such tricks?”
He paused to consider. “Hmm. What an interesting question.” He began backing slowly away from her toward the water. “It certainly would bechildishto allow someone to taunt you into doing something you didn’t want to do. Just like it would bechildishto creep out of one’s bed at night and put on a nightgown and impersonate a ghost, for example. Or to arrange for one’s husband’s sleep to be interrupted for several nights running, thanks to a never-ending stream of wailing.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Another purely hypothetical example, naturally.” His feet touched damp sand, and he felt the rush of the surfagainst his toes. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to do anythingchildish,Jane.” He held her gaze for one final moment, and then he turned and flung himself into the waves.
Behind him, he heard a muffled exclamation, the words snatched away on the wind before he could make sense of them. His immediate concern was the breath-stealing, numbing cold of the sea; he ducked his head beneath the water, diving under an oncoming wave, and when he emerged, shaking his head like a dog, he turned to see Jane struggling out of her dress. She managed it after a few seconds and flung it down, and his heart stuttered in his chest at the sight of her in her chemise, no corset in sight, backlit by the afternoon sun, every dip and curve silhouetted through the fine cotton. Her hair was coming loose, curls tugged in every direction by the wind, and her eyes were fixed on him as she strode toward the surf, irritation and frustration and determination written clearly in every line of her face.
Had he ever thought her face stern, or harsh, or anything other than beautiful?
It was beautiful to him in that moment. He could not imagine thinking it otherwise ever again.
She broke his gaze only when she dove into the waves.
Predictably, she came up swearing.
“Jesus Christ!” Her teeth were chattering, and by the time he made his way to her side, she was shivering violently as she found her footing in the shallow water, looking somewhat like a drowned rat and glaring at him more ferociously than she had at any previous point in their acquaintance. “I will never forgive you for this,” she said bitterly.
“It’s not so bad once you get used to it,” he said, treading water before her; this was, in fact, a lie—the English sea was never balmy, and in late April, it was positively glacial. Penvale himself was beginningto shiver. Her scowl intensified, and she shook her head to try to get her wet hair out of her eyes; Penvale reached out and brushed it away for her.
“Did you wish to say something to me,husband?” He wondered if anyone had ever uttered that particular word with such hostility.
He gazed at her for a long moment; salt water clung to her eyelashes. “Did you?” he asked at last. “What are you doing, Jane?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” she said, but she was looking furtive, and there was no real conviction in the words. She fixed him with a wheedling expression that Penvale found disconcerting. “But if, perhaps, you are feeling unsettled by recent events and wish to call off the house party—”
Penvale’s jaw dropped. “Is that what this is about?” She paused as if weighing her words carefully, which was all the acknowledgment that Penvale needed. “Jane, for Christ’s sake, did it ever occur to you to just talk to me?”
“Oh, yes, and you’d have immediately changed all of your plans just because I wasnervous?” Her voice was so sarcastic that Penvale felt an entirely uncharacteristic rush of anger course through him, hot and fierce.
“Yes, damn it—it’s your house, too, you know—I don’t want you to be utterly miserable! I already reduced the numbers so that you wouldn’t have to converse with as many people, but if—”
“You did what?”
He realized only belatedly what he’d said, the words having poured out of him in a rush. He sighed. “I… I didn’t extend a few of the invitations,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard over the waves. “I didn’t invite Belfry’s siblings or Sophie’s—only my closest friends. I thought you would be more comfortable with a smaller crowd.”
She opened her mouth to reply and inhaled a mouthful of seawater, which sent her into another fit of coughing that lasted several seconds. Penvale reached over to none too gently thump her on the back.
