Page 69 of To Swoon and to Spar
Audley and Jeremy jumped; Penvale, feeling all at once exceedingly grim, did not.
There was a beat of silence and then another shriek—sufficiently shrill to raise gooseflesh on his arms—this time coming from quite the opposite side of the house as the first one.
“Christ.” Jeremy set down his glass. “If that’s the sort of thing you’ve been hearing since you’ve been here, I’m impressed you didn’t decamp to the nearest inn months ago.”
Audley was already on his feet. “Come on, then,” he said. “Shall we follow the sound?”
Penvale sat unmoving, as if rooted to the spot, his mind racing. He’d dismissed it the week before, when Violet had mentioned hearing some sort of noise—he’d thought it a member of the staff having a bit of a laugh at the guests’ expense, confident that Jane wouldn’t reprimand them for this behavior.
But this…
It was coordinated. Because now that he knew of the hidden staircases, he knew that it was not possible to travel from one side of the house to the other as quickly as the sound of that wail had—which meant, logically, that there was more than one wailer. It was a planned effort. And if it had been planned…
Well, he was perfectly well aware who the person behind it was.
The three made their way to the hall, where they paused, listening intently, but no further sound was forthcoming. Exchanging a glance, they headed for the staircase by unspoken agreement and emerged onto the second-floor landing in time to see Violet poke her head out of the bedroom she and Audley were sharing.
“James!” Her face brightened at the sight of him, the faint wrinkle in her brow smoothing. “I heard the strangest sound.”
“As did we,” he informed her. Farther down the corridor, a couple of other doors opened, and before too long, the majority of their guests had assembled. Jane was among the last to arrive; she was already dressed for bed, a flannel dressing gown knotted tightly at her waist, but Penvale caught a glimpse of white lace at her neck.
Jane was not wearing one of her appalling nightgowns.
Instead, she was wearing a white lace-edged one.
Just what she would wear, he thought, if she were planning to spend an evening roaming the halls in the role of a ghostly apparition.
She made her way to his side. “Did you hear the noise, too?” she asked. Before he could make any sort of reply, she added swiftly, pitching her voice low so as not to be overheard, “Penvale, I don’t know what that was—it wasn’t me.”
Hope rose in his chest, lightening the weight that had settled upon his shoulders; a moment later, however, when Violet said with some eagerness, “Let’s form a search party, then!” and Jane offered nothing but a frown, doubt crept back into Penvale’s mind.
Surely, if she were telling him the truth—if she were not behind tonight’s events—she would not look so displeased at the idea of searching for the ghost. She looked downright irritated, however, standing at his side with her arms crossed over her chest, not appearing, in that moment, a single bit more welcoming of his friends’ presence than she had that very first afternoon in his drawing room in London. He had thought that she was coming to like them, to enjoy herself—was he that bad at reading her, still, after all these months?
The thought struck Penvale that his friends would be leaving tomorrow—as Jane knew perfectly well. What was there to gain, then, from the ghost appearing tonight? There was no need to frighten them now, not when they were already preparing to depart.
Unless…
Unless she was eager to sendhimback to London with his friends—in which case tonight would be her last opportunity to scare him away. By, for example, insisting that she didn’t know who the ghost was this time. Surely she didn’t think him enough of an idiot to believe the house was actually haunted, after months of white nightgowns and hidden staircases and theatrical wailing.
Unless the past fortnight, spent seeing him in the presence of his friends, had convinced her once and for all that she did not want this marriage, that it—he—was not worth all of this bother… and she was willing to try whatever it took to be rid of him.
And if that were true, then he could not bear to be the cause of her misery any longer.
Before he could say anything else to her, there was the sound of athumpoverhead, loud enough to cause a brief hush to fall among the assembled group as their eyes were drawn upward. Penvale instead studied Jane, searching her face for signs of artifice in her reaction. He shook his head—he couldn’t live like this anymore, wondering every moment whether his wife wished for him to even be in the house. Not when he had come to realize how desperately the answer to that question mattered to him.
Dimly, Penvale registered the sound of a search party being formed, Violet and Jeremy at its helm. The group was divided between those who wished to remain in their bedrooms and those who wished to join the search; Penvale did not join this discussion for a long moment, still gazing at Jane, unable to look away.
Her frown deepened under his scrutiny, and she said, “Don’t you want to go help them search?”
“Of course,” he said shortly. She did not blink or avert her eyes,merely continued to frown at him with that faintly perplexed expression—and neither did she offer anything by way of explanation or apology.
Penvale didn’t need to see any more. “Let’s be off, shall we?” he said, turning to rejoin the group. “Let’s head upstairs before the ghost has a chance to escape.” He spoke the words without any real conviction, now that he knew of the existence of the hidden staircases; whoever was upstairs tipping over furniture was likely already long gone.
“I’ll check the staircases,” Jane said quietly to him, making as if to turn in the opposite direction, but he stopped her with a firm hand on her arm—the last thing he needed was for his friends to catch sight of a ghostly apparition and somehow realize it was Jane. Even if she were truly trying to rid herself of him once more, he still felt a strange sense of loyalty toward her and could not bear for his friends to think poorly of her. “Why don’t you stay with us,” he said to her in an undertone. It was not a question.
“But surely, if they’re trying to escape—”
“You’re the viscountess, Jane,” he snapped. “I don’t need you crawling through dusty staircases like a child—I need you to act like the mistress of this house.” He lowered his voice even further. “I need you to come with me and behave like a woman who has never impersonated a ghost in her life and who is as confused as everyone else.”
