Page 70 of To Swoon and to Spar
Her mouth snapped shut, two spots of color appearing high on her cheeks. “Fine,” she said, her eyes not quite meeting his. “Lead the way, then.”
He regretted speaking so harshly, aware on some level that it was his own hurt and confusion sharpening his tone, but he was in no mood to explain that to her now.
Instead, he led her and his friends on a search for a ghost he knewperfectly well they weren’t going to find. He did not reveal the hidden staircase to his friends, so whichever members of staff had been responsible were able to make their way safely back to bed unseen.
When they finally abandoned the search as fruitless and returned to their rooms, Penvale and Jane paused in the hallway outside their bedrooms. Penvale opened his mouth, though he wasn’t certain what words he could muster that would possibly improve the situation, but before he could say anything, she offered him a cold “Good night,my lord” and vanished into her room, slamming the door behind her.
So Penvale returned to his own room, and undressed, and bathed, all the while turning over the evening’s events in his mind. When he dismissed Snood at last, he stared for a long moment at the connecting door in his dressing room leading to Jane’s suite of rooms.
Then, turning his back on it, he climbed into bed. And by the time sleep finally found him, some unknowable time later, he knew what he had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Breakfast the next morning wasa less than cheerful affair.
For her part, Jane was exhausted; sleep had been long in coming last night after she’d returned to her bedroom. She’d spent their entire search of the third floor torn between hurt and slowly simmering anger.
She felt like a fool. There she’d been, thinking things were going—well, if not perfectly, then at least as well as could be expected. Penvale’s friends had seemed reasonably happy; she and Penvale were getting along; she’d even abandoned her usual array of flannel nightgowns for the single lacy, vaguely seductive one she owned in an attempt to entice her husband—not that she’d got the chance in the end.
Instead, his words from the night before echoed through her head:
You’re the viscountess, Jane.
I need you to act like the mistress of this house.
And that was it, wasn’t it? At the end of the day, she could play at being the viscountess, at being comfortable with this role she’d stepped into, one far grander than she’d ever expected for herself. But when it came down to it, she wasn’t fooling anyone. All it had taken was the presence of his friends for him to realize this fact.
It was these thoughts that had kept her awake, along withreflections on the evening’s strange events. She wanted to know who had been responsible for the wailing, naturally—the staff had been under strict instructions to cease all such activities while the house party was under way—but it was her snappish exchange with Penvale that had cost her the most sleep. She’d eventually fallen asleep in a temper and awoken to find her mood unimproved.
So she sat, heavy-eyed and faintly miserable, moving her pile of eggs around her plate, avoiding any attempts at conversation with her guests.
Until Penvale arrived.
He, too, looked the worse for the previous evening’s events; his eyes were faintly red-rimmed, though whether that was from exhaustion or spirits—the drink had been flowing heavily the night before—Jane wasn’t certain. And there was a determined set to his mouth that made her uneasy.
“Penvale, you look dreadful,” Diana said, diplomatic as ever; next to her, Jeremy rolled his eyes heavenward, even as he leaned forward to steal a piece of toast from her plate.
“Thank you, Diana, terribly kind,” Penvale said, then glanced around the table as he came to a halt before the sideboard, picking up a plate and calling over his shoulder, “I’m glad you’re all here, though, there’s something I wanted to say.”
At this, the table fell immediately, eerily silent. Penvale had been the latest riser that morning, so all of their guests were already present—some still in the middle of their meal, others lingering over last cups of tea and coffee. All eyes turned curious gazes upon Penvale, who was busily loading his plate with sufficient food to feed a small army. Jane wondered if he was stalling. She wondered what he was about to say. She wondered why she felt soappallinglynervous, herheart kicking up an anxious rhythm in her chest. Sophie, seated next to her, reached over to still Jane’s hands; Jane glanced down and realized that she’d been tying the napkin in her lap into a knot that would impress even the most fastidious of valets.
At last Penvale turned back to the table. “I’ve decided to return to London with the rest of you today,” he announced without preamble, his eyes lingering on various of his guests but carefully avoiding Jane. “The incident last night has made me realize that my presence here is no longer tenable—these strange occurrences seem to have picked up with a fervor when I arrived at Trethwick Abbey, and it is my guess that my absence will hasten their cessation. With that in mind—and with the understandably traumatic effect they must undoubtedly be having on everyone who lives here—I feel that my departure is the only responsible course of action.”
He spoke these words almost mechanically, Jane thought, as though he were an actor reading from a script he had yet to memorize.
Belfry leaned forward in his seat, lifting a dark, arrogant brow. “Penvale, do you mean to tell us that you are running away from aghost?” His voice was laced with faint incredulity, and Jane did not entirely blame him; it was a decidedly strange announcement.
“Yes,” Penvale said, and now he did look at Jane. It was only for a moment, but his eyes met hers as he said, “From a ghost.”
From her. She was the ghost.
This knowledge burned within Jane, hot and angry. He knew that no such ghost existed, and yet he claimed to be leaving on its account, which meant—
That the ghost was an excuse. Just as Jane had made use of it to scare away one unwanted man, so, too, was Penvale using it for his own purposes now. And those purposes were—from all Jane could tell—toget as far away from her as possible. From the wife who, in company with his friends, was awkward and bad-tempered. Who could not even host a handful of guests without nerves. Who impersonated ghosts with ease but could never quite manage to play the role of an aristocrat’s wife in a manner that was convincing.
You’re the viscountess, Jane.
But out here, on this remote hillside, she didn’t really have to act like one—and all it had taken, apparently, was the arrival of his friends from town for him to see that she wasn’t the right sort of woman for the role.
