Page 74 of To Swoon and to Spar
“Are you supposed to be Jeremy now?” Audley had never called him “old chap” in his life.
“—that you seem rather despondent of late,” Audley continued as if Penvale hadn’t spoken at all. “And as someone with firsthand experience of a man being unhappy in his marriage, I thought it best that I have a word with you.”
“Youthought, hmm?” Penvale was skeptical.
“We,” Audley amended, unrepentant.
“I suppose Jeremy had a hand in this.”
“Belfry, too. Remarkable what a romantic he’s turned into now that he’s married.”
“I think impending fatherhood has really been the final nail in the coffin,” Penvale said thoughtfully. The last time Penvale had been to Belfry and Emily’s for dinner, Belfry, not the lady of the house, had insisted on showing him the room they’d decided to turn into a nursery. And Penvale—who had always considered himself disinterested in children, or in anything that spoke of cozy domestic scenes—had felt the strangest pang of jealousy.
“In any case,” Audley continued, drawing Penvale out of his thoughts, “out with it now. What has you so damned moody? You’ve been miserable company since the moment we returned to town.”
Likely on the journey back, too, Penvale thought; he’d returned to London with Jeremy and Diana, resisting all their attempts at conversation, staring resolutely out the window instead. He’d tried to read one of Jane’s novels that he’d pilfered several days earlier, but his head had started pounding so badly that he’d had to give it up; this had motivated him to bump a particular errand on his list to the very top, and he remembered that he had an appointment that afternoon to collect the results of said errand.
“I’ve a lot on my mind,” he replied absently.
“A lot,” Audley repeated; Penvale glanced sideways at him, but Audley’s gaze was fixed ahead. “?‘A lot’ wouldn’t happen to answer to another name, would she?”
“For God’s sake,” Penvale muttered.
Audley’s mouth twitched. “So you’re miserable over Jane,” he said. Penvale remained silent but managed to accidentally grip his reins so hard that his horse reared up, and it took a moment to get him tosettle. Glancing sideways, he saw that Audley was losing his battle with his twitching mouth.
Taking this for the confirmation that it was, Audley continued, “Why don’t you go back to Cornwall, then? Why did you leave in the first place? Don’t give me any more nonsense about a bloody ghost.”
Penvale sighed and gave up. He’d been avoiding discussion of the matter with his friends ever since they’d returned to town, and he was suddenly exhausted by the effort. “Jane is the ghost.”
Audley was silent for a moment. “Ah.” There was a wealth of meaning in that single word.
“Indeed.”
“And you assume she was the ghost in order to…?”
“Rid herself of the unwanted men in her life.” Penvale felt his mouth curving upward in spite of himself. He hadn’t taken a moment to pause and consider her plan, once he’d worked it out, nor to appreciate it for its odd cunning and humor.
Another pause. “That is…”
“Demented? Unhinged?”
“Rather clever, actually.”
“I know.” A sideways glance at Audley confirmed that he was grinning, too. Penvale was oddlyproudof Jane, despite the fact that he’d had nothing at all to do with this plan of hers and was currently suffering as one of its victims. It was just so utterly her, everything about it, that he could not help but be appreciative of the scheme. It was like being offered a glimpse inside her mind, to see how it worked, and at some point, such a thing had come to feel like a rare and precious gift to Penvale.
Oh, God, he really did love her, didn’t he?
“So you left because—”
“The ghost returned during the house party,” Penvale confirmed. “I thought we’d agreed to call a halt to the haunting.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I thought we were building something between the two of us. A real marriage. But if she doesn’t want me there, I’m not going to force my presence upon her.”
“It’s your house,” Audley said, stating the obvious, and Penvale had no doubt that, a few months earlier, he would have thought the same thing. But now he’d lived in that house alongside Jane, he’d seen her speak to the staff, he’d seen the way her gaze softened when she glanced out a window at the sea, he’d seen the loving care she’d taken each time she pulled a book off the shelf in the library, and now he knew the truth.
“It’s her house, too, James.”
Audley glanced sharply at him—he could likely count on one hand the number of times in the entire duration of their two-decade friendship that Penvale had called him by his first name—and Penvale met his gaze evenly.
“You certainly worked hard enough to win it back,” Audley murmured.
