Page 9 of To Swoon and to Spar
“My point is,” Jeremy said, dismissing Penvale’s trauma with a wave of his hand, “she can turn on the charm when it suits her. Miss Spencer seems fundamentally unable to do so.”
“Well, that won’t be much of an issue, since she hates London,” Penvale said. “I don’t expect she’ll wish to come to town very often.”
A short, appalled silence followed this declaration.
“So you’re going to rusticate in Cornwall for the rest of your life?” Audley asked, sounding disturbed.
“Have any of you everbeento Cornwall?” Penvale asked, irritation creeping into his voice. “You make it sound as though I’ll be on a remote desert island.”
“I’d think that would be a great deal more pleasant,” Belfry said.
“Certainly warmer,” Audley muttered.
“In any case,” Penvale said, growing a bit exasperated, “whether or not Miss Spencer enjoys town is entirely irrelevant, since there is nothing at all stopping me from coming to town whenever I wish, regardless of how she feels about it. She’s welcome to remain in the countryside; there’s no need for my plans to affect hers.”
“Spoken like a man who’s never been married,” Audley said, sounding cheerful. Penvale sensed that they were about to embark upon the portion of the evening in which his friends, all happily married, beganto smugly dispense sage advice, and he frantically attempted to head it off.
“My marriage is not a love match, Audley,” he said shortly. “I am perfectly aware that you and Violet are nauseatingly attached to each other—lately,” he added, which was a bit unsporting; Violet and Audley’s marriage, while a love match, had suffered a lengthy estrangement that had been repaired only the previous summer. “But I don’t care about any of that.”
“As a man who recently married for convenience, Penvale,” Belfry interjected, “I regret to inform you that it does not always go quite according to plan.” Belfry and Emily had married the previous autumn for purely practical reasons, but it had not taken long for stronger feelings to develop between them.
Penvale’s situation, however, was entirely different. Belfry and Emily had known each other before they’d wed, and no one had been terribly surprised when they’d fallen in love, given the obvious interest between them. Penvale, however, was marrying a woman with whom he’d had precisely one conversation—a woman he’d met less than three weeks before. He didn’t think he needed to worry about inconvenient feelings cropping up inhismarriage. And this was just the way he liked things: orderly. Uncomplicated. He had conducted the entirety of his adult life in such a way as to ensure that he remained far removed from messy emotional entanglements, and he saw no reason for this to change just because he was going to stand up in a church and speak some vows that he didn’t feel particularly beholden to.
He said as much to his friends and was met—predictably—with a set of eyebrows raised in unison.
“Did you rehearse that ahead of time?” he asked grumpily.
“I do not think this is going to be as simple as you think it will,”Audley informed him. “You’re getting married; you’re tying your life to someone else’s. You can’t simply go about your days as though she doesn’t exist—that sounds like a bloody miserable existence. I spent four years attempting to do just that, and it was hell. I wouldn’t wish that on you.”
Penvale regarded his friend for a long moment, knowing, despite the irritation he felt at the meddling, that Audley meant well—and that, furthermore, he believed everything he was saying. What Audley didn’t understand—couldn’tunderstand, as besotted as he was with Violet—was that Penvale did not want the same thing from marriage as his friends did. He’d watched them all, over the past summer and autumn, fall in love with their wives, and it had all been terribly… messy. Distracting.
Penvale had never thought seriously about marriage—wives were expensive, and he had other plans for his fortune. There had been no room for a wife in said plans, and he didn’t feel the loss, never lacking for friends and, on occasion, female companionship. And so, now, finding that his long-held plans and marriage were inextricably linked was causing him to reconsider what his life would look like. But he already knew that his marriage would be nothing like those of his friends.
“I intend to be a decent husband to Miss Spencer,” he said, leaning back in his chair and glancing from Audley to Jeremy to Belfry in turn. “She won’t want for anything. But I’ve no intention of allowing my marriage to affect anything else about my day-to-day existence. I’ve a perfectly good life here in London; once I’ve settled in at Trethwick Abbey and seen that all is running smoothly, I expect I’ll be in town frequently, regardless of whether Miss Spencer wishes to come with me.”
“Penvale, old chap,” Jeremy said with a wide grin, “I truly cannotwaitto see how this works out for you.”
Being married, Penvale was pleased to discover, was so far little different from bachelor life.
It was the morning after his wedding—which had been a suitably quiet affair, for all that his friends attempted to turn the wedding breakfast into something considerably more raucous, given the amount of champagne on offer—and he was in his study, looking over a few last pieces of correspondence from the piles on his desk (Penvale had never been terribly tidy) before he departed for Cornwall the following day.
His wife, Smithers had informed him, had risen late and taken breakfast in bed. Penvale had no idea how she’d occupied herself after that point, which seemed like an ideal state of affairs to him.
Penvale returned his attention to the letter before him, which summarized the state of his accounts now that he’d paid his uncle’s asking price for Trethwick Abbey. He hadn’t spent his entire fortune, but it was undeniable that he’d want to ensure the estate was turning a tidy profit fairly soon so that he wouldn’t have to economize. He had a number of ideas about potential improvements—he’d made it a habit to read plenty of books on land management and agricultural reform over the past decade, all in preparation for this day—but he wouldn’t have a clear idea of what changes were necessary until he saw the estate and took a good look at the account books. Which was why they were leaving town tomorrow.
Penvale rubbed the bridge of his nose, squinting at the words before him, his vision blurring a bit. He needed to step away from his desk for a while, he thought; part of the reason he was so fond ofmorning exercise was that he tended to get a bit twitchy if he sat still for too long. Swimming in the warmer months, and riding or walking in the winter, cleared his head. He rose, heading for his study door with half-formed thoughts of a ride in Hyde Park, perhaps stopping on Curzon Street to see if Audley wished to join him. He was just reaching for the doorknob when the door was opened by Smithers. “Your uncle is here, my lord,” he intoned.
“For God’s sake,why?” Penvale muttered, the faint headache forming at his temples threatening to worsen.
“I could not say, my lord,” Smithers replied somberly. “Shall I show him in?”
“No,” Penvale said shortly, moving past his butler. “I’m going for a walk. If he wishes to talk, he can accompany me.”
His uncle did indeed wish to talk, as evidenced by the fact that he fell into step beside Penvale without complaint. Bourne House was on St. James’s Square; given that it was a bleak gray day in the last week of January, the square was largely deserted, other than a few harried-looking nannies trying to shepherd their bundled-up charges on a healthful walk in the biting wind. Penvale, who had never minded the cold, turned up his collar against the wind and took a deep breath, inhaling London’s winter scent of smoke and rain.
“What’s this about, then?” he asked without preamble; now that the wedding was over and all the paperwork had been signed, he had been hoping to see as little of his uncle as was possible for the foreseeable future. Even if Penvale did not find the man smug and tiresome, the fact was that his father had despised his younger brother, and for Penvale—who still clung to a small boy’s worshipful memories of his father—this was reason enough for his dislike.
“I just thought, now that the deed has been done…” his unclebegan, leering a bit; Penvale, naturally, had no intention of informing him that he’d spent an entirely uneventful, celibate night in his own bed, Jane asleep in the viscountess’s bedroom through the connecting door. “The time has come to warn you.”
