She was sorry; Axel was damned glad she was alive, but those words would not aid her to regain her composure.
“You chose the art in here?” Over the sideboard hung a still life of polished red apples in a green crockery bowl with a sheaf of yellow chrysanthemums in the foreground. Above the fireplace in a simple wood frame, a cat napped on a hearthrug near a wicker knitting basket, a fire blazing in the background.
“I conspired with Lavinia. I chose the art in Oxford, had the paintings sent to her from the shops, then had her send them here as examples of her work. Gregory could not deny me the right to display them. He even took one of my selections to hang in the alcove outside his apartments—another portrait of a napping cat, of all things. I’m very fond of the hydrangeas that hang in my office. I cannot believe my own husband…”
She trailed off, her gaze going to the cat above the mantel. Abby’s choice of art had been prosaic, comforting, and well-executed. As rebellions went, the paintings were a brilliant place to start, though the parlor was as yet dusty, cold, and unused.
And Axel needed to be away from this place where yet more of Gregory Stoneleigh’s evil had come to light.
“You have a conservatory,” he said. “Suppose you show it to me.”
“Hadn’t we better spend the time questioning Ambers? I’d like to know where Gregory went on those regular appointments.”
She’d probably like to establish a pension for any woman who’d spared her Gregory’s attentions, and doubtless Ambers was waiting at that moment in the servants’ hall for Axel’s summons.
But Matthew had said that haste was the enemy of a successful investigation, and Axel needed to consider what he’d learned over the past two hours.
Questioning Ambers again could wait one more day. “A conservatory can take years to put to rights, Abigail. Best let me have a look now. We haven’t much more light.”
And Axel didn’t want to put her through another upsetting interview with a servant. Let Ambers leave the shire or worry himself into a confession, if a confession there was to make.
Which Axel doubted. Again, Ambers had no obvious motive, and years upon years of much better opportunity than late one January night in the colonel’s own home, drat the luck.
The conservatory was a cavernous waste of cold, damp, and poorly sealed glass, an altogether dreary place at the back of the house. Most estates would fill their conservatories over the winter months—conserving delicate species in cold weather being the intended use of same. Save for a few potted ferns and an anemic banyan tree, the Stoneleigh conservatory was empty.
Not a rose, not a damned pansy, to be seen.
“I’ll make you some sketches,” Axel said. “A deal of work is needed to set this place to rights.”
In the gathering gloom of an advancing winter afternoon, a shadow passed through Abigail’s eyes. Axel had said something amiss, or she’d recalled the latest of the revelations resulting from Stoneleigh’s murder.
Axel paced away from her, lest he wrap her in his arms and never let go. “You think somebody killed the colonel to protect you?”
“Shreve was smitten, you said as much.”
“Shreve did not kill Stoneleigh.” Axel was not quite as confident of this conclusion as made himself sound. “Shreve had years to end the colonel’s life. He could have slipped a sleeping powder into the colonel’s brandy then held a pillow over his employer’s face, nobody the wiser. He could have added a fast poison to his hunting flask. I’ve heard of poisons from the Amazonian jungles that will drop a man in his tracks with a single dose. Shreve spent years in India, where he would have been exposed to all manner of exotic violence and strange potions.”
Abby gently untangled fern fronds, creating a mess of disintegrating leaves on the conservatory floor.
“You acquit Shreve not on the basis of motive, but because he had too much opportunity and did not avail himself of it, but I became unwell only in the past half year.”
Axel turned her by the shoulders. “I vow I will solve these puzzles. I will not rest until I find you the answers you need to feel safe in your own home. I promise you this, Abigail.”
She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned into him, and while she felt lovely and warm in Axel’s embrace, her silence suggested he’d yet again said something wrong.
Was it wrong to wish Axel Belmont’s version of solving a lady’s problems did not also involve a vow to return her to her own property? Not simply assurances, or casual promises, but a vow?
Abby pondered that question as her mare plodded back to Candlewick, side by side with Ivan.
“You’re quiet, Abigail,” Axel said. “Shall I tell you what was in the safe?”
Bother the safe, which had appeared to hold nothing more than a gun, papers, and ledgers. Abby wanted to push Professor Magistrate out of the saddle and into the snow, there to commence kissing him witless until spring.
She was upset of course, to have learned that Gregory had been trying to kill her—kill her—but she was also confident that her health was returning. Like one of the professor’s roses, proper attention was putting her quickly to rights.
Axel Belmont missed his roses; Abby would miss Axel Belmont. “What was in the safe?”
“Some answers, and more questions.”
“The usual, then.”
“I’ve wondered where the colonel’s funds came from. Traveling in comfort is not cheap, purchasing a stable full of prime hunters, maintaining a large kennel, kitting oneself out in London finery season after season… Stoneleigh treated himself to a very gentlemanly lifestyle, and yet, the import business, from what Gervaise has written, showed only a modest profit. Brandenburg kept scrupulous records, and as long as that fellow was extant, the import records were all maintained in order.”
“Have you found my family’s fortune?”
“I found accountings from three different Oxford banks, Abigail. Your cash reserves have increased… enormously.” Axel named a figure that, like much in recent days, Abby could not entirely comprehend.
“I’m back to being an heiress.”
“You are an independent woman of substantial means, one of the rarest blooms in the English garden.”
Not necessarily one of the happiest, considering how she’d come by her wealth.
“Could this money be proceeds from the import business?” Gervaise was due the entire sum, if so.
“The import business accounts are in London, and Gregory’s will included a ‘rest, residue, and remainder’ clause, meaning anything not specifically bequeathed to another party was left to you. The sum documented in that safe is too great to have been accumulated importing peacock feathers and jade paperweights.”
The horses turned up the Candlewick drive. The manor house sat a quarter mile away, a lamp already burning on a post near the mounting block. No black crepe, no knocker swathed in black… No tainted memories of a marriage based on evil and greed.
“Next,” Abby said, “you will tell me of a labyrinth of darkened passages beneath Stoneleigh Manor leading to a smuggler’s cave or pirate treasure.”
“I dare not answer that, despite Oxfordshire’s landlocked position, when we have no idea where the second safe is nor what its contents might be. What we’ve learned today is that you’ve had a near miss, assuming your health continues to improve.”
He would speak of this, for which Abby was both grateful and… not.
“A person using slow poison has to be willing to watch their victim die by inches,” she said, because Axel would not put that into words. “But what if we’re wrong? What if I was simply enduring a bout of ill health?”
Her question was met with silence, broken only by the sound of the horses crunching along the drive in the direction of the stables. The sun was all but gone, the world had turned to the frigid blue-gray twilight found only in deepest, snowy winter.
When they reached the stable yard, Abby nearly slid off her horse straight into the snow, so
great was her fatigue. Axel caught her in his arms and held her in the space between the horses.
“I’ll find the truth,” he said, kissing her cheek.
Abby rested her forehead on his shoulder. “You can find every answer there is, Axel, and nothing you discover will make me want to set foot on that property again. I nearly died there. I was… growing more ill by the week, bleeding from the wrong places, unable to sleep, losing flesh. Gregory said I mustn’t seek attention for common female ailments or overindulge a nervous tendency. These little indispositions pass…”
She was beyond tears, beyond even hatred, though not beyond fear. Axel’s scent soothed her. His scent and his simple, generous embrace.
“Be patient,” he said. “You’re like a soldier who’s survived a bitter battle. The artillery has fallen silent, the cavalry charge is over, the infantry has done its worst. You’re still standing, but as you absorb the devastation around you, and learn of one friend after another taken by the enemy, your well-being is embattled all over again. Time helps, and that you have.”
For a man who lacked flowery speeches, Axel Belmont sometimes had the right words nonetheless.
Abby gave herself one more moment to borrow his strength, lean against him, and be comforted by his nearness, and then made herself stand back.
“A toddy in the library appeals,” she said. “And perhaps a tray in my room. I didn’t make much progress with Grandpapa’s journal last night, and I don’t think I’d make good company at dinner.”
“Come,” Axel said, flipping Ivan’s reins over the horse’s head and doing the same with Abby’s mare. “I can’t think where Wheeler has got off to, but we’ll find somebody to put up the horses, and get you that—”
He’d started leading the horses into the stable, but came to a halt at the sight of a substantial gray gelding in the cross-ties.
“That is Hermes. By God, I’d know that handsome rump anywhere, and that is my brother’s favorite mount to the life.”
“Has Nick come back from town?” Matthew Belmont asked when Axel had returned from lighting the pretty widow up to bed.
The pretty widow who’d apparently turned an increasingly unsocial academic botanist into a surprisingly attentive host, if Axel’s behavior at dinner was any indication. For his younger brother’s sake, Matthew was pleased.
Axel went straight to the sideboard and poured two neat brandies. “Nick will likely spend the night in Oxford, renewing old acquaintances as it were.”
Corrupting Matthew’s sons in the process, no doubt. Ah, well, what was university for? Matthew had decided to tarry first at Candlewick rather than surprise the boys with a visit.
“I could have sworn I heard the front door closing,” Matthew said. Through the library windows, he’d also seen Axel, hatless and coatless, staring into the darkness beyond the lamps illuminating Candlewick’s front terrace.
“The front door did close.” Axel brought Matthew a drink. “I was taking a bit of air, admiring the night sky.”
Matthew tried a sip of his drink rather than comment. The closer he’d ridden to Candlewick, the lower the clouds had descended, until only a thin band of light had remained to the west. The sunset had been spectacular, but no stars would be visible in the night sky.
The wintry air would subdue a man’s… unruly imagination readily enough.
“You should marry her.” Matthew settled back on the sofa as Axel came down beside him.
“Marry? Abigail?” Axel sounded as if Matthew had suggested crossing a potato with an orange.
“Of course, Abigail.” Mrs. Stoneleigh, to her neighbors. Her other neighbors.
Axel set his drink on the end table, beside a porcelain vase holding a single white rose.
“The lady and I are not that well acquainted, Matthew.”
The professor was a terrible liar, always had been. “You were an awfully long time lighting her candles.”
“Shut your mouth. We exchanged a few pleasantries, is all. Abigail’s day was exceedingly trying, and her health remains delicate.”
Kissing could be very pleasant. Theresa had suggested Matthew investigate the situation in Oxfordshire—and perhaps the murder as well.
“Now you’re the chatty type, Professor?”
“Must I beat you, Matthew? I’m younger, quicker, and I spent the entire autumn with all five of our offspring taking turns at me.”
“I’m older and more devious. I spent the autumn resting my ancient bones and honing my tactics.”
Instead of an elegant mass of blooms on the piano, flowers had been placed about the library in smaller bouquets and single buds. This scheme was a departure from what Matthew usually found at Candlewick, though the effect was pleasing.
More work though, for Axel considered the positioning of every blossom he brought in from the glass houses, much as he pondered every point and supporting thesis in his well-attended lectures.
His magistrate’s reports would be works of documentary art, as were the herbals he published.
“You honed your courting tactics,” Axel muttered. “Now your wife has put you up to seeing that my foot is caught in parson’s mousetrap as well.”
Theresa had merely said that she was worried about Axel, all alone in the middle of winter, and wouldn’t it be lovely for Christopher and Remington to see their father for a short visit?
Matthew had sent them back to university less than a month ago.
“Theresa said you deserve to be loved.” This fraternal conversation would have been extraordinary before Matthew’s recent remarriage. Now, what made it extraordinary was that Axel hadn’t yet resorted to fisticuffs.
A man of few and well-chosen words, was the professor. “Caroline loved me.”
“She did. She also put you off marrying again.”
Axel leaned forward and pulled a hassock up, then tugged off his boots and put his feet on the hassock. Matthew did likewise, brotherhood having its privileges. Marriage had not, and never would, change that.
“Why would you accuse Caroline of putting me off marriage? You’re not by nature obnoxious for the hell of it, one of your many endearing qualities.”
“I loved her too, because she made you more or less happy, but Caroline was a damned lot of work on a good day, and a walking megrim for the unsuspecting male betimes.”
The relief of putting that sentiment into words was nearly fifteen years overdue.
Axel took a leisurely sip of his drink. “‘A damned lot of work.’ What does that mean, coming from you?”
“Coming from me,” Matthew said, pushing his brother’s feet aside with his own and appropriating the middle of the hassock, “whose first wife was also a trial in her own fashion. Point taken, but don’t prevaricate. We’re discussing your future here, not my past.”
Axel gestured with his glass. “Say on. I am too tired to properly thrash you.”
Too tired or too in love? “Matilda was a far from perfect wife, but did she ever announce to the assembled dinner guests that if the bull died, she could simply turn her husband loose among the heifers, and they’d all come into season?”
“Matilda was not… given to indelicate humor.”
“Did Matilda ever pitch her wine in my face in front of the same guests?” Matthew inquired pleasantly.
“Matilda did not get so easily tipsy as Caroline did.”
Tipsy. Hah. “Did Matilda ever tell me, in front of the same guests, I’d better not linger over my port, or I’d once again find myself sleeping in a guest room for the rest of the month?”
“We had a particularly difficult evening. You can’t judge Caroline for those small lapses.”
Matthew patted his brother’s knee. “I judged her a hell of a lot of work. They aren’t all like that.”
Axel closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the sofa. He was maturing—not yet aging, and he was a good-looking fellow. A tired, good-looking fellow with a penchant for thinking everything through down to first caus
es and last details. Caroline had been right about that—also right to ask Matthew to look after Axel in the event of her death.
“Caroline was good for me,” Axel said. “She towed me out from behind your shadow, out from under the grief of our parents’ deaths, out of my own tendency to brood and sulk.”
Caroline had also doubtless provided Axel that list of positive attributes within a year of the marriage.
“You’ve always needed a lot of privacy. That isn’t brooding and sulking. Another woman won’t take your privacy away from you.”
Axel peered at his drink. “Caroline hadn’t yet reached her majority when we wed, and she had me in hand in a matter of weeks.”
She’d yanked Axel loose from his rose bushes, in other words. “You’re no longer eighteen. You simply explain to your lady that you like time to yourself. You choose a woman who can comprehend that, not the first woman to flash her bubbies at you.”
“Caroline wasn’t the first.”
“And you weren’t her first,” Matthew said, setting his drink aside. Axel was lightning quick when in a temper.
“Just how do you know that, Matthew?”
Matthew remained silent, braced for the first punch.
“The dear lady never could keep her mouth shut.” Axel’s smile was wistful rather than sad. “Unless she was in the mood to make me guess at my latest transgression.”
“Matilda was furious with her,” Matthew said, by way of consolation. “Said it was the most vulgar thing she’d ever heard a woman brag about, and I should tell you to set Caroline aside. Coming from Tilly, that was a brilliant display of hypocrisy, but protective of you for all that.”
“Your wife cuckolded you, mine led me around by my parts and made sport of me to other women in the family. You wonder why I’m not leaping back into the marital affray when I can instead have the pleasure of academic company, and the rousing intellectual challenge of Oxford university life. Dean Clemens says one of the colleges is about make me an offer, Matthew.”
Good God, not this again. Axel had been maundering on about a fellowship at Oxford since he’d put off full mourning.
It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels Page 21
