“Ask her for a batch scones,” Abby said, “but insist she use her own recipe.”Axel took the tray to the low table before the sofa. “Come sit with me, Abigail. How did you know I’d finish up in the glass house before dark? You left me all the chocolate tea cakes, which I cannot possible eat myself.”
“One can hope,” Abby said, abandoning the desk. “It’s a wonder my dresses still fit, the way your kitchen feeds me.”
He bit into a tea cake and settled beside Abby on the sofa. “If your dresses no longer fit, you must leave them off. Are you ready for tomorrow’s journey home?”
No, Abby was not, and the journey was not homeward. She’d simply return to the place she’d lived before being widowed.
“I’m not afraid the killer will return.” Not as afraid. “What we’ve learned about Gregory suggests he could have made enemies with reason to do him bodily harm. I don’t condone murder, but neither do I think those enemies have a motivation to harm me.”
Axel’s arm rested along the back of the sofa, and he had to lean partway across Abby to choose a raspberry tea cake.
“You attribute rational processes to somebody capable of taking a life, madam. I’m worried about you leaving Candlewick, and wish you’d reconsider.”
This wasn’t what they needed to discuss. “You are sending no less than six footmen, four maids, and Hennessey to guard my well-being. You’ve lectured my staff at length, inspected the premises, changed the locks on every door, including the larders and pantries, found one safe, and doubtless set the staff to searching out the other—if it exists. What more could you possibly do?”
Besides offer the protection of marriage, which Abby would be honor-bound to reject.
Axel held the raspberry cake up for her to take a bite, then finished it off himself.
The silence became thoughtful, then, for Abby, sad. They would likely not sit thus, companionably enjoying a tea tray, ever again.
“I will miss you, Abigail, and will, as you suggest, continue my investigation as unobtrusively as I can. I expect word from Nicholas any day regarding the import business, and I will start reading your grandfather’s journal tomorrow. Your turn to choose a tea cake.”
He did this. Made up intimacy out of nothing, so that in the course of the day’s least remarkable moments, vines of shared memory wrapped around Abby’s heart.
“Bother the tea tray, Axel. What happens when I go back to the manor?” Not Stoneleigh Manor. She’d find another name for it.
He sat back and took her hand in his. “You will have a discussion of this? Very well, we’ll discuss it. You shall return to your property, and at the Weasel, some money will exchange hands, for our prospects are doubtless the subject of vulgar wagers. I will finish my herbal, find a comfortable set of rooms in Oxford, and prepare to enjoy the life of a much respected academic. You will become the most visited widow in the shire.”
Axel kissed her knuckles and gave her the saddest specimen of a smile she’d ever seen.
“You will not be among those visitors?”
“The talk must die down, Abigail, and you must make a dispassionate appraisal of all the options before you. You are among the wealthiest landowners in the area, if not the shire. I have created certain expectations that mean I cannot offer you matrimony at present, but you well deserve to remarry if you so choose.”
The ache in Abby’s heart had dulled her brain. “You think I should remarry—you who has had years to remarry and declined the pleasure?”
He patted her hand, for which Abby wanted to smack him. “I think you are lovely, and deserve the devoted appreciation of a man who can stand beside you as a spouse, if that’s what you desire.”
“What if you’re what I desire?”
“Then we should retire early tonight, for tomorrow will be a full and fraught day.”
Abby was about to ask him what in the perishing perdition that meant when Hennessey returned with enough sandwiches to satisfy an entire university college.
Rather attempt to eat, Abby rose and paced across the room, which at midafternoon was full of the sunlight reflecting off the snow.
“You are denying me a continuance of our liaison?” she asked, her back to the man who’d promised her much, but not what she needed.
“I’m suggesting that you take time to consider options, Abigail. That right was wrenched away by a scoundrel when your parents died. You were harried, misinformed, taken advantage of, and victimized.”
“I hate that word.”
“I hate that you suffered.”
Blast him and his honorable heart. “Thank you. I understand what you’re about.” Abby’s mind did, the part of her that could puzzle out what the woodcuts in Axel’s books depicted, outlandish though they might be. Her heart was like a potted rosebush dropped to the floor of the glass house—torn leaves, exposed roots, shattered crockery, dirt everywhere, blossoms trampled into unrecognizability.
“What am I about, Abigail?”
“You are easing me away, gently, for my own good. You presume to know what my good is.”
Abby turned to see him getting to his feet, and for a moment, she expected him to leave the room. She was being… ungrateful, selfish, shrewish.
Also honest. Who was Axel Belmont to say what she needed from whom, or when?
“I am presuming to respect you,” Axel said, enfolding her in his arms.
They were before a window, visible from the stable, and Abby cared not one whit. Widows needed comforting, by God, and so did a woman saying good-bye to the man to whom she’d given her heart.
“I’m being cross,” Abby said. “Maybe I am afraid after all.” Terrified, more like, but not of somebody who’d born a grudge against Gregory Stoneleigh.
“If you need me, Abigail, a note will suffice. I’m still your closest neighbor, and I’m your friend too, and always will be at least that. Turn Stoneleigh Manor upside down, turn every bachelor in the shire upside down, but mostly, be happy. You deserve to be happy, and your happiness matters to me a very great deal.”
Abby wanted to run out to the sanctuary of the glass house and weep until sunset.
She settled for making love with Axel on the sofa, then ruining her supper by helping him demolish what remained of the offerings on the tea tray.
Madeline Hennessey had been half in love with Axel Belmont since she’d joined his household at the age of sixteen. He’d been a few years older than she, but decades wiser, and had ignored or convincingly misinterpreted every inexpert lure she’d cast.
The Belmonts had not been the most cheerful couple, but the young master of the household had been sensible, and devoted to his wife even when not quite enthralled with her. Eventually, Hennessey’s respect for Mr. Belmont had eclipsed her infatuation.
As he and Hennessey waited for Mrs. Stoneleigh to emerge from the Candlewick manor house, Hennessey felt neither respectful of, nor devoted to, the professor.
Though she liked the poor wretch more than ever.
“So I’m to watch over Mrs. Stoneleigh, see to her welfare, and insinuate myself into her confidences?” Hennessey asked, as Mr. Belmont paced before the mounting block.
They were taking the coach over to Stoneleigh Manor, for a closed conveyance was fitting when a widow was in first mourning. Then too, Mr. Belmont had spent most of the day in the glass house with Mrs. Stoneleigh. Somebody had muttered about “letting the lanes dry out,” though that would take until April.
And now, darkness was falling, and not only in the literal sense.
“You are to earn her confidences,” Mr. Belmont said, turning to pace the distance between the mounting block and the lamp post. “You are to keep those confidences, from me, from the rest of the staff, from any who would pry. You are to protect her with your life, and bring to bear all the common sense I know you to possess. Abigail—Mrs. Stoneleigh, that is—appreciates common sense.
“Draw upon the second sight you claim to have inherited from your great-grandmother,”
Mr. Belmont went on, “upon the charm the footmen attribute to you without limit, Hennessey. Abigail Stoneleigh deserves to be happy, to make friends, to entertain those friends, and have them about her. She needs books and beautiful flowers, complicated projects and simple joys. She should take her conservatory in hand—you might suggest that to her, there being a botanist in the neighborhood who has some helpful ideas—and she’s to discard mourning if she’d rather ignore convention. Above all things, she should be—”
“She should be with the man who loves her,” Hennessey interjected.
Mr. Belmont came to a halt facing the lamp post. Hennessey would not have been surprised to see him smack his forehead against it, repeatedly.
“Many people have supported my cause at the university, Hennessey. I have created obligations there I cannot extricate myself from easily. My own children expect me to be on hand when they matriculate. As for Mrs. Stoneleigh…”
His gaze went from the mud and snow along the main drive to Candlewick’s front door. The look in his eyes was wrenching—love, determination, and heartache, blended with the noble bewilderment of a man incapable of acting on a selfish impulse.
“She loves you too,” Hennessey said. “You do her no favors by abandoning her this way.”
He braced himself with a hand on the lamp post. “Hennessey, you forget your station.”
“So turn me off without a character,” she shot back. “I’m a woman, I know what it is to love a man beyond reason. She thinks you don’t want her, that your infernal roses are more important to you than she is. I must say, for a man of science, you are not very intelligent, sir. I’m glad I no longer work for you. Mrs. Stoneleigh and I will be fine.”
The hint of a ghost of a suspicion of a smile that Mrs. Turnbull and Cook watched for and discussed and treasured upon each sighting flickered over Mr. Belmont’s features.
“Hennessey, that was a lecture. I’m quite sure the ability to lecture has been grafted onto my very staff.”
“I’m not your staff anymore,” Hennessey retorted, though in some sense, she wanted to be the professor’s friend. His ally, for she did owe him. “Mrs. Stoneleigh will worry about you. Mourning means she can’t call on you, and thus you consign her to that stinking house, like a princess locked in a tower. She’ll miss you, and her heart will break for want of your company when she needs you most. You encourage her affections, and then you turn her out. You are being a dunderhead, sir. A complete, hopeless dunderhead.”
He leaned against the lamp post, crossed his arms, and regarded her with such a ferocious scowl, Hennessey was glad she was no longer in his employ.
“I will explain myself to you, Hennessey, out of respect for your years of service to me and my household, though I ought instead to arrest you for some damned thing or other. When a man’s regard for a woman exceeds a certain limit, his own needs cease to matter. Above all—above all—Abigail Stoneleigh needs to know that she is the sole authority operative in her life. She chooses with whom she associates now. She chooses the art hanging in her stairwells, the amount of sugar in her every cup of tea, whether her front door is manned by a butler, footman, or porter.
“She chooses whether she rides a mare or a gelding, whether her boudoir is done up in green or blue or peacock or cloth of gold, do you hear me? I’ll not have it said she was taken advantage of again, that she exercised poor judgment in a weak moment, that her grief clouded her reason. She chooses, from a position of unassailable independence, which she has earned very nearly at the cost of her life, and the rest of the world accommodates her choices.”
The professor’s words rang through the late afternoon air with the conviction of an impassioned sermon. He believed what he said, and he had a point.
Colonel Stoneleigh had been gone only a handful of weeks, and Mrs. Stoneleigh’s remarriage now would be seen as hasty. A prudent widow caught her breath after her first dalliance rather than leap straight into remarriage, especially a prudent widow who’d inherited significant wealth.
And yet, there stood Axel Belmont, gaze fixed on the front door like some Romeo beneath his beloved’s balcony, his roses very likely all but forgotten.
About damned time.
The door opened, and his expression became that of a man beholding a wish come true. Mrs. Stoneleigh was all in black, though she looked… hale. Healthy, if a bit pale, but black made everybody appear washed out. She moved down the steps with good energy, her gaze clear-eyed and calm.
“Mr. Belmont,” she said. “Take me back from whence I came. There’s a great deal to be done to set my estate to rights, and I’m sure you’d like to get to your glass houses on such a temperate evening.”
He looked puzzled, as if he could not recall which glass houses she referred to, but he handed the lady into the coach, provided Hennessey the same courtesy, and climbed in afterward.
The journey was silent and sad, but as Hennessey watched two people who ought to be together pretend to ignore the brush of the lady’s hems over the gentleman’s boots, a thought intruded.
For Mrs. Stoneleigh to assume control of her life was important. The slight trepidation in the widow’s gaze, the pensiveness of her expression as she pretended to read her correspondence, vindicated the professor’s judgment on that point. A wealthy widow needed confidence in life, and confidence did not result from sticking exclusively to the paths others mapped for her.
But men needed confidence too. Mrs. Stoneleigh needed to take charge of the choices in her life, and Mr. Belmont craved—longed—to be chosen for himself, and for himself alone, roses, thorns and all.
Chapter Twenty
Unless Axel immediately concocted a convincing lecture on the inadvisability of breaking a man’s heart, he and Abigail would spend their last moments together in silence. She sat across from him in the coach, apparently engrossed in a yet another note of condolence.
“Sir Dewey is leaving for some foxhunting in Leicestershire,” she murmured. “He says winter has gone on too long, and hunt season has all but fled. He promises to call upon me when he returns, and has given me his direction. I’m to send to him if I have need.”
Would that Sir Dewey had been of a mind to hunt foxes in darkest Peru. “You will send to me, Abigail, if you need anything at all.”
Abby stashed the note into her reticule and jerked the strings closed. Hennessey, sitting beside her on the forward facing seat, took to studying the darkening landscape beyond the window.
“I will send to whomever I please, Mr. Belmont.”
What imbecile had been ranting—not lecturing, ranting—about the necessity of according Abigail Stoneleigh despotic authority over every aspect of her life?
“I beg your pardon, Abigail. I beg—I’m ready to help, if aid is required.” Fat lot of help he’d been so far. His almighty aid, over a period of weeks, had failed to solve the mystery of Stoneleigh’s murder.
His apology had Abigail staring out the window too. The sun had nearly set, meaning there was nothing for either woman to see outside the coach but dormant trees, snow, and the occasional slash of dead grass or mud. The coach lamps afforded Axel one more opportunity to memorize the curve of Abby’s cheek, the slope of her nose, the exact contour of an ear he’d whispered outlandish suggestions into only hours earlier.
“Why is Sir Dewey going hunting?” Abigail murmured.
“Most gentlemen ride to hounds because they like to get tipsy and go for a good gallop.” The tipsy part was appealing more strongly by the moment.
“But Sir Dewey doesn’t foxhunt. I thought he accompanied Gregory on various jaunts about the countryside because men are social that way, but… maybe it’s nothing. With Gregory gone, I expected Sir Dewey might be less inclined to travel.”
Did she want Sir Dewey to remain consistently in the area? That useless inquiry came to a halt as Axel recalled Sir Dewey himself stating that he had no interest in foxhunting.
A prickle of unease shivered over Axel’s nape. “Do you k
now if Sir Dewey enjoyed shooting?” Sir Dewey’s elegant, exotic library came to mind. Not a weapon in sight, not a weapon on display anywhere on the premises.
Premises owned by a bachelor knight with a long and distinguished military career.
“I don’t know if he enjoyed shooting,” Abby said, gaze swiveling to Axel’s. “Now that you mention it, when he and Gregory went off to the grouse moors, they never packed any guns. Gregory had no fowling pieces other than the antiques on display in the library. Don’t most men like to use their own firearms when they hunt?”
“My brother certainly claims that familiarity with a trusted piece increases the likelihood of a successful outing.” Matthew had said something else, about a case often breaking right after the investigator had given up hope of ever solving it.
The coach turned up the drive to Stoneleigh Manor, while a sense of dread coalesced in Axel’s chest.
“I don’t want to leave you here, Abigail. I have failed to find the person who killed the colonel, failed to locate the second safe, failed to—”
Failed to tell her he loved her, though that sentiment was not for Hennessey’s ears.
Abigail held up a black gloved hand, a gesture clearly intent on silencing the great lecturer.
“I wrote to Gregory on several occasions,” she said, “when he’d told me he’d be in London, meeting with Mr. Brandenburg, dealing with matters related to the import business. I suspected he was merely socializing, renewing army acquaintances, doing whatever gentlemen do in London, but he seldom responded to my letters.”
“Not every man is a reliable correspondent.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, as the coach slowed. “I mean it’s as if he never got my letters. I’d send along word that one of his mares had foaled early, and he’d be surprised to see the foal upon his return. I’d pass along a notice that one of his army acquaintances had died, and when I’d condole him on the loss, he be taken aback to hear the news. I didn’t confront him about this, but then, I never confronted him about much of anything.”
It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels Page 30
