Axel, page 10
part #3 of Jaded Gentlemen Series
“Austen,” she said reaching for a book, only to have her hand collide with Axel’s. “I beg your pardon,” she murmured as a blush crept up her neck.
Austen was a fine choice for a blushing widow in evening dishabille. Axel took Abigail’s hand and slapped the book against her palm.
“Excuse my clumsiness,” he said softly. The best he could do, with Nick listening to every word.
“I might be needing a book myself,” Nick said from the sofa.
“Try the Bible,” Axel retorted. “Take it up to your room and start with Genesis. Don’t come down until you’ve finished Revelations.”
“Already read that one,” Nick replied. “I like the Song of Solomon best. Caught my eye when I was a wee lad. Shall I light you up to your room, Mrs. Stoneleigh?”
Axel wasn’t half done questioning her, but she was already paging through the tale of Mr. Darcy’s fall from arrogance.
“Nicholas will behave,” Axel said, “or you have my permission to bludgeon him with the book.”
She considered her tome. “It’s a slim volume, and bound books are very dear.”
“You wound me, madam,” Nick said, rising and picking up a carrying candle. “I’ll behave, Mrs. Stoneleigh, because I am a gentleman and too tired to do justice to a flirtation with you—for now.”
“You will behave,” she said sternly, “because I expect it of you, sir.”
Nick beamed at her. “I am in love. She understands me.”
“Bother you,” Abigail muttered, preceding Nick from the library, Miss Austen at the ready.
The widow was safe with Nicholas, or as safe as she wanted to be. Axel gave the fern another drink and wondered where a fellow learned the knack of witty repartee.
Nick came back to the library a few moments later—too few moments for much mischief to have occurred.
“I do not see a bright red handprint on your cheek,” Axel said. “I conclude you are working on a stealthy seduction rather than overwhelming the lady with your appeal.”
A dalliance might do Abigail Stoneleigh good. All of Axel’s scolding had yet to put roses in her cheeks, or win a true smile from her.
“I doubt she has much familiarity with trifling,” Nick said, collapsing onto the sofa and tugging off his boots. “You could help her with that. She’s too damned pale.”
“She is pale.” Axel had grown accustomed to Abigail’s pallor, and the woman was grieving, after all.
“Tell her to stop using the damned arsenic.” Nick yawned and propped his stockinged feet on the low table. “My step-mama wouldn’t let my sisters use it.”
“Arsenic?” Axel settled in beside Nick, who had half a regiment of sisters. Axel was familiar with every cosmetic use of plants, but knew nothing of what else might lurk on a woman’s vanity.
“The ladies use arsenic to give their complexions that lovely, ethereal quality,” Nick said, closing his eyes. “Genuine grief apparently has the same result.”
“She does miss the old fellow.” Axel hoped. “Tell me, Nicholas, how is my brother? And how are my sons?”
“I had to leave,” Nick said. “Matthew and Theresa are besotted, and she has that secret glow of the breeding woman. Loris and Thomas are in the advanced stages of the same condition on the next property over, and the whole shire stinks of marital bliss. Move down.”
Axel complied, shifting to the end of the sofa, only to find Nick’s feet in his lap, while the considerable length of his friend lounged along the rest of the sofa.
“Your fatigue is catching up with you.” Axel pulled an afghan from the back of the sofa. He tossed the blanket over Nick’s face, letting Nick arrange it further.
“This sofa,”—Nick closed his eyes—“must be conveyed to me in your will. Or if I die first, you must bury it with me so I might have it in the afterlife, like the pharaohs of old from whom a god such as myself is doubtless descended.”
Damn and blast. From the mouths of marriage-shy viscounts. “I should look at their wills.”
“Whose?”
“Abigail’s parents. She believes they died deeply in debt, but her upbringing was the finest, and her father’s businesses were to appearances thriving.” And her father would have recently inherited whatever her grandfather had left behind, too.
Nick opened his eyes. “Appearances have little to do with finances, particularly among the aspiring class. Will you seduce her? I think she likes you.”
“Nicholas, you grow tedious. She doesn’t like me.” Especially not after hearing Axel’s speculation regarding her guilt, or those secrets—plural—which she had not shared. “She might respect me. We were not well acquainted prior to Gregory’s death, and we’re both pleasantly surprised to find each other human.”
“Oh, right. Admit it, Belmont. You left Sussex and traveled nearly a hundred miles in the dead of winter to escape the foul miasma of marital bliss under your brother’s roof.”
“I’m not jealous, Nicholas, and neither are you. We’re happy for Matthew.” Mostly.
“Overjoyed,” Nick said. “Why don’t you bring that decanter over here, and we’ll drink to Matthew’s glorious benighted happiness.”
Axel fetched the decanter, which was merely what a conscientious host and a good friend would do, after all.
* * *
“So what will you do with your day?” Abigail asked her host. They were alone in the breakfast parlor, something of a relief.
“I thought I’d call upon Reverend Weekes, maybe visit Sir Dewey Fanning, get off a letter to Gervaise, and nose about at the Wet Weasel. Have you an errand you’d like me to dispatch?”
Abby chose a slice of toast from the rack on the table, and Mr. Belmont pushed the butter toward her. The crust was golden perfection, the toast still warm.
“I’ll be content to remain close to the house today.” Abby slathered her toast with butter. Gregory had preferred delicacy on the female frame, while Axel Belmont apparently liked to see a woman enjoy her food.
The raspberry jam was another delight of the Belmont table, so Abby added a portion to her toast.
“I have letters of condolence to acknowledge,” she went on, “and I’d like to explore your library.”
“Help yourself to any volume that catches your fancy, of course.” Mr. Belmont poured her a fresh cup of tea and plucked an orange from the bowl on the table. “Nicholas will probably sleep late. He had a hard day of travel yesterday and was no doubt keeping Town hours before that.”
“About Nicholas.”
Mr. Belmont put aside the orange, several inches of curled rind already trailing from the fruit.
“What about him?”
“Did you…?” Abby’s host was being inscrutable, and he was dashed good at it too. “You did not intend… That is, you didn’t ask him…”
“What exactly are you dancing around, Abigail?”
She got up and went to the window, where a weak sun was trying to find openings in a gathering overcast.
“His lordship implied he was available to comfort me, though he was delicate about his insinuations, and I might have misconstrued them. You didn’t put him up to that, did you?”
Silence, which Abigail took for an affirmative, then she heard a chair scrape.
“Comfort you, how?” Mr. Belmont asked from immediately behind and to her left.
“As a man comforts a woman.” Or was supposed to comfort her? “In bed.”
“Were you offended?”
They had the most peculiar conversations. “I ought to have been, but I was not. Not very. He might have meant nothing by it.” Or he might have been encouraging Abigail to dally with Axel Belmont. She hadn’t been sure, and thought perhaps his lordship preferred her to remain confused.
“I will certainly warn him off—if you wish me to.”
Mr. Belmont did not sound angry. Not with his friend, not with Abigail even if she’d been considering a liaison under Candlewick’s very roof, and Gregory barely gone a month.
“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Belmont.” Abby hadn’t asked the question that truly plagued her. Would a magistrate who suspected her of colluding in her husband’s murder test her loyalties by dangling temptation at her elbow?
“Did I procure Nick’s services for you? Do you really think I would?”
What Abigail thought was that nearly a decade of marriage to Gregory had given her no sense of how to handle men in the wider world, and certainly no ability to handle this man.
“I’ve offended you.” Or perhaps she’d amused the professor, or foiled his nasty strategy. “I’m sorry, but you seemed so sure I would develop such associations now that I am a widow, and I am at sea in so many ways. I do not know how these things are done. I did not mean to give offense.”
Mr. Belmont turned her gently by the shoulders.
“If I thought you sought that kind of consolation, Abigail, I would hardly set Nick upon you. I love the man dearly, and he’s accounted a good time by the ladies, but you deserve better than a mindless romp.”
He dropped his hands. What would he do if Abby told him that, indeed, she sought that kind of consolation? Axel Belmont wouldn’t offer a mindless romp, not to her, not to anybody.
He would be mindful, very, very mindful. Just as he’d mindfully arrest her in the king’s name if he suspected she’d arranged Gregory’s murder.
He drew her chair back. “Eat your breakfast, Abigail. I’ll tell you about Nick, and maybe you’ll forgive him.”
She sat and took up her toast, though the entire exchange had raised more questions than it had settled.
“Nick is at war with his papa, the Earl of Bellefonte.” Mr. Belmont resumed peeling his orange. “The earl wants Nick to marry and produce the requisite heir. Lord Bellefonte is rumored to be in failing health, but Nick isn’t ready for domesticity. He has fought for ten years against the inevitable, and his father’s patience is at an end. When the Season begins, Nick will be on the hunt for a wife.”
“I do not understand the male of the species,” Abby said, savoring the combination of butter, toast, and raspberry jam. “Your friend gives every appearance of adoring women, but can’t be bothered to find one special woman for himself.”
The orange squirted juice all over Mr. Belmont’s fingers. “Perhaps having a fondness for all women does not allow for loving only one.”
“You loved your wife.” Abby needed to believe this about him, though she and Gregory had not loved each other. She’d been grateful, she’d been dutiful, she’d prayed for Gregory’s soul—but she hadn’t loved him.
“I was a young man,” Mr. Belmont said, “who’d found a woman willing to bear my children and all that entailed, so of course I was enamored of Caroline.” He ripped the last of the peel away from the orange and tore the fruit in half. “She was well-situated, pretty, passionate about life, and not so diminutive that I felt like an oaf when we danced.”
Half an orange landed on Abby’s plate. “You married her because she did not make you feel like an oaf?”
He picked off the pith from his half, while citrus and awkwardness perfumed the air.
“I was a good catch. Not titled, but wealthy and biddable. Reasonably presentable in evening attire.”
He was stunning, in his way. “Biddable?”
“A fine quality in a husband. I’m sure your mama told you how to encourage it in the colonel.” His half of the orange lay in tatters on his plate.
“Whatever are you talking about? Gregory was my husband, the head of our household. Of course he wasn’t biddable and by the time I married him, my mama was laid in her grave.
Mr. Belmont studied the mess on his plate. “If Caroline wanted something badly, she knew to ask me for it… when the exercise of certain marital privileges was much on my mind. I was biddable.”
How had they ever got onto this topic, and more to the point, how could they pretend they’d never discussed it?
“I know nothing of this kind of manipulation between spouses, Mr. Belmont. If Gregory asked something of me, I tried my best to accommodate him, and I’m sure he made similar efforts. The behavior you describe… It had no place between us.”
Abby had taken less than a year to establish what her spouse needed from her—an orderly, quiet home; a well-run country estate; companionship between his jaunts to the grouse moors, Melton Mowbray, or London.
Nothing more, and nothing less.
“You make Stoneleigh sound like a paragon, Abigail. I rode out with the man enough to know he was given to pomposity, self-absorbed, and rigid. He could be jocular, but he was becoming an arrogant old martinet.”
Well, yes, but fortunately, being an arrogant old martinet was not grounds for murder.
“He was a fine man,” Abby shot back. She hadn’t truly known Gregory Stoneleigh, any more than his housekeeper or head gardener had known him. Even his children, after early years in India, had been sent back to England to finish growing up.
“We are having an argument,” Mr. Belmont said, patting Abby’s hand. “I haven’t argued with a woman for years. Are you enjoying this altercation?”
The orange had got the worst of it. “I am loath to admit it, but I am. I did not argue with Gregory.” Not ever.
“Look at the fun you missed. I argued with Caroline from time to time—one didn’t take her on lightly—and while I disliked the altercations, I enjoyed patching things up afterward.”
“And you call yourself biddable. Caroline was lucky.”
“So was Gregory. Now that we are friends again, would you like to visit the filly with me?”
Friends. An invigorating notion, when Abby suspected Mr. Belmont would arrest such a friend without a qualm. They were soon crossing the back gardens, though any trace of sunbeams had disappeared behind the clouds.
“That sky does look like snow,” she said. “Don’t tarry in the village, if you please.”
“Will you worry about me, Abigail?”
She liked hearing him say her name, part challenge, part… friendship. “I will worry about me, lest I be snowbound with Lord Reston of the easy virtue.”
“You tell him no, and he will desist. If he doesn’t, protect yourself accordingly with my blessing.”
“Protect myself? Not to cast aspersion, but I wonder if you could protect yourself from his lordship when he’s in a temper.”
“Nicholas never lets himself get into a temper, and you can protect yourself in the manner of women.”
Abby crunched along beside him between bare hedges and dormant roses. “This must be something else my mama neglected to tell me, along with how to keep my husband biddable.”
“A man can be rendered utterly harmless by a knee to his stones, and from you, he’d not expect it.” Mr. Belmont’s tone was lecturing, as if the next topic were propagation of fruit trees in winter. Had Abby not spent time with her nose in various naughty tomes, she would have had no clue regarding the male anatomy under discussion.
When they reached the stable, Mr. Belmont fussed over the little filly, then stopped by the stall of the viscount’s enormous mare—Buttercup, by name. The mare greeted Mr. Belmont as if he were a long-lost friend, wiggling her lips against his cheek.
“Ivan will be jealous.” Abby was jealous, not of a horse-kiss to Mr. Belmont’s cheek, but of the easy affection between man and mare. Of a marriage where spouses were free to argue with each other, of women who knew how to protect themselves from importuning viscounts.
She was a wealthy widow, and yet, she felt impoverished.
“Geldings don’t get jealous,” Mr. Belmont replied, “but they do get impatient. Wheeler, I’ll take Ivan now. Come along, horse, and we’ll escort Mrs. Stoneleigh back to the house.”
Ivan the Not Very Terrible toddled placidly behind his master, while flurries danced down from the sky.
“I doubt I’ll be back for luncheon,” Mr. Belmont said, halting his horse by the mounting block before the front steps.
Maybe he’d had that kind of marriage too. The kind where spouses kept each other informed of their whereabouts. Gregory had often simply departed for “Melton,” or “London,” with little notice and fewer details, rarely even specifying his date of expected return. He’d more than once told Abby he was off to check on the import business’s activities in Town, only for Brandenburg, the London factor, to send inquires as to when the colonel’s next visit would be.
“I’m accustomed to eating alone,” Abby said. “Be off with you.”
She patted Ivan’s shoulder and aimed an I’m-just-fine smile at Mr. Belmont. The sooner he left, the sooner he’d return, and the notion of a supper tête-à-tête with the viscount was not to be borne.
A knee to the…. Well.
Mr. Belmont brushed a kiss to her cheek and swung into the saddle. “See that you eat, whether you’re alone or in company. Keep a list of all the condolence notes you receive, especially from impecunious bachelors. Take Mr. Darcy up to bed for a nap if you’re so inclined.”
“Yes, sir. At once, Mr. Belmont. Of course. Now shoo, before I turn into an ice sculpture.”
He turned his horse away from the mounting block, then cantered off down the frozen driveway, but not fast enough to hide the glimmer of a smile in his eyes.
Chapter Seven
Axel might have stopped in at the Wet Weasel for his midday meal, but Ivan, doubtless longing for his cozy stall and a heaping pile of hay, instead brought his rider home for luncheon after the interview with Weekes.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Abigail said. “Was Mr. Weekes not home?”
She was the picture of domestic bliss on the library sofa, her feet curled under her, a cream-colored shawl about her shoulders, the everyday porcelain on a tea tray before her.
“You’ve been cavorting with Mr. Darcy,” Axel said, closing the library door. “Better him than Nicholas. Weekes was at home to callers, though I’ve discovered a capacity for mendacity in our vicar.”
“Tell me,” Abigail said, patting the sofa beside her. “Even Mr. Darcy’s charms have their limit, though he writes a compelling letter.”
