Axel, page 21
part #3 of Jaded Gentlemen Series
“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 causes 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.
Time to circle back to the relevant points—or pour more brandy. “Oxford doesn’t deserve you, and Caroline didn’t have a very well-developed sense of marital privacy. Mrs. Stoneleigh, obviously, is cut from a different cloth.”
“Matthew, for all Abigail has confided some surprising particulars to me, I can’t help but feel she’s still not being entirely honest.”
Good for her, if she was making Axel work to earn her trust. “Women are canny. They have to be. When they trust a man, his power over them approaches life and death, and from what you said before dinner, Abigail Stoneleigh came perilously close to death at her husband’s hands.”
“Gives a fellow pause, and probably gives the lady pause as well.” Axel stood and gathered up his boots. “Just how bad was Caroline?”
Matthew wanted to say she’d been bloody awful, particularly when she’d been at the wine and was in a mood, but if a man’s memories were all he had, one had to tread lightly.
“For all her faults, she loved you.”
“And I loved her, more than I knew at the time, but Matthew, nobody loved Abigail. For eight years, she managed on her own—no parents, no siblings, no children, and a spouse whose capacity for evil would make the devil blush. Stoneleigh subtly maligned her, robbed her when she was at her most vulnerable, denied her any friendships, and alternately abandoned her and left her no privacy… that was before he tried to poison her.
“The notion of remarriage holds limited appeal for me,” Axel went on, “but for Abby… I can’t see her ever taking such a risk again. Marriage to Stoneleigh nearly killed her. A prospective suitor with little charm doesn’t waltz his way past a trauma like that.”
Axel had clearly assessed the challenge such a suitor would face, though. Matthew could write that much heartening news in his first letter to his wife.
But like a pair of young horses, the professor and the widow would trot back and forth on separate sides of the pasture fence, snorting and pawing, tails over their backs, but neither one was willing to take a leap for the sake of a shared future.
Fortunately, Matthew knew exactly how that felt and with the help of his new wife, had learned a few things about how to open gates.
Chapter Fourteen
“You left them alone?” Matthew asked, glowering at the closed door.
Axel took his brother by the arm and led him away from the Candlewick family parlor.
“Marriage has made you forgetful, Matthew.” Also damned happy. The glow of contentment radiating from Matthew would have illuminated both glass houses on a moonless night. “I asked Sir Dewey to call on Abigail. Condolence calls are paid to the bereaved, not to the magistrate investigating the murder resulting in the bereavement.”
Matthew’s fists went to his hips, which display put Axel in mind of the male peacock, preparing to strut the bounds of his territory.
“The murder was barely a month past, Axel. Sir Dewey is rushing his fences.”
“Sir Dewey is saving me, and quite possibly you, several freezing miles on horseback. When he’s made his bow to Abigail—who needs the distraction of his company—we can ask him a few questions.”
“Questions?” Matthew uttered the word the way university scholars spoke of freshly baked rum buns in the dead of winter.
Axel moved off down the corridor, lest Abby catch him trying not to eavesdrop.
“Did Sir Dewey know of the safe?” Axel began. “Why didn’t he mention it, if so? Does he know where the second safe is? What’s his explanation for the magnitude of Gregory Stoneleigh’s wealth? Where exactly did they go on these shooting excursions? Were he and Gregory lovers?”
Matthew stopped short. “Hadn’t thought of that. That’s quite good. That will throw him right off stride, and then you can follow up with the question you really want him to answer. Which would be…?”
Are you in love with Abigail Stoneleigh? Except Axel had already asked that one, and received a perfectly gentlemanly response.
“You’re the brilliant investigator. How about you think of the brilliant questions?”
Though Matthew was stepping down as magistrate by midsummer, before a blessed event could steal all of his attention not already reserved for his wife and children.
“Why not ask him if he killed Gregory Stoneleigh?” Matthew asked.
“Of all people, Sir Dewey had no motive. He’s a nabob, for one thing. He tolerated Stoneleigh’s crotchets, for another, such as a man bent on uxoricide can be allowed mere crotchets. Then too, nobody can place Sir Dewey on the premises that night.”
And Sir Dewey did not strike Axel as a man fond of violence. Unlike Stoneleigh Manor, Sir Dewey’s abode boasted no displays of crossed swords, mounted pistols, or gory scenes from the hunt field.
“Only a scholar would refer to killing one’s wife as uxoricide,” Matthew retorted. “Sir Dewey could have hired the murder done. Put Ambers up to it, or even Shreve.”
If Ambers had done murder, he was certainly malingering at the scene of the crime when all sense should have sent him off to the Continent.
Axel had led his brother to the library. Here, Axel could picture Abby curled on her end of the sofa. He could rearrange the bouquets he’d chosen for her that morning. He could cast longing glances in the direction of his collection of erotica, which in his fantasies he shared with her.
Abigail liked books, and she liked him, as far as he could tell.
Matthew yanked the bell-pull.
“What in the perishing hell are you ringing for? Luncheon was less than two hours ago.”
“If we’re to entertain Sir Dewey, some food and drink are only hospitable.”
Sir Dewey was at that moment sitting before Axel’s best everyday service, and a tray doubtless piled with tea cakes, scones, jam, butter, clotted cream… fruit. Anything Axel’s cook could conjure that Abby might enjoy nibbling on.
“You cannot possibly be hungry,” Axel said.
“And you cannot possibly long for your glass houses.”
They shared a moment of fraternal accord that only looked like mutual exasperation.
“Am I interrupting?” Sir Dewey Fanning sauntered in, all fine tailoring and lean good looks. Axel wanted to kick him right in his handsome teeth, doubtless a symptom of having neglected the glass houses.
“Sir Dewey, greetings. May I make known to you my brother, Matthew Belmont, late of Sussex. Matthew, Sir Dewey is a neighbor of several years standing.”
Sir Dewey’s bow balanced geniality and dignity. “I understand you are an experienced magistrate, Mr. Belmont. I’m sure you’ll give us the benefit of your thinking regarding the situation at Stoneleigh Manor.”
Oh, for God’s sake. Kicking was too good for such blatant graciousness.
“Perhaps we might discuss that very topic?” Axel said, gesturing to the sofa. “I have a few more questions for you, if you have time to oblige me.”
Sir Dewey flipped out the tails of his dark blue riding coat and took a seat. “Inquire away. If I know the answer, I’ll gladly share it. I must say, I’m greatly relieved to see Mrs. Stoneleigh looking so much better.”
“Better?” Matthew asked, taking the armchair nearest the fire. “I gather she was not at her best at the funeral?”
“Even before that, she was… fading. Losing flesh, growing pale. Several times I saw her steady herself when she’d risen too quickly. Clearly, the professor’s care and cosseting have helped put her back to rights.”
If Axel attempted to cosset Abigail beyond basic hospitality, she’d unman him.
“Your visit is much appreciated as well,” Axel said, taking the other armchair. “I’d hoped Weekes might put in an appearance, but he has yet to brave the elements.”
Or tear himself away from Mrs. Weekes’s baking abilities, while Matthew had ridden nearly a hundred miles in the depths of winter, left his new bride and his children, to come to his brother’s side.
The tea tray arrived, to which Matthew applied himself with predictable assiduousness, leaving Axel free to interrogate their guest.
“Why, exactly,” Axel asked, as Matthew troweled butter onto two scones, “did you leave the import business, and did Sir Gregory buy out your interest? And please help yourself to the offerings on the tray.”
If Matthew left any.
Sir Dewey selected a scone, then fixed himself a cup of tea, his movements leisurely.
“I see where you’re heading with this, and I agree with you,” he said. “The business bears closer inspection, being a source of revenue, debt, and entanglement with various third parties. So… I decided to extricate myself from the partnership before I had even left India, and had been corresponding with Gregory to that effect. I implemented the decision shortly after my arrival here.”
