Axel (18 page)

He kissed her on the mouth. A friendly, brandy-flavored greeting of a kiss.

“What was that for?”

“This shouldn’t be a serious discussion, Abigail.” He repeated the kiss. This time he lingered, so Abby could enjoy the simplicity of the gesture, the soft, warm sensation of his mouth touching hers. Her hand slipped around the back of his neck, her fingers stroked the damp locks that fell over his collar.

Kisses were about pleasure, Abby thought, as a delicate whisper of tongue eased across her lips. About life being good and dear. About connection with that goodness, and the sheer physical delight any human ought to glory in from time to time.

“Not serious,” he said, softly. “When you’re enjoying the firelight and the company of a woefully informal gentleman at the end of a long, cold day, kisses ought not to be serious.”

Mr. Belmont sat back, when Abby would have kissed him again.

“Your spouse smoked pipes,” he said. “He might have been self-conscious about inflicting unpleasant breath on you. One should be considerate of one’s spouse.”

He topped off Abby’s glass, then his own and switched seats, so he was beside her and his feet propped on the hassock.

Gracious…
And yet, Abby was far from affronted. If anything, she wanted to snuggle closer. To him, to his kisses, to his unapologetic brand of gruff warmth.

“If you’re preparing to have an attack of manners, Abigail, I don’t think lectures and scolds will do much good. I’ve been a bachelor raising boys for too long, and the niceties were never very firmly in my grasp to begin with. Academics are allowed a few eccentricities. If I’ve presumed too egregiously, I could send you to Weekes, but I’m unwilling to return you to Stoneleigh Manor yet.”

The idea of Stoneleigh Manor, empty save for nervous servants, echoes of violence, and memories of misery, appealed not at all.

Though neither did the notion that the estate Abby now owned was drifting without her managing presence.

“I did ask you about kissing.” She’d been asking about loneliness, about other people’s marriages, about so much of which she’d remained in ignorance while a wife.

He patted her hand. “So you did, and I am ever prone to lecturing. Let me tell you about my chat with Sir Dewey, who holds you in fearfully high esteem.”

Nicholas chose that moment to interrupt—without knocking—and went straight to the brandy decanter.

“Colder than the ninth circle of hell out there, and a man must decide between breathing freely or freezing his face off. Thoughts of smiles from my dearest Abby were all that warmed me.”

Nick’s hair was tousled, his cheeks ruddy, and the gleam in his eyes suggested he might sit in Abby’s lap.

“We’re discussing Mr. Belmont’s interview with Sir Dewey,” Abby said. “You will please stop flirting long enough for a serious conversation.”

“In the presence of a pretty woman, I never stop flirting. I see we’re being scandalously informal.”

“I’m preparing Mrs. Stoneleigh for that day when the nephews descend from Oxford. If this is informal, they will turn the household barely civilized. Sit down, Nicholas, and give us the benefit of your thinking.”

Nick eased himself into a wing chair with the sigh of a weary horse flopping into deep straw at the end of a day’s journey. He pulled off his boots and propped stockinged feet on the other side of the hassock, cradled his drink in his lap, and closed his eyes.

Being a widow had unexpected aspects, to say the least, but the very informality of the moment gave Abby a sense of being esteemed and accepted—admitted to a secret society on the far side of strict decorum, a more sensible place, and less lonely.

“Say on, Professor,” Nick murmured. “Did Sir Dewey confess to murder most foul, and can he account for himself the night of the murder?”

“I don’t know,” Axel said. “His staff would lie for him, so I saw no point asking and enflaming his curiosity. Doubtless he’d say he was tucked up in his library, working at his ledgers as any nabob ought to be.”

Nothing in Sir Dewey’s interview came as any surprise to Abby, but she was disappointed nonetheless. She’d wanted him to have a solid alibi—darts at the Weasel, a short trip down to London, anything to put him beyond suspicion.

But then, she wanted everybody to be beyond suspicion and the murder to never have happened—though regaining the status of Gregory Stoneleigh’s wife in exchange for that of his widow also held no appeal.

No appeal at all.

Wasn’t this just lovely?

Nick had left Sussex intent on escaping the miasma of marital bliss afflicting his friends there, and now, in the household of the most confirmed bachelor Nick knew, in the dead of winter, romance was blossoming.

Coming in from the stable, Nick had had a stray dog’s view through the library window of Axel Belmont and Abby Stoneleigh kissing. The sheer wonder of their intimacies, the savoring and tenderness, had nearly turned Nick around for another slog to the Weasel.

Except he’d been to the Weasel and had news to report.

“You’ll talk to Sir Dewey again?” Nick asked.

“Very likely, and Shreve and Ambers and Mrs. Jensen, at least.”

Axel clearly didn’t want to. He wanted this investigation to be over—death by accident, as the preliminary reports had stated—but the woman sitting next to the professor would not have peace until Axel brought some fool to justice.

“I asked a few questions at the Weasel,” Nick said, as if nosing about the local watering hole had been his avowed purpose for riding two miles in bitter weather.

“You had a few pints too,” Axel replied. “And flirted with Polly Nairn.”

Polly, in truth, had made a good attempt to flirt with Nick. He’d barely been able to muster a wiggle of the eyebrows for the poor woman, though he’d left plenty of extra coin for her efforts.

“I had one pint. The publican’s winter ale is not the Weasel’s finest recommendation. You will be pleased to know that all the shire is relieved to have Mrs. Stoneleigh taken in hand by a responsible household.”

“This again,” Abby muttered, twitching at her shawl. “I am not some waif shivering in a church doorway.”

That would be a charitable assessment, compared to what Nick had heard. He exchanged a look with Axel, whose expression across the hassock was,
Get on with it
.

“You are high-strung, my dear,” Nick said. “Easily overset. Everybody knows this. You are delicate. The colonel had his hands full with you, which is why he never took you calling. The death of your grandfather and your parents in quick succession dealt a blow to your nerves from which you never recovered, hence your reclusive nature. Mrs. Turnbull and her minions are tasked with hauling you back from the brink of a complete breakdown.”

The twitching stopped. “I’m a witless wonder, while I ran that estate, even when my husband was larking around the grouse moors for weeks at a time? When he’d disappear to London, to do God knew what with God knew whom? I can’t tell you how often he claimed to be in London, though if I sent him a note care of Mr. Brandenburg, even my most urgent queries often went unheeded.”

“You needed solitude,” Nick went on, for Polly had been very sure of this point, “and the colonel needed respite from the demands of your company. The Stoneleigh staff was simply too loyal to admit the burden your care placed on them.”

Abby rose and set her drink on the end table. “Stoneleigh Manor has a full complement of servants, and yet I had no lady’s maid. What hysterical wreck manages without her lady’s maid? I had no nurse, I had no companion, I never drank to excess, never raised my voice. Why would people be so cruel?”

“Not cruel,” Axel said, staring at his slippers. “Misguided. I don’t get the sense anybody bears you ill will, Abigail. They are repeating a fancy woven long ago, embellished with convenient facts.”

She stood before the fire, a pillar of outraged consternation. “What facts? I ran my husband’s property. I kept ledgers, I tried to compensate for the worst of his follies without antagonizing him. I dealt with squabbling servants, directed the steward regarding eight tenant farms. I gave up my reading, I stopped sketching, I stopped playing the piano—”

“You became eccentric,” Nick offered, at least by the standard of country folk who expected the gentry to be… genteel.

“I became the wife Gregory Stoneleigh wanted,” Abby said. “He saved me from the poorhouse or worse, and I was determined to be a good wife to him.”

One could not be a good wife to a selfish idiot, though Nick hardly knew how to convey that sentiment respectfully.

“Sometimes,” Axel said, “when somebody has a shortcoming—an inability to express fine sentiments or appreciate art, for example—rather than admit that shortcoming, they attribute it to those around them. My nephew Christopher vociferously castigates his brother for being late, when in fact, Remington is generally punctual, but Christopher, the elder brother, loses track of time.”

In his example, the professor had apparently offered Abby a measure of comfort.

“My father was always losing his spectacles,” Abby said. “If my mother misplaced her reticule once every two years, she never heard the end of it from Papa. Gregory wasn’t eccentric, exactly.”

Nick could help with this, for the professor had seized on a telling point. “Stoneleigh had no friends, save Sir Dewey,” Nick observed. “He had odd tempers. He traveled frequently, though we’re not sure why and haven’t even confirmed his destinations. He never took you along, his finances are a mystery, he was not close to his children, and he supposedly ran an international import business, but couldn’t be bothered with his own acres.
He
was difficult, demanding, and eccentric.”

That Abby had to be convinced was sad, also a tribute to how determined she’d been to be Stoneleigh’s “good wife.”

“I’ve seen your quarters, Abigail,” Axel said, his tone ominously gentle. “You have no cheval mirror, only a small hand mirror in your bedroom. Gregory had two cheval mirrors, one in his bedroom, one in his dressing closet. He was never less than perfectly turned out, while I’d guess you haven’t had a new gown in two years.”

Abby’s expression said the new gown had likely been five years ago. “Gregory said an excessive interest in one’s own appearance led to vanity.”

“Gregory always went about in fashionable attire, and apparently visited London tailors from time to time,” Axel pointed out. “Gregory had a valet, you had no lady’s maid. How were you to manage?”

“I rang for a maid to deal with my laces when I wasn’t wearing jumps,” Abby said. “I wasn’t raised with a lady’s maid, so I thought little of it. Gregory said small economies were the basis of greater luxuries, and I do like my privacy.”

Gregory had said a bloody damned lot to his young, grieving bride. Somewhere in the midst of his dictates, Abby had misplaced the distinction between isolation and privacy.

“You are not eccentric, Abigail,” Axel said. “But the more I learn of your late husband, the more I believe he was hiding something from all and sundry, including you.”

A conclusion Nick could drink to—so he did.

“I’m investigating two murders,” Axel said to Nick.

Another day had been spent in a freezing saddle, haring about the shire. Another day when Axel had been warmed by the thought of Abigail Stoneleigh reading by the hour in his glass house, in his library, in her sitting room.

He ought to move his collection of erotica to the estate office, but Abby would notice an abruptly empty shelf or two in the library. She was a bookseller’s daughter to her very bones, much to his surprise and delight.

“My bachelorhood is about to be murdered,” Nick said, lighting the branch of candles on the piano. “Get out your fiddle, Professor. My manners have grown ragged lately, and my spirit needs soothing.”

What Nick needed was an hour sampling the tender charms of Polly Nairn. Axel suspected half the reason his nephews frequented Candlewick was to ogle Polly’s bosom and practice their fledgling flirtation skills.

“Nicholas, you cannot be made to marry. Stop sulking and resign yourself to courting, or tell your papa you aren’t ready to take a bride.”

Though Nick
was
ready. The man was so lonely he’d intrude on any friend, brave any weather, to avoid the bridal search awaiting him in London.

Men could be such fools when it came to matters of the heart.

“Where do you keep your fiddle?” Nick asked, raising the cover over the piano keys. “One never sees you practice, and yet, your skill remains sharp.”

Like kissing apparently, some of the knack remained after the opportunity to flourish one’s expertise had passed.

“If Mrs. Stoneleigh is resting, your pounding and my scraping will disturb her.”

Nick sat at the piano while Axel poured two brandies. The consumption of spirits in his household had increased considerably, but then, so had the availability of interesting company.

“I do not pound, you do not scrape,” Nick said, leafing through a bound volume of Beethoven. “What are your intentions regarding the fair Abigail?”

The role of knight protector suited Nick, much as Axel resented the question. Like the good academic Axel aspired to be, he considered the query as dispassionately as one sip of brandy allowed.

“I intend to keep Abigail safe, and to aid her to regain health that was apparently slipping from her grasp.” Axel also intended to kiss her again—another surprise.

“Abby reminds me of a barn cat,” Nick said. “One promoted to pantry mouser in the depths of winter. All this ease and comfort appeal strongly, as does the warmth of the hearth, though she’s bewildered by it too, and cautious.”

Well, yes. Abigail’s kisses savored of bewilderment, also of wonder.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the lady herself, standing in the library’s doorway. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

Nick rose and bowed. “My dear, you could not possibly intrude, because you are ever present in my thoughts. Axel has news to report from his day’s labors, but after dinner, we must inspire him to find his violin. He will rise in your esteem beyond all bearing when you hear him play.”