Axel (29 page)

She squeezed, he pushed forward, and anything resembling thought fled Abby’s grasp. She’d tried to learn the mechanics of breeding roses by studying a manual earlier in the day, and found the whole business too sexual.

The seed rose wept a sticky exudate when ready to receive the pollen rose’s offerings; the pollen rose was stripped nearly naked of petals, the better to present the precious pollen for collection.

Those words and images collided with Axel’s steady, relentless loving, and submerged Abby in a pleasure bordering on insensibility. She felt the moment of Axel’s surrender, felt the instant when their joining grew so intimate that they became a single entity, suspended in a limitless, perfect passion for each other.

As the incandescent pleasure faded to a hot glow, and then something gentler still, Axel did not leave her. Abby had the sense he
could
not. Words tried to coalesce in her mind.

Unique. Precious. Hold me. Help.
Axel
.

Love.

Axel kissed her brow, stood tall, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

Was this how the bud felt when torn from its own stem and wrapped tightly to the sturdy graft stock? Utterly bereft of identity save for the sheltering generosity of the rooted plant? Willing to reach past the most wicked thorns if a glimpse of the sun meant the joining could become perpetual?

Axel kissed her again, left cheek, right check, mouth, then he gently withdrew. He stroked himself almost contemplatively, as if unsure where the experiment might lead, until his head tipped back, his neck corded, and on a soft exhalation, his desire came to its natural conclusion.

Resentment wedged against the pleasure and wonder in Abby’s heart, for that final, silent pleasure should have been shared with her, not withheld in the name of prudence and consideration.

Axel used his handkerchief, then resumed his previous posture, arms around Abby, his warmth once again sheltering her from the cold. The resentment faded, warmth seeped through Abby’s limbs, and rest beckoned. She leaned against her lover, and surrendered to peace.

T
ime in the glass house had on several occasions produced for Axel a species of euphoria.

Late at night, working quickly with newly cut rosebuds to preserve them from drying or unnecessary trauma, time often faded. The silence, the delicacy of the work, the pleasure of bringing together two different species to create something stronger… Axel could lose himself in that process until the rising sun alone brought him back to mundane reality.

His grafts were notably successful, and he’d wondered if making the cuts and binding the plants together by night wasn’t part of that success. Making love with Abby had cut him, cut him to his soul, and left him bleeding and new and more at a loss for words than ever.

He’d loved his wife, and he still in some regard loved Caroline’s memory. They’d been young together. They’d started a family together, fought hard with each other though not always well, and in the short space of Caroline’s illness, they’d grieved together too.

Nothing, not any of that profound, unremarkable, precious marital history had prepared him for the lovemaking he’d shared with Abby Stoneleigh. He was not sore, he was
wounded
by the intensity of the intimacy they’d created.

Abigail, by contrast, had never looked lovelier, her dark braid over her right shoulder, her lips rosy, her complexion flushed, her gaze…

The moment required words, the right words, and Axel hadn’t any to offer. Even
no
words could be wrong, because clearly, Abigail was prone to fancies, such as that he’d avoid her over the breakfast table, for God’s sake.

“If you take a tray at dinner,” he said, “I will go into a decline.”

With a brush of her hand, she dropped her skirts over boots, garters, stockings, and pale thighs. Axel would miss the sight of those thighs in particular.

“It’s not always like this, is it?” Abby asked, scooting off the table and pushing Axel’s hands away from his falls. She did him up, while he watched and mentally bundled together evidence, intuition, and courage.

“I’ve wondered about something, Abigail.”

“You wonder all the time.” She smoothed his cravat, which was probably torn in three places. “I like that about you. Your imagination is seldom still. I’m the same way, probably because I read too much growing up.”

Axel led her to the hearth, took the rocking chair, and pulled her down into his lap. Some scooting and rearranging of skirts was needed, but they got situated comfortably.

How to approach this?
“I’ve been wondering about the colonel’s will. He was lax about many things, but the will was thorough and detailed.”

“He was evil. Of course he’d leave me Stoneleigh Manor, because he expected to outlive me. So generous of him.”

Abby was getting over the first, most vulnerable burst of rage, then. Settling in for a siege of well-earned bitterness.

Axel kissed her temple, a gesture of gratitude for allowing him to approach his inquiry from an oblique angle.

“Gregory provided for Lavinia and Gervaise,” he said. “He made specific bequests, established pensions for those approaching retirement. All very tidy.”

Axel’s own will was that tidy, and Matthew’s was probably a work of lawyerly art.

“You are reminding me that I’ll need a will—I haven’t one, you know—and I must decide what to do with my newly re-acquired wealth. I can’t think about that now.

I want to nap.” She scooted about most distractingly. “I must nap, in fact.”

A desk and a chair in the glass house made sense, but moving a bed in here…?

Axel would find a way. He’d built this glass house to come apart, expand, reconfigure, and disassemble, after all.

“Nap soon, listen now. Stoneleigh made no provision for after-born heirs.” This had bothered Axel the way a new tooth makes the gum sore. For some time, a child might complain of discomfort for no apparent reason, the gum irritated, the mouth tender. Then a sharp point visibly protruded from the child’s gums, and the misery made sense.

Though of course, nobody warned the little fellow’s father of that progression.

Abby nestled closer. “After-born what?”

“When a man dies, his widow might have a child following his demise. As thorough as Stoneleigh—or his lawyers—were regarding the rest of his estate, as young as you are, he would have made a provision for after-born heirs.”

Abby ceased twiddling the air at Axel’s nape. Axel ceased breathing, for he could barely comprehend the magnitude of the trust she’d shown him.

“I’ve told you Gregory and I were not… entangled. He was getting on, thank God, and he spared me, that is to say, we didn’t—”

“I was your first.” Axel kissed her with all the wonder and sweetness of that revelation, and with a hint of smugness too. “I was also your second.”

The sensation in his heart was like moving down the rows between his failures, all of which he yet loved in some fashion: failure, embarrassment, near miss, disaster, near success, failure… and then coming upon a bloom so beautiful, so impossibly perfect, the fresh wind, good earth, gentle sun, and beaming stars had to have conspired with the most sparkling showers in its conception.

“I was your first lover, ever, Abigail, and you did not tell me, because you rightly supposed I would not have availed myself of your affections had I been aware of your virginity.”

Axel wanted to weep—for sorrow, that Abby would waste such a gift on him, and for joy, that he had been so privileged. Once in his life, he’d been somebody’s first, and he’d not, apparently, bungled that.

For he
had
been her second too. The experiment had been replicated with verifiable results, writ indelibly in his heart.

“We can talk about that later,” Abby said, “though you allow me to raise another question. I’m not… When I was younger, I wasn’t horrid to look at, I was willing. Gregory was my husband, and at the time I was prepared to be dutiful.”

Axel grasped her question and realized as well that she hadn’t had anybody else to ask, doubtless another intended result of Gregory Stoneleigh’s campaign to keep his wife isolated and ignorant.

“You wonder why Gregory didn’t exercise his marital rights?” This question—or rather, Gregory’s intimate indifference—likely accounted for Axel’s earlier sense that Abby had been hiding secrets. What new widow wanted to admit to a near-stranger that her husband hadn’t consummated the union?

Abby hid her face against Axel’s throat, emotion shuddering through her. Anger, relief, or some combination too rare to name?

“Maybe the colonel could not consummate the vows, Abigail. Either he did not desire women, or he had no functioning in any regard. Illness can do that, injury, certain medicinal substances if used excessively are said to obliterate desire. Age certainly takes a toll.”

The tension in her relaxed. “It’s not an answer we’ll find. You were my first, Axel Belmont, if you need to hear the words. You were my first, and I consider that an excellent step in the direction of revenge against many bad memories. This chair is digging into my back.”

You were my first.

How was he supposed to let her go after such a confession? Axel stood and deposited Abby on her feet. While they remained in a loose embrace, he mentally tried to assemble a little speech about gratitude, and obligations—hers to him, and his to her—about children, and a place of respect in the local community. A mention of, oh, maybe years of shared pleasure might be a nice addition—

She patted his bum, and all topics and subheadings flew from his grasp.

“I came out here to tell you something,” she said. “I nearly forgot, so overwhelming is the passion you visit upon me. Do you know how much that pleases me?”

“Only
nearly
forgot, Abigail? You damn with faint praise.”

Another soft pat. At that moment, as far as Axel was concerned, Oxford University could remove itself to the western reaches of Persia, as long as Abigail kept stroking his fundament.

“Ambers has penned his resignation,” Abby said, yawning. “The stable is being reduced with each sale of a hunter, and he intends to look for work at a larger establishment after the hunt season ends next month. With many thanks for all the years of employment, he must regretfully notify me of his intent to seek another post come April. He went prosing on at some length—the man has beautiful penmanship—but I won’t be sorry to see him go.”

The words she quoted were prosaic, nearly a formula of polite leave taking, but Axel could feel a shift in her, and not merely because they’d copulated like two people trying to put the passion of an all-night orgy into twenty minutes of lovemaking.

“You think our last suspect has decided to leave the scene, and thus you’ll be safe at Stoneleigh Manor.”

In Axel’s mind, in his bones, in his heart, he wanted to bellow at her that she was wrong. That Ambers wasn’t the killer, that all the arguments that excused Shreve from guilt also excused Ambers, and that Ambers’s reasoning made sense—the Stoneleigh stables no longer belonged to a huntsman.

“He hasn’t left yet,” Axel said, tucking a lock of dark hair behind Abby’s ear. “Give me some time to talk to the man, look for the second safe, and otherwise attempt to finish my investigation. I cannot abide the notion you aren’t entirely secure in your own home.”

Abby slid from his embrace. “Sir Dewey was very polite, but he hinted that if I’m not free to return to Stoneleigh Manor, I have only to apply to him, and he’ll force the matter. I gather there’s talk at the Weasel, and probably in the churchyard.”

Kicking was too good for the gallant Sir Dewey.

“People will always talk, and if they talk long enough, and I listen well enough, that talk might result in a murder solved. Give me a little more time, Abigail.”

She plucked a yellow leaf from the peach tree and tossed it into the dirt around the roots.

“You won’t give this up.”

For her sake, no, he would not, but neither would he badger her. “I will ask you to think the situation over. You needn’t decide anything at the moment. Join me at the worktable, and I’ll show you how to make a good, strong graft, and maybe even how to create a new breed of rose.”

She peered at him, as if waiting for him to say something more, but exhortations about killers and gossip and conception occurring in a glass house would not aide Axel’s cause when he wasn’t entirely sure what his cause was.

“You want more time,” she said, brushing his hair back from his brow. “I can give you more time, Axel, but not forever. Stoneleigh Manor is what I have to show for years of hard, lonely work, and I won’t let anybody or anything take that from me—that too. I’m not a coward.”

“Most assuredly not.”

He took her hand and launched into one of his oldest and best-rehearsed lectures, about how to make a successful graft of two different species, a process which required patience, calm, and the ability to apply a razor to two innocent roses.

“During the entirety of Caroline Belmont’s marriage to my brother,” Matthew Belmont said, “she might have spent as much time in a glass house with Axel as you have on this one afternoon.”

Abby found Mr. Matthew Belmont an exceedingly pleasant man—irritatingly pleasant, in fact.

She’d come to the library to work at her embroidery near the rose she thought of as hers, the little white blossom with the powerful fragrance. For a parlor rose, the species had stamina in a vase, and the scent…

She wanted a perfume of that fragrance, to remind her of how Axel Belmont’s care had brought her back to life.

“The late Mrs. Belmont had a household to run, and small children to raise,” Abby said, knotting off her thread. Her eyes ached, her head hurt, and her neck pained her. By contrast, the sensations lingering between her legs were the stuff of rare, rapturous books.

“Caroline called the roses his mistresses,” Matthew replied, selecting from among the pieces on the piano’s music rack. “Will you play with me, Mrs. Stoneleigh? We have another half hour before we go in to dinner.”