Axel (5 page)

Ambers was gazing out the window, holding himself slightly apart from the house staff, as usual. Whether he did this out of deference to the usual servant hierarchy—house servants being above ground servants—or because he considered himself superior to them all, Hennessey neither knew nor cared.

Ambers had once tried to
demand
kisses from her—more fool he. He’d made quite a fetching picture, writhing on the ground in his London finery.

Hennessey glanced at the clock. In fifteen minutes, she’d file out the servants’ entrance with the rest of the Candlewick employees paying their respects, and wedge herself into the Belmont traveling coach for the short journey home.

Mr. Belmont had declared that his staff was not to tromp the lanes in frigid weather when reasonable people availed themselves of coaches on such a solemn occasion. The professor was a great one for declarations, treatises, lectures, and general grumbling.

Hennessey wished him the joy of his investigation. If she’d concluded anything in more than an hour of sitting on a hard chair and avoiding Heath’s hopeful glances and Jeffries’s subtle ones, it was that the servants were keeping secrets.

Servants did that. Their discretion was bought and paid for, also a matter of honor. This group might quietly admit Mrs. Stoneleigh wasn’t faring well, but never go so far as to worry aloud that the widow looked positively sickly, and had lost too much flesh in recent months.

Heath was right to worry, and Mr. Belmont was right to investigate, alas for his roses, lectures, and much-respected treatises.

A
xel Belmont returned to Stoneleigh Manor for the reading of the will, which to Abby’s relief, did indeed, leave her the entirety of the landed estate. Gervaise inherited the London-based import business—another relief—and Lavinia received a trust to be administered by her solicitor husband.

All in order, all quite equitable.

Gervaise went trotting back to Oxford along with Gregory’s solicitor immediately after the reading, Lavinia’s coach following in their wake.

“I’m glad you have some family in the area,” Mr. Belmont said, peering out the formal parlor window as if to ensure that family had in fact gone haring back to town. “Even if they’re staying elsewhere and only for a few days.”

“Lavinia is dear.” Lavinia was particularly dear in small doses, and she was a dear unwilling to bide under a roof where murder had been done. “Was there something else you wanted to discuss, Mr. Belmont?”

“I have more questions for you, though we should sit, because this might take a while.”

“My private parlor is warmer,” Abigail said, turning to go.

Mr. Belmont’s hand on her arm stopped her. “You’re not eating and probably not sleeping.” His blues eye held the concern of a man who had explained to a seven-year-old that death was not the same as oversleeping.

“I’m managing, Mr. Belmont. You need not be anxious.” Because if he continued looking at Abby like that, she might… lose her wits, run barefoot across the snow, drink every drop of spirits in the house. As she’d lain awake night after night, she’d concocted a long list of things she must not do.

Startle at every sound the house made as it creaked its way through the interminable hours of darkness, for example.

Abby shrugged out of Mr. Belmont’s grasp and led the way to the smaller, cozier room closer to the back of the house. A wood fire—extravagant, that—burned in the hearth, while Shreve added water to a vase of roses.

“Gervaise sent them,” she said, when Mr. Belmont—the botanist—leaned in for a whiff. “He knows they are my favorite, and I will never again enjoy the scent of lilies.”

The scent of funeral casseroles was equally disagreeable, along with Gregory’s infernal pipes. In recent months, the pipe smoke had been enough to put Abby off her feed entirely.

The sight of Shreve hovering by the door didn’t agree with her lately either. Ambers, she’d been able to mostly avoid, and she kept the door open when she met with Mrs. Jensen these days too.

“Funeral lilies aren’t my favorite,” Mr. Belmont said. “Trim up the stems on the roses daily. Change the water, don’t simply add more, and they’ll be happier by the window, where the temperature is lower and the light stronger. Shreve, would you be so good as to bring Mrs. Stoneleigh the tea tray and some sustenance, and for myself, pencil and paper?”

“Of course, Mr. Belmont. Madam, anything else?”

“Thank you, no,” Abby replied, not wanting to delay Mr. Belmont’s interrogation one moment more than necessary. She moved the roses to the table near the window, lest the professor do that himself, and took the rocking chair she’d had brought down from the nursery years ago.

Mr. Belmont took the nearest corner of the settee. Behind him hung a painting of hydrangeas arranged in a purple crock—one of only four paintings in the entire house Abby had chosen—the flowers the same lustrous blue as Mr. Belmont’s eyes.

“We might as well begin with the handsome, charmless barrister,” Mr. Belmont said, crossing his legs at the knee. “Gervaise benefited greatly from his father’s death, so he had motive to commit murder. How well do you know him?” The magistrate’s pose was relaxed and Continental, a neighbor paying a call, not an inquisitor starting on a martyr.

And yet, Abby knew his pose was likely the only thing relaxed about him. She earned a few moments’ reprieve from answering when Shreve returned with the tea, sandwiches, sliced apples, and a small offering of tea cakes.

Abby poured Mr. Belmont a cup of tea, recalling when he’d brought her a mug to savor in private.

“You will have it that we don’t stand on manners, Mr. Belmont, but talk murder over our tea and crumpets?”

“You are refreshingly direct, Mrs. Stoneleigh.”

He wanted this over with too. The realization brought Abby a drop of comfort in an ocean of heartache and anxiety. Who had killed Gregory?
Why?
When, if ever, would she be able to eat and sleep normally again?

She passed over his tea. “Would it surprise you to know you have also been called refreshingly direct, Mr. Belmont?” Blunt as an andiron, according to Mrs. Weekes, unless he was discussing his blooms.

“I would be astonished,” he replied gravely.

They had shared a joke. Abby was almost sure of it. She dropped her gaze, but not before she saw the flare of humor in his eyes. Next she might be tempted to flirt with him.

Flirt?

With
him
? She wouldn’t even know how.

“I don’t know Gervaise well,” Abby said, preparing her own serving of tea. “He was already through with his terms when I married Gregory, and well established in London’s legal community. The import business will make a suitable inheritance for him, for he seldom leaves Town. It’s said he never represents a party unless he believes his client to be innocent.”

Mr. Belmont stirred his tea slowly, deliberation apparently part of his nature. Abby knew from churchyard talk that he didn’t simply direct gardeners to see to his roses. He personally tended the plants in his glass houses, and published scholarly botanical treatises too.

Axel Belmont was probably closer to his roses than Abby had been to her own husband.

“Murder is usually motivated by greed, revenge, or passion,” Mr. Belmont said. “Gervaise doesn’t strike me as particularly greedy, or passionate, and I cannot discern what revenge he might have taken on his aging father.”

“Gregory was hardly doddering.” Though he’d no longer been a man in his prime. Abby had never seen him unclothed, but she’d noticed the tremor in his hands of late, a quaver in his voice where command had once been. Gregory had been tall, but in the past year, that height had taken on the stooped quality of advancing age.

“Eat something, Mrs. Stoneleigh.”

For form’s sake, Abby arched a brow at Mr. Belmont’s peremptory tone, but then reached for a scone. Her digestion was off, though no worse than usual.

“With butter, madam, if you please.”

She let her hand fall and hoped her stomach wouldn’t growl. “You are not my nanny. What else would you like to know?”

“Tell me of Lavinia.” Mr. Belmont slathered a scone with butter, slapped it on a plate, and passed it over.

They were to be
very
informal then. “She is the friendlier of the two.” Abby’s stomach did growl, drat the luck. “Lavinia wed the year after I married Gregory, and has two small children. She dotes on them and on their father, Roger, a successful solicitor who should manage Lavinia’s bequest quite competently.”

Or… was Roger a solicitor who only
appeared
successful? “Roger has sent the children here for an occasional summer,” Abby went on, “and the children seemed to love their holidays.” She had certainly loved having the children underfoot, while Gregory had barely tolerated them. “Roger would be called high-strung were he a female, and I think he’s relieved when the children are elsewhere.”

And their mother with them, though Abby munched a luscious, buttery bite of scone rather than admit that.

“Any other family?”

“Gregory had a cousin or two, older fellows. Gervaise could tell you more about them. They sent Gregory the occasional letter. I recall a few old chums from the army too, some of whom were mentioned in the will. Mr. Brandenburg, his London factor until recently, was a business acquaintance of long standing, but he’s gone to his reward.”

“Do you have Gregory’s correspondence?” Mr. Belmont asked, picking up the second half of Abby’s scone and holding it out to her.

He was relentless, like one of those thorny climbing roses that took over all in its ambit.

“I have his letters,” she said, accepting the scone. How had Mr. Belmont’s children avoided acquiring dimensions comparable to market hogs? “I suppose you’ll want to see every note and rough draft? At times Gregory and Mr. Brandenburg were weekly correspondents.”

“My brother, who has brought numerous felons to justice, has cautioned me against undue haste in my investigations. Nonetheless, the murderer doesn’t seem inclined to step forward and announce himself, so I’d best have a look at those letters.”

“A woman can fire a gun, Mr. Belmont.” And what were tea cakes with chocolate icing doing on that tray? “I do not recall asking Mrs. Jensen to stock our larder with sweets.”

“I sent them over.” Mr. Belmont was not apologizing for that presumption either. “When Caroline died, Day and Phil developed a fondness for chocolate. I enjoy it myself.”

Abby chose a confection and held it out to him. Someday she might be capable of saying the words
when Gregory died
without wanting to clap her hands over her ears and run shrieking from her own home.

“My thanks.” Mr. Belmont took the sweet from her hand and set it on a plate.

“The treat provides greater pleasure if you place it in your mouth.” Abby demonstrated with her own tea cake. For the first time since the colonel’s death, she was almost… enjoying herself. Not in the sense of merriment, but in the sense of feeling on her mettle, despite an unsolved murder, bad digestion, and an utter lack of energy.

Feeling somewhat safe too, as long she had Mr. Belmont to spar with—lowering thought.

He watched her devour her sweet, his scowl thunderous. Perhaps he was feeling on his mettle too.

“Have you family, Mrs. Stoneleigh?” he asked when he’d dispatched his tea cake.

“How is that relevant?”

“Greed,” he said, quartering an apple with the silver paring knife. “You are now personally wealthy; hence, your heir’s circumstances have improved.”

He held out a section of apple on the point of the knife.

“I don’t know as I have an heir.” Which was sad, and also Gregory’s fault, though Abby hadn’t pressed him on the matter. She’d learned not to press him on any matter.

She plucked the apple from the knife.

“The Regent will be happy to serve as your heir of last resort. Have you no family whatsoever?”

“Third cousins, perhaps?” Abby bit into the apple, thinking. “When I was a girl, my grandfather took me to Yorkshire to meet some cousin of his. He was a delightful old fellow, the Earl of Helmsley. His lordship grew flowers over every arable parcel of his estate, or so it seemed to a child. I recall two girls and a boy, his grandchildren. I was older than the girls, but younger than the boy, and he was a boy—nasty business, boys of a certain age, you know? I cannot recall their names.”

“The last Earl of Helmsley,” Mr. Belmont said slowly, “died this past summer under house arrest for attempting all manner of mischief against his sisters. The title has lapsed, and the estate reverted to the crown long enough to be passed out to some war hero—a duke’s by-blow, I believe. The flowers were famous throughout the realm in their day, though the gardens have long since been neglected.”

“You know this, how?” Abby asked, because really, what need had a rural squire for such gossip?

“I read the papers, and I have an abiding interest in ornamental horticulture.”

Mr. Belmont also lied when it suited him, though not well. He must have a towering
passion
for his flowers to know this sort of trivia.

“I do not read the papers, much less the society pages. What was your next question?”

“Have you any lovers?”

“Why do you ask?”

Color stained Mrs. Stoneleigh’s cheeks, and Axel was relieved to the point of gladness to see a normal reaction from her.

Duty alone could force him to put such a question to a recent widow. “You might lack the ability to end your husband’s life, but you are an attractive woman, and a man intent on spending the rest of his life with you, on this large and thriving estate, could act rashly.”

Attractive was a parsimonious word for her beauty, but she’d take offense at anything more honest. She resembled a pale, blown rose, all the more lovely for the delicacy of her appearance.

She munched a chocolate tea cake into oblivion. “You insult me by suggesting I would play false a husband who provided for me generously when I had neither grandfather nor parents to look after me. You compliment me as well, implying somebody would desire my company enough to kill for it.”