Axel (19 page)

Abby wrinkled her nose. “I esteem Mr. Belmont quite highly enough for his hospitality, his botanical accomplishments, his tireless efforts to find justice for my late spouse, and his unwillingness to bother a new widow with clumsy flirtation.”

Axel wanted to stick his tongue out at Nick, but settled for pouring a third brandy.

“Nick plays the piano well.” Not as well as he flirted, damn the luck.

Abby stared at her brandy. “As a young lady,
I
played the piano well. My grandfather insisted that everybody should be competent on a musical instrument. He said we couldn’t read all the time, or we’d ruin our eyes.”

“About your grandfather.”

Abby, rather than take the corner of the sofa Axel had mentally consigned to her keeping, took the place beside Nick on the piano bench.

“Grandpapa Pennington was a dear,” she said. “He understood people, as a good shopkeeper must. He knew what his customers would enjoy and delighted in providing it. I can’t tell you the number of times he lent a book to some elderly patron, asking her to read it for him so he’d know to whom to recommend it. He said he hadn’t the time to read, though that was a lie, for he read every night. He was engaged in shameless kindness.”

“Books are not intended to sit about on dusty shelves,” Axel said, opening the sideboard and extracting his violin case. Young wives with endless imagination and aching hearts were not intended to molder away on remote country estates either.

He set the case on the sideboard and opened it.

“Won’t you play for us?” Nick asked.

“Not now. The instrument will only go constantly out of tune until it’s physically warm. After supper, perhaps I’ll run through an air or two, but for now, I have something to give Abigail—from her grandfather, as it turns out.”

Axel left his violin breathing like wine on the sideboard and extracted a bound volume from the top right desk drawer.

“Cassius Pettiflower sends his warm regards,” Axel said. “When your family died, and the shops were sold, the staff came across this volume and asked him to give it to you. Pettiflower kept it, hoping to pass it to you in person. I suspect he held on to it for sentimental reasons.”

Abby took the volume cautiously, as if it had thorns or teeth to bite her. “What is it?”

“Your grandfather’s journal.” Axel wished he’d waited, wished he’d done something to prepare Abby for this moment. One didn’t simply tuck an instrument under one’s chin and start sawing away, after all.

She opened the book and did exactly what Axel so often did in his glass house, she sniffed.

“Sandalwood.” She ran a finger down the page, though the writing was fading. “Grandpapa said the scent made him feel dashing.”

She blinked and sniffed again, though not at the pages. Nick passed her a monogrammed handkerchief—white silk, based on how it caught the firelight.

“What did Pettiflower have to say, Professor?” Nick asked, as Abby dabbed at her eyes and clutched the journal to her heart.

Axel glowered at Nick, for what was the urgency about a few rude questions between strangers, when Abigail was in tears?

“Tell us,” Abby said, taking up her corner of the sofa. “Cass would never dissemble before the king’s man.”

Nick took the place at Abby’s side, which was just as well. Axel felt a towering need to hold the woman’s hand, put an arm around her, or perhaps smash his brandy glass—another specimen from his treasured Jacobite collection.

He took the wing chair instead.

“Pettiflower corroborated the vicar’s rendition of events.” How Axel wished that was all he had to report. “Pettiflower wrote to Abby, and his letters came back unopened. He sent flowers, those unacknowledged. He had to apply to his vicar to find Stoneleigh’s home parish and could thus write to Weekes.”

“I don’t under—” Abby set her grandfather’s journal on the end table. “I don’t understand
why
. Why would a good friend have been kept away from me when I’d lost both parents and my grandfather in a succession of weeks?”

Nick crossed his arms, muscles flexing. By firelight, the genial, blond viscount looked fleetingly capable of murder himself.

“What else did you learn, Professor?” Nick asked.

“Pettiflower had spoken with Abigail’s father, who’d given tentative approval of a match. Anthony Pennington asked that Pettiflower not propose for another six months, because Abby’s papa didn’t want Abby to feel as if she’d snapped up the first offer to come her way. She was not yet twenty, and she was an heiress.”

Nick rose. “Well, of course. Greed will out. What sort of heiress?”

The truth Axel had to convey was all thorns, no fragrance, no lovely bloom—also not entirely a surprise.

“Abby’s father had looked into the Pettiflower finances, and Pettiflower, being of a mercantile bent, did likewise with his prospective in-laws. Pettiflower was willing to support Abby’s parents in their old age, but what he found astounded him.”

“I’m astounded,” Abby said, her grip on the journal fierce.

Hours later, Axel was still, more furious than anything else. He sat forward, gently pried the journal from her grasp, and passed her his drink.

“Pettiflower’s mother is one of thirteen,” Axel said. “His father one of eight. He has relatives keeping shops all over Oxford, with their fingers in many different enterprises. His information is better than Bow Street and a team of solicitors could gather with unlimited time and funds. Your parents were well beyond comfortable, your grandfather was wealthy.”

“You were an heiress twice over,” Nick said, stalking back to the piano bench. “I could toss this piano through the window I’m so angry on your behalf, Abby. If Stoneleigh weren’t already dead—”

Precisely.
“Here is a motive for murder, or the beginnings of one,” Axel said. “Stoneleigh committed a great theft, a swindle, at least, and if Pettiflower knew of that, he had a motive to take Stoneleigh’s life.”

“Because the colonel took my future, my fortune, my books,” Abby said.

Murdered them, more like. Murdered Abby’s innocence, the crime an ongoing violation of decency that cried out for an explanation—and for justice.

“Does Pettiflower have an alibi?” Nick asked, closing the lid over the piano keys.

“The night of the colonel’s demise, Pettiflower was with family, having dinner, guests at the table.” Then too, Pettiflower had had years to avenge his intended’s fate, but he’d instead written a single letter, minded his shop, and gone on with life.

As a gentleman ought when a lady has categorically dismissed him from the suitor’s lists.

Pettiflower’s alibi had been the company of his own family—his prospective wife, her parents, his parents. All of them enjoying a meal that by rights Abby might have planned with him, had Stoneleigh not worked his evil.

“I am angry,” Abby said. “I am furious, enraged. If I had learned what you’ve just told me—”

“Which is why Stoneleigh kept you locked in your tower, surrounded by false rumors of delicate nerves, and no less than eight tenant farms to keep you occupied,” Axel said. “If you had intimated that family wealth had gone missing, then your questions would have been dismissed as fanciful imaginings. This answers at least one question.”

For the first time, Abby looked at him. She had put her tears aside, perhaps to be renewed in private, and her gaze held both betrayal and determination.

“If any man, ever, thinks to keep the truth from me again,” Abby said, “he will do so at the cost of his safety. I love words, Mr. Belmont, I love elegant prose and the exquisite turn of phrase. For the loathing that grips me now, I have no words. I have no, no… I haven’t
anything
adequate to convey my sentiments. Death for Gregory was a mercy, compared to what I’d do to him.”

“Perhaps somebody saw to the matter for you,” Axel said. “We at least know where Gregory’s money came from. His wealth came from your inheritance. Now we need only determine where it went.”

“At present, I leave that puzzle to you gentlemen, and you will excuse me,” Abby said. “I’ll take a tray for dinner, though don’t expect me to eat a bite, and don’t presume to scold me for it. My grandfather’s journal wants reading.”

Axel rose and held up the unfinished drink. Abby downed it at one swallow, replaced it gently on the sideboard, and departed the library on a soft swish of her hems, the journal clutched against her chest.

“She’ll cry hysterically,” Nick predicted, abandoning the piano. “And yet, I have the sense you pulled your punches, Professor. There’s more, isn’t there?”

There was more brandy, fortunately.

“Investigating this murder will turn me into an obese sot,” Axel said, switching seats to take Abby’s corner of the sofa. “Pettiflower knew which firm of solicitors handled the Pennington estate.”

“Lawyers,” Nick said, coming down beside Axel. “Now comes the truly nasty part.”

“The import business—not the printing press, the bookshop, or the tea shop—was handled by Handstreet and Handstreet. Pettiflower has relations who no longer use them, and said the firm has become, in the hands of the present generation, the type to not ask too many questions. The family solicitors responsible for the shops were Nehring and Son, a fine old firm Pettiflower could highly recommend.”

“Stoneleigh was a fine old cavalry officer too, I’m sure.”

“When did you get so skinny, Nicholas?”

“I’m in a premarital decline. I saw you kissing the fair widow, my friend. At least close the curtains before you dispense that sort of consolation.”

The consolation in that kiss had gone both ways. “You’ve taken to peeking in windows, Nicholas. Should I be concerned?”

“Cheer me up with talk of murder, please. We’re taking trays in the library so you can play me out of my megrims.”

Axel would play his violin for the woman upstairs, who was mourning the murder of her dreams at the hands of a greedy old man, for purposes Axel had yet to divine.

“The entire Pennington estate,” Axel said, “for the grandfather and both of Abby’s parents, was handled by the Handstreet lawyers, the same firm that was responsible for the import business dealings here in Oxford.”

“While another pack of mongrels dealt with the London end of things,” Nick said, yawning. “Probably more of the same in Portsmouth, or Liverpool… But why would Handstreet—a firm charged with business matters—get involved in chancery issues such as the Pennington estates? You said the Nehring firm was already in place and known to the family.”

Between the brandy, the earlier long, cold ride to Oxford and back, and the seductive warmth of the fire, Axel was falling asleep. He rose, though a scoot and a shove were needed to win free of the sofa’s embrace.

“I don’t know why the colonel’s business firm took over the settlement of the deceased couple’s affairs,” Axel said. “But I intend to find out. Doubtless, the Handstreet solicitors will attempt to thwart my investigations, and demand that I produce some sealed document confirming the colonel’s death and the need for an inquest.”

Nick slouched lower into his corner of the sofa. “Let’s visit the lawyers together. I’ll produce my left fist and my right fist, throw around the title, drop some coin in the hands of a few ferret-faced law clerks. This will be good practice.”

Axel’s investigative instincts, numbed halfway to frostbite by the day’s outing, stirred.

“Practice, Nicholas?”

For a moment, Axel thought Nick had dozed off. The fire crackled softly, and the violin warming on the sideboard called to Axel’s spirits.

“My papa is dying, Ax. I don’t know what to do.”

Bloody perishing hell.
“Nicholas, I am so sorry. When papas get to dying, there’s often not a damned thing one
can
do.” Axel pressed a hand to Nick’s shoulder, moved the brandy bottle nearer to Nick’s elbow, and went off to order supper trays—and another bottle of spirits.

A
bby could read no more of her grandfather’s journal. The handwriting was faint in places, her head throbbed, her eyes ached, and the hour had grown late.

A soft tap came at her bedroom door, disturbing a mental state too riotous to qualify as brooding.

That gentle knock was the gesture of a man who wanted to be able to say over breakfast that he’d come by to check on his guest, but hadn’t wanted to disturb her slumbers.

Abby pulled the door open and found Axel Belmont holding a white rose in a pink porcelain bud vase.

“You are awake.” The professor spouted a metaphor, did he but know it.

Abby stepped aside. “Come in.”

He ought not to set foot in her bedroom, and not because the hour was late and they were unchaperoned. Unchaperoned apparently did not signify, when a woman’s late husband had made sure all and sundry thought her prone to hysterical fancies.

Axel eyed the journal in Abby’s hand. “Abigail, I am sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity.” She dragged him by the sleeve into her room and closed the door before all the fire’s heat escaped into the dark and drafty corridor. “I want to kill Gregory Stoneleigh several times over, I want to thank the person who pulled that trigger, and I don’t care if that makes me a monster.”

Axel set the rose on her night table. “You are not a monster. You have been monstrously wronged. I’ll get to the truth. That, I vow to you.”

The covers had been rumpled as Abby had tossed and turned her way through her grandfather’s pages. Axel began making the bed.

“You might not find the answers,” she said, setting the journal on the desk, well away from the hearth. “I almost don’t care who killed Gregory. I care that Gregory likely squandered every shilling my family worked their entire lives to acquire. I care that Gregory lied to me, repeatedly, for years. I care that I was made to feel grateful to him,
grateful
, every waking moment, season after season, when he—”

She’d whipped back toward the hearth to find herself face-to-face with Axel.

“Curse if it helps,” he said. “Bellow down the rafters, rant, hurl the breakables. You’re entitled.”

If Abby ran cursing into the night, Axel Belmont would find her. That thought alone preserved her from the frightful impulse to strike him. His crime was to tell her the truth, and yet, violence coursed through her.