Axel (12 page)

Abigail sat across the room, as regally as if she’d been in presentation robes rather than nightclothes, shawl, and slippers. She’d picked a fine time to begin availing herself of a widow’s relaxed view of the proprieties.

“Follow the money,” Nick said, after listening to Axel’s recitation. “Gregory Stoneleigh does not appear to have been a philanderer, and he was also singularly lacking in enemies. That rules out passion and revenge, and leaves greed. He was wealthy?”

“That’s one piece of the puzzle,” Axel replied. “Abigail, you said Gregory married you in part to acquire a manager for the estate, and he wasn’t about to put his own money into the place. What money?”

“The estate banked in Oxford,” Abigail said, running a pale finger around the rim of her glass. Nick had served her from one of the Jacobite set, the inscription—
audentior ibo—
translating loosely to
I shall go more boldly
.

“Gregory would come back from some horse auction,” she said. “Ambers would have a new pair of hunters for the stables, though Gregory would not use estate money to procure his horses. He traveled with Sir Dewey frequently and did not ask me for funds from the household accounts.”

Nick posed the obvious question. “Where did Gregory’s money come from?”

“From his import business,” Abigail said. “From the rents on his London properties, from investments, I assume.”

And none of that income had been reflected in the ledgers Axel had seen. “I’ll ask Gervaise for the appropriate records, but some funds had to have been kept here in Oxford.” And yet, no correspondence from any Oxford bank had been among Stoneleigh’s letters, nor had any ledgers referred to Oxford accounts other than those Abigail used.

She rose and set her untouched glass on the sideboard. She was a graceful woman, and Axel had missed bickering with her over dinner.

“What else did you want to ask me, Mr. Belmont?”

Did you conspire to kill your husband, and if so, how will I bring myself to arrest you for it?

“Tell me about the bookkeeping for the estate in earlier years,” Axel replied. “You said when you married Gregory, the estate was sliding into debt. I can’t see why that would be. Your land was in fair condition when Gregory took it over years ago, and you’ve been prudent in its management.”

If Axel’s compliment registered with her, her expression didn’t show it. “I can only tell you what I found when I married Gregory, and that would be the accounting equivalent of chaos. Gregory would go on queer starts. He wanted one of our streams to have retaining walls on both sides for part of its length, the better to train his hunters on water obstacles. Masons and stone take money, as do trips to the quarry, teams, wagons, and so on. His little project was exorbitantly expensive, and he began it without so much as estimates in hand.”

His little project had also been ridiculous. Hunters were best trained over natural terrain in the company of experienced campaigners.

“When did you learn how to manage the ledgers?” Axel asked. “You could not have been but nineteen or twenty years old when you married.”

Though Axel had been managing Candlewick by that age, or trying to.

“My father believed I would someday, with my spouse, take over the Pennington family businesses. My earliest memories are of sitting on Papa’s lap while he showed me how to use the abacus.”

“What did your father do?” Axel’s children would never have sat still long enough for such instruction.

Abigail tidied the glasses on the sideboard, then used a handkerchief to polish one of the decanters.

“Papa and Grandpapa started with a printing shop in Oxford,” she said, moving on to the next decanter. “To that my father added a bookshop, the year I was born. The bookshop did very well, or so I thought, because we were near many of the colleges. When I was a girl, Papa bought the property next door to the bookshop and turned it into a coffee shop and tea room. I thought he was quite successful at all three.”

“But?” Nick and Axel asked at the same time.

She dusted off the last decanter and lined them all up just so. “But he died in debt, and I inherited next to nothing. Gregory explained that all had been mortgaged, the better to afford tutors, lessons, and frocks for me.”

But no dowry? A merchant who could purchase entire businesses had set aside nothing for the daughter he adored?

“You put no value on the frocks,” Axel said.

She moved on to the hearth, using the broom on the hearth stand to sweep ashes back against the screen. Axel wanted to caution her not to get her hems dirty, but she held them aside with one hand.

“Why buy me a Broadwood piano for my sixteenth birthday when Papa could not sustain the businesses he’d owned for years? The ledgers all showed healthy balances and regular sums set aside for savings. Gregory’s description of Papa’s finances made no sense to me, but then, I was devastated to lose my parents so shortly after Grandpapa Pennington’s death.”

Another mystery, then, except paternal pride might be the entire explanation.

“Impending financial ruin inspires many men into an irrational determination to maintain appearances,” Nick observed.

Another possibility fit the available facts: Stoneleigh had connived to marry an heiress. Axel had no evidence to disprove that theory—and none to support it. Abigail’s parents had died nearly a decade ago, and relevant financial records were likely long gone.

“I didn’t know you played piano,” Axel said. Most women of any means played
at
the piano.

Abby’s next project was a fern growing in a suspended pot near the globe. The plant enjoyed the light from the bow window and some warmth from the hearth, but it did tend to dry out. Abigail tested the soil with her finger, then used her handkerchief to wipe the dirt away.

“I used to play by the hour, but Gregory found my skill lacking,” she said, using a water glass to give the fern a drink. “I read voraciously too, when I was younger. I came down here thinking to raid the library shelves.”

“And instead,” Nick said, wiggling his eyebrows, “look at the treasure you found.”

“Without doubt, I am the luckiest of females.”

“She’s warming up to me, Professor,” Nick said. “You can hear her growing fondness in her very words.”

What Axel had heard was sadness, old puzzlement, and longing—and not for more silly banter. He rose and crossed to the bookshelves.

“What manner of story would you like? Something improving or something entertaining?”

He ignored the highest shelves, the ones bearing his collections of erotica and poetry. Every academic had such a collection, after all.

“A novel, if you have any.”

“If I have any?” Gregory Stoneleigh’s widow had much to learn about enjoying life. “I suppose you think only exponents of that lowly institution on the River Cam enjoy recreational reading? If I have any…. ” He waggled his fingers at her, gesturing her to his side.

“Sir Walter Scott,” Axel began, “Jane Austen, Mrs. Radcliffe, whom Day and Phillip have both read, but you must not own I told you that. Fielding, a goodly helping of pastoral poetry, and the mandatory Byron, though that hardly qualifies as verse in the opinion of many. What is your pleasure?”

She perused the shelves, her expression carefully composed, as if this choice, rather than Axel’s suspicions regarding her husband’s death, was more likely to reveal latent criminal tendencies.

“Austen,” she said reaching for a book, only to have her hand collide with Axel’s. “I beg your pardon,” she murmured as a blush crept up her neck.

Austen was a fine choice for a blushing widow in evening dishabille. Axel took Abigail’s hand and slapped the book against her palm.

“Excuse my clumsiness,” he said softly. The best he could do, with Nick listening to every word.

“I might be needing a book myself,” Nick said from the sofa.

“Try the Bible,” Axel retorted. “Take it up to your room and start with Genesis. Don’t come down until you’ve finished Revelations.”

“Already read that one,” Nick replied. “I like the Song of Solomon best. Caught my eye when I was a wee lad. Shall I light you up to your room, Mrs. Stoneleigh?”

Axel wasn’t half done questioning her, but she was already paging through the tale of Mr. Darcy’s fall from arrogance.

“Nicholas will behave,” Axel said, “or you have my permission to bludgeon him with the book.”

She considered her tome. “It’s a slim volume, and bound books are very dear.”

“You wound me, madam,” Nick said, rising and picking up a carrying candle. “I’ll behave, Mrs. Stoneleigh, because I am a gentleman and too tired to do justice to a flirtation with you—for now.”

“You will behave,” she said sternly, “because I expect it of you, sir.”

Nick beamed at her. “I am in love. She understands me.”

“Bother you,” Abigail muttered, preceding Nick from the library, Miss Austen at the ready.

The widow was safe with Nicholas, or as safe as she wanted to be. Axel gave the fern another drink and wondered where a fellow learned the knack of witty repartee.

Nick came back to the library a few moments later—too few moments for much mischief to have occurred.

“I do not see a bright red handprint on your cheek,” Axel said. “I conclude you are working on a stealthy seduction rather than overwhelming the lady with your appeal.”

A dalliance might do Abigail Stoneleigh good. All of Axel’s scolding had yet to put roses in her cheeks, or win a true smile from her.

“I doubt she has much familiarity with trifling,” Nick said, collapsing onto the sofa and tugging off his boots. “You could help her with that. She’s too damned pale.”

“She is pale.” Axel had grown accustomed to Abigail’s pallor, and the woman was grieving, after all.

“Tell her to stop using the damned arsenic.” Nick yawned and propped his stockinged feet on the low table. “My step-mama wouldn’t let my sisters use it.”

“Arsenic?” Axel settled in beside Nick, who had half a regiment of sisters. Axel was familiar with every cosmetic use of plants, but knew nothing of what else might lurk on a woman’s vanity.

“The ladies use arsenic to give their complexions that lovely, ethereal quality,” Nick said, closing his eyes. “Genuine grief apparently has the same result.”

“She does miss the old fellow.”
Axel hoped
. “Tell me, Nicholas, how is my brother? And how are my sons?”

“I had to leave,” Nick said. “Matthew and Theresa are besotted, and she has that secret glow of the breeding woman. Loris and Thomas are in the advanced stages of the same condition on the next property over, and the whole shire stinks of marital bliss. Move down.”

Axel complied, shifting to the end of the sofa, only to find Nick’s feet in his lap, while the considerable length of his friend lounged along the rest of the sofa.

“Your fatigue is catching up with you.” Axel pulled an afghan from the back of the sofa. He tossed the blanket over Nick’s face, letting Nick arrange it further.

“This sofa,”—Nick closed his eyes—“must be conveyed to me in your will. Or if I die first, you must bury it with me so I might have it in the afterlife, like the pharaohs of old from whom a god such as myself is doubtless descended.”

Damn and blast
. From the mouths of marriage-shy viscounts. “I should look at their wills.”

“Whose?”

“Abigail’s parents. She believes they died deeply in debt, but her upbringing was the finest, and her father’s businesses were to appearances thriving.” And her father would have recently inherited whatever her grandfather had left behind, too.

Nick opened his eyes. “Appearances have little to do with finances, particularly among the aspiring class. Will you seduce her? I think she likes you.”

“Nicholas, you grow tedious. She doesn’t like me.” Especially not after hearing Axel’s speculation regarding her guilt, or those secrets—plural—
which she had not shared
. “She might respect me. We were not well acquainted prior to Gregory’s death, and we’re both pleasantly surprised to find each other human.”

“Oh, right. Admit it, Belmont. You left Sussex and traveled nearly a hundred miles in the dead of winter to escape the foul miasma of marital bliss under your brother’s roof.”

“I’m not jealous, Nicholas, and neither are you. We’re happy for Matthew.”
Mostly.

“Overjoyed,” Nick said. “Why don’t you bring that decanter over here, and we’ll drink to Matthew’s glorious benighted happiness.”

Axel fetched the decanter, which was merely what a conscientious host and a good friend would do, after all.

“So what will you do with your day?” Abigail asked her host. They were alone in the breakfast parlor, something of a relief.

“I thought I’d call upon Reverend Weekes, maybe visit Sir Dewey Fanning, get off a letter to Gervaise, and nose about at the Wet Weasel. Have you an errand you’d like me to dispatch?”

Abby chose a slice of toast from the rack on the table, and Mr. Belmont pushed the butter toward her. The crust was golden perfection, the toast still warm.

“I’ll be content to remain close to the house today.” Abby slathered her toast with butter. Gregory had preferred delicacy on the female frame, while Axel Belmont apparently liked to see a woman enjoy her food.

The raspberry jam was another delight of the Belmont table, so Abby added a portion to her toast.

“I have letters of condolence to acknowledge,” she went on, “and I’d like to explore your library.”

“Help yourself to any volume that catches your fancy, of course.” Mr. Belmont poured her a fresh cup of tea and plucked an orange from the bowl on the table. “Nicholas will probably sleep late. He had a hard day of travel yesterday and was no doubt keeping Town hours before that.”

“About Nicholas.”

Mr. Belmont put aside the orange, several inches of curled rind already trailing from the fruit.

“What about him?”

“Did you…?” Abby’s host was being inscrutable, and he was dashed good at it too. “You did not intend… That is, you didn’t ask him…”

“What exactly are you dancing around, Abigail?”

She got up and went to the window, where a weak sun was trying to find openings in a gathering overcast.