How generous she’d been, at the last, to give Axel leave to while away years in his glass houses, when all through the marriage she’d begrudged him his “hobby.”
Abby broke the last piece of shortbread in half and held out a portion to him. “So you disappeared into your glass houses, becoming a near recluse who might have been welcome on a darts team but couldn’t be bothered to show up. You don’t linger at services either—when you go—and you use the lack of a hostess to excuse your unsociability. No wonder it took a murder to allow us closer acquaintance.”
Axel was saved from replying to those thorny observations by Nick’s arrival to the library.
“Somebody ate all the tea cakes,” Nicholas said. “No matter. Mrs. Stoneleigh, good morning, and a pleasure to start my day in your company. I will content myself with the sweet boon of your presence. Move over, Professor. I’ve flirting to do.”
Axel stayed right where he was. “If you’ll give the bell-pull two tugs, the kitchen will know we’re ready for luncheon. You may join us, if you’ll promise to sit across the table from Mrs. Stoneleigh.”
“The better to gaze into her lovely eyes,” Nick said. “I’m in good form today, don’t you think?”
No, Nick was troubled about something, having hidden in his room until Axel had returned. Abby didn’t appear offended by Nick’s blather, though neither was she impressed.
The interruption was for the best. Axel had been about to apologize for overly familiar behavior at the mounting block earlier, though perhaps no apology was needed. He’d offered Abigail only the merest gesture in the direction of a kiss, after all.
Perhaps magistrates went about kissing ladies they suspected of conspiring to commit murder. Abby had meant to ask Mr. Belmont about his parting gesture, but then Nick joined them at luncheon, and any hope of sensible discourse disappeared before the soup had been served.
“You’re off to visit Sir Dewey?” Nick asked, as Mr. Belmont served pear torte from the head of the table.
“He’s the next logical interview. Elbow off the table, Nicholas.”
The viscount remained as he was, handsome chin propped on his palm, elbow on the table.
The pear torte smelled divine, full of spices, a hint of spirits, fresh baking… Abby’s appetite was returning, and if she took only a small portion of everything served, her digestion was improving as well.
The dish Mr. Belmont set before Abby held at least three times what she could comfortably consume.
“What questions do you have for Sir Dewey?” Abby asked.
“He might know something of the colonel’s finances,” Mr. Belmont said. “He should be able to shed light on military connections, as well as on friends or enemies made on these walking tours, shooting trips, visits to London, and other journeys. He’d note any peculiarities of the colonel’s demeanor in recent days, such as snappish incidents in the hunt field.”
“Sir Dewey doesn’t ride to hounds,” Abby replied. “He claimed the tropics left his blood too thin for cold-weather sport.”
“Ask him why he kept company with Stoneleigh in the first place,” Nick said. “If the colonel was difficult on a good day, then why bother with the old blighter at all—meaning no disrespect to present company—much less travel with him repeatedly?”
The two men exchanged a not-in-front-of-the-lady look.
Oh, for mercy’s sake. “I don’t think the colonel and Sir Dewey were lovers,” Abby said.
Nick’s spoon clattered to his bowl.
“My grandfather imported books from all over Asia,” she went on. “I was in the shop at all hours, and I found the books I wasn’t supposed to see, the ones Grandpapa kept on the shelves behind the counter.”
Mr. Belmont’s brows came down, as if the bite of pear on his spoon had become day-old porridge before his eyes. Was her host wondering if she’d found the treasures on the highest shelf behind his desk?
Indeed Abby had, and Mr. Darcy had been shamefully neglected for more than an hour.
“Upon what,”—Mr. Belmont set his fork down—“upon what evidence do you base your conclusion?”
“Sir Dewey was never affectionate with Gregory, never touched him at all that I can recall. They argued frequently, though Sir Dewy was never uncivil. Their original connection was business, I think, and then shared army memories, but they…”
Both men were studying Abby, dessert apparently forgotten. “I think Sir Dewey was fond of me,” Abby said. “Not in an inappropriate way, but I suspect part of why he tolerated Gregory’s company was out of pity for me.”
She’d needed that pity too, and all morning, as she’d meandered from Mr. Darcy to exotic, forbidden woodcuts, Abby’s joy in renewed proximity to books had been bounded by a growing anger. Reading had been her greatest pleasure, her means of coping with all trials, and Gregory had scolded, scowled, and tut-tutted it from her grasp within the first year of their marriage.
“Sir Dewey felt pity,” Nick said, pushing a nearly empty bowl a few inches away. “For you.”
“For my situation,” Abby said, regretting that she’d opened her mouth.
“I’ll ask Sir Dewey to chronicle his whereabouts the night of the murder,” Mr. Belmont said. “Nicholas, you will excuse us. Mrs. Stoneleigh must see me to my horse.”
Nick reached for the uneaten portion of Abby’s sweet. “The professor is preparing to lecture you about your propensity for honesty at the table, Abby dearest. Without his sons to keep him on his toes, his sensibilities have become delicate.”
“I’m sparing the lady any more of your nonsense,” Mr. Belmont said, “and aiding her to get a breath of fresh air. Until dinner, Nicholas.”
Nick half rose when Abby stood, saluted her with a spoonful of torte, and winked. “The professor takes great pride in his lectures. Try to look impressed.”
Abby smacked Nick on the shoulder as hard as she dared, which violence apparently met with the professor’s approval.
“We’re not going to the stable,” Mr. Belmont said, when Abby had donned a cloak, scarf, and gloves—all black, but warm enough. “My glass houses are the only place where I can be certain no helpful viscounts or conscientious staff will eavesdrop, and you and I need to have at least one difficult, private conversation.”
Abby trundled along at his side across the snowy gardens, the wind plucking at the ends of her scarf.
“Are you arresting me?”
“For God’s sake,”—he stopped and tucked her scarf back over her shoulder—“I am not arresting you. You are at Candlewick to rest, to recover from the shock of your bereavement, to have some companionship as you adjust to your loss, dubious though the present offerings might be. Come along, or Nick will see us tarrying here and scold me for keeping you out in the foul weather.”
He stomped off, not waiting for Abby to fall in step beside him. His tracks across the snow made a straight line toward his glass houses, which sat nearer to the manor than the stable did.
Abby came along. If her marriage had taught her nothing else, it was to obey an order when given by a man who was in the grip of strong emotion.
Abigail Stoneleigh was a guest, not a detainee of the crown, and Axel’s first order of business was to clarify that point.
“Around this way,” he said, leading her to the stable side of the first glass house. The interior walls were wet with condensation, which meant even where plants did not block the view, nobody outside would see what happened within.
Exactly as Axel preferred it. He unlocked the door and ushered Abby through, then closed the door behind them, turning the latch. The wind would snatch at the glass and shatter the door if the latch wasn’t secured on every occasion.
“To be inside here must be such a relief,” she said, unwinding her scarf and stashing her gloves in a pocket. “That scent—green, growing plants, flowers, rich soil… it’s a safe smell.”
Caroline had never cared for the smell of dirt. “Safe, how?” Axel hadn’t bothered to butt
on his coat or put on his gloves. The warmth and scent of the glass house barely registered with him anymore.
Abigail remained where she was, between two rows of potted roses, most of which were devoid of blooms but sporting lush foliage.
“If plants can thrive,” she said, “then all will be well. Everything depends on the plants. The beasts would have no fodder, the sheep no grass, the birds no nests, without plants. We’d have no wool, no meat, no vegetables, no flowers, without the plants. No paper, no books, no wooden furniture, no linen, cotton, spirits, or shelter save for what we could fashion of stones. If you safeguard plants, you safeguard life itself.”
She uttered not a lecture, but a sermon. Axel wanted to kiss her, and write down every word she’d spoken, though neither endeavor was the reason for this visit.
“These are my failures,” he said, gesturing to the roses on her right. “I experiment in here. In the other house, I propagate for my own pleasure, and for commercial purposes. I am modestly successful in the flower trade.”
He could live splendidly on what his flowers earned. Only Matthew knew that. One didn’t farm for profit according to the gentry version of high stickling, one rented tenancies and complained about the tenants.
Axel had dismissed that approach as balderdash within a year of his marriage.
“One suspects you of shrewd business instincts,” Abby said. “These plants are marvelously healthy. Why are they your failures?”
Axel explained about the unpredictable results of crossing varieties, the patience required to make even slow progress toward a perfect specimen. Years of devoted recordkeeping and plant tending, observation and experiment, failure upon failure, all for the smallest advance.
“The thorns are quite small on this one,” Abby said as they rounded the end of the table. “Do you consider it a success?”
“I won’t know unless or until it blooms, and I see if the trait breed true,” Axel said. “My very best grafting stock, for example, a fellow whom I refer to as the Dragon, has beastly thorns, but everything I bind to him thrives. Any progress is encouraging, but so often, gain in one sense means loss in another.” He and the late Empress Josephine had commiserated by correspondence on that very point.
The glass house was Axel’s favorite place to be, as if he were one of the roses, not the botanist. He could breathe here, he could sense in what direction light came from. A good place to have a difficult conversation with his guest.
“You mean,” she said, “you can reduce the size of the thorns, but then the blooms will also be smaller, or you’ll lose the fragrance, or the plant never grows more than a foot high?” She sniffed one of the few blooms on the failure table. “This one looks very robust, and it’s larger than the others. Did you not prune it back as far?”
“I did. The damned thing grows like a weed, which would be a fine quality if it didn’t also smell like a weed sunk in brackish water. About what you overheard last night.”
“You aren’t arresting me, but I’m a suspect,” Abby said, turning to face him.
Between the rows of plants, Axel had left only enough room for a person to pass without disturbing the foliage. He and Abby were close enough to embrace, close enough that he could see improvement in her appearance.
She wasn’t as pale, as tired, or as gaunt as she’d been at the time of her husband’s death.
“I will discover who killed Gregory and why,” Axel said. “You can’t feel entirely safe, you can’t move forward in all the ways that matter, unless I find those answers. I will not fail you.”
He’d surprised her, and he’d surprised himself. A magistrate should solve a case because justice was a fundamental tenet of societies bound by the rule of law. Justice was a fine old concept, but in this situation, justice meant finding answers for Abigail Stoneleigh.
Not for the crown, not for the community, not for the ailing king. For her.
“But you suspect me. I did not kill my husband, Mr. Belmont.”
“Of course you did not. I thought about this all the way to the vicarage and back. I do not kiss murderesses.”
“You kissed me.”
The humidity was making her hair curl, turning a tidy coiffure heedless of its pins.
“So I did, and you did not object. Do I need to apologize for that kiss?”
Wind rattled the glass panes, though the structure was sturdy. Axel had designed it himself and was accustomed to winter’s threats.
“You need to explain,” Abby said, moving down the row. “If these are your failures, where are your successes?”
“I haven’t any successes, only hopes, and those are at the next table. Nick is a friend.”
“He’s also something of a hope, I’m guessing. Your friend is troubled by the prospect of marriage.”
“Every man should be. What I said to Nick—that I think you’re keeping secrets—is the truth. You did not confide to me how frightened you were to remain at Stoneleigh Manor, where your husband had been murdered. That fear is reasonable, and yet, you tried to hide it.”
“And failed, apparently. I know you better now, but we were barely cordial previously, and I’ve never been a widow before. I don’t know how one goes on with the magistrate when one’s husband has been murdered.”
Fair question. The magistrate wasn’t entirely sure how to go on either.
“I didn’t want Nick to get the wrong idea,” Axel said, as Abby paused before a swamp rose pining for its home. “That one will revive in spring. I hope. Some wild varieties give up in here, others thrive.”
Axel wanted Abigail Stoneleigh to thrive.
“So you will add me to your collection of hopes,” she said. “I am well read, or I was, and I’m good for amusing lonely viscounts, but my energy is lacking. I’m prone to staring off into space when I recall my husband was killed in his own home, but you expect I’ll come right with enough sunlight, nourishment, and care. Good of you, Mr. Belmont. That still doesn’t explain your kiss.”
Such thorns she had, and she was entitled to them. “Weekes surprised me, or insulted me, I’m not sure which. Shall we sit?”
By imperceptible degrees, the glass house had become comfortable for at least one human specimen in addition to all the plants. An old rug pilfered from the attic lay before one of the hearths. A spare table doubled as a desk, a rocking chair that rocked unevenly had migrated from the nursery.
Abby took that rocker, while Axel took the chair at the table. She unbuttoned her cloak, while he… formulated a lecture.
“I was concerned Nicholas would think I was taking advantage of you,” Axel said, though he hadn’t articulated the concern to himself until he’d been halfway to the vicarage. “I was concerned he’d leap to conclusions about your virtue and my honor. I voiced my suspicion of you mostly to reinforce my role as magistrate in Nick’s mind. I do not suspect you of having any responsibility for your husband’s death.”
This too, had become clear on the way to the vicarage, while the rosy scent of Abby Stoneleigh had yet been fresh in Axel’s mind.
“So you cast guilt in my direction, rather than let your friend think you’re attracted to me?”
Attracted to her? He wasn’t at—well, he was. Somewhat.
“I tried to appear disinterested, in command of all the evidence, and competent as an investigator. I’m sorry for my words. If I had any basis upon which to suspect you of colluding in Gregory’s murder, I’d send you to Weekes’s care while making the case against you.”
She sat back, the quality of her composure at once the same as, and different from, what Axel had observed the night of the murder.
“You suggest I might be both a suspect and not safe, else you’d send me home.”
“You had no motive to kill your spouse,” Axel said. “I’ve puzzled over this and puzzled over this. You genuinely bore the colonel no ill will. You accepted him for the overbearing old martinet he was rapidly becoming. He left you a sort of freedom, even as he isolated you, and y
ou fashioned a meaningful and not unpleasant life. Whoever killed your husband took risks—of significant injury from the colonel’s loaded gun if nothing else. You have no motive to take such risks.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I was meek, so I can’t be guilty.”
“You’re good, so you can’t be guilty,” Axel said, scooting his chair close enough to take Abigail’s hands. “You’re also intelligent. If you had decided to do Gregory mortal harm, you’d have been clever about it, made it look like a heart seizure, an apoplexy, a bad fall from his horse. You had all the opportunity in the world—for years—but no motive. You did not kill your husband.”
She used her gloves to swipe at her cheek. “That helps, though if you ever hint, for any reason, that I might do such a thing, I will apply my knee in a location you won’t enjoy.”
She’d warn him first—warn him again.
“Abigail, I am sorry. I’m not a magistrate by natural inclination, nor am I social by inclination. Nicholas’s arrival has surprised me, though I doubt he’ll stay for long. This is apparently the season for surprises.”
“Not every surprise is bad, Mr. Belmont. You surprised me at the mounting block.”
Axel had probably surprised the Deity Himself, as well as the servants gawking from the windows and Ivan the Sluggard.
“I was concerned Weekes would think your biding at Candlewick irregular. He instead thanked me for taking matters in hand, and said Mrs. Turnbull would put you to rights in no time. Your pallor and poor health were remarked upon after Gregory’s service. Mrs. Weekes even referred to you being in a decline prior to your husband’s death.”
And so thoroughly had Axel neglected the activities expected of a wealthy bachelor—no mistress, no regular visits to London, no regular calls on comely widows—that, abetted by Mrs. Turnbull, he’d apparently acquired the qualities of a chaperone himself, at least where a widowed neighbor in poor health was concerned.
A man aspiring to the celibate reputation of an Oxford fellow should have been pleased.
It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels Page 12