“Uneasy, certainly. An ambush on a bridle path, poison in the library, tampering with a firearm, all on a man’s own property… Anybody would be uneasy.”
And furious. Theresa hadn’t endured this same blend of outrage and dread since she’d realized that conceiving a child was the only certain means of extinguishing her cousins’ interest in marrying her to the highest bidder—or worse.
And yet, Theresa calmed amid the normal hubbub of introductions and holiday wishes. The Belmont family had decorated their home, wrapping holly about the bannisters, hanging mistletoe from the rafters, and draping greenery outside the front door. The party repaired to the library, with Matthew’s sons taking Priscilla up the spiral stairs to the reading loft, while the adults sipped punch and gathered before the fire.
Matthew looked tired, but put on a show of genial good manners, doubtless for the sake of the children. He kissed Theresa’s cheek in greeting, and kissed Alice and Loris in the same fashion.
“Mama, there are more books up here!” Priscilla shouted, leaning over the railing. “Books about art and sculpture; books in French and German. I have never seen so many books!”
“We have a book about castles too,” Richard said. “But if you fall over the balcony and break your head, you’ll never get a chance to read it.”
“Mama would catch me,” Priscilla retorted, disappearing from view. “I live in a castle, I’ll have you know, but we haven’t this many books.”
The young people fell to quiet murmuring, and Matthew excused himself to let the kitchen know his guests had arrived.
“Cease worrying,” Thomas said. “He’s hale and whole, and as focused as ever on his victuals. His sons are on their best behavior, and Priscilla has them well in hand.”
“If nobody objects, I’d like to have a look at Mr. Belmont’s collection,” Alice said. “Priscilla isn’t the only one in raptures at the sight of so many books.”
While Theresa didn’t even like the idea of Matthew strolling the corridors of his own home alone. She excused herself after asking Loris for directions to the ladies’ retiring room, and found her quarry at the first turning of the corridor.
He had his back to her, and her first thought was that he really was overdue for a trim about the collar. Mistletoe hung from above, though Theresa hardly needed that excuse.
She wrapped her arms around him from the back. “I have missed you so, Matthew Belmont, and worried for you awfully.”
He turned, but even as strong arms settled gently around Theresa, her mind was registering facts at variance with her assumption.
He was a shade too lean.
His scent was lavender rather than cinnamon and spice.
His embrace was off.
“To envy one’s brother is exceedingly bad form, and yet, honesty compels me to admit that I do.”
The voice was too… gruff.
Theresa stepped back. “You’re not Matthew.”
“Axel Belmont, at your service.” He executed a deferential bow. “If you’re not Miss Theresa Jennings, then my brother has much to explain.”
Axel Belmont bore a disconcerting resemblance to Matthew. He was the same height, his hair nearly same shade of gold at the back, but darker around his face. His smile, though, was ironic rather than warm.
“Mr. Belmont, my apologies. I assure you I’m not in the habit—”
“Brother, I will thrash you silly if you attempt to flirt with Miss Jennings.” Matthew’s arm slid around Theresa’s waist. “She’s shy, and unused to you university types. Now that you’ve torn yourself free of my glass house, please join the gathering in the library. We’ve matters to discuss.”
Axel Belmont’s gaze cooled to downright chilly, then he kissed Theresa’s cheek, plucked a berry from the mistletoe above, and dropped it into his pocket.
“Welcome to the family, Miss Jennings,” he said. “You’ll have your hands full with the southern branch of the clan, but if ever you need a thrashing administered to your handsome swain, I’m your man.”
He marched off, but not before Matthew had tossed the entire sheaf of mistletoe at his brother’s retreating backside.
“He likes you,” Matthew said. “That’s mostly a good thing.”
“But he looked so fierce.” Surely Theresa hadn’t imagined the chill in those blue eyes?
“Axel regularly lectures on botanical topics at Oxford, where he must deal with half-drunken, unruly, randy young fellows in quantity. His glower is the envy of the other professors, though his own children taught it to him. Come along, or your brother will be on patrol next.”
Theresa didn’t come along. She stood right where she was, wrapped her arms around Matthew, and held on.
“Thomas is sending me back to Sutcliffe Keep after the holidays. He says you’ve asked this of him.”
Matthew obliged her with a snug embrace. “I ask it of you, too, and ask that you take Priscilla and Miss Portman with you. These difficulties I’m having are serious, and once my family has returned to Oxford, I expect more trouble.”
For all that Matthew’s arms were around her, he’d already ridden away to battle in a sense.
“You want me to leave?”
“I care for you very much and want you and Priscilla to be safe. My own selfish wishes don’t signify.”
“I’m being banished while you remain here to fight dragons.” As she’d had Thomas banished.
“Not merely fight the dragons, slay them. I have many reasons to prevail, my dear, not merely to survive.”
Theresa slid from his embrace. “And the less favor you show me, the safer I’ll be?” This was how the king’s man would organize his pursuit of justice, with innocent bystanders well away when he drew his weapon.
“I will write to you, I will do my utmost to apprehend my malefactor, and I will carry you in my heart until the end of time, if need be.”
Or the end of his interest in her, or hers in him. The young girl who’d developed a naughty smile and tolerance for liquor knew how dreams could die, slowly, silently. Sutcliffe Keep might never crumble into the sea, but dreams certainly could.
“Matthew, I don’t want to leave you.”
“I don’t want to send you away. Please trust me on that much, at least.”
Theresa blinked back the tears and took the handkerchief Matthew offered.
“I hate this, Matthew, when all my choices lead to either danger or heartbreak for somebody I love. I’d choose the danger for myself, because I’m convinced if I remain here, I can keep you whole.”
The urge to argue, to rant and reason and insist until she got her way, came from an old, unhappy place. Nobody listened to “the girl,” nobody paid attention to her. When Theresa might have tossed Matthew’s handkerchief back at him, she noticed Thomas standing outside the closed library door, his expression grave.
“Priscilla is agitating to visit the ponies,” he said, extending a hand to Theresa. “For what it’s worth, I don’t want to send you away either.”
Theresa took her brother’s hand, and he pulled her closer, into a tight, fierce hug.
“I didn’t want to force you away from Sutcliffe, Thomas,” she whispered.
As rotten as the situation was, as badly as Theresa longed to stand in front of Matthew with a gun aimed toward any who’d try to harm him, in Thomas’s arms, she took comfort from a moment of grace.
Absolution without further penance, forgiveness even in the absence of a complete understanding.
“I’ll go back to Sutcliffe,” Theresa said, “but don’t expect me to bide there month after month like some hermit. Priscilla is old enough to enjoy the sights in London, my wardrobe is a disgrace, and the Keep is long overdue for some new furniture.”
Matthew’s expression was thoughtful, though he did not offer to jaunt up to London to meet her. When the king’s man undertook to keep a woman at a safe distance, then at a safe distance, she would remain.
The sheaf of mistletoe lay on the carpet, a fo
rlorn little sprig of pale greenery with a half-dozen white berries yet clinging beneath the leaves. Theresa picked it up, held it over Matthew’s head, and kissed the hell out of him.
* * *
Theresa’s kiss gut-punched Matthew’s resolve, and the only sympathy he got was a stout blow on the shoulder from the baron as the lady flounced off to the library.
“If you break my sister’s heart, I will kill you, Belmont.”
“If I break her heart, and somebody else doesn’t dispatch me first, then you are welcome to end my days as you see fit.” Though Matthew would expire of heartache in any case.
Sending Theresa back to Sutcliffe was necessary, but it was not… not right.
“I should have killed my cousins,” Thomas said, slinging an arm around Matthew’s shoulders. “I see that now. A pair of thoroughgoing scoundrels, and I left my sister to deal with them. I’ve been an idiot. She sent me away to keep me away from harm, and now life is serving me the same dish.”
“Most brothers are idiots from time to time. Ask Axel for his opinion on the matter, or Richard. My youngest has a fine sense of martyrdom as a result of being outnumbered by his idiot older brothers.”
Which sense of martyrdom, the boy had not left at Oxford. If anything, Richard was more taciturn and withdrawn than ever. Matthew joined his guests in the library and ignored the empty space on the sofa next to Theresa.
“Priscilla, gentlemen,” Matthew called up to the reading loft. “If you would come down for a moment?”
The sound of the boys’ boots on the spiral staircase had changed since summer, becoming heavier and slower. They were no longer pirate lads quitting their crow’s nest for a portion of grog. They were the Belmont heirs, budding scholars, and young men to be proud of.
How Matthew had missed them, and how he would miss them.
“Richard, I understand Miss Priscilla longs to see the ponies,” Matthew said. “If you would oblige her and take the old guard some carrots?”
Get the boy outside, was all Matthew could think. Get some color into his cheeks.
“Yes, Papa,” Richard said. “Come along, Miss Priscilla, and if you refuse to wear your gloves and scarf, I will tattle to your mama and you will never be allowed to visit the ponies again.”
Priscilla stuck her tongue out at Richard, which provoked the first smile Matthew had seen from him for months. She then took Richard by the hand and dragged him from the library.
“His voice is changing,” Matthew said, shoving back to sit on the desk. “Christopher and Rem, you will not tease your brother about this. Tease him about growing too tall, eating too much at one sitting, or bankrupting me with his tailor’s bills, but not about his voice.”
“Yes, Papa,” they chorused.
Matthew ought to have convened this gathering in his public parlor, the place where he held the magistrate’s sessions on Monday mornings when criminal wrongdoing had been alleged, or an arrest made. The library lacked sufficient chairs, and Matthew was keenly aware of Maida’s absence.
“Rem and Christopher, if you’d fetch yourselves chairs?”
Remington folded to the hearth rug in one lithe movement, Christopher doing likewise.
“Uncle Axel said there’s trouble afoot,” Remington said, sitting cross-legged. “Perhaps you’d best come back to Oxford with us.”
“From the mouths of babes…” Axel muttered.
Matthew ignored the attempted mutiny—a remove to Oxford might well bring the danger to Axel’s doorstep—and summarized for the assemblage the facts as he knew them.
“So you don’t have solid evidence of attempted murder,” Christopher said. “But you have too much coincidence to ignore. You’re beastly careful with your firearms, and any fool could have seen that the harrow was left in the worst possible location. As for the poison…”
The poison Matthew might have casually ingested, but for Maida’s bad manners.
“It strikes me,” Theresa said, “that this person knows you, but not as well as they think they do. They know you eat prodigious quantities, but not that you abhor mustard. They know that you use a certain pistol in the hunt field, but not that Spiker routinely fires that weapon in the vicinity of your hounds and hunters through the week.”
“You are suggesting I can eliminate my staff from suspicion.” Theresa’s insight yielded Matthew significant relief. His children and his only brother were dwelling at Belmont House, after all.
“And yet,” Loris said, “it has to be somebody the staff would expect to see about the area and on the premises. A neighbor who typically attends the hunt meets, though not a groom or a servant, for they would not presume on your library.”
“They might have helped themselves to the hunt breakfast and come in through the French doors,” Theresa said, chewing a nail.
“Damn,” Axel muttered at the same time Thomas said, “Shite.”
“Stealth has been part of this campaign,” she went on. “Nobody saw the harrow being dragged about the countryside, suggesting it was moved at night. Nobody saw anybody tampering with the pistol, suggesting that happened when the stable was quiet, which again, occurs every night and often throughout the day. Any Sunday morning or afternoon, the stable would be deserted. The poison was left out when a crowd made it easy for anybody to gain access to the house.”
“What are you saying?” Matthew asked.
“This person is a likely suspect,” Theresa replied. “They cannot afford to provoke you even to speculating about their involvement.”
“I think I know what she’s saying,” Rem interjected. “When we realize who it is, we’ll wonder how we could have missed him. You locked up somebody who was innocent, you settled a dispute and left somebody with a grudge, you got the magistrate’s job when somebody else wanted the prestige or power of it.”
“Nobody in their right mind wants the magistrate’s job,” Thomas said.
“I certainly didn’t,” Matthew said.
“I damned hate it,” Axel added, “begging the ladies’ pardon for my language. I think we’re dealing with a simple case of cowardice. Some criminals like a bit of risk about their undertakings, a sense of sporting fair play. Whoever we’re dealing with here…”
“Is not a professional,” Theresa murmured. “There are professionals, bully boys, thieves, forgers. Evil for hire abounds in London.”
“Criminal expertise certainly does,” Thomas said. “One can hire murder done, for a price, but our murderer has been unsuccessful, suggesting he’s an amateur. Poison is often considered a woman’s weapon because only stealth is needed to wield it, and anybody can shove an obstruction into the barrel of a pistol.”
“What motive would a woman have?” Loris asked. “Matthew is unfailingly polite, a reliable guest for making up the numbers, a gentleman…”
“Greed, passion, and revenge are the typical motives for murder,” Axel added, oh so helpfully.
Though thank God others were capable of seeing the situation rationally, because all Matthew could think was that in less than two weeks’ time, if this damnable business weren’t resolved, he might never see Theresa Jennings again.
His mind went to work on that problem—for it was a problem—the way he’d often start to worry an unsolved crime. Loose ends tumbled around in his imagination sometimes resulting in insights when he least expected them.
“Papa isn’t the type to inspire passion,” Christopher said. “Well, you aren’t. You’re the Harmless Old Squire, who takes little old ladies to church and to market. The widows adore you, but you never dance with the same one twice.”
Was Christopher being delicate?
“You are popular with the ladies,” Loris said. “Though I believe I’m the last woman you offered for, and that was more than two years ago.”
Remington looked intrigued, while Christopher twitched at dog hair caught on the fringe of the hearth rug.
“We can safely assume her ladyship has not conceived a violent dislike of you,”
Axel observed. “Besides which, the baroness has been off on her wedding journey. If we rule out passion as a motive, that leaves greed and revenge.”
“Papa’s wealthy,” Remington said, “but we’re his heirs, and our uncles are the estate’s trustees. As much as Richard is being a pest lately, I don’t think he’s had the means or the motivation to plot murder.”
“Not unless he’s planning on conjugating and declining Papa to death,” Christopher said.
“So we’re down to revenge,” Thomas said. “Belmont, make a list of all the people you’ve arrested, all the cases you’ve heard in the past year, all the parties who’ve muttered into their beer about the magistrate being a blight on the king’s justice.”
“I made such a list last night, and it’s quite short.”
Theresa was watching Matthew from halfway across the room, and he could nearly hear her thoughts. They had made no progress with all this discussion, and they likely wouldn’t make any progress unless or until the killer made another attempt on Matthew’s life.
By which time, Matthew had insisted that Theresa and Priscilla would be safely returned to their castle by the sea.
Their lonely, drafty, crumbling castle by the sea.
Chapter Nineteen
“If you would send Beckman back with the coach in an hour or so,” Theresa said, “I will remain here and make a final inspection of the kitchens. Matthew has no hostess, and somebody needs to see that all is in order before the open house.”
Thomas paused with half his coat buttons undone, but before he could make some brotherly protest, Loris passed him her cloak.
“Sending the coach back will be no bother at all,” she said. “Shall we take Priscilla home with us?”
“Please do. She’s bound to be tired from her adventures today. I won’t be long, assuming all is in readiness.”
Richard Belmont, may the young man be eternally blessed, had taken Priscilla on an inspection of the retired ponies, then given her a stall-by-stall tour of the Belmont stable. She’d returned to the library tired, elated, full of story ideas, and none too tidy.
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