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  “Axel—The Jaded Gentlemen Book III” Copyright © 2015 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations or excerpts for the purpose of critical reviews or articles—without permission in writing from Grace Burrowes, author and publisher of the work.

  Published by Grace Burrowes Publishing, 21 Summit Avenue, Hagerstown, MD 21740.

  ISBN for Axel—The Jaded Gentlemen Book III: 978-1-941419-19-9

  Cover by Wax Creative, Inc.

  To the bench scientists, and to those who love them

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Will's True Love

  Acknowledgements

  Axel and Abigail’s tale is a nice, big book—slightly more than 100,000 words—and the story took me in some unforeseen directions. Twining about the romance is a murder mystery, though I didn’t set out to write one of those any more than Axel Belmont set out to be a magistrate. He’s a botanist, for pity’s sake, and all he wants is to become a fellow at nearby Oxford University.

  In the Regency period, the Oxford fellow was not permitted to marry. The lovely folks at the Oxford University Information Office and the Oxford University Archives responded to my inquiries regarding this curious situation, an artifact left over from the University’s medieval associations with the church. Without the University’s generous assistance on this topic, I would have disappeared down the research rabbit hole, possibly never to be seen again.

  I owe another enormous debt to Joyce Lamb, my editor, who is also a RITA™-nominated author of romantic suspense novels. Any boo-boos in these pages are, of course, my own, but if the plot works, if the prose sings, it’s because of Joyce’s keen eye, and the supporting roles ably played by my proofreaders, Sarah and Cora.

  And now, on to the romance… and the roses!

  Chapter One

  “Any neighbor who turns up deceased in the middle of a frigid January night has exhibited the height—the very zenith—of bad form.”

  Axel Belmont announced this thesis to his horse, for Ivan had never been known to contradict one of the professor’s opening statements.

  “Said bad form,” Axel went on, “would be surpassed only by a fellow who has the effrontery to complain of the inconvenience resulting from that neighbor’s poorly timed death.”

  Even if that fellow had been summoned from his late-night glass of wine among his dearest companions, all of whom hailed from the family Rosaceae.

  “The part about being magistrate I detest the most,” Axel muttered as he guided Ivan up the Stoneleigh Manor drive, “is becoming privy to my neighbor’s dirty linen. Mind the footing, horse. You are laden with precious cargo.”

  Precious, shivering cargo. Axel’s estate bordered the Stoneleigh property, but by the lanes, that was still nearly two miles of slow going in fresh snow. An arctic wind did nothing to improve Axel’s mood, nor did the thought of his grafts, abandoned in the warmth of his glass house not thirty minutes earlier.

  He brought Ivan to a halt in the Stoneleigh stable yard, and Ambers, the Stoneleigh head groom, stomped out of the barn.

  “I’ll take your horse, Mr. Belmont. Very bad business at the manor tonight. Very bad, indeed.”

  “No argument there, Ambers. Hay for my intrepid steed. I don’t know how long I’ll be.” An eternity of the figurative sort at least, for a man who was cold, tired, and more interested in flowers than felonies.

  Axel handed off the reins and marched across the stable yard, up the snow-covered drive to Stoneleigh Manor’s solid three-story façade. Despite the lateness of the hour, lamps on the front terrace were ablaze. The door opened before Axel had used the boot scrape on his oldest pair of riding boots.

  “Come in, Mr. Belmont.” Shreve, the Stoneleigh butler bowed. “Come in, please. It’s colder than Hades out there tonight, and you’ll catch your death…oh dear lord… What I meant to say, well, begging your pardon, sir.” The old fellow bowed again, though he’d yet to close the damned door.

  “Good evening, Shreve,” Axel said, pushing the door closed. “I can see to my own coat, hat, and gloves. Where is the deceased, and where is Mrs. Stoneleigh?”

  Shreve gestured vaguely with an ungloved hand. “She’s in the library with the, er, with… the colonel. The late colonel.” He blinked, then stared straight ahead, as if he’d heard an odd noise of the sort butlers didn’t acknowledge.

  “Might we have a tea tray in the family parlor?” Axel asked.

  More blinking and bowing. “A fine idea, sir. Tea in the family parlor. I’ll see to it at once.” He’d likely forget before he reached the kitchen, not that Axel was in the mood for a perishing pot of tea.

  Axel had been an occasional visitor at Stoneleigh Manor in years past, so he made his way to the study unescorted, knocked once, and let himself in.

  Two impressions struck him before he’d taken a half-dozen steps into the room.

  The smell of death by gunshot at close range was unmistakable—a hint of blood, metallic and acrid, and overlaying that, the faint, sulfurous stench of the discharged weapon. The second salient aspect of the room was the wintry temperature, caused by the January night air intruding through open French doors.

  Axel was halfway across the room, thinking to close the doors, when a single word stopped him.

  “Don’t.”

  Mrs. Stoneleigh remained so still in the shadows beside the hearth, Axel hadn’t detected her presence. She rose with a rustle of skirts and stepped from the shadows.

  “If we lay my husband out in here, the room should remain unheated. Thank you for heeding my summons, Mr. Belmont.”

  “Mrs. Stoneleigh.” Axel took her cold hand, bowed over it, and examined her as closely as manners and firelight would allow. She was tallish for a woman, though still a half foot shorter than Axel’s own six feet and several inches. Abigail Stoneleigh was also pretty in a quiet, green-eyed, dark-haired way.

  Because she was—had been—another man’s wife, Axel’s assessment of her beauty had never gone further, though if she weren’t so perpetually aloof, if she ever once smiled, she might even be beautiful, not that he’d care one way or the other.

  She had to be frozen to the bone.

  “If I recall your note,” Axel said, “you begged the favor of my presence at my earliest convenience. Hardly a summons, madam.” Her penmanship had been elegant, though the groom who’d delivered the note had nearly babbled the news of Stoneleigh’s death.

  Axel led her over to the hearth, where a dying fire was losing the battle with winter’s chill.

  “I should warn you, Mrs. Stoneleigh, I am here in the capacity of magistrate as well as neighbor.”

  “To come at this hour was still considerate of you.”

  The woman’s spouse was crumpled over the desk, not fifteen feet away, her only defense against the frigid air was a plain brown wool shawl, and she was offering pleasantries?

  Everybody coped with death differently. Caroline’s passing had taught Axel that.

&nbsp ; He took off his jacket and draped it around Mrs. Stoneleigh’s shoulders. “Why don’t we repair to the family parlor? I’ve asked Shreve to bring the tea tray there.”

  Mrs. Stoneleigh’s gaze swung away, to the darkness beyond the French doors. “My—the colonel would not want to be alone.”

  Wherever Stoneleigh’s soul had gone, the life had departed from his mortal remains. Wanting or not wanting to be alone no longer came into it. Axel knew better than to argue reason at such a time, though.

  “Nothing in this room,”—such as a dead body, for example—“can be moved until I’ve looked the situation over more closely, Mrs. Stoneleigh. I would prefer privacy to do that.”

  “You may have your privacy, but I’ll send Ambers to stay here thereafter. I’ll await you in the parlor.”

  As imperious as a bloody queen—a pale, bloody queen. “You don’t want Shreve with the colonel, or perhaps the colonel’s valet?”

  “Mr. Spellmen is on holiday visiting family in Hampshire. Ambers will do. Shreve is overwrought.”

  While the lady was glacially calm. She also bore the faint fragrance of attar of roses, which realization had Axel longing for his glass house all over again.

  He escorted her to the door, then turned his attention to the question of how a man reasonably well liked, in good health, with wealth aplenty, and no apparent vices had managed to get a bullet through his heart at close range in his very own home.

  * * *

  Abigail waited until the door latch clicked shut before drawing Axel Belmont’s wool coat more closely around her. His garment smelled good, of fresh flowers and the green, growing scent of a conservatory, and the coat was blessedly warm from the heat of his big body.

  Mr. Belmont and Gregory had always been on noddingly cordial terms, so over the years, Abby had had some opportunity to observe her neighbor.

  The magistrate was pleasant to observe: tall, blond, and good-looking in the way of a man who likes to be out of doors. He was considered quite the catch, having both family and personal wealth, and he was always in demand as an escort or partner at the local assemblies. To his credit, he was devoted to his sons, Dayton and Phillip, and he was a quiet neighbor.

  He’d come in response to Abby’s note, in the middle of a frigid, snowy night too.

  From Abby’s perspective, his list of positive traits ended there. Mr. Belmont had a blunt, uncompromising quality, an indifference to the opinions of others, an inner set of convictions that made him rigid, to her way of thinking. Others referred to him as quite bright—he lectured at Oxford!—and academically inclined, for he’d published many scholarly treatises on botanical topics.

  In Mr. Belmont’s presence, Abby had always felt tacitly condemned for marrying a wealthy man thirty years her senior.

  But what, what on God’s green earth, could she have done otherwise? And what was she to do now?

  Shreve appeared with the tea tray, an inordinately comforting bit of consideration. Then Abby recalled that Mr. Belmont had ordered this sustenance for her.

  Nonetheless, a hot, sweet cup of tea settled the nerves, and Abby’s nerves were… overwrought. She swallowed past a lump in her throat at that understatement. She could not have Mr. I Am Here As The Magistrate Of Doom Belmont see her discomposed.

  “Shreve,” she said as the butler turned to withdraw, “because Mr. Belmont will be joining me forthwith, perhaps you’d better fetch the decanter from the library.”

  “Will there be anything else, madam?”

  He needed to be kept busy, to be given simple tasks, lest he fall to pieces.

  Abby needed simple tasks too. “If you’d bring me my lap desk, please? Family will have to be notified, and I’ll write those notes before I retire. When Mrs. Pritchard arrives, she can lay the colonel out in the study, provided Mr. Belmont is through. The neighbors may call Thursday afternoon between two and five, and I’ll send a note to the vicar to that effect.

  “We’ll need the black hangings,” Abby went on, though making her mind focus on practicalities was a prodigious effort. “You’ll find the crepe in the attic above the gallery. Any servant still awake may have a medicinal tot of spirits, for we’ll need our rest, despite tonight’s upset. Draping the windows, mirrors, and portraits can all wait until tomorrow.”

  As could crying, pacing, and fretting. Swooning, though tempting, was out of the question.

  “Yes, madam.” When Shreve returned with the brandy and the writing supplies, Abby sent him sniffing and blinking back to the kitchen. Shreve had been with her husband since the colonel had come home from India eleven years ago.

  The butler, unlike the lady of the house, was entitled to faltering composure.

  Abby turned her focus to writing an obituary, because the local weekly would expect it of her.

  Then too, she needed to remain occupied, or she’d hear again the obscene report of a gun in her own home, at an hour when all should have been seeking their beds.

  Her third draft of an opening sentence was disturbed by a single, brisk knock on the door, followed by Axel Belmont striding into the family parlor. His height and his sense of purpose made the room seem small, and if Abby had resented him before, he provoked her to positive distaste now.

  She rose from the sofa and shrugged out of his coat. “I trust you left Ambers at his post?” she asked, holding the coat out to her guest.

  Though tonight he was the magistrate, not a guest at all.

  Mr. Belmont slipped into the coat with the ease of a man who managed often without a valet.

  “I left Ambers in the study with Mrs. Pritchard. Shall we sit? We have matters to discuss, Mrs. Stoneleigh. Matters you will find troubling. I can delay this conversation until tomorrow, but the news will not improve with time.”

  Gregory would be just as dead, in other words.

  “My husband shot himself,” Abby said as evenly as she could. She put that blunt reality on offer, not because she wanted to spare Mr. Belmont’s delicate sensibilities, if any such sensibilities he possessed.

  Abby spoke those terrible, bewildering words because she needed to yank the truth out of the shadows down the corridor, where it quite honestly frightened her.

  “The colonel was in good health,” she went on. “He had much to live for, seemed in reasonably good spirits most of the time, and yet he took his own life. What could be more troubling than that?”

  * * *

  Your lack of reaction, Axel wanted to retort, but when his own spouse had died, his control hadn’t slipped until he’d come upon his brother Matthew, holding a sobbing Dayton after the funeral.

  “Let me tell you what I’ve observed so far,” Axel suggested. “Shall I pour?” A widower would expire of dehydration if he didn’t learn to navigate a tea service.

  “I’ve had a cup. Shreve brought the brandy if you’d rather.”

  “I would.” Tea at nearly midnight, at the scene of a crime, seemed insufficient fortification given what Axel had to tell her.

  Mrs. Stoneleigh poured him a generous portion of brandy, the glow from the hearth creating fiery highlights in her dark hair. Her movements were elegant and graceful, and that was somehow wrong.

  Was she surprised by her husband’s death? Relieved? Pleased?

  “First,” Axel said, after a bracing sip of good brandy, “my condolences on your loss.”

  “My thanks.” Two words, and tersely offered. She took one side of a brocade love seat pulled close to the hearth. “Won’t you sit, Mr. Belmont? The hour is late, you have to be tired, and we must discuss awkward matters. I’d rather be able to see your face.”

  Forthright, Axel thought, running a hand through his hair, which the winter wind had doubtless left in ungentlemanly disarray. Mrs. Stoneleigh had a way of expressing herself that made him feel as if he were trying her patience and insulting her intelligence.

  All thorns and no blossom.

  Axel could be blunt too. He lowered himself not into a wing chair, but to the place right besi de her.

  “I have reason to believe your husband was the victim of foul play.” Murder being the foulest form of human play imaginable. “To quiet misgivings from our vicar, I will preliminarily rule death by accident.”

  Mrs. Stoneleigh was silent for a moment, not reacting at all.

  Then she sat taller. “Sir, you will explain yourself. Please.”

  “The cause of death was likely that gunshot to the chest—to the heart—as you no doubt suspected.” Contrary to what the Gothic novels propounded, once the heart ceased performing its function, little bleeding occurred—and Stoneleigh’s heart had stopped instantly.

  “I did not move the body,” Mrs. Stoneleigh said, her hand going to her middle. “I knew he was dead, because I put my fingers to the side of his neck, and I saw blood spattered on the desk and blotter. I also saw the gun in his hand, but I did not… I did not look.”

  “You were wise not to disturb the scene.” Was she reacting now? Was there a slight tension around her eyes and mouth? She was mortally pale, though many English women went to pains to protect their complexions.

  “You needn’t flatter me, Mr. Belmont. I simply did not know what to do, other than to send for my nearest neighbor.”

  Who had the bad luck to be serving as the temporary magistrate—something she apparently hadn’t known.

  “Given the gun in your husband’s hand, a casual observer might think the colonel had, indeed, taken his own life, or perhaps had an accident while cleaning his equipment.”

  Axel took another swallow of brandy, resisting the urge to down it all at once.

  Mrs. Stoneleigh reached toward the tea service as if to pour herself a second cup, but her hand drifted to her lap instead.

  “God help my late husband if, after more than twenty years in the cavalry, he was attempting to clean a loaded gun.”

  “True.” Axel hadn’t considered that perspective. “The difficulty with the theory of suicide, though, is that the gun in your husband’s hand had not been fired and was, in fact, still loaded. Your husband was shot, and the fatal bullet was not fired at close range.”