Free Axel by Grace Burrowes Page B

grow to great heights to have room for all the food you stuff into them. These spices are marvelous.”
    Stewed apples, with cinnamon, cloves, and walnuts, were comforting on a cold winter afternoon.
    “My mother had a recipe for muffins that used the same spices,” Axel said. “I associate cinnamon and cloves with rainy days spent in the kitchen stealing batter and playing cards with my brother. Matthew’s preferred fragrance comes close. I think he has it blended in Paris.”
    “You are very close to this brother of yours.”
    And yet, Axel and Matthew lived nearly a hundred miles apart. “Having no other siblings might have that result. When we’re through with our meal, I planned to check on my brood mares, though it’s far from foaling season. Would you care to walk with me?”
    He wasn’t nearly done interrogating her, and—bracing thought—she likely wasn’t done interrogating him either. The apples had disappeared from her bowl posthaste, though.
    “A constitutional would suit,” she said. “Your mares are in your south pasture, if I recall?”
    Dayton and Phillip might not have known that much. “That part of the property has the most reliable water,” Axel said, rising and holding her chair.
    “You could easily put in a cistern and a windmill pump on the western pastures. The breeze is seldom still, and you have better drainage on that side and more shade as well.”
    “Hadn’t thought of that.” Neither had Axel’s land steward, who’d been managing rural properties since before the Flood.
    When they reached the back corridor, Axel took her cloak off a peg, settled it around her shoulders, then began to tie the frogs.
    “Axel Belmont.” She had closed her eyes.
    “That is my name. Axel Lysander Horatius Belmont, of all the pretensions.”
    “I am capable of dressing myself.”
    He dropped his hands and stepped back, though her
point
eluded him.
    “This was a habit with your wife, I take it?” Mrs. Stoneleigh’s gaze was understanding, and resentment blossomed, not at her, not even at her understanding, but at a past that still had the power to ambush the present.
    “A habit, yes.”
    She held out his coat. “A lovely, domestic gesture. Sweet.”
    Ye gods, sweet. What else had she said? That Axel was
awake
, and close to his brother, which had made him uncomfortable because her observations were accurate and based on very little evidence.
    Abigail Stoneleigh was awake as well, though what had life with the colonel done to such an intelligent, alert spirit? She’d both looked at Axel and
seen
him. Seen the widower, the papa, and the professor.
    Had she seen the man?
    Axel had long since given up wishing for a woman to focus on him that closely. Far easier to be overwhelmed with raising his sons, delivering his scholarly lectures, running his estate, popping down to Sussex to see his brother. Far more pleasant to unravel the mysteries of the rose, or the wonders of what Americans called witch hazel.
    “You are silent, Mr. Belmont,” Mrs. Stoneleigh said.
    They’d left the snowy garden and were crossing the paddock immediately behind the stable. All without Axel offering a word of conversation.
    “Shall I chatter on about the weather?”
    He dropped her arm to leap across a rill of snowmelt encrusted with ice. He straddled the water and planted his hands on her waist, swung her over it, then grasped one of her gloved hands to pull her up the opposite bank.
    The lady was too slight, and riding habits were not ideal attire for marching about the countryside. He’d wanted her to take some fresh air though, to regain the campion-pink flush to her cheeks.
    “The weather is a dreary topic this time of year,” she said. “I like the quality of your silences, for the most part.”
    “What of Gregory?” Axel asked, keeping Mrs. Stoneleigh’s hand in his, for now they were on a rutted bridle path. “Was he quiet or noisy?”
    “He fretted about his bitches when they were about to