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barely stand.”
    The lady heeded his instructions, and within moments, he had her upstairs in her private sitting room, a plate of food before her.
    “Eat,” he admonished. “I’ll fetch you tea, unless you’d like something stronger?”
    “Tea would be lovely, with milk and sugar.”
    He eyed the plate, from which she had eaten nothing, and realized he was well and truly—if inconveniently—worried about her. The worry housed a goodly dose of resentment too, which probably made him convincing when he treated her to his best “do as the professor says” scowl before taking his leave.
    Axel Belmont, an unlikely guardian angel if ever there was one, would stand over Abby until she consumed her portion, so she tucked into the food. He’d chosen simple fare: slices of apple, cheese, and ham, and two pieces of liberally buttered bread.
    He paid attention, and not simply to the evidence relevant to a murder investigation.
    Mr. Belmont had loved his wife, as had been obvious to anyone with eyes. His Caroline had loved him back, and loved their boys as well. They’d been such a happy little family, Abigail had dreaded the sight of them, the boys up before their parents when they rode out, or all four in the buggy on their way to church.
    So of course, Mr. Belmont would comprehend that rich food did not digest easily on a grieving stomach. He would understand that a woman needed solitude after dealing with so many people, most of whom hadn’t bothered to call on her twice in all the years she’d dwelled among them. He would grasp immediately all manner of realities Gregory would never have understood even were they explained in detail.
    Mr. Belmont reappeared carrying not a delicate tea cup, but a substantial, steaming mug.
    “Your tea, and I purloined a few of these.” From his pocket he withdrew several tea cakes in a serviette, keeping one for himself and putting the rest on Abby’s plate.
    “Will you sit, sir?” The tea was ambrosial, soothing and fortifying, prepared to the exact sweetness she preferred.
    Mr. Belmont flipped out his tails and lowered himself beside her. “I will remain as long as you keep eating. I am avoiding interrogation by the gentlemen around the punch bowl.”
    Interrogation about—? Oh.
    Oh dear
. Abby bit into a cold slice of apple. “For you and I to be closeted up here isn’t quite proper, is it?”
    He settled back, his frame filling his corner of the sofa with elegant, sober tailoring, and a perpetual scowl.
    “You’re a widow now. By virtue of your husband’s demise, you graduate from needing chaperonage to being a source of it.”
    Like the tea, the apple was lovely. Belmont’s brusque company was fortifying too, oddly enough.
    “We are such a silly society,” Abby said.
    “In many ways, though you have cleared the first hurdles of losing a spouse, so some of the silliness is behind you. You’re through the death, the wake, and the burial, and can get on with the grieving.”
    Death.
Mr. Belmont eschewed platitudes and euphemisms, while Gregory had hardly ever dealt in blunt truths. All bluster and chit-chat, when he wasn’t scolding some servant or other.
    Or his wife.
    “I keep waiting for the grieving to start.” Abby considered a slice of apple, which her grandpapa had insisted was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. “I keep waiting for tears, for sorrow, for something momentous, but all I feel is upset and… sad.”
    “I recall saying nearly the same thing to my brother when Caroline died. There’s no wrong way to mourn. You’ve described your relationship with Stoneleigh as cordial, and maybe a marriage free of passion means you are spared passionate grief as well.”
    Must he be so philosophical? Abby set the rest of the apple slice on the plate.
    “Perhaps I will sit bolt upright in bed at midnight, realize I have no spouse, and be overcome by strong hysterics.”
Again.
For what Abby
did
have was a
late
spouse, who’d been murdered