“Or you.” Axel dipped a shaving brush into the half-full tub and worked up a lather with Val’s shaving soap. He sniffed the soap and dabbed lather onto Val’s cheeks. “Lovely scent. How do you conclude somebody tampered with your roof?”
“We know there were trespassers.” Val craned his chin up so Axel could lather his throat. “We also know the slates were tight on Friday.”
“You know your roofing crew claims they were tight on Friday,” Axel corrected as he began to scrape the razor along Val’s jaw. “From what you described, it took at least a half ton of fieldstone piled on that scaffolding to loosen the slates. Correct?”
“You don’t think it was mischief,” Val said when Axel swiped the razor clean on a towel.
“I do not. It was too random. Anybody could have been hurt by those stones, or nobody. The weight might have been enough to loosen the slates, and then again it might not. Somebody who really wanted to cause you harm would have taken more predictably troublesome measures to do it—if they had any sense. Hold still.”
Val considered Axel’s reasoning and found it sound. Axel, like his brother, Matthew Belmont, in Sussex, occasionally served as local magistrate. He had experience investigating crimes, and more to the point, he was Day and Phillip’s father. He would not put them at avoidable risk of harm; of that Val was certain.
Axel tossed a clean towel directly at Val’s shaven face. “I think you’ve dropped some weight. Your face is thinner.”
Val shrugged as he stood. “Darius claims the rest of me is thinner, as well. I confess to being indifferent on the matter but not the least indifferent to the thought of that tub of hot water.”
“Cuff links.” Axel waggled his fingers, and Val held out his left hand.
“Ye gods, Windham.” Axel frowned at Val’s swollen joints and reddened flesh. “Did you hit this thing with a hammer? It has to hurt.”
“It flares up,” Val muttered, snatching his hand back as soon as Axel had the cuff link out. “I think I can manage from here.”
“Like hell you can. You either let me unbutton your falls, or I’ll stand here and watch while you attempt it yourself.”
“Axel.” Val scowled at him in earnest.
“What?” He grabbed Val’s breeches by the waistband and scowled right back. “Do you have them made this loose?” He deftly unfastened the buttons while Val stood and suffered the assistance.
“I don’t like them tight.” Val shoved breeches and smalls over his hips. “If you must know, they are a little looser than when they were made.”
“Abby can probably take them in for you.” Axel picked up Val’s discarded clothing and kept further comments on his guest’s leanness to himself.
“Might I have the soap?” Val asked, sinking down into the water with a grateful sigh.
“You might.” Axel rummaged in the satchel brought up with the last of the hot water, fetched a sliver of milled soap, and laid out a complete change of clothes on the bed. “Dunk, and I’ll do the honors.”
In truth, it felt good to let Axel fuss over him just a little, although being scolded for the state of his hand was grating in the extreme. Axel would no doubt alert Val’s family—and dear Nicholas, as well—but they weren’t likely to come haring out to Oxfordshire to pester him personally, not when there were no real accommodations, no social life, and only the barest of provisions. Then too, Val hadn’t sent either of his brothers the exact direction to his latest folly, and they were both busy men.
Westhaven’s letters were full of the wonder—and drivel—that probably characterized all new papas. Devlin’s letters read more like dispatches. They were terse, factual, and few in number. The Rosecroft estate up in Yorkshire hadn’t been in much better shape than Val’s own acquisition, and Devlin was newly married, newly blessed with a stepdaughter, and shortly expecting his own firstborn.
And if Val regretted that his oldest brother was a week’s journey away, at least it was an improvement over the years when the man was leading cavalry charges against the damned French.
But Val rose from the tub, admitting just how much he’d missed his brother Devlin since coming down from the north two months previously. It had been a pleasant winter in Yorkshire with Dev, little Winnie, and Emmie—cozy, almost, and were it not for the condition of Val’s hand…
He looked down at that hand and let out a low oath, as its condition was almost as bad as when David Worthington had examined it. Two things were now certain, though: Rest improved it, albeit at an excruciatingly slow pace; and using the hand for anything like a normal level of activity caused it to deteriorate with appalling swiftness.
Val struggled into his shirt then fumbled at length to get his clean breeches fastened as he realized Ellen had not treated his hand for more than two days. After lunch, he promised himself he would seek her out and beg her assistance. If he had to suffer Axel’s dressing him like a fidgety toddler, it really would send him round the bend.
He was toweling his hair dry when he heard the door to his room open and close. A servant would have knocked, and Ellen was supposed to be at her own bath.
“Axel,” Val muttered from the depths of his towel, “if you’ve come to do me up like a little fellow newly breeched, you can bugger the hell off.”
“Now that’s a fine way to address your host,” growled a deep and familiar baritone. “I’m sure Her Grace will be pleased to know my baby brother’s impeccable manners are serving him in good stead.”
Val tossed the towel aside, and as if his thoughts had conjured the man, there stood Devlin St. Just, Colonel Lord Rosecroft, Valentine’s oldest brother, in the bronzed, healthy, and grinning flesh.
“Dev?” Val was in his brother’s crushing embrace in the next instant, his back being heartily pounded, and his throat suspiciously tight. Val pulled back and assured himself that his eyes had not lied. “What in the hell are you doing away from Emmie and Winnie?”
“I was banished.” St. Just’s grin became sheepish. “Emmie isn’t due for a few more weeks, and she accused me of hovering. I missed those members of the family who were not kind enough to winter with us, so here I am on a lightning raid, as it were.”
“And damned glad I am to see you. Damned glad. How long can you stay?”
“I’ll depart for York by the end of the week, but Oxford is nominally north of Town, so you were on my way.” St. Just stepped back, and Val was treated to the critical appraisal of the brother who was half Irish and all former soldier.
“And Belmont knew you were coming?” Val pressed. “He said not one word to me, and I’ve had his boys underfoot for the past several weeks.”
“Belmont knew I was coming but not exactly when, as he and I have business to transact of a sort, and our wives are connected.”
“Your wives…” Val frowned and recalled that Abby Stoneleigh—now Abby Belmont—had mentioned being related to the late Earl of Helmsley and his surviving sisters.
“I thought the army was the world’s largest village,” St. Just said, “but the English peerage takes that honor. If you’re done with that tub, I’d like to hop in before the water is done cooling.”
“Help yourself, but I’m sure Axel will send up clean water, if you’d prefer.”
“Compared to what was available in Spain”—St. Just was already out of his shirt—“this is sparkling. Smells good too.”
“I’ll leave you some privacy, then.” Val moved toward the door.
“The hell you will.” St. Just shucked out of his breeches. “We’ll have to make polite conversation at table, so stay and take your interrogation like a man. For starters, I’ve seen prisoners of war in better weight than you, Valentine Windham. What has you off your feed?”