Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (20 page)

He moved the sketches aside and used the table as a bench, scooting back to sit on it. “The French shout, Genevieve. They are a pugnacious, articulate people, and not without prejudices where women are concerned, for all their talk to the contrary.”

She took the place beside him. “You are telling me Paris will not be a bed of roses. I know that. Are you hungry?”

Clearly, the question surprised him. “I am. It’s late, though. Shall I escort you to your room?”

This was not an offer to accompany her to bed. This was Elijah being proper, and Jenny nearly hated him for it.

“Come with me.” She hopped off the table and grabbed him by the wrist. “Papa is always testy when he’s peckish, and I’m no different.”

She didn’t turn loose of his wrist, but towed him along through the darkened house. The cloved oranges lent the corridors a holiday fragrance, while mistletoe dangled from the rafters.

“Is there a reason you’re not having a late-night tea tray sent up to your room?” Elijah asked.

“The staff is exhausted from the preparations for all the arrivals tomorrow. The larder is full to bursting though, and nobody will miss what we help ourselves to now.”

The kitchen was in a lower corner of the house, where access to water was assured by an ancient well in the cellars, and where the pantries and gardens were close by.

“I have always liked kitchens,” Elijah said as they gained the darkened main kitchen. “They are warm in winter, and they say a lot about a family.”

“I should have pried you loose from that studio earlier.” Jenny dropped his wrist and took a candle into the cook’s pantry. She appropriated butter, bread, an apple, and a wedge of cheese.

“You can slice us some ham,” she said when she emerged with her platter. “I’m going to make chocolate.”

She expected an argument, because for the past three days, they’d mostly argued. Twice she’d caught Elijah regarding her with an expression she could not fathom, but both times, he’d dropped right back into his art.

His damnable, excellent art.

“Who were today’s letters from?” She fetched the pitcher of milk from the window box and stirred up the coals in the hearth.

“My two middle brothers. There’s an epistolary siege underway. Is this enough ham?”

“You could eat twice that amount yourself. What is the objective of the siege?”

The knife came down on the cutting board loud enough to make a “thwack!” in the shadowed kitchen. “My pride is being besieged. I made a vow I would not return to Flint Hall until I’d gained entry into the Royal Academy. My dear siblings”—Thwack!—“would have me violate that oath.”

Jenny snitched a bite of ham. “So would I.”

“Watch your fingers, Genevieve. What do you mean?”

She held up a bite of cheese, wanting him to nibble it from those fingers. He instead took it from her and held it, his posture expectant.

“How old were you when you made your infernal vow?”

He popped the cheese in his mouth and chewed slowly. “I’d gone up to university. I wasn’t a child.”

She moved away, to the hearth, where the pan of milk was beginning to steam over the coals. “The chocolate is in that tin on the counter and the grater is right beside it.”

Elijah had made hot chocolate before, apparently. He ground off an appropriate portion of chocolate and sprinkled it into the heated milk while Jenny stirred briskly. Next came a dash of salt, some spices, and a bit of sugar.

“I’ve never had it with cinnamon before,” Elijah said, setting two mugs on the table near the fire. “Why do you think I should go home this Christmas, Genevieve?”

She followed with the tray, thinking this was a meal designed to nourish more than the belly.

“You know what folly I got up to at an age when most boys go off to university. I wanted to marry Denby.”

He took the tray from her, pausing for a moment so they were both holding it. “You wanted to
marry
him?” His tone suggested that a desire to contract the plague and pass it along to the regent would have been easier to fathom.

“I was sixteen, Elijah. I was even younger when I sent my brother Bartholomew off to war.”

He gestured with the tray. “Sit and explain yourself before the chocolate gets cold. You did not send your brother off to war.”

She sat at the head of the table, so they would be neither beside each other nor directly across. “I love the scent of cinnamon. Bart liked it in his chocolate too.”

“He would be your late older brother?”

Late—a euphemism for dead, but not much of a euphemism. “
One
of my late older brothers.”

Elijah slathered butter on a piece of bread, added ham and cheese, and passed it to her. “And you
sent
him off to war?”

She studied the food, studied her mug, and took a fortifying whiff of cinnamon and nutmeg. Elijah ought to go home; she knew this as clearly as she knew her destiny lay in Paris.

“Adolescents are prone to righteousness. Bart made the mistake of teasing me about my drawing once too often, and I—I suspect my female humors were in part to blame—I came at him with guns blazing.”

“You could not aim a gun at a living creature to save yourself.” He made himself a sandwich twice the thickness of Jenny’s.

“I have a temper.”

He munched a bite of sandwich. “You are passionate where your art is concerned.”

Only her art? Jenny’s hands tightened around her mug, because the idiot man was humoring her. “I appropriated my mother’s tactics. His Grace rants and blusters when he’s in a temper, but his words are not intended as weapons. Her Grace’s artillery is much quieter. She sniffs, she frowns, she mentions, she lets a quiet question hang in the air, and one is devastated.”

Elijah took up a knife and the apple. “What did you mention to your brother?”

Jenny set her mug aside, the scent of spices no longer appealing. “I
mentioned
that I was ashamed of him. He’d finished his studies and was idling about, getting his younger brothers into trouble, making Mama worry, and starting up horrible rows with His Grace. He drank excessively, at least by my juvenile standards, and he terrorized the maids.”

“If you knew that and you were his lady sister and little more than a child, then he should have been ashamed. Have a bite of apple.”

Elijah held out his hand with four eighths of an apple in his palm. She took two.

“You aren’t going to tell me young men are full of high spirits? That a young man needs to learn to hold his drink? That a ducal heir should have lived long enough to outgrow those high spirits? To produce the next heir?”

Elijah crunched off a bite of apple, the sound healthy and… reassuring. “If he’d finished his education, Genevieve, Lord Bart had had three years in that expensive conservatory of spoiled young manhood known as Oxford. He’d had years to lark about, chase the tavern wenches, learn to hold his liquor, and acquire the knack of living within an allowance. By the end of my first year there, I was serving as banker to the older boys, and had taught one of the chambermaids the rudiments of reading.”

The notion that not all heirs to titles had a misspent youth was novel. “Why?”

He passed her sandwich to her. “Because I am the oldest of twelve. I could not do otherwise. The cost of educating six boys and launching six girls is substantial, even for a man as wealthy as my father. I could not countenance squandering my education or setting an example that would allow any of my brothers to squander theirs. Eat your sandwich.”

She took a bite and chewed, finding both the food and the conversation fortifying. “Bart was not the oldest, not really.”

“He was the heir to a much-respected dukedom, which is responsibility enough. He was also likely at or near his majority by the time you took him to task, and I say it was high time somebody did.”

The sandwich was good, much better than cheese, bread, butter, and ham had a right to be. “He and Papa reconciled. Papa bought commissions for Bart and Devlin, though it made Mama cry.”

He passed her two more apple quarters, though she hadn’t touched the first two. “Mothers cry. I suspect fathers do too, but not when anybody’s looking.”

“That’s why you should go home.”

He paused while stacking together the ingredients for a second sandwich. “I assure you, the Marquess of Flint is not crying over my absence. We’re quite cordial. I meet him for dinner at his club at least once a quarter unless I’m traveling. I take tea with my mother. I entertain my younger brothers when they’re in Town.”

Idiot. Buffoon. Imbecile.
Jenny posed her question sweetly. “And your younger sisters?”

He sat back. “You wield your mother’s weapons quite skillfully.”

“How long, Elijah?”

“I haven’t seen the twins since… for quite a while.”

“And they miss you, and when you persist in this foolishness, they will miss you yet more and think they’ve done something to make it easy for you to stay away. If you’re thrown from your horse tomorrow, Elijah, if you should sicken from bad fish and die, what are they to make of the example you set for them?”

He took a bite of his second sandwich and chewed slowly while Genevieve took a swallow of chocolate.

“I’ve written to them.”

She snorted and bit into an apple quarter rather than cry. When Elijah patted her knuckles, she nearly jumped in surprise.

“We’ll start painting tomorrow afternoon.”

Jenny rose and took her mug to the sink. By the time she came back to the table, she’d decided to allow the change in topic. “
You
will start painting. I will greet my siblings and their various spouses and offspring. Her Grace has made it plain that my presence will not be excused merely so I can look over your shoulder while you paint.”

“Then I’ll work on finishing up Sindal’s commission, and your parents’ portraits can wait their turns. Sometimes a project turns out better when I’m given a day or so to think about it.”

“You are doing this so you don’t get ahead of me. I expect you to be much faster than I am, Elijah.” He’d challenged Jenny to paint two portraits, one of each parent based on the same sittings he was using, and then they’d compare their efforts.

“I am not particularly fast, Genevieve, but I apply myself to my commissions in a disciplined fashion. Are you going to eat that cheese?”

She pushed the tray closer to him, realizing he had to have been famished before they’d come down here—and she was still famished.

“Why haven’t you kissed me, Elijah?”

He paused with a slice of ham and a slice of cheese rolled together in his fingers. “I kissed you the day I arrived here.”

“Hah. My brothers kiss their horses with more mischief than you allowed in that kiss.”

“Your brothers, all three of whom are reputed to be dead shots, dead shots who will arrive tomorrow. Then there’s Kesmore, whose aim is legendary, while Sindal looks like he might enjoy breaking my knuckles for his casual entertainment.”

She plucked the food from his grasp and took a bite, then handed it back. “Your point?”

He set it down uneaten and rose, his chair scraping back loudly in the otherwise quiet kitchen.

“Genevieve, we are under your parents’ roof. You are
going
to
Paris
, need I remind you, and while I understand a lady might need to lay a ghost or a regret to rest, kissing can lead to… to folly. To the type of folly that will remove Paris from your future, if it hasn’t already.”

He looked exasperated and… dear.

Jenny took a considering bite of her apple and wondered what it meant that she tempted him to folly—with mere kisses, she tempted him to folly. She took another bite of apple and realized that lurking at the edges of his rejection was a lovely consolation that had to do with chivalry and respect.

“So I’m to content myself by painting with you instead?”

“You want to go to Paris. Painting with me seems a good use of your time while you’re making arrangements for your travel.”

His words reminded her that she still hadn’t read the packet schedules, or started filling those trunks. “Come sit.”

He obliged, but he would not look at her. Instead, he interrogated the last bites of ham. “When will you know?”

He would not write letters of introduction for her, but he’d provide her as much artistic instruction as he could before her departure. Jenny was trying to decide whether to be pleased or disappointed when his question registered.

“When will I know what?”

He looked around, as if her brothers and brothers-in-law might have been hiding in the kitchen’s deep shadows. “Know if you are
with
child
.”

For an instant, she thought she’d heard hope in his voice, but then common sense asserted itself. Hope and anxiety were close relations—she’d heard nothing more romantic than an unmarried, honorable man’s worry.

The next instant was spent grieving that she did not carry his child and would not ever have with him the domestic riches the rest of her family enjoyed in such abundance.

In the very next instant after that, she vowed it was time and past she made those travel arrangements he’d alluded to.

“I’m sorry, Elijah. I should have told you when I laid eyes on you several days ago. You have no need to worry about impending fatherhood. Finish the ham.”

His expression gave away nothing. Not relief, not disappointment, not irritation. Nothing.

“Was this why you came back to Kent, Elijah? Because you were concerned about a child and you did not trust me?”

His lips quirked up. “I trust you, Genevieve. I came out to Kent to accept a ducal commission, and now it has turned into a double commission with the possibility of an entire gallery of juvenile portraits to follow. I do not regret my decision, but it’s late. Let me escort you to your room.”

She wanted to argue, but he hadn’t given her anything to argue about. Her entire family would descend tomorrow, and even the thought of their noise and activity was wearying.

Elijah took the tray to the counter. Jenny rinsed out his mug and let him hold the candle as they walked through the house.