Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (26 page)

Jenny turned, dropping her arms. “You think I’m like
His
Grace
?”

She was fascinated, not horrified, which meant he was doomed to explain rather than defend his notions. He chose a small, fine finishing brush, took up his palette, and added a dot of green to the drapery behind the duke.

“When was the last time you had any instruction in art, Genevieve? Anyone to discuss your ideas with, anybody to trade criticisms with?”

She watched as he brought His Grace’s curtains into harmony with the same drapes in Her Grace’s portrait. “I tried for a while after my come-out to work with Antoine, but the subterfuge was too much, and he became… He humored me.”

“And yet, you still painted. When you couldn’t paint, you drew. When you couldn’t draw, you embroidered.” He turned to aim a glower at her. “You are relentless.”

He’d all but growled the words, and yet, she was smiling a bemused smile. “After Victor died, I didn’t want to paint, but he’d made me promise, and he was right. I am … relentless. His Grace is relentless too—so’s Mama.”

She started in painting, still not getting the duke quite right in Elijah’s opinion. The portrait was all but completed, and recasting the sitter’s personality was not easily done in touch-ups and finishing work.

His Grace was relentless, and tireless in pursuit of his ends, but he was also a man capable of asking for what he wanted, even demanding what he wanted, and Jenny had far to go if she were to emulate her father.

He paused, his brush poised above the duke’s heart. Jenny had been very forthright on the dance floor. Elijah considered the curtains, decided they needed more work, and allowed Jenny to paint away the afternoon in silence.

***

“Elijah didn’t even suggest Sindal’s portrait should be sent to the nominating committee.” Jenny turned at the mantel and paced back across the parlor the ladies had taken over for the holidays. “He didn’t mention the Academy at all. Just told me to pack the thing up and send it along to Sidling.”

“Sit down,” Louisa muttered. “If I only have an hour before the baby wakes, I don’t want to spend it watching you careen about like a kite in the wind. Maggie, send that teapot over here.”

Maggie rose from her rocker by the fire and set the teapot—a porcelain confection of green leaves and pink cabbages roses—down before Louisa. “Jenny is worried for her artist. If the committee doesn’t see this portrait, then some old curmudgeon—Farthingdale?—will keep Bernward from being nominated to the Academy.”

“Fotheringale,” Jenny said, taking a seat next to Louisa. “He holds a grudge against Elijah’s parents. I believe Elijah has given up any hope of becoming an Academician.”

Sophie glanced up from her embroidery hoop. “Men have been known to give up when they receive no encouragement whatsoever.”

The door opened, admitting a flushed and flustered Lady Eve. “I have ruined Christmas!”

“Close the door,” Louisa groused. “We can at least be cozy while we endure this ruined Christmas.”

Eve flounced down onto the sofa on Louisa’s other side. “I’m serious. Deene and I agreed to exchange our presents on Christmas Eve under the mistletoe, because we wanted a tradition, and that’s today, and amid all the commotion and the coming and going, I left his p-present at L-lavender C-court!”

Louisa put an arm around Eve, who took to weeping, while Jenny exchanged looks with her sisters. Eve and Deene’s first kiss had been beneath a sprig of mistletoe, just as Elijah and Jenny’s had been.

“We’ll send a footman,” Maggie said.

“Can’t,” Eve replied, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “Mama has them running all about in preparation for the open house later today.”

“A groom?” Louisa ventured.

“They’re still decorating the ballroom,” Eve wailed.

“I’d send Sindal, but he’s gone off to fetch old Rothgreb,” Sophie said.

Jenny rose, before her sisters could stop her. “I’ll go. I’ll be there and back in a trice, and Mama won’t notice my absence, because you lot will distract her if the preparations don’t suffice. You will not tell our brothers, either.”

Another round of looks was exchanged: Louisa’s thoughtful, Sophie’s dubious. Eve looked hopeful—also quite gravid and in no condition for any upset—while Maggie looked… Maggie’s expression was hard to discern.

“Go then,” Louisa said. “Eve, describe this dratted present, and, Genevieve, you will not tarry or end up in a snowdrift, lest we’re left explaining to Mama why she has a portrait to show off to the neighbors this evening but no Lady Jenny, hmm?”

Jenny listened with half an ear as Eve described an oblong box left on a sideboard. Lavender Court wasn’t far at all—it adjoined the Morelands park on the other side of the woods—and far more important than Eve’s sentimental intentions toward her husband, this errand would free Jenny from Morelands for the space of at least an hour.

***

“Lady Maggie told me I’d find you here.” Clearly, had Elijah tarried even another minute above stairs, he would have missed Jenny’s departure.

Jenny paused as she fastened the frogs of her cloak. “And why would you be looking for me, my lord?”

He tugged her hands away and went to work on her cloak—
my
lord, indeed.
“I wasn’t looking for you. I was enjoying a comfortable spot of tea in the agreeable company of your feline familiar, when Lady Maggie said you were haring off across the countryside, intent on some errand for your younger sister.”

The look she sent him gave away nothing, except perhaps general displeasure. His mother had perfected that very expression early in his boyhood.

“It’s snowing, my lady, and while you are yet in England, you will allow a gentleman to escort you on any cross-country
sorties
.”

He frenchified the word but kept most of his exasperation behind his teeth.

She held his greatcoat out to him, which Elijah took for a compromise. He might walk by her side on this short outing, but only because a week or a month hence, she’d be free to dodge the offal on the streets of Paris without even a footman to attend her.

The notion was increasingly hard to tolerate. “Take my scarf.”

“I have bonnets—”

He looped his scarf over her ears and around her neck, but did not wrap it right over her fool mouth. “Bonnets will not keep you warm, and bonnets do not fare well when snowed upon.”

She fussed with the drape of the scarf but did not hand it back to him. “It’s not snowing that hard.”

“Not
yet
.”

God help him, it felt good even to argue with his Genevieve. The duchess had been fretting over the weather all morning, though, worried that guests would not be able to attend her open house, worried they’d be snowed in if they did. Worried for her duke, who was serenely content to organize the loudest scavenger hunt in history for the children—or perhaps for his grown sons, who had apparently secreted bottles of French potation in various locations.

Lady Jenny pulled on gloves. “If it’s going to snow, then the sooner we’re off, the less we’ll have to contend with.” She gestured at the door, her posture and tone reminiscent of her mother.

Elijah did not attempt to offer the lady his arm, but rather, accompanied her out the front door, down a shoveled path past the stables, and on toward the home wood. When he could tolerate her freezing silence no longer, Elijah opened a topic he thought safe. “Is the scavenger hunt a tradition?”

Jenny crunched through the snow beside him, her pace approximating a forced march with the enemy in mounted pursuit. “Yes.”

“Do the ladies take part?”

“No. We enjoy some peace and quiet or we help Mama and the staff put the final touches on the public rooms for the open house.” She came around a holly bush and stopped short. “This didn’t use to be here. I could swear this wasn’t here the last time I rode through these woods.”

An oak of considerable proportions had fallen across the path ahead. “The way looks clear around to the—”

She was already scrambling over the horizontal trunk, despite the wet snow, despite the availability of a gentleman whose stated purpose was to provide escort.

Off to Paris, she was. She’d probably departed weeks ago—years ago, even. If Bartholomew’s death hadn’t purchased her a ticket for Calais, then Victor’s certainly had.

Elijah vaulted across the trunk, turned, and pulled her the rest of the way over the fallen tree. “You’ve snow all over you. Hold still.”

She tolerated his brushing at her cloak, stood still like some martyr enduring blasphemy. “Will you tell me about Paris?”

A small, chilly question, though it lit a flame in him. He finished dusting her off. “Anything you want to know. Ask me anything.”

To his relief, she wanted to know practical things: where to stay, where to procure food, where to never, ever go, even with an escort. To whom might she apply for instruction, where might she display finished works. How did one procure a horse and keep the beast and any conveyances, grooms, or coachmen? Where did one find domestics?

The last question comforted most, because it meant Jenny contemplated a cozy establishment, not some drafty garret where she’d enjoy only mice as companions.

Their pace slowed as they wound through the home wood, and at some point Elijah took Jenny’s hand. When they emerged from the trees, she stopped again but kept her fingers laced with his.

“I want to paint this. I want to paint Eve’s cozy little manor house, the snow coming down, the greenery adorning the windows. I want to paint it for myself.”

Because she’d miss this too. Elijah let her look her fill, the wind whispering through the trees behind them, flurries dancing on the frigid air. Snowy days had a scent to them, a subtle, different feel to the air.

Jenny was talented enough that she could probably paint even the scent of snow.

“Come, my lady. You’ll become an ice sculpture if we stand here long enough.”

She turned the same regard she’d shown the house onto Elijah, a memorizing sort of look that conveyed both affection and impending loss. He marched away from her, intent on escaping her scrutiny and the longing it held.

“Have you any more questions about Paris?”

She huffed out a sigh that made a little cloud before her. “I have nothing but questions, though I didn’t want to distract you from your painting. Have you ever come across a female sculptor?”

“I have not, thank God. Do you have a key?” The knocker was down, and staff likely let off for the holidays.

Jenny withdrew the key and handed it to him. “Why ‘thank God’?”

He pushed the door open, admitting them to an entryway that on a sunny day would glow with the light of polished wood, but at present was gloomy and cold.

“Thank God, Genevieve, because you probably have some notion of becoming the first internationally renowned female sculptor. Do you favor the proportions of a stevedore on a duke’s daughter? Bad enough you’ll heft heavy canvases. Sculptors wrestle their art from stone, you know, and—”

She stared at the floor immediately inside the doorway, making no move to free herself from his scarf or her gloves. He’d probably driven her clear off to Moscow this time.

He unwrapped his scarf from her, shook the snow from it, and draped it over her shoulders. “You aren’t listening to me.” Her gloves came next. “If you want to become a sculptor, then you must, because you’ll be brilliant at that too, but I cannot—hold still.” He used his teeth to get his own gloves off and went to work on her frogs. “I cannot countenance that you will face difficulties and you will have no support. You will have
no
one
. Your art must stand or fall on its own merit—such as merit can be subjectively determined—and as much as I want to, I cannot be there to temper the winds of fortune for you.”

He stepped back and yanked at his buttons, lest he start shouting. She wasn’t asking him to temper any winds of anything for her, and she never would.

She stood there, her cloak hanging open and his scarf adorning her shoulders like some bishop’s stole. “That’s why you’ve taken me to task so much over my painting? You’ve carped and criticized because you think that’s what awaits me in Paris?”

The daft woman was smiling as if he’d given her some sort of holiday present.

“The French regard criticism as sport, Genevieve, and none are immune. Your gender, your birth, your looks—
nothing
will preserve you from their verbal violence if you cross the wrong Frenchmen in the wrong mood. They are utterly democratic in the sense that no one, not they themselves, not the masters of antiquity, and certainly not English aristos are spared when inspiration strikes—”

She stopped his ranting with two chilly fingers pressed to his lips. “Get your coat off, and let us find Eve’s present.”

So calm, and yet humor lurked in her green eyes. He was mad with worry for her, and she was amused. He pitched her cloak and his coat onto hooks, tossed his hat onto a sideboard, and let Jenny lead him through the gloom.

“This is a pretty little place. Was it part of your sister’s dowry?” And why, even when barely heated, did it have to smell so wonderfully of pine, cedar, and something else, something comforting—lavender?

“It was. Our grandmother thought, as the youngest, Eve might be older when she settled down, having to wait for her sisters to wed first. Eve got property, and the rest of us got competences, which have been invested for us. Westhaven has agreed to continue handling my finances for me after…” She started up a wooden stair. “After the holidays.”

Elijah followed her, resisting the urge to tackle her on the landing and make her say the words: After I leave everyone who loves me, and every comfort I’ve ever known, because I must be a martyr to my art.

She led him down a dim hallway then opened the door to a peculiarly cozy guest room.

“Ah, there it is.” Jenny crossed the room and picked up a little box done up in green velvet with red ribbon. “Eve was beside herself. Whatever this is, Deene had best appreciate—why are you staring at me like that?”

He closed the door and stepped closer. The room was unusual, built with a small balcony overlooking a conservatory that might have been added as an afterthought, hence its relative warmth and humidity, and the lush scent of foliage blending with all the other fragrances wafting through the house. “Looking at you like what?”