Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

Ten

“Genevieve Windham, get out of my bed.”

In keeping with his new status as lunatic, Elijah had whispered those words, not shouted them. The lady was asleep, probably worn out from chasing Kesmore’s daughters, helping them build a snow fort, and bellowing instructions to them for how to best thwart their father’s and Elijah’s efforts to steal the precious bag of carrots that had been declared the afternoon’s prize.

The ladies had soundly trounced the gentlemen. Kesmore’s poor aim was in part to blame—at least half the time his snowballs had pelted Elijah instead of the opposing team, and much merriment had ensued as a result.

Elijah brushed a strand of golden hair from Jenny’s cheek. “I had fun today.”

He’d also ended up with a sorry case of holiday heartache, that particular brand of homesickness that afflicted him when in company with happy families this time of year.

Jenny’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re here.” The sleep faded from her gaze as a smile rose in its place.

“And you, my lady, are leaving.” When had he taken a seat at her hip?

The smile ebbed, though she made no move to obey him. “I am leaving. Louisa told me Their Graces left Town today and will likely be by to collect me tomorrow.”

She rolled away from him, which meant Elijah could see she wore nothing—not her frothy nightgown, not a robe, nothing—beneath the covers.

He shook off a fascination with her bare nape and focused on her words. “Your parents’ arrival means you must help yourself to my bed?”

Her parents’ arrival meant he would never see her like this again. The artistic grief of that reality was eclipsed only by the sexual frustration of it. She said nothing for a moment, then rolled back to face him. Her hair was in a thick braid, one he could wrap around his wrist several times.

If he were fool enough to touch her now that she’d awakened.

“Our paths are not likely to cross again, Elijah. Not unless you travel to Paris, or I come back here to visit family.”

Elijah turned his back on her and pulled off a boot. “I have had a bellyful of Paris. It stinks, and the French are mean, though in fairness to them, they’re as mean to each other as they are to the rest of the world, and I miss—”

The French were not mean—practical was not at all the same thing as mean—and Elijah’s mother had been born in France. Elijah was grousing because he missed his brothers and sisters. He missed Flint Hall. He missed his parents, and he hated Christmas more each year as a result.

“What do you miss, Elijah?”

He yanked off the second boot and draped his stockings over the tops. In some regard, this casual disrobing was more personal than all the kissing and petting he’d indulged in with Jenny previously.

“I am missing my wits, if what I’m contemplating is any indication.”

The covers rustled, and the bed bounced beneath him. “I want it to be you, Elijah.”

He knew exactly what she meant and nearly strangled himself getting his cravat off as a result. “No, you do not. You do not want it to be anybody. Can’t you save yourself for your art?” His favorite waistcoat went sailing across the room to land in a rumpled heap near his easel.

“Now you are being mean.” She’d trotted out her Aunt Jenny voice, the same tone she might have used to convey disappointment in one of her nephews.

“I do apologize.” Elijah got two buttons undone before wrenching his shirt over his head and tossing it toward the nearest chair—and missing. “I am not in the habit of finding naked women in my bed, particularly not women who regard a second deflowering as an item to attend to before taking ship.”

One cannot be deflowered a second time. He knew she was thinking those very words even when he could not see her. He could smell her, smell jasmine and soap and a hint of peppermint tooth powder.

“You weren’t like this last night.”

Only his breeches remained on his person as evidence that he possessed a shred of honor or sense.

“Last night, I set limits, if you’ll recall. I indulged your whims and dealt with, with—” He’d brought himself off. How did one discuss vulgar realities with a near virgin who happened to be naked in one’s bed?

“You denied yourself.”

Elijah felt a hand stroke over his shoulders. Jenny’s caress was gentle and platonic, and yet, he felt it directly behind his falls.

“I expect you deny yourself often, Elijah, and think little of it, but must you deny me?”

Curses started piling up in his head. How was a man to know what honor required when a naked woman—a lonely, innocent, determined naked woman—turned the thumbscrews of guilt so easily?

“Do you want more pleasure, Genevieve?” He turned on the bed to face her, hoping he might placate his guilt and her determination with more half measures. “You can bring such pleasure to yourself, you know. There’s no reason a woman—”

The rest of his homily on female self-gratification flew from his head. Jenny reclined against the headboard, the sheet draped across her lap. Her braid fell over one pale shoulder and her breasts…

The artist in him noted that her left breast was ever so slightly lower and boasted a bit more fullness than the right, and yet both were beautiful and perfect, and both rosy nipples were puckered, though his room was warm.

The man in him cast anything approaching scruples far out into the Channel and frankly stared at the bounty before him. He’d seen her before, seen her nude, spent, and gloriously happy with it in his arms.

But he’d not taken even a moment to behold her, to caress the glory of her with his gaze, and to savor the way firelight cherished each curve and hollow of her naked body.

“Genevieve Windham…” He raised a hand, then let it drop before he’d cradled her jaw against his palm.

“I want it to be you, but a lady can’t do the asking.” The determination was still there in her voice, but she was pleading too, for him to capitulate, to comprehend—

The gentlemen in him, the perishing, damned, inconvenient gentleman in him grasped both the plea and the solution. So simple and so wondrous, to give her what she sought and what Elijah needed.

“I want it to be me too. It shall be me, and for me, it shall be you.” He leaned forward and kissed her, not touching her anywhere else, so he might savor the kiss sealing that vow.

“Elijah—” She sank a hand in his hair and hauled herself closer. “Yes, please and please again.” She became a woman possessed, dragging herself up to her knees, locking her arms behind his neck, and devouring him with her kisses.

“Genevieve, slow down. Slow—” His hand curved around her flank and pulled her closer, and yet, the angle was awkward. He was half-turned toward her on the bed, she was clamped around him, and the damned covers were so much linen seaweed, dragging about them in all the wrong directions.

“I want you so, Elijah. I could not have borne to leave here in the morning without—”

He rose off the bed, turned, and stepped away. “I could not either, but if I don’t get my damned breeches off, I will not answer for the consequences.”

She knelt among the blankets, rosy, naked, and smiling as if she’d just landed her snowball directly on his arse, which in a metaphorical sense, she had. Marriage to this woman was going to be wildly delightful.

“Let me get my breeches off, Genevieve, for both our sakes.”

She said nothing, her gaze riveted on his chest. From somewhere, Elijah found the strength of will to slow himself down. This night would mark a beginning for them, and Jenny relied on him to make it the best beginning they could share.

“You do it,” he said.

Innocent that she was, she blinked at him in bewilderment.

“My falls, love. I want not a stitch between us.” He wanted to give her summer sunshine on naked flesh, he wanted soft breezes, and he wanted long, sweet nights full of pleasure for them both.

She knee-walked to the edge of the bed, studying his falls. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I should hope not.” He couldn’t hide his amusement, but he did manage to stand there, hands relaxed at his sides, when her mouth made him think of things vulgar, naughty, and—with Genevieve, he dared to hope—within the realm of possibility in the not-too-distant future.

Her hands shook minutely as she unfastened the buttons to his falls. He could feel the tremor as well as see it as the flap gradually draped open.

Genevieve dropped her hands, sat back on her haunches, and worried a nail between her teeth. “Now what?”

Now came the time when the man, the artist, and gentleman would collude to make this experience everything the lady had ever dreamed it might be. “Now I bring you pleasure.”

Her smile was lovely, naughty, and a little worried. She moved to the center of the bed and scooted down beneath the covers.

“She hides her treasures,” Elijah grumbled to no one in particular as he shucked out of his breeches. He heard her draw in her breath, and in a fit of spontaneous martyrdom, readjusted his immediate plans.

Rather than launch himself onto the bed, he stooped to pick up his clothes. She braced herself on her elbows and watched while he gathered up the sartorial casualties of his earlier haste and folded them one by one on the clothes press.

“Elijah?”

“Tidiness is a habit,” he explained, though when a man’s cock was bobbing against his belly, tidiness was a ridiculous habit. The idea that Jenny would one day tease him for his comment pleased him.

He moved behind the privacy screen, used his tooth powder, and prayed for fortitude.

And stamina. A determined woman deserved stamina in her prospective spouse.

“I have missed seeing you like this,” Jenny said.

She would be seeing a great deal of him like this, and soon, if he could talk her into a special license. “Scandalous woman.”

“I am, aren’t I? My favorite session was when you took Mr. Jackson’s pose for Satan Summoning His Legions.”

A pose that illuminated the subject’s genitals nearly as well as his face, because all the light in Sir Thomas’s painting was from the netherworld at the bottom of the image. Then, too, Satan’s upraised arms required a pose that made the model’s arms ache abominably.

Elijah approached the bed, noting when Jenny’s gaze fell on his upthrust cock. She ran her tongue over her top lip, and he nearly vaulted onto the mattress.

“Shall I come to bed, Genevieve?”

A small, sensible part of him wanted her to fling back the covers, snatch up her dressing gown, and announce that she’d changed her mind. They were going about things backward, though many couples did. As much as Elijah wanted her, and wanted to please her, he also wanted her to know he’d wait for her.

For the three weeks necessary to cry the banns, he could wait for her.

She did not take her gaze from his cock. “Please, come to bed.”

He climbed onto the mattress. “You use the word ‘please’ a lot.”

“When I’m around you, and yet… often I want to holler it at you, Elijah. I want you to pause as you climb onto the bed, so I can capture the combination of eagerness and wariness I see in your eyes. I want you to hold a position over by the clothes press, because your body makes a perfect contrapposto pose angled to the firelight. I want to draw what I feel of your lips when we kiss—”

He remained on all fours on the bed and kissed her to shut her up. “And to think you couldn’t even ask me to remove my shirt.” Their marriage was not going to suffer from an abundance of clothing. The artist, the man, and even that other fellow were cheered by the notion.

She slid down farther beneath the covers, and that meant Elijah had to follow her, until he was crouching over her, the covers between them.

“You are an indecently good kisser, Elijah Harrison.”

“One grows inspired by the company. I have a title, you know.” This was a paltry gift laid at the feet of a woman who’d been Lady Jenny since she emerged from the womb.

She squeezed his biceps, testing the resilience of his muscles, maybe, artist fashion. “Earl of Bernward. You ought to use it.” She did it again, then levered up to press her face to his throat. “Elijah, I’m nervous.”

He loved her. The knowledge came to him like a whiff of her jasmine—unmistakable no matter how faint or subtle. This was not mere affection, not infatuation, not a passing preoccupation. He’d caught the love, well and truly. He loved her for entrusting him not only with her beauty and with her past disappointments, but also with her nerves and her future.

He cradled the back of her head with one hand and braced himself over her with the other. “Nervousness is to be expected with a new experience. Give your nervousness to me, Genevieve.” He was not nervous—this was the most right thing he’d ever done. He was aroused, though, and impatient to win her trust.

She angled her head to peer up at him. “This is a new experience, isn’t it?”

“Completely, for both of us.” The first of many.

He let her subside onto the mattress, then climbed under the blankets with her.

“You are warm, Elijah.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “I’m on fire.”

In less than a minute, he’d ignited his lady’s passions too. He denied himself the pleasure of covering her, needing the check on his self-restraint to withstand another spate of kissing from his lover as they lay facing each other on their sides.

“I will forever associate tongues and paintbrushes when I’m around you, Elijah. I want to paint you.”

“You have.” He dipped his head and nuzzled her breast. “You shall.”

She hiked a leg over his hips and pulled herself closer. “I mean I want to apply paint to your naked body, put colors on you everywhere—” Elijah felt a soft, female hand trace down his midline, then close around his shaft.

“Wicked, passionate, imaginative woman.” He rolled to his back and prepared to be tortured. Of course she would want to see him. Male artists could inspect themselves in the mirror or gawk at models when they were working with nudes.

And yet, she surprised him by straddling him instead.

“We can do it this way, can’t we? I’ve studied those exotic prints in Louisa’s library, and last night—”

Marriage to her was going to be a scantily clad, glorious, exhausting undertaking.

Elijah treated himself to the feel of her breasts against his palms. “We can make love any way you please, Genevieve.” Though, pray God, let it be soon.

“I like that.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her braid tickling Elijah’s thighs. He pulled it over her shoulder and dabbed the end around her right nipple.

“Do you like that too?”

She opened her eyes, expression puzzled. “I like your hands better. I love your hands, whether they’re sketching, painting, holding William, or touching me.”

He trapped her fingers and brought them to his mouth. He would take her to Paris. He would take her there as often as she liked, and stay for weeks at a time. When he might have shared these sentiments with her, she tipped forward as if to kiss him, and Elijah thwarted her by taking a luscious nipple into his mouth.

“E-li-jah Har-ri-son.” Her hand wrapped around the back of his head as he drew on her, and the heat of her sex so very near his cock burned at his self-restraint.

Because words were moving beyond his reach, he anchored a hand on Jenny’s derriere and urged her down. She obliged, her damp, warm, lovely sex sighing onto his erection.

“That… That makes me want to kiss you, Elijah.”

He switched breasts rather than tell her what it made him want to do. Without him asking, she started moving on him, a slow, wet drag and return that stole his breath and sent arousal spiraling out through his body.

She would not describe herself as a virgin, though to Elijah she was more deserving of consideration than if she had been. He gave up the pleasure of her nipple in his mouth and watched her face.

“Genevieve.” He had to say her name, so absorbed was she in the stroke of her sex over his cock. “Genevieve, take me inside you.”

Jenny stared at him, as if she groped for the sense of his words.

Elijah took her hand and wrapped it around his cock. “Take me inside you, now. Please.”

He fitted his hand around hers and positioned himself at the entrance to her body, then nudged up and went still. Her expression was fierce, aroused, and in some regard holy, like Lawrence’s rendering of the dark prince. In a dim corner of Elijah’s awareness, he wanted to paint her thus, poised on the brink of accepting both him and the pleasure that was her due, and yet he knew such an image exceeded his talent by leaps.

She snugged her body down enough to start their joining. “There? Like that?”

“Exactly like that. Kiss me.”

She folded forward carefully, close enough that Elijah could fill one hand with the abundance of her breast and sink the other into the hair at her nape. “Like this.”

He synchronized his tongue and his cock in slow undulations, until her body was moving smoothly over him, taking him deeper and deeper into bliss, deeper and deeper into her.

He felt her arousal welling up, felt her slowing her movements as if she’d cower away from the pleasure—and that he could not allow.

“Be brave, Genevieve. Be greedy and strong. Be mine.” He took control of their joining, anchoring an arm low on her back, thrusting into her hard, and watching her face.

“Elijah—” She arched her back, her throat gleaming white in the firelight as her body gave itself up to pleasure. Elijah had to close his eyes lest the sight of her surrender send him past control. In some ways, that decision was ill advised, for he could feel her fisting around him, feel the one, endless spasm that wrenched a groan from her throat, and feel when desire eased its grip on her and let her sprawl in a boneless heap on his chest.

A boneless, satisfied heap.

For long minutes, he contented himself with stroking her hair, her back, her derriere. His passion was not sated, and yet he was content. As he drew a queen of hearts on her back with the tip of her braid, Elijah debated telling Genevieve Windham that he loved her.

Such a declaration might be better saved for their wedding night, or for when he presented her with an engagement ring. Or perhaps—

Along with the lust throbbing gently in his veins, along with affection for the lady in his arms and pride in her fearless passion, a quiet thread of joy coursed through Elijah.

He’d take her to Flint Hall after the New Year—after he’d been officially admitted to the Academy—and tell her there that he loved her, for even a stubborn, idiot man who’d wandered in a wilderness of pride for ten years was entitled—was required—to show his bride off to his family.

Jenny shifted on his chest, nuzzled his sternum, then settled again.

He was a better man for loving her, he was a better artist for loving her, and he would tell her that too when he brought her to their home.

“Elijah?”

“Love?”

She kissed him and peered at him with the sort of intensity Elijah suspected had to do with questions a newly engaged woman found difficult to keep to herself.

How many children did he want?

A special license or St. George’s or a wedding in the Morelands chapel?

Would they reside with his family at Flint Hall, or live for a time at Bernward Manor?

When would he speak to her father?

She brushed his hair back from his forehead, a wifely caress if Elijah had ever felt one.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, sweetly, gently. “I will miss you so very much.”

Elijah’s hands stopped moving on her back; his lungs stopped drawing in air.

When she went to Paris…

When she went to Paris, exactly as planned, as if this night, as if he, meant nothing more than a passing whim.

As if he’d completely misconstrued her words, her glances, her intentions, and seen them through a haze of lust and longing that had obliterated his judgment.

But not his pride.

Anger welled up, at her, at himself, at Paris, and following immediately after, like an undertow follows a wave, despair surged—for himself and for her. He did not want to go to Paris, much less in the company of a woman whose view of their dealings was radically different from his own.

Jenny would go to Paris, though he was coming to suspect something more than artistic compulsion drove her there, perhaps something she did not understand herself.

For the past ten years, he had wanted to go home, and home he would go.

Allowing intimacies with Denby had been stupid and disappointing but not tragic. Marriage to Denby would have been tragic. These thoughts, along with both satisfaction and loss, coursed through Jenny as she sprawled on Elijah’s chest.

Denby had been a selfish, inept boy, just as Jenny had been a selfish, inept girl, while Elijah was… a man, a skilled, generous, passionate, caring, talented…

Jenny very much feared that intimacies with Elijah Harrison were going to have consequences tragic for her, though she couldn’t quite fathom how. She could still feel him, feel the pleasurable fullness of him inside her body, and suspected she’d feel him in her heart for far longer than was prudent.

“Elijah?” She could not say these things to him, and yet she wanted to say something.

“Love?”

The sensation of him using her braid like a paintbrush on her back was peculiar and soothing. He gathered her closer, and she kissed him, kissed him with all the regret and longing in her, with all the sorrow and loss too.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, because the missing had already started. “I will miss you so very much.”

His hands went still on her back, and Jenny’s heart stopped beating.

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and studied her, guardedness replacing the tenderness in his eyes. “You said you wanted it to be me, Genevieve.”

“I did, and it was, and I thank you for that.” One did not thank a man for indulging one’s passions. Jenny realized that as she watched the guardedness cool yet more.

“You’re pleased then, with this night’s work?”

Work? He’d emphasized the word slightly, or maybe Jenny had heard emphasis where none had been intended.

“I am—I was. I’m not now.” Their bodies were still joined—she was more or less lying on him—and yet, something was off, something was terribly, terribly off, and she was desperate to right it.

He closed his eyes, heaving up a sigh that Jenny felt bodily. “Why are you going to Paris?”

To study art. That was what she was supposed to say to him. Jenny folded down against his chest, relieved beyond measure when his arms came around her.

“I cannot bear…” She tried to stuff the words back into her mind, back so far under propriety and familial regard even she didn’t have to acknowledge them. “I can no longer tolerate the company of my family. They don’t know me, you see, and yet they love me.”

This was as honest as she knew how to be, and yet, the answer didn’t feel complete.

His hand moved on her back, no braid-paintbrush in his fingers, just his hand, slow and warm. “They know you. Our families know us even when we wander off for years, Genevieve.”

He sounded so sad and faraway, and yet he was holding her close too.

“My family thinks I’m good, and when I see them gather together every Christmas, I’m reminded that I’m not good at all. I don’t want the things I should want, and I do want things I shouldn’t—selfish things.” The feel of him inside her was diminishing, and Jenny gave up any notion that he’d indulge her in yet more passion. The pain of that loss helped dilute the pain of the topic she’d raised.

“My sentiments regarding you lie near your family’s, Genevieve, and under most circumstances, I am not accounted a foolish man. You are a good woman. Headstrong, passionate, and misguided, but good.”

Her brothers called her pigheaded, her sisters made her the subject of despairing looks, and her parents smiled and expected her to grow old in their keeping, and yet, they were all convinced of her goodness too.

Of them all, she could be honest only with Elijah.

“I hate them sometimes, with their cozy glances and knowing smiles. My sisters and brothers never used to nap, and now it has become something of a family institution. Mama and Papa are in some ways the worst. The grandchildren—”

Elijah kissed her temple, a small gesture full of encouragement.

“Their Graces see their own children through the grandchildren. Westhaven is father to the next heir, St. Just dotes on his daughters, Valentine dedicates sonatas to his, while I… I want to paint. I have to paint and sketch.”

“Has nobody offered for you, Genevieve? A woman can paint and sketch while married and raising children. My mother certainly did.”

His question was reasonable. She hated that his question was reasonable, and yet she could never hate him.

“I’ve had a few offers, but they all put me in mind of—”

Two fingers pressed themselves to her lips. “Don’t say his name.”

Elijah was right. That name did not belong in this bed. “Those men wanted a Windham daughter, a lady, a pretty, sweet, proper, well-dowered, biddable—I’m getting angry just thinking about it. If I’d told any one of my suitors I’d sneaked into drawing classes, if I’d told them I went to the workhouses to sketch the children, if I’d told them I still want to sketch those children, they would run shrieking in horror.”

Elijah was silent for a time, his hands moving more slowly. “Don’t go to the workhouses alone, Genevieve. Promise me that.”

His tone was uncompromising, though his touch remained gentle. How Jenny wished she’d gone to those bleak, diseased, miserable places alone. “I promise. One need not frequent such locations to see poverty in London, and besides, I’ll be in Paris.”

Where there would be no indulgent, blissfully married, surviving siblings, but where—according to Elijah—the stench was miserable. How could a woman enjoy her croissant and coffee on a street corner that stank?

“Where in Paris, Genevieve?”

The same uncompromising note underlay his question, and entwined with him bodily, Jenny did not even consider dissembling. “I don’t know exactly. I was hoping you might have some suggestions.”

“Of where to live?”

Something else lurked in his question, but Jenny had nobody else to ask.

“That, and other things. Antoine said his friends are all dead or no longer teaching. I’m sure there are galleries and shops—”

She went still, very much aware that Elijah had left off stroking her back.

“Genevieve, Antoine has been teaching in London since my father came down from university. He knows everybody with artistic aspirations here, on the Continent, and probably in darkest Africa. If he did not offer to aid you in establishing yourself in Paris, then it’s because he chooses not to. Very likely his patrons and familiars would be offended to learn of it if he did, to say nothing of what your parents could do to him.”

Gone was the tender lover, and in his place was a fierce, frustrated stranger. One who spoke aloud the conclusions Jenny had tried to spare herself.

“You could help me.”

The words cost her, particularly when she could feel something shift in Elijah’s body. Beneath her, he was no longer a warm, relaxed, naked man, he was Satan Summoning His Legions, full of ire and power though he had not moved.

“I would be more comfortable with that observation, Genevieve, had you made it fully clothed and somewhere other than my bed.” His body might have been that of a ferocious, dark prince; his tone was colder than the ninth circle of hell.

“You think I’d—” Offer sexual favors in exchange for his connections and knowledge of the Paris art world. The thinking part of Jenny, the part that had come up with Paris as a solution in the first place, saw how he might reach such a conclusion.

He lifted her away from his body and arranged her against his side. “I do not think that. I would not think that, and I shall not think that of you, particularly if you desist in your importuning. Many fashionable women have seen Paris since the Corsican’s defeat. I’m sure you’ve asked them what they know.”

Jenny was leaving in the morning, and that inspired boldness sufficient to overcome her dread of his disapproval.

“You know more than they do, more than probably anybody but Antoine knows. The rumors are you were in Paris even during the war.”

He remained silent, and something bright and brave in Jenny’s heart sank. “Shall I leave, Elijah?”

His chest heaved up, then down, a sea of male emotion beneath her cheek. “You shall not.”

“Will you make love to me again?” Of all the questions she’d asked him, that one was the most difficult, and yet she wanted more of his warmth and tenderness, more of him.

“You’ve exorcised your ghosts, Genevieve, and it’s late. Go to sleep.”

He tucked her closer and closed his eyes, ending the conversation as effectively as if he’d left the room, the manor, and the shire.

As Jenny drifted off to sleep, the last thing her thinking mind registered was that though Elijah had not offered her his help and had refused her any further lovemaking, when the fire had burned down to coals and a winter wind whistled around the old house, deep in the night, he still held her close.