Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

Six

The Earl of Westhaven steered his horse around a frozen mud puddle, while the Duke of Moreland’s bay gelding splashed right through, indifferent to the breaking ice or cold, muddy water. Westhaven, like his horse, was more of a Town fellow, while the duke longed for the countryside.

“Her Grace is growing restless, sir. I trust you are aware of this?”

Meddling adult children were a loving father’s cross to bear. The duke glanced over at the handsome fellow who was his son and heir. “How is your wife, Westhaven?”

Westhaven rode bareheaded, so His Grace could see his son’s expression take on the sweet, distracted air of a man contemplating the woman about whom he was head over ears. “Anna thrives. She is completely over the birth of our second son, and completely in love with the boy. He’s a quiet little fellow, but sturdy and very alert. Anna says he takes after me.”

“She’s in good health then?”

“As good health as a woman can be when she’s the sole sustenance of a growing boy. It helps that this is not our first. We’re no longer raw recruits to the ranks of parenting.”

With two children still in dresses, Westhaven could wax parental, as if he’d invented the occupation himself upon the birth of his firstborn.

“How many siblings do you have, Westhaven?”

“Seven extant, two deceased, an increasing variety of siblings by marriage. What has this to do with my mother’s discontent, Your Grace?”

Westhaven was a plodder, not given to leaps of intuition but incapable of missing a detail or failing to notice a pattern. When he took his seat in Parliament, England would be the better for it.

Though as a son, he could try the patience of a far more saintly papa than His Grace.

“I have raised ten children with Her Grace and been privileged to partner her in holy matrimony for more than three decades. Do you think I wouldn’t know if the woman were growing restless?”

Westhaven’s lips quirked up in a smile his lady likely found irresistible. As a young husband, His Grace had possessed such a smile, though ten children had rather dimmed its efficacy with their mother.

“I suppose not, sir. I could escort her to Morelands, if that would help.”

“You will do no such thing, Westhaven, nor will you intimate to my duchess that you’ll spirit her away from my side. You will caution your brothers and brothers-in-law not to make any such offer either.”

A rabbit nibbling on a patch of brown winter grass looked up as the horses ambled along the path. Nose twitching, the little beast seemed to weigh the pleasures of filling its belly against the danger of remaining in sight of humans. It snatched another few bites then loped away.

“I confess myself puzzled, Your Grace. You are usually Mama’s slave in all things, and the entire family is to gather at Morelands for the holidays. I don’t know why you’d deny her the pleasure of preparing for our arrival, when she’s so anxious to quit Town and return to Morelands.”

His Grace was not above dissembling when it came to his family, though he’d learned that dissembling was a fraught undertaking where his duchess was concerned. So with his firstborn, he dissembled only a little.

“I haven’t found Her Grace’s Christmas present yet.”

Westhaven’s expression softened. “Your Christmas presents put the rest of us fellows in the shade, you know. Anna won’t even hint what I might give her. If His Grace can come up with such inspired gifts, then surely a small token shouldn’t be beyond me?”

Balderdash. Anna, Countess of Westhaven, was likely already hinting about a little sister for her pair of boys.

“Each year, it becomes more difficult to find something original, something unique. The challenge is to think of a gift your mother hasn’t even admitted to herself she longs for.”

Though she longed to have her family gathered together for the holidays. His Grace could be stone-blind and still see that.

“So you’ll tarry in Town until inspiration strikes?”

“If I must.” And because Westhaven would be Moreland someday, His Grace went on in the most casual of tones. “I don’t think Jenny minds keeping Sophie company while your mother and I are in Town, particularly not when Harrison also bides at Sidling, doing portraits of the little ones.”

Westhaven brought his horse to a halt at a fork in the bridle path. “Harrison? Elijah Harrison? The painter?”

His Grace’s bay came to a halt as well. “Harrison is Flint’s oldest boy, though he’s likely close to your age by now. Fancies himself a portraitist, and when old Rothgreb was grumbling about children growing up too soon, I might have mentioned Harrison to him.”

“Elijah Harrison served as Kesmore’s second at last year’s duel,” Westhaven said. He stroked a hand over his horse’s crest. Westhaven had inherited shrewdness from both sire and dam lines, so His Grace said no more but let his son ponder the puzzle pieces. “Seemed a decent sort. There’s been no gossip about the duel, in any case.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, just as I have no idea what I’ll get your mother for Christmas, though I’m scouring the shops until something comes to mind. I trust you’ll pass along any worthy ideas?”

“Of course.” Westhaven looked like he might have a question brewing in his handsome head.

His Grace lifted a hand in parting accordingly. “My regards to your family, Westhaven, and I’ll look forward to seeing you out at Morelands ere long.”

Westhaven saluted with his riding crop and trotted off in the direction of that wife and family, while His Grace considered whether and how best to explain this latest parental gambit to his dear wife. Perhaps she’d have some idea how long two artists might be thrust into each other’s company before the creative passions took over.

Reading Reynolds’s Discourses was getting Elijah nowhere. The grand old style of portraiture—an approach that flattered subjects, carefully posed them, and surrounded them with heroic symbols of great deeds—was fading.

Children had no heroic deeds, in any case. They had sticky fingers, silky curls, and a particular scent, of soap and innocence, that Elijah had forgotten.

The door to Elijah’s sitting room creaked open. His first thought was that a footman, presuming the occupant to be abed, had come to douse the lights and bank the fire.

His second thought… evaporated from his mind when he saw Genevieve Windham standing inside his door in her nightgown and robe, a sketchbook clutched in her hand.

“I want to do you in oils,” she said, advancing into the room. “I will content myself with some sketches first. I trust you can remain awake for another hour.”

“Awake will not be a problem.” Sane, however, became questionable. “Genevieve, you cannot remain in my rooms with me unchaperoned when the rest of the house is abed.”

She flipped a fat golden braid over her shoulder. “I was unchaperoned with you at breakfast; I was unchaperoned with you in your studio before the boys arrived. I was unchaperoned with you in the library when the children went for their nap after luncheon. How did you expect to pose for me, Mr. Harrison, if not privately?”

“You are—we are—not properly clothed.”

Her gaze ran over him assessingly, as dispassionately as if this Mr. Harrison fellow were some minor foreign diplomat with little English.

“Had I been accosted in the corridor by my sister, Sophie would have taken greater notice were I not in nightclothes. Besides”—a pink wash rose over her cheeks—“I have seen you without a single stitch and memorialized the sight by the hour with pen, pencil, and paper. Perhaps you’d like to take a seat?”

He would like to run screaming from the room, and nearly did just that when a quiet scratching came from the door.

“This will be our chaperone,” Lady Jenny said.

To be found alone, after dark, with a lady in dishabille could also be his downfall. The Academy would quietly pass him by, his father’s worst accusations would be justified, and the example he was supposed to set for all those younger siblings would become a cautionary tale.

As he watched Genevieve stride across the room to the door, Elijah realized being found with him could be her downfall too, the loss of all the reputation and dignity she’d cultivated carefully for years. The Royal Academy might admit him in another ten years, despite some scandal in his past—Sir Thomas had been accused of dallying with no less than the regent’s wife—but Jenny’s reputation would not recover.

“Genevieve—”

She opened the door a few inches, and a sizable exponent of the feline species strutted into the room, tail held high. This was the same dignified, liveried fellow who’d shared a bed with Elijah at Carrington’s. “And here we have Timothy?”

“None other. He can hold a pose for hours and all the while look like he’s contemplating the secrets of the universe.”

“While we contemplate folly. Genevieve, you take a great risk for a few sketches.”

She moved closer to the fire and tried to shift his reading chair.

“Let me.” He moved it rather than pick her up bodily and deposit her in the corridor. “Will that do?”

“Turn it a bit this way.” She gestured with a finger, a clockwise swirl. He moved the chair as quietly as he could. “Now sit, as if you’re lord of all you survey.”

Elijah surveyed a looming disaster, on several fronts, and one very determined woman. “You have one hour, my lady, and then you and your familiar will go back to whatever dungeon you sprang from. A few sketches could get you married to me for the rest of your life, should we be discovered.”

She made no indication she’d heard him. Instead, she was frowning at the chair, the fire, the Discourses, while her cat stropped itself against her nightclothes.

“I’ve never had the nerve to get myself ruined,” she said, moving a branch of candles on the mantel. “I’ve had the opportunity, in case you’ve wondered. Take your seat, Mr. Harrison.”

More and more dangerous, but at least she was observing propriety in her form of address, which was how one was supposed to treat a model.

Drat the woman.

He sat, feeling like a prisoner about to be shackled. “What constitutes an opportunity to be ruined, if not the present circumstances?”

She took a position cross-legged on the floor near his feet, the firelight finding every shade of highlight in her hair—red, gold, white, wheat, bronze, and indescribable combinations thereof.

“His name was Jeffrey Denby, and he was my drawing master when I turned sixteen. He was charming, handsome, and had just enough talent to fool my parents for a summer.”

Elijah abruptly forgot about career interests, looming scandal, and the frustrations of trying to sketch small children who could not hold still. “Did he fool you, Genevieve?”

She flipped open her sketch pad and stared at the blank page. “Twice. I did not consider the first encounter a fair measure of the experience, novelty being an issue, but the second time…”

Blessed, blasted saints. She should not be telling him this. She should not tell anybody of this, ever.

“The second time?”

“I was mortally disappointed. One reads poetry and overhears the maids giggling and one’s brothers boasting, and one develops expectations.” She produced a penknife and sharpened her pencil to a lethal point. “I am not as ignorant as you and the rest of the world might think. Lift your chin.”

He obliged, when what he wanted to do was hunt down this sketch-pad-toting Lothario, shake the man’s teeth loose, and break his untalented, presuming fingers. “Are you trying to make me look imposing by sketching me from below?”

“I’m trying to find a position where I can be comfortable for an hour.” At his feet, of all places. “Hold still.”

She set her sketch pad aside and rose up on her knees. Elijah was obediently staring straight ahead, so he didn’t divine her intention until deft fingers undid his cravat. That was bad enough, but then—merciful deities preserve him—she stroked her hand over his throat.

“The textures of a man’s skin are a challenge,” she said, stroking him again. “Your cheeks are roughened with a day’s growth of whiskers, but your throat is smooth, and your chest…”

She unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a chest sprinkled with dark hair, a chest trying not to rise and fall rapidly.

“If you spend much more time posing your subject, Genevieve, you’ll not have an opportunity to sketch the poor devil.”

With one finger, she nudged the placket of his shirt aside, off center, baring some muscle to the light of the fire. “Like that,” she said as she drew the finger down over his heart, moving the shirt aside another inch. “Now do that off-in-the-distance look you have. Contemplate deep things.”

She sank back on the hearth rug and took up her sketch pad.

He could contemplate nothing, because all thoughts led to her and to the sorrow and surprise of finding out that she’d broken the rules while still a girl. Many did. Many broke the rules only to redeem themselves by marrying their partner in mischief.

The cat jumped into Elijah’s lap, a heavy, purring mass of fur and warmth.

“Leave him,” Jenny muttered. “He’ll keep leaping on you until you give up attempting to deport him. Timothy becomes fixed on his goals.”

Elijah shifted slightly as the cat settled in and commenced washing itself.

“With your drawing master, Genevieve…?” How did he ask an impossible question?

“Mr. Denby. Louisa called him the pulchritudinous Mr. Denby.”

“Of course he would have been beautiful, and he would have known how to use his beauty on young girls, but why him? You are the daughter of a duke, lovely to behold, well dowered, and notably agreeable in disposition. Why risk your entire future for disappointment in some dusty attic or stable?”

Her pencil paused on the page. “He preferred the minstrel’s gallery in the ballroom, which was dusty enough, but bore little risk of discovery.”

Not even a cot, no candlelight, no fragrant, leafy bower with the murmur of a stream nearby. No sensation of the soft summer breeze or gentle summer sun on naked, eager young flesh. No place to drowse in a lover’s arms, no intimacy about such a setting at all.

“Stop making a fist, Elijah. It was a long time ago, and hardly memorable.”

And yet, she hadn’t resumed drawing.

“You haven’t told me why.” He needed to know, needed to understand. “Sixteen is a legendarily confused age.”

“When Louisa turned sixteen, she threatened to go up to university as Mr. Louis Windham. His Grace found someone knowledgeable to tutor her in maths then, some formidable old fellow who spouted Newton in the original Latin.”

“While you planned an escapade of a different nature. Was it merely curiosity, Genevieve?” God knew, boys were curious at that age—boys at sixteen were nothing but curiosity, most, if not all of it, sexual.

She peered up at him, her posture and expression by firelight making her look young and bewildered. “I fancied myself an artist, and artists understand passion. I wanted to understand passion too.”

As if some fumbling, itinerant bounder would have bothered to teach her about passion? About pleasure? In her innocence, she could not have comprehended the folly of her choice.

“You understand passion as well as anybody I know, Genevieve.”

She gave him a confused look, and he saw that she had yet to make the distinction between simple sexual desire, to which even the birds and beasts were prone, and a passionate nature. He wanted to throttle Denby all over again.

“I am determined, Elijah, which is not the same thing as being ruled by impulses. Please face forward, and do be quiet.”

Her tone made plain that being ruled by impulses was a sorry condition.

Elijah wanted to argue, wanted to shake her for her erroneous conclusions and dangerous experiments, but he remained quiet, as she had remained quiet about her lascivious drawing master.

Sitting motionless, the cat in his lap, Elijah did not contemplate deep things. He contemplated a good girl, a pretty girl, but an innocent trying to slip through the bars of propriety’s cage out of passionate curiosity. She’d been experimenting with shadows at the age of sixteen.

She’d been experimenting with social damnation too, an experiment she’d apparently resumed, though with a different aim. She sought answers now not in the minstrel’s gallery, not in Antoine’s drawing classes, but—if she had her way—in blighted, stinking Paris.

In her pigheadedness, she might have been telling the story of his own adolescence. “Let me see what you’ve got there.”

“Not yet.”

For another fifteen minutes, Elijah petted the cat and endured the animal’s stentorian purr. In the face of such audible contentment, it was difficult to sustain agitation, and yet, Elijah did.

She’d been sixteen, curious, desperate for some recognition of her talent—of her—and buried under a pile of rambunctious, confident, older siblings. She’d had nothing she trusted to differentiate herself from that pile but a love of art.

How well, how bitterly and how well, Elijah understood her motivations, and yet, Genevieve Windham had remained on good terms with her family and was on good terms with them still.

For now.

“Your time’s up, Genevieve. Time to pay the piper.”

Uncertainty flashed through her eyes. “You needn’t bother with a critique. I insisted on ruthlessness and that other whatnot, but it’s getting late, and you’ve had to put up with Timothy, and tomorrow there will be more sittings with the boys—”

He extended a hand down to her while she recited her excuses. Perhaps in the last decade she’d learned some prudence after all, for she fell silent. “Come sit by me and prepare for your fifty lashes.”

She passed him her sketch pad, put her hand in his, and let him assist her to a place on the hearthstones beside his chair. She brought with her a whiff of jasmine. All day her fragrance had haunted the edges of Elijah’s awareness, a teasing pleasure lurking right beneath his notice.

“A good critique always starts with something positive,” he told her. “This raises the critic in the esteem of his victim, and lowers the victim’s guard. When the bad news inevitably follows, the victim will be paying attention, you see, and will have no choice but to hear at least some of the difficult things hurled his way.”

His tone was teasing; his warning was in earnest.

“I will clap my hands over my ears at this rate, Mr. Harrison. Please get on with it.”

He studied her sketch for some minutes while the cat purred and Genevieve radiated tension beside him. She took her art seriously, so it was fortunate she was genuinely talented.

“You are accurate, your command of perspective is solid, and you’ve learned a lot about how to suggest details quickly since last I saw your work at Antoine’s.”

He liked having her leaning close to him, liked bending his head near to hers to torment himself with her scent. He did not like her handling of the shadows though.

“You give up too soon on the darker areas. My face has two halves, one in light, one in shadow, and yet, because you moved those candles on the mantel, both are illuminated to some degree. Attend me.”

He took up her pencil and traced in some details on the darker side of his face. “Even if you can’t see them with your eyes, your mind adds these features in dim lighting, doubly so if the face is familiar to you.”

“So you’re suggesting them. How does that differ from the shadow created by your beard?”

“A beard is a texture more than shadow. On a man who is blond or red-haired, you must render it without making it a shadow.”

If the cat hadn’t sprung out of Elijah’s lap with an uncomfortable push from powerful back legs some minutes later, Elijah would likely have discussed that sketch until dawn, drunk on the scent of jasmine and the image of his features as she saw them.

And the entire time, arousal would have been stirring in the same stratum of his mind that took notice of Genevieve Windham’s curves, of the highlights in her hair, and the guarded tenacity in her green eyes.

“It’s time you were leaving, Genevieve. We’ll need the morning light if we’re to make any progress with the children.”

She reached down to pet her cat. “You’ve been helpful. May I impose on you again tomorrow night?”

“I have given my word.” He rose and assisted her to her feet, then picked up the cat and moved toward the door. “You are due seven more hours of ruthlessness from me, but I see little point in spending them all sketching. Nobody will take it amiss if I set up an easel here, or if we set up a pair of easels in the studio.”

He’d never made a more foolish or a more genuine offer, and his punishment was her naughty-madonna smile, a brilliant, blinding version of its previous incarnations.

“You will paint with me?”

“You will paint for me,” he replied.

The cat hung in Elijah’s hands like a great, purring muff. This turned out to be fortunate when Genevieve went up on her toes and kissed Elijah near the closed door. Because he held the cat, he could not wrap his arms around her and abet her efforts to turn the kiss into a conflagration of all good sense.

He bore it, instead, like a martyr. Bore the feel of her coming close in all her soft, warm nightclothes, bore the scent of her skin, bore the sensation of her hands framing his jaw, holding him still for a meeting of mouths that had nothing of Christmas about it and everything of Misrule.

She must have known he was trapped by the cat, by the moment, by lust itself, and worse, by a yearning to show her what desire ought to be. She took liberties. Her tongue swiped against his mouth, a little taste of sin and insanity that he returned as delicately as greed and longing would allow.

Genevieve Windham was so sweet, so wickedly, unbearably—

Timothy sprang from between them on an indignant yowl, his back claws raking Elijah’s belly through the fabric of his shirt.

Thank God for the blasted cat. “Leave now, Genevieve, else you will not get your sittings.” He’d never used that desperate, raw tone before, much less on a woman, a lady.

She kissed his cheek and slipped away, closing the door quietly in her wake.

I desire Elijah Harrison.

Jenny had deprived herself of much sleep, marveling at this revelation, one she did not even speak aloud to her cat. She woke in the morning, still pondering the notion: for the first time in nearly ten years, she wanted a man.

As she rebraided her hair and wound it up in a tidy bun, she paused, a hairpin in one hand, a greater insight in the other.

For the first time in her life, she wanted a man, a specific man. With Denby, she’d wanted… something, an experience, a sin, a memory, relief from the presumption of unworldliness that chastity implied. She’d been disappointed but not devastated by what had transpired with him.

With Elijah, she wanted him, all of him, nothing less, and nobody else would scratch the itch that had started years ago in Antoine’s drawing classes. She wanted intimate knowledge of his body, his art, his mind, his everything.

Though she could allow none of her desire to show, not before the rest of the household.

“Good morning, my lady.” Elijah rose as Jenny entered the breakfast parlor, his expression genial, his eyes… watchful.

As badly as she itched to be erotically intimate with him, she itched to capture those eyes on canvas too. Itched, longed, desired… She was becoming a different woman, a more interesting woman altogether.

A woman who could carry off living in Paris, with or without her family’s blessing. The notion stunned her, like strong summer sunlight stunned senses left too long in shadows. Joy and anxiety filled her in equal measure, her soul teetering between “Don’t be ridiculous” and “If I don’t at least try, I will regret it for the rest of my sweet-natured-maiden-aunt life.”

Neither Victor nor Bart would have discouraged her from trying, and that insight freed her from a good portion of her doubts.

“Good morning, Mr. Harrison. Is Jock your only company this morning?”

Rothgreb’s old hound dozed by the fire, the beast likely craving warmth even more than he longed for a snitch of bacon.

“He’s agreeable company, if lacking in conversation. I trust you slept well?”

The watchfulness was still in Elijah’s gaze, and something else, something… fierce, and yet…

He was worried about her.

Outside, the day was dreary, a winter morning making little effort to shrug off a blanket of clouds. Inside Jenny’s heart, a rainbow sprang up, bright and warm. This was not Denby’s you’re-not-going-to-cry-on-me-are-you sort of male anxiety, which in truth had hidden the more genuine you’re-not-going-to-peach-on-me-are-you worry.

Thoughts of Paris fled as Jenny realized what she saw in Elijah’s eyes was caring.

“I slept wonderfully, Mr. Harrison, and now I am famished.” For the sight of him, for that slight easing behind his eyes when she turned a smile on him. The food she could take or leave.

“Allow me to fix you a plate.” He came around the parlor, stepped over the sleeping hound, and moved to the sideboard. “What would you like?”

He lifted the lids of the warming trays, served her eggs, bacon, toast, and some forced strawberries. He would have buttered her toast had they been guaranteed privacy, his solicitude putting Jenny in mind of her parents.

“Some tea, my lady?”

He’d know how she took her tea, just as His Grace knew exactly how Mama took hers. Jenny hazarded a guess that the tea the duke prepared for the duchess tasted better to her than those cups the duchess fixed for herself.

“I’m in more of a chocolate mood this morning,” Jenny replied. The words were no more out of her mouth than Elijah was swirling the little pot, this way then that, and pouring her a steaming cup.

His plate was empty, and the parlor was empty save for the old hound. As Jenny picked up her first forkful of eggs, she realized Mr. Elijah Harrison had been waiting for her.

The eggs were ambrosially seasoned, the chocolate rich, the butter on the toast superbly creamy.

“Have you any ideas for working with the children today?” Elijah asked. He poured himself another cup of tea, while Jenny wished she’d thought to offer him the pot.

She was being ridiculous, but as long as she didn’t act ridiculous, where was the harm?

“I’ll distract them while you sketch, if you like. Cards seemed to go over well.”

“Which suggests they’ll be bored with them today. Kit isn’t quite old enough to learn how to cheat.”

“I forget, you’re an older brother. I owe my older brothers an entire education that had nothing to do with deportment or elocution.”

He paused while stirring sugar into his tea. “Such as?”

“How to fend off a bully, where to apply perfume.” She’d also learned that she could trust her brothers to have her best interests at heart, even if they were complete dunderheads about it.

And she had learned that even her boisterous, indestructible brothers could die.

“They told you where to apply perfume?”

“Not willingly, of course. Little sisters eavesdrop and pick up on these things. Bartholomew remarked to Devlin that the nape of a certain chambermaid’s neck bore the scent of lavender water when he kissed her there. Bart sounded bemused to note it, as if the woman wore her scent that way exclusively to lure him closer.” Bartholomew had sounded besotted, but then he’d been besotted with life in all its fascinating details.

“God help me if my little sisters take their education from my brothers.”

Jenny put a strawberry on his otherwise empty plate and wondered where Sophie and Sindal had gotten off to. “Why not take their education from you?”

He sat back, as if something noxious had floated to the surface of his teacup. “Will the hound be as agreeable as your cat about sitting for a portrait?”

“Jock will bide anywhere there’s a decent fire, and he’s very patient with the children.”

“We’ll impress him into service then. I saw your sketches, by the way.”

Jenny was so busy studying the way the blue of the parlor’s wallpaper compared with the blue of Elijah’s waistcoat that she had to think before answering.

“Which sketches?”

He peered into his teacup, his expression disgruntled. “The ones you made of the children, the pastels. They’re brilliant.”

“Pastels can’t be brilliant.” And yet he’d sounded so puzzled by his own compliment, Jenny couldn’t help but be pleased. “I do enjoy children though, very much.”

He glanced up from his teacup, as if he’d heard the reservation in her tone. She enjoyed everybody else’s children, and that hurt like blazes.

A footman paused just inside the doorway. “Post for his lordship.”

Jenny didn’t think Sindal would appreciate his correspondence being left about for all to peruse. “Cornelius, the baron is likely—”

Elijah rose. “I believe Cornelius means me.” He retrieved a single epistle from the footman and resumed his place beside Jenny.

Jenny finished her eggs, toast, and chocolate, trying to decipher Elijah’s expression. He looked bemused now too, and the script on the letter was pretty.

A word came to Jenny’s mind, the perfect word for the feelings curdling the meal she’d just consumed: damn. Damn and blast. Elijah was handsome, charming, well liked, and never in want of commissions. Why shouldn’t some pretty widow correspond with him about a portrait of her children or about renewing her acquaintance with him over the holidays?

Damn and… damn. Double damn.