Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (2 page)

“Of course.”

“I studied here and there. I have French cousins on my mother’s side, and while Paris was no fit destination for an Englishman for quite some time, my cousins sought refuge in Italy, Denmark, and Switzerland. I made a royal progress of visiting them and their drawing masters. My mother spoke French to me from the cradle, so France was not as risky for me as it would have been for others.”

Her Exquisite Ladyship fixed his second cup of tea, while he forgot his meal and instead focused on how firelight reflected off the tea service and off her hair. Lady Jenny was not a woman of angles; she was a woman of curves—an elegant curve to her spine in particular suggesting she’d eschewed stays due to the lateness of the hour, or perhaps—being in the country—she had settled for stays without boning.

The teapot was not the tall, silver, decorative variety, but rather, a round, porcelain confection with pink roses and green vines twining about the glaze. The curve of the pottery spout mirrored the curve of Lady Jenny’s neck and shoulder. The green of the leaves was only a shade lighter than her eyes, and the gold tracing on the teacups a near match for her hair. If he were painting her, he’d find ways to echo the lines and colors, in the pattern of the curtains, the curl of a cat’s tail, the foliage of some lush, flowering houseplant or—

“Your tea, and I can find you a book to take upstairs with you tonight.”

She passed him the cup and saucer and decamped for the rows of shelves at the other end of the room.

Being a gentleman, he couldn’t very well remain on the sofa if she wanted to wander the room, despite the fact that he was damp, hungry, and exhausted. He followed her between two rows of shelves, bringing a candle with him.

“You’ll need some light, unless you have Kesmore’s library memorized?”

She didn’t take the candle, so he held it higher, the better to illuminate books, titles, and one lovely, if shy, woman. “One could not memorize the contents of Joseph and Louisa’s library. They’re always acquiring more books, lending this volume, trading that. Louisa is mad for books, and Joseph is mad for his lady.”

“Their collection is to be envied,” he said, studying the titles at eye level. Elijah’s estimation of Kesmore rose—or perhaps widened—as he regarded the spine of an illustrated volume of erotic Oriental woodcuts. Beside that was some French erotic poetry, and beside that—

Lady Jenny was not as tall as he’d first thought her. The titles he regarded would not have been visible to her.

Mentally, he shook his imagination by the scruff of its shaggy neck and wagged a finger in its panting, eager face:
small
talk.
“I enjoy Wordsworth.” As a soporific, anyway.

“His poetry is lovely. I’m partial to—”

She fell silent as the library door clicked open, followed by the rapid patter of what sounded like small feet.

“Let’s be quick, Manda. Papa always keeps it in his desk for when we rescue him from the ledgers.”

“Hush, Fleur.” The little feet crossed the library. “If Aunt Jen finds us, she’ll be disappointed in us.”

“I
hate
when she’s disappointed in us.”

Lady Jenny started forward, clearly ready to rain down disappointment in torrents, but Elijah caught her with an arm around her waist.

“Wait.” Whispering in the lady’s ear meant he had to bend close, close enough to catch the light, lovely scent of jasmine.

She turned her head to whisper back. “They should have been in bed hours ago. Let me go.”

The sound of a drawer opening carried across the room. Through the stacks of books, Elijah saw two small girls, both dark-haired like Kesmore, both swathed in thick flannel dressing gowns. They plundered their father’s desk, intent on some mischief.

“Aunt Jen won’t be mad when we draw the pictures. She’ll help us with them and make them ever so much prettier.” This came from the smaller of the two, Fleur. “And Papa won’t be mad when he opens our present.”

“Mama can help us make it into a book, just like her books.”

Against Elijah’s body, Lady Jenny felt as if she were quivering with a need to herd these juvenile felons back to the nursery, while Elijah quivered with something else entirely.

Her scent was marvelous; her curves were marvelous; her focus on the children and complete lack of awareness of him was not marvelous at all, though it was exactly what he deserved.

“Which is your favorite?” Amanda asked as they closed the drawer.

“I like them all. I wonder which is Papa’s favorite?”

Elijah’s favorite was the manner in which Jenny Windham’s backside fit exactly against the tops of his thighs, though the way she’d gone still and relaxed against him made a close second.

“Probably the one about the crow who fills the pitcher of water with stones. Papa likes cleverness and not giving up. Per… Per-something.”

They trundled out, discussing the moral merits of various of
Aesop’s fables
, while Elijah realized he’d been trapping his hostess against his damp self for far longer than was wise.

He let her go and retrieved the candle from the shelf where he’d perched it.

“Those are your nieces?”

For a moment, Lady Jenny remained with her back to him. When he should have been plucking a book from one of the lower shelves, Elijah instead studied her perfect, downy nape.

And was still studying it when she turned. “Amanda and Fleur are Joseph’s daughters from his first marriage, though Louisa dotes on them shamelessly, and they love her dearly.”

“And Kesmore dotes on the lot of them.”

He ought not to have said that, because all this doting and loving among Kesmore’s brood put hurt in Lady Jenny’s eyes.

“He does. And the baby. They all adore that infant.
We
all do.”

She blinked, as if taken aback by the forlorn quality in her own voice.

Elijah slipped past her with the candle, took her hand, and led her away from the shadows and all that intriguing erotica, back to the warmth of the fireplace. “The holidays make everything worse, don’t they?”

She tugged her hand free and looked at him as if he’d recently escaped Bedlam. “I beg your pardon?”

“I beg
your
pardon. I am tired, and I have not yet done justice to all this scrumptious fare. I was asking if the holidays made being around family particularly difficult, but you will ignore this question. Tell me why Lord Kesmore’s offspring think you will abet their Christmas schemes?”

***

Elijah Harrison was like a horse. His body mass was so great, the heat of it would dry out a damp blanket from the inside. He had the sleek musculature of a horse as well, all too evident beneath his damp shirt and breeches.

Jenny stopped herself from drawing any further equine analogies, though held against his body, her back to his chest, at least one more such comparison lurked in her awareness. “Shall we resume our meal?”

“Of course.” He gestured toward the sofa, a gentleman in stocking feet and damp clothing, who posed difficult questions. “I take it you enjoy drawing?”

Very difficult questions. He settled on the sofa beside her, tucking into his food with unabashed enthusiasm, unaware of the havoc he wrought with her composure.

“I do like to draw, and you must like children.”

He paused with a bite of yellow cheese halfway to his mouth. “I don’t think one likes children or dislikes them. One rails against them or surrenders to them, surrender being the more prudent course. Aren’t you going to eat?”

She was hungry—hungry to sketch him, hungry to know what he knew.

“Of course. What did you mean about the holidays making everything worse?”

He paused with a slice of apple in his hand. “I am from a large family, though I’m the oldest, which meant I could get free the soonest. My first objection to the Yuletide holidays is that they fall just as the worst of winter’s weather is getting its grip on the land. Who would position a holiday thus? Travel is difficult; moving goods to the shops for holiday shopping is difficult. Absent gross extravagance, there are no fresh fruits or vegetables to facilitate holiday feasting. All in all, the timing is very poor.”

While he spoke, he gestured with the apple slice, not grandly, but with the languid eloquence of a thoroughly Gallic wrist. He probably shrugged like a Frenchman too.

Jenny took a sip of her tea, but it was tepid and weak compared to the man beside her. “Have you other objections?”

“I do, but I would rather hear about your drawing, Lady Genevieve. Your nieces were convinced you had some skill.”

Some skill. That was all she had—little training, and less hope of acquiring any unless she took very drastic measures indeed.

“I enjoy it.”

He munched the apple slice into oblivion far more tidily than a horse would have and reached for another. “You, my lady, are prevaricating.”

On so many levels. “How do you know?”

“Your eyes. They truly are the window to the soul, and that window closes a little when we dissemble. Most people glance down and left, others—some women—acquire a particularly vapid expression when they lie. You aren’t one of them.”

He held the second apple slice up to her. “Tell me about your sketching.”

Temptation loomed irresistibly. When Jenny had sneaked into Antoine’s classes, she’d loved the time spent immersed in creation, but she’d loved just as much the discussions that followed.

“I dabble, though I love the dabbling. I can sketch for hours, and when I’m not sketching, I want to be painting. If I can’t sketch or paint, then I can embroider. The tedium of the embroidery, the stitch-by-stitch pace of it, can be meditative, but it’s frustrating too.”

The entire time she’d spoken, he’d held the apple slice up before her and kept his gaze on her. Now he took a crunchy bite and held the half remaining before her again, his focus on her mouth.

She wanted to lean forward and take what he offered with her teeth; instead, she took it with her fingers, dodging whatever dare he’d posed.

“You’re still holding back on me,” he said, helping himself to the gingerbread. “You want nothing but to spend your days creating, studying the masters, or reading about their lives and works. You long to travel the Continent, I’m supposing, and feast your eyes on the treasures there—what treasures the Corsican didn’t acquire for himself. Am I right?”

Jenny could not tell if he disapproved of the person he described or was merely familiar with such creatures.

“You have never been so afflicted?”

“I
was
so afflicted.” He dispatched another crispy apple slice, followed it up with a few bites of ham, then set about buttering a slice of bread. “Inside every professional artist a passionate amateur lies entombed. Enjoy your frustration, my lady.”

The arrogance, condescension, and lurking bitterness of his pronouncement made Jenny want to spit out the apple he’d just shared with her. “Are you mocking me?”

He paused with a dollop of butter on a wooden knife poised above the bread. No, not bread. They’d baked the year’s first batch of stollen today, a holiday sweet bread made according to Jenny’s German grandmother’s recipe.

He set the stollen on her plate. “I am envying you, dear lady. I trust you enjoy butter.”

“Of course.” She did not precisely enjoy his company, though being around him made her feel more… more. “If you’re unhappy with your art, why not give it up?”

The same question she’d asked herself countless times.

“I am not unhappy with my art, and now you are trying to distract me.” His tone was gentle, coaxing, and implacable. “Tell me about your drawing. When did you become interested, and when did you become aware you were different from the other girls?”

Those who sat to him said Elijah Harrison was a comfortable fellow to spend hours with. Jenny had found the notion preposterous. Elijah Harrison was big, quiet, and self-assured. He moved through life with a knowing, confident quality that struck her as incompatible with comfortableness.

She’d come to that conclusion without ever having talked to the man, though, and here, late at night, over informal victuals, his coat gently steaming two yards away, he regarded her with such, such
compassion
, that she wanted to entrust him with all her silly secrets and dreams.

When she had sketched him, his eyes had been bored, lazy, and slightly mocking:
Here
I
stand, more confident in my nudity than you lot cowering in your fashionable attire behind your sketch pads.

In hindsight, and with the passage of a few years, she had realized that in a room full of young men with varying degrees of artistic talent, he’d adopted that attitude more for their ease than his own.

“Genevieve?”

Zhenevieve?
She ought to remonstrate him for his presumption, but the sound of her name on his lips was too lovely.

“I’ve always been different. I’m different still. Everything you said… that’s who I want to be. I am a duke’s daughter, though, and probably more significantly, the daughter of a duchess. Were I to give vent to my eccentricities, it would break my parents’ hearts.”

A quantity of food had disappeared, and now Mr. Harrison appeared content to feast on her silly notions. “So you choose instead to break your own heart?”

She left off staring at his hands and rose to tend the fire. His question had not been challenging, but worse—far worse—gently pitying.

“One can love others, Mr. Harrison, or one can love one’s own ambitions. A woman who chooses the latter is not highly regarded in our society. A man who chooses the former is regarded as weak or possessed of a religious vocation.”

He did not pop to his feet when she knelt before the hearth and arranged an oak log on top of the stack already burning. Oak was heavy, though, and the weight of the additional log collapsed the half-burnt ones beneath it, sending a shower of sparks in all directions.

“Careful. Your skirts might catch.”

He’d seized her under the arms and hauled her away from the hearth in one smooth, brute maneuver. When she ought to have been offended or unnerved, Jenny was impressed.