Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (24 page)

And far from her family’s benevolent meddling, she’d effectively eliminate any and all possibility of having children and a family of her own.

She said nothing until they reached their destination, and then she turned a slow circle, taking in each gravestone and marker. “You remembered. Oh, Elijah, you remembered.”

He would remember this too, remember Jenny Windham wrapping her arms around him as the wind picked up and the flurries danced down. He’d remember that when he might have argued her away from her course, when he might have offered her marriage and frequent trips to Paris, he’d instead held her and held her and held her.

And then he’d let her go.

***

“Jenny has taken a daft notion to go to Paris.” Louisa knew she sounded worried, but it couldn’t be helped. The parlor door was closed, the syllabub had been served, and this was likely the only privacy the children, spouses, and parents would allow her with her sisters.

“Paris in springtime is supposed to be lovely,” Sophie observed. “Sindal says he’ll take me one of these years, but there always seems to be a baby on the way or one just arrived.”

Petite, blond Eve, her feet up on a hassock, patted her belly. “Please, God, let one arrive before I explode or Deene frets himself into a decline. Lou wouldn’t be worried if Jenny were making a quick shopping visit.”

Maggie left off poking at the fire—no footmen would disturb this gathering—and took up a rocking chair. “Jenny told me the same thing. Told me not to be angry with her, but if she didn’t leave now, she’d never go.”

“She needs a fellow,” Louisa said. “We all needed a fellow, and the boys needed their ladies.”

Sophie considered her drink. “I don’t know, Lou. Your fellow lets you write all the poetry you want, and has you dedicate the racy verses to him. Ladies have been writing poetry for eons. Jenny’s art is a different matter.”

“Deene let me ride King William,” Eve said. “Before I got as big as King William. Maybe the right fellow will encourage Jenny’s painting.”

There was a point to be made here, and Louisa had not the patience to make it subtly. “It’s not just that Jenny paints, it’s that she paints well—better, I think, than half those buffoons in the Royal Academy. My poetry is all well and good, but it hardly ranks with Milton and Shakespeare. Joseph says Jenny is brilliant.”

And Joseph, as anybody with any brains knew, was nigh infallible.

“Amateurs can be brilliant,” Maggie said, though her tone suggested they seldom were.

Eve appeared to study her feet as if she hadn’t seen them in some time. “I gather the difficulty is not only that Jenny is talented, it’s that she’s English. Frenchmen do not limit their ladies to dabbling in watercolors and lounging about like brainless ornaments. The Germans let their ladies paint too, as do the Italians.”

Louisa glowered at her sisters. “Frenchmen no longer understand gallantry, what few Frenchman are left between the ages of five and fifty. They will pillory the daughter of an English duke on general principles, despite their convenient reversion to monarchy at the end of Wellington’s sword.”

A silence descended, not even the clink of a spoon disturbing it. Glances were exchanged. Eve, the most recently married, spoke up.

“Mr. Harrison is gallant, and he understands art. Deene says the menfolk chatted away an entire afternoon while Jenny eavesdropped, and Mr. Harrison had eyes only for her.”

Maggie picked up Timothy, though how he’d gotten into the room was a mystery. “Mr. Harrison insisted Jenny be free to help him complete his commissions, though when I pop into the studio, Jenny’s always before her own easel, spattered in paint and looking…”

“Happy,” Sophie said. “She looks happy when she paints.”

The cat started purring in Maggie’s lap, loud enough for all to hear.

“We’re agreed, then,” Louisa said. “Mr. Harrison makes Jenny happy, and Paris would make her miserable.”

Eve yawned, Maggie stroked the cat, and Sophie picked up an embroidery hoop. “Paris would make her miserable, if she were allowed to go, which will never come to pass as long as Their Graces draw breath. Shall we order another syllabub?”

***

Tea was an occasion for parents to leave their offspring in the nursery and gather below stairs for some sustenance and conversation. Because Jenny and Mr. Harrison remained in their studio, it was also an opportunity to compare notes.

“So what will you do?” Joseph, Lord Kesmore, asked his brothers-by-marriage.

Westhaven glanced around and noted Their Graces were absent, and the ladies were gathered near the hearth on the opposite side of the large, comfortable family parlor.

“Do? I wasn’t aware we were required to do anything besides eat and drink in quantities sufficient to tide us over until summer of next year,” Westhaven said.

The Marquess of Deene patted his flat tummy. “Hear, hear. And make toasts. One must make holiday toasts.”

St. Just shifted where he lounged against the mantel. “Make babies, you mean. My sister looks like she’s expecting a foal, not a Windham grandchild, Deene.”

Gentle ribbing ensued, which Westhaven knew was meant to alleviate the worry in Deene’s eyes.

“The first baby is the worst,” Westhaven said. “His Grace confirms this. Thereafter, one has a sense of what to expect, and one’s lady is less anxious over the whole business.”

“One’s lady?” Lord Valentine scoffed. “You fool nobody, Westhaven, but Kesmore raises an excellent point. Every time I peek into the studio in search of my baroness, all I see is that Harrison and Jenny are painting or arguing.”

“Arguing is good,” Kesmore informed a glass that did not contain tea. “Louisa and I argue a great deal.”

Respectful silence ensued before the Earl of Hazelton spoke up. “Maggie and I argue quite a bit as well. I daresay the consequences of one of our rousing donnybrooks will show up in midsummer.”

Toasting followed, during which Lord Valentine admitted congratulations were also in order regarding his baroness, and St. Just allowed he suspected his countess was similarly blessed, but waiting until after Christmas to make her announcement.

When every unborn Windham grandchild had been recognized by the assemblage, Westhaven said what they’d all been avoiding.

“My countess tells me Genevieve has taken it into her head to remove to Paris. I suspect she wants to avoid being aunt-at-large, while her own situation admits of no change. We are Jenny’s family, and Christmas is upon us. Harrison paints, he argues with her, and he has all his teeth. What say you, gentlemen?”

“Paris reeks,” Lord Kesmore said. “Harrison’s scent is rather pleasant by comparison.”

“He smells of linseed oil,” St. Just observed.

“A point in his favor,” Hazelton murmured, “from Lady Jenny’s perspective.”

Westhaven glanced around the group. “Then we are agreed. Lady Jenny will have no need of the dubious sanctuary of France. None at all.”

***

Paris began to loom like salvation for many reasons.

Jenny had checked the packet schedules. She’d made lists of what she’d take with her. She’d quietly packed up several boxes and stowed them in the bottom of her wardrobe, and just as quietly interrogated Aunt Gladys and Aunt Arabella about where a lady might find proper quarters in a decent part of town.

Gladys had given her a long, pitying look, but had shared what she’d known.

“You could do more with that necklace,” Elijah said, peering at Jenny’s portrait of Her Grace. “Pick up the highlights from the fire and Her Grace’s hair. Make them resonate with the ring she wears and the candles.”

Elijah was a great one for making things resonate. Jenny was tempted to make his skull resonate with her retort, but she kept her tone civil.

“I could tell
you
that your portrait is of a duchess, while mine is of a wife and mother. She doesn’t even like jewels, Elijah, but wears them so as not to hurt His Grace’s feelings.”

Elijah wiped his hands on a rag and glanced around the room. “Your cat has abandoned us, and you’re peckish. Tea came and went an hour ago, and you’ve hardly left this room since you took a luncheon tray some hours before that. I was making a suggestion, Genevieve, not a criticism.”

Outside, darkness had fallen. Jenny had painted for hours, not in an attempt to keep up with Elijah, but simply to be near him.

“Is your portrait of Sindal’s boys done?” she asked, stepping back from her easel.

Elijah used his rag to wipe paint from the handle of a brush, the way a soldier might wipe blood from a sword. “As done as it will be. West has written that Fotheringale harps on the lack of a completed juvenile portrait from me, though I showed them all the sketches.”

Jenny passed him her brushes—Elijah was meticulous about tidying up at the end of each session—and took a seat by the hearth. “You can send them the completed portrait. Rothgreb wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

Instead of cleaning the brushes, Elijah dunked them in a jar of turpentine—also across the room from the fire—and sat on the hearth beside Jenny. “Will you marry me, Genevieve?”

He kissed her cheek while Jenny flailed about for a response, any response at all. “The paint fumes are affecting you, Elijah, or you’ve spent too much time imbibing His Grace’s wassail.”

“
You
affect me. I paint better when you’re near, and I was warned about His Grace’s wassail—or Her Grace’s—by the regent himself. Marry me.”

She wanted to say yes, even if this declaration was not made out of an excess of romantic love. “If I marry you, I cannot go to Paris.”

He leaned back, resting his head against the stones behind them, closing his eyes. “I’ll take you to bloody Paris, and you can appreciate for yourself that the cats have ruined the place. Rome isn’t much better, though I suppose you’ll want to go there and sniff it for yourself too.”

He’d promise to take her there, probably to Moscow as well if she asked.

“Babies put rather a cramp in one’s travel plans.” Because if she were married to him, and Windham proclivities ran true, babies would follow in the near, middle, and far terms, and all hope of painting professionally would be as dead as her late brothers.

“Your siblings all managed to travel with babies. What’s the real reason, Genevieve? We’re compatible in the ways that count, and you’re dying on the vine here, trying to be your parents’ devoted spinster daughter. Marry me.”

He was tired, and he felt sorry for her. Of those things, Jenny was certain, but not much else. She hadn’t foreseen an offer from him that would ambush her best intentions and be so bewilderingly hard to refuse.

“You need to go home, Elijah. I need to go to Paris. Painting with you has only made me more certain of that. If I capitulate to your proposal, I will regret it for the rest of my days, and you will too. You feel sorry for me, and while I appreciate your sentiments, in Paris I will not be an object of pity.”

Nor would she be the object of marital schemes, and that… that was important too, though exactly why it was important, Jenny could not fathom.

Elijah was silent for a moment, while beside him, Jenny tried to swallow around the lump in her throat, because she would
also
regret not capitulating to this proposal, even though giving up on a life’s dream for a man who’d proposed out of pity wasn’t prudent.

“Compassion is not pity, woman. I find it puzzling that a lady who’s about to turn her back on all she’s known—family, friends, and familiars—exhorts me so relentlessly to go home.”

The paintings were coming along nicely, which Jenny suspected was symptomatic of her first brush with channeling one kind of frustration into another kind of creativity. She would likely paint masterpieces in Paris as a result of the same frustration.

Though in Paris, a woman could take a lover. The notion was incomprehensible—a procession of Denbys and glorified flirts who would only leave her feeling lonelier.

“We are not going to marry, Elijah. My family stopped even pretending to chaperone us days ago, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I noticed, though I drew a different conclusion entirely.” He took her hand, and she not only allowed it, she reveled in it. His touch was never presuming, but neither was it hesitant. “You will face challenges in Paris, Genevieve. When things go well, you’ll tell yourself that’s reason to stay longer. When things go poorly, you’ll tell yourself you can never leave in disgrace, and you’ll use even the setbacks and criticisms as justification for staying far from home.”

He spoke from experience, and she hurt for him. Hurt for the very young man who’d taken on an unlikely profession and made himself successful at it.

“I am not you, Elijah. I have nothing to prove. I want only to paint and to be taken seriously. My brother Victor died—”

Jenny blinked, the lump in her throat turning painful and sharp without warning.

Elijah drew her close, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and kissed her cheek again. “Let’s not argue. We have a few days left, and then we’ll part. What did you think of the green I added to the curtains, hmm? Did it pick up on the green in Her Grace’s eyes? I can tone it down, but I think I like it.”

Jenny fell asleep, cradled against his body. When she woke up, she was in her own bed, alone but for the cat curled up at her feet.

The cat whom she’d also miss when she went to Paris.

***

“I’ve come to let you know that your portrait is all but finished.”

Elijah had much more he wanted to say to Moreland, but the old fellow was a whirlwind, taking a batch of grandchildren out for a sleigh ride, escorting his duchess on various calls, and then disappearing into this very study to wreak God knew what mischief-by-correspondence with his cronies in the Lords.

The stack of letters Elijah had sent in response to his siblings’ pleadings was dwarfed by the volume of Moreland’s epistles, and each was written in the duke’s own hand.

His Grace sat back but didn’t rise from the monstrosity of a desk at which he was ensconced. Mistletoe hung above the desk, only a few berries remaining among the leaves.

“Good work, Bernward. You’ll stay long enough to see all and sundry admiring your handiwork, though. Her Grace delights in the Christmas open house, and I won’t see her deprived of a chance to show you off.”