Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (29 page)

Oh, damn. What was a man to do when confronted with a teary duchess and a weeping daughter? Percival set the bloody drinks aside, grabbed a serviette, and enveloped both crying females in a hug.

This had the advantage of ensuring he had the privacy to take a surreptitious swipe at his own eyes, but did not relieve him of the obligation—of the need—to reinforce Her Grace’s words.

And to lay the groundwork for a bit of paternal strategy.

“Of course we’re proud of you. We have always been proud of you, but I must tell you, Genevieve, Paris will not do. Not when there’s the whole of the Continent full of art and drawing masters. Paris alone simply will not do.”

***

“I cannot imagine what lies in London that requires you to abandon all sense, much less abandon the woman you love, and subject your horse to such a journey. My countess will worry about you, and that is a sore trial for the rest of the household.”

Kesmore passed Elijah a flask as he scolded, and Elijah took a sip of smooth, fiery brew redolent of hazelnuts.

“I must pay a call on a member of the Academy’s nominating committee then visit my family at Flint Hall. Your hospitality these past two days has been much appreciated.”

Particularly when a foot of snow had fallen Christmas Eve into Christmas Day. Kesmore had offered to take Elijah home with him after the open house, and Elijah had left Morelands, bag and baggage, rather than remain where at least one duke and one duchess held him in mortal dislike.

As well they should, though not for the reasons they did.

Kesmore capped the flask. “Are you paying the least attention, Bernward?”

“No.” Elijah tested the snugness of the horse’s girth, because he might have tightened it, and he might have not. Such were the mental faculties of a man with a broken heart, a man who’d waited in vain for Genevieve to leave the upper reaches of the house and join the party below on Christmas Eve.

“She leaves New Year’s Day for the Continent,” Kesmore mused, and abruptly the foggy, boggy morass that was Elijah’s brain regained the ability to focus.

“Genevieve is going to Paris?”

His initial reaction was… a sentimental mix of gladness for her, pride in her resolve, and the certain knowledge that no amount of drinking or rumination was going to ferment those feelings into outright joy.

“Eventually. Seems a widowed aunt wants to visit relations in Vienna, though the itinerary will take them through Rome, Venice, Florence, a few other places known for their art treasures. Paris is on the list, I’m sure. When His Grace says a little travel broadens the mind, one had best start packing.”

England without Genevieve would be a lonely place. Any studio without Genevieve would be a lonely place.

The back of Elijah’s horse would be a very lonely place, particularly when that horse was pointed away from the lady. That she was achieving her heart’s desire was much less comfort than Elijah had hoped it would be.

“Wish me safe journey, Kesmore, and thanks for all of your hospitality.”

Kesmore shoved the flask at him. “Louisa says you are an idiot, but I must be patient because you are an idiot in love with an imbecile. She says that’s the general case where tender sentiments are involved, and I am ever grateful for my countess’s guidance. Safe journey.”

Kesmore yanked him into a hug, walloped him once on the back, then let him go.

As Elijah swung down from his horse, long, weary, frigid miles later, the force of Kesmore’s blow still reverberated in memory, almost as if the man had been trying to knock sense into him.

“Mr. Buchanan will see you now, my lord.”

They all
my
lorded
him now, the entire committee. He didn’t like it from them any more than he’d liked it from Genevieve—for different reasons.

“Bernward, welcome, and what a pleasure!” Buchanan’s face was wreathed with a smile that suggested he knew things Elijah did not. That smile went onto the growing list of things Elijah did not like.

“Buchanan. Apologies for the lack of notice, but I was passing through Town on my way to Flint Hall.”

Those words dimmed the smile, blending it with consternation. “You’re off to the family seat?”

“For what remains of the holidays, yes. My mother’s wishes trump royal edicts, papal bulls, and likely the whims of the Almighty. I did, however, want to discuss with you—”

A footman appeared bearing a tray. Buchanan gestured the man into a room, the walls of which were crowded with old masters growing dark with age—and not a smile to be seen among them.

“You wanted to discuss the committee nominations,” Buchanan said when the footman had withdrawn. “Shall we sit?”

No, they shall not sit. “Afraid I haven’t the time, sir. You will understand the urgency of keeping the Marchioness of Flint from a display of stubborn temper?” Mama would kill him for that prevarication. Her menfolk were the ones afflicted with stubborn temper.

Buchanan’s expression became considering, the look of a politician rearranging his chess pieces. “If you’re going to Flint Hall, perhaps you’d take a package for me to Lord Flint?”

“Of course, though the purpose for my call was to retrieve from you the sketches I’d passed along of a certain portrait.” The best portrait he’d ever done, and the best likeness he’d rendered of a certain young lady.

Who was on her way to the bloody, sodding Continent in only a few days’ time, there to kick up her heels, admire art, and be admired by not just Frenchmen—those were bad enough—but Germans, Austrians, Dutchmen, and
Italians
. Possibly Russians as well, and those dear chaps had burned three-quarters of Moscow in the dead of winter rather than allow Napoleon the satisfaction of sacking it. Genevieve would be right at home among them.

“So you don’t want to discuss the committee’s nominations?”

Turpentine and paint fumes could addle a man’s wits, particularly when they were all he breathed for decades at a time. Elijah spoke gently. “I do not care that”—he snapped his fingers under Buchanan’s sizable nose—“for the committee’s nominations.”

Plainer than that, he could not be. Not without lapsing into profanities, but what mattered the committee’s blessing when Genevieve was packing for the Continent, and the last coffin nail was being pounded into Elijah’s relationship with his family?

Genevieve had told him to go home, so home he would go.

Buchanan regarded him for another moment, looking less like a politician and more like a man who’d once rendered portraits and had the knack of reading faces. “I’ll get your father’s package. It’s in my study, and your drawing is with it.”

Elijah followed him through a chilly, dank house—the damp could not be good for all the art displayed on the walls—into an equally chilly, damp, and cramped room toward the front.

Buchanan’s study had good light, though. As Buchanan opened a cupboard and extracted a leather tube about thirty inches long, Elijah realized they were standing in what had once likely been a studio.

“Do you miss it?” Elijah asked.

Buchanan passed the leather case over, his eyes revealing comprehension of the question. “I do. I should not have stopped, but the Academy is a fine institution, and it wanted guidance. I was never as talented as some, but I miss the painting. I do miss it.”

He let go of the case, and his lips quirked up. “I’ll keep your sentiments regarding the committee to myself, for now. That is a fine, fine portrait, Bernward.”

Elijah turned to follow Buchanan’s line of sight, only to be gut-punched by the painting hanging against the far wall.

Genevieve and the busy, laughing little boys, old Jock snoozing happily, and everything Elijah had ever wanted summarized in one painting. Even as his mind comprehended that the portrait was good—better than he’d known—his brain was scrambling to make sense of the painting in its present context.

“What is that doing here?”

“I agree,” Buchanan said, stepping closer to the painting. “If I’d commissioned this, I would never have let it out of my sight, but it arrived with a note from no less than His Grace the Duke of Moreland, with leave for the committee to consider it when deciding upon their nominations. Said his daughter, whose artistic sensibilities eclipse those of any academy member, required it of him. Even Fotheringale shut up for once. You apparently have a talent for rendering children.”

Or for rendering any setting that included Genevieve Windham, and yet the committee’s flattering reception of this one painting did not change anything—anything of consequence—one bit.

Though Elijah spared an internal sigh for Genevieve’s generosity of spirit. Maybe a return to the Harrison family seat would help ease that ache—and maybe not. “I’m off to Flint Hall, Buchanan. You’ll want to send that painting back to Kent with all due care.”

Elijah snatched up the case of drawings and departed. When he’d traveled halfway to Flint Hall and had to stop to rest his weary horse, it occurred to him to wonder what was in the case.

Some of his mother’s drawings? She was quite talented… and yet, the package was for his lordship. A gentleman did not open another gentleman’s mail.

Though Elijah’s drawing of Jenny and the children was in there, and Elijah was seized with an abrupt yearning to look upon that image. He wanted to indulge the impulse now, before he dealt with the drama of his arrival at Flint Hall, before Genevieve left the country for a journey that could go on for years, before anybody who knew him might observe his folly.

He appropriated the snug at a familiar posting inn, opened the case, and unrolled a thick sheaf of drawings. What they revealed had him cursing, laughing, and climbing back on his tired, muddy horse.

***

“So you’re really going?” Louisa kept the question light, because Jenny was in love, and people in love were prone to inconvenient histrionics, as were people in expectation of interesting events.

“Aunt Arabella has agreed, so yes.” Jenny held a boot in each hand, ordinary lace-up half boots, but they must have had some significance known only to her, because she held them as if they were… original poems penned by a beloved.

“And how long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know.” The boots went into a trunk, placed gently, like an infant’s baptismal gown might have been stowed away. “Have you seen my—?” Jenny worried a nail then retrieved an embroidered bag hanging inside the door of her wardrobe.

From her seat at Jenny’s escritoire, Louisa watched as the little bag got the same sentimental treatment. “What’s in there?”

“Elijah’s Christmas present to me. He left it on my pillow before he came downstairs on Christmas Eve. The embroidery is his mother’s, and it’s exquisite.”

Embroidery, no matter how beautiful, was tedious as the devil, and Jenny could create more fantastic stitchery even than what graced that bag. “He gave you the bag?”

Jenny nodded, her gaze on the bag where it lay on top of the other contents of the trunk. She might have been regarding the mortal remains of a beloved pet, based on her expression. “He gave me sketches, I’m sure of it. I’m saving them for when I’m in Italy, or Austria. Possibly France.”

Or maybe Bedlam. Louisa shoved to her feet and snatched the bag from the trunk. “You haven’t even opened your Christmas present, and yet you won’t leave the country without it. You, Sister, are in a state.”

Jenny said nothing, and that gave Louisa pause. The old Jenny, the Jenny who called everybody dearest and had to have a sketchbook in her hands, was never in a state, much less one she admitted openly.

This Jenny had a softness about her, and while she was given to leaving rooms abruptly, and sometimes looked as if she’d been crying, she was an easy person to love.

Eve’s brilliant ploy with Deene’s supposed Christmas gift had not worked, or not worked well enough, and Their Graces were watching these travel preparations with worry in their eyes.

Worry for Jenny, who’d never given anybody cause to worry.

Louisa opened the bag and peered inside. “These are not sketches.”

“They’re not?”

Before Jenny could grab the bag back, Louisa extracted a sheaf of letters. “Oh, good. Some are written in German, and I do enjoy German. This one’s Italian, and there are several in French. This must be… I didn’t know Elijah had a grasp of Russian.”

“He spent a year in St. Petersburg. Let me see those.”

Louisa handed over one, the first one in French, and watched while Jenny translated.

“Oh, that dear, dratted, man. That dear, dear…”

Rather than listen to Jenny prattle on, Louisa translated another of the French missives. “These are letters of introduction. Your dear, dratted man has written you letters of introduction all over the Continent. This one is written in French but addressed to some Polish count. This one is to some fellow on Sicily. Will I ever see you again?”

“There are ruins on Sicily. Greek, Roman, Norman… Beautiful ruins.”

What that had to do with anything mattered little compared to the ruins Louisa beheld in her sister’s eyes. “Was he
trying
to send you away?”

Jenny handed Louisa the letter, watching with a hungry gaze as Louisa tucked the epistles back into their traveling bag. “I didn’t ask Elijah for those letters, and I won’t use them.”

“Why in blazes not?” Blazes was not quite profanity. When a woman became responsible for small children, her vocabulary learned all manner of detours.

“Because he’ll never get into the Academy if he’s seen promoting the career of a woman in the arts. The Academy has been his goal and his dream for years, and he’s given up years of time among his family to pursue it. There’s unfortunate history between one of the committee members and Elijah’s mother, and it will obstruct Elijah’s path if he’s seen to further my artistic interests. I would not jeopardize Elijah’s happiness for anything.”

Elijah. Not Bernward, not his lordship, and certainly not Mr. Harrison. Perhaps Eve’s pretty, empty box hadn’t been entirely in vain.

Louisa pronounced sentence as gently as she could. “You love him. You’re in love with him.”

A young girl, a girl who’d never known real heartache, would have beamed hugely at this pronouncement and fluffed her hair or twitched her skirts. Jenny’s smile as she regarded her nearly full trunk was that of a woman, a woman who’d endured both life’s joys and its sorrows. “I love him.”