Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (10 page)

“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?”