Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (11 page)

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
.

“It’s from my sister. My youngest sister.” Beside Jenny, Elijah popped a strawberry into his mouth and chewed mechanically.

A sister? Jenny had the sense he was liberally blessed with same. “Are you concerned for her?”

“Sarah has never written to me before. She’s the youngest by three minutes, though our mother claims they were a memorable three minutes.”

Sitting right there beside her, so close Jenny could catch a hint of his scent, he’d gone away to some familial place in his mind.

“Open the letter, Elijah,” Jenny said, passing him another strawberry.

He cast her one glance—a gentleman did not read correspondence at table—then slit the epistle with an unused knife.

If this sister called Elijah home before Jenny had pried from him just how those pastels merited the term “brilliant,” she’d hunt Lady Sarah down and ensure that a lump of coal for Christmas would be the least of the young woman’s problems.

“She’s well,” Elijah said, “and uses a fine vocabulary for somebody who doesn’t yet put up her hair consistently.”

“A bookworm, possibly. Louisa was the same way. I learned many a term from her that impressed our elders.”

He peered at Jenny over his letter. “She and Ruth are both mad for books. I always know what to send them for their birthday and Christmas.”

Twin sisters, then, which was common enough in large families. Two more strawberries disappeared while Elijah finished reading his letter, and Jenny stifled the urge to pace.

She was not ready to have him snatched from her. She needed these days with him, artistically and… otherwise. All too soon Their Graces would return from Town, the children’s portraits would be completed, and Jenny would be heading off for Paris.

If she’d doubted her resolve on that goal before, she didn’t now.

Come fire, flood, or famine, as His Grace would say. Jenny was more determined on her destination than ever, and Elijah Harrison was part of the reason for her conviction.

“Sarah misses me.” He got up and crossed to the window, where bleak winter light did little to brighten the parlor.

Jenny glanced at the epistle long enough to see
“Greetings, dear and long lost brother…”
in the salutation.

Jenny had two long lost—forever lost—brothers, and would have given her right hand, the hand with which she painted, not to have it so. “You’ll see her at the holidays, won’t you?”

He remained facing away. “She can’t possibly miss me. She hardly knows me.”

Jenny rose and went to him, wanting to see what he saw out that cold window. “She
can
miss you. I barely recall my grandparents, but because most of my memories of them came from holiday gatherings, I do miss them.”

Missing loved ones at the holidays was always part of the season. How could he not know that?

“I left when Sarah was little more than a toddler. I used to read her stories, her on one knee, Ruth on the other.”

Jenny slipped her hand into his, because he seemed not simply gone away, but lost. “You’ll be with them at Christmas, won’t you?”

He let out a sigh of sufficient depth that the window fogged before him. “
After
Christmas, and then only if I’m made a member of the Academy.”

“They often don’t announce the results of their votes until the New Year, when the honors list comes out.” And what had membership in the Academy to do with sisters who missed him?

“Then I’ll wait until the vote is cast, but I will not go home until I can do so with sufficient standing that my father will have to admit he was wrong.”

Jenny had been raised with five brothers and four sisters, each sibling a living tribute to their parents’ legendary stubbornness. She recognized foolish pride when confronted with it, and recognized as well that to the person displaying it, it wasn’t foolishness and never would be.

“What was your father wrong about?”

Elijah glanced down at her, then at their joined hands. He kissed Jenny’s knuckles and gave her back her hand. “Very little, as it turns out. He told me I lacked the fortitude necessary to succeed as an artist, told me I was turning my back on my birthright out of laziness and self-indulgence, not because I had an artistic vocation. He told me I wasn’t prepared for what my artistic inclinations could cost me.”

“And you think he was right?” The hound stirred at the sharpness of Jenny’s tone, but Elijah smiled.

“He was spot on about much of it, but not all of it. I’ll admit that when I go home with an Academician’s status. I’ll admit I had no notion of the cost and effort involved in pursuing an artist’s life, that I was a spoiled lordling with no understanding of the greater world—provided my father rescinds his judgment of my character.”

So Jenny could blame this familial drama on honor, the worst of the crotchets male pride was prone to, and not just Elijah’s honor, but the marquess’s honor as well. She linked her arm through Elijah’s and led him around the table, lest they disturb old Jock at his slumbers.

“The regent sings your praises. Sir Thomas sings your praises. Surely you don’t need the Academy’s imprimatur to prove your father wrong?”

“The last thing I said as I tossed my brushes and spare shirts into a traveling bag was that I would come back as an Academician or not at all. I knew I had enough talent, and I was determined he should admit it.”

Jenny wanted to tell him he was an idiot. She wanted to tell him that young men rode off, full of themselves, their talent, and their invincible honor, and they came back in coffins. When they were dead, one couldn’t write them letters, couldn’t apologize, couldn’t explain what had driven one to sharp words and stupid taunts.

“Tell your sister you’ll see her at Christmas,” Jenny said. “Or shortly thereafter. She really does miss you, Elijah.”

Just as Jenny would miss him, even as she boarded her packet for Calais.

***

Elijah had a reputation for completing commissions quickly. He’d learned the necessity for speed early in his career, when his fees were modest and a gap in work meant a gap in coin.

Though in truth, he wasn’t all that quick. He was organized and disciplined, and work tended to get done when a man rose early and spent time in his studio rather than at the numerous distractions available in London Towne.

Then, too, he’d cultivated the social nap, using fashionable Society’s evening gatherings to catch up on his rest, fill his belly, and remind all and sundry that artistic talent was near to hand.

“My ability has gone begging today,” he said. “I can render the dog down to every wrinkle and hair, but the children are beyond me.”

Jenny glanced up at him from where she was building a house of cards with Kit. Wee William was astride old Jock, who dozed on the hearth rug at Elijah’s feet.

“Come down here, Mr. Harrison. Your perspective from that chair has to be awkward.”

She had a point, and she had a way with children, both on the page and on the thick carpet before the fire. Elijah gave up his seat and stretched out on his side on the floor. William dismounted from his perch on the dog and came careening into Elijah.

“Go for a ride!”

Elijah caught the boy with two hands on his chubby middle. “He is a solid fellow, is William.”

Jenny balanced cards in a carefully inverted V. “He’ll take after his parents and soon be as big as Kit.”

Elijah rolled to his back and lifted William straight up above him.

“Weeee! Ride!”

“Won’t Kit take after his parents too?”

“Kit is a foundling,” Jenny said, helping the older boy to make his own inverted V. “Sophie and Vim took him into their household when he was less than a year old.” She took the card from Kit’s little mitts, where it would soon be bent beyond use. “Like this, my man. Gently and slowly.”

When, all odds to the contrary, Kit managed to lean the two cards against each other, Jenny made a great fuss over her amazing, exceptional, clever nephew.

Elijah blew against the top of William’s head, making a rude sound and feeling not in the least amazing, exceptional, or clever. He couldn’t sketch worth a damn today because of his blasted sister’s note, a bit of familial sand thrown into the gears of a morning that ought to be taken up with professional concerns… and with Genevieve Windham.

“You caught something of William’s solidness in your pastels,” Elijah said, lifting the gigging child up again. “You conveyed that he’s a healthy, substantial young fellow.”

“Because I’ve carried him around on my hip, and he is substantial.” Jenny carefully, carefully placed a card crosswise over the two supports she and her amazing nephew had constructed.

“I-unt-up!”

Elijah lifted William straight up, realizing he’d forgotten this about youngsters. They were insistent and tenacious in their play, persevering at their fun when sense, strength, and adults had long since had enough.

“William is training me, like a bear at the circus.”

“William is enjoying himself,” Jenny countered. She had constructed another V, and was trying to show Kit how two cards had to balance perfectly together to become stable.

“You caught that too,” Elijah said. “The fixity of purpose common to the young at their play.” Whereas he had focused on rendering an accurate impression of little William’s curls and Kit’s small fingers.

“You have the same fixity of purpose,” Jenny said. “Careful, Kit-my-love.”

She sat, serene and graceful, with her legs tucked under her, and yet Elijah knew that Genevieve Windham’s determination likely eclipsed that of all the males in the room combined, including the hound. He rolled to his side, the better to behold his stubborn lady, and settled William astride his ribs.

“You have it too, Genevieve. Your determination is one of your defining accomplishments.”

She peered at the card in her hand, maybe wondering if he meant his words as a compliment, which he did. “I come by it honestly. My parents are strong willed.”

“Ride!” William bounced hard on Elijah’s ribs to emphasis the command, while Jenny smiled at her younger nephew.

“Vim takes them both up frequently, though lately it has been too cold. I looked at your pastels, you know.”

Elijah wrestled himself free of his rider and came to a sitting position, legs crossed, William ensconced on his boots. “And will you render a critique?”

To ask her was an odd relief. She would not be brutal for the fun of it, as old Antoine could be in the presence of dilettantes, but neither would she be timid.

“Something in you does not want to see the essential nature of your subject when you look at these children, Elijah. With your other portraits, there’s a compassion about what you render. You see the best in people. A peer might be elderly, too fond of his drink, portly, and forgetful, but you capture the humor in him, the fondness he has for his hounds or grandbabies.”

She had studied his work, and that pleased him. “I have bills, the same as everybody else. The flattery inherent in the grand style is commercially sensible, for all the
Discourses
would have it artistically imperative too.”

William grabbed for a card and captured the knave of hearts. Elijah took it from him and tried to balance it on the child’s crown. The card came sliding down over William’s nose, which resulted in much squealing and bouncing about.

“Sarah liked this game, though she got so she could hold quite still. Ruth never had the patience for it.”

Jenny sent him a look, a look that included but was not limited to pity. “You miss them too, Elijah.”

The second time, William purposely bounced on his little bottom to make the card slide off his head. “Maybe some.”

Jenny passed Kit a card, then another, and sat back as the boy tried to balance them against each other. “How long has it been since you’ve been home, Elijah?”

“A while.” He tousled Kit’s curls, then William’s. “What do you think the essential nature of these subjects is, Genevieve, the thing I wasn’t able to capture in my sketches?”

“How long is a while?”

The knave went sliding for a third time, and William was just as delighted. Elijah wrapped his arms around the small, ecstatic boy and kissed his ear. “Nine years and eight months since I’ve been home. My mother sees to it I run into my siblings occasionally, as if by chance. I call on her when we’re both in Town. My father and I meet at his club—it’s all very cordial.”

Nine years, eight months, and eleven days, but who was counting?

“You’ll go home soon,” Jenny said. “I’ll go to Paris, and you’ll go home to see your family.”

Her tone held an ominous sense of resolution, and while Elijah didn’t want to think of sweet, quiet Sarah and the more boisterous Ruth missing him, the notion of Jenny removing to Paris made him positively ill.

“Go!” William kicked out this time as he bounced, and the little house of cards went sailing in all directions. Elijah braced himself for a burst of outrage from Kit, but the boy clapped his hands.

“Let’s do it again,” Kit said. “This time I can be a wolf who blows the house down!”

***

Elijah Harrison could see the truth in others. He could find something attractive in a gouty old squire, a schoolgirl who hadn’t yet put up her hair, or a princess expected to one day effectively rule a nation when she’d never seen peace between her own parents.

Elijah had no idea, not the first inkling, how attractive he was, lounging on the rug with William, scratching the ear of an old hound, or giving Jenny a crooked smile and asking for a critique.

She would show this attractiveness to him, just as he had shown her how much art she was leaving in the shadows of her sketches.

“You were expecting me,” she said as he stepped back to allow her into his sitting room.

“The way Wellington expected the Corsican at Waterloo.” He closed the door behind her, locked it, then leaned back against the door. “That was rude. I apologize. I am out of sorts.”

“You are tired.” So she would sketch him tired, but she would not, not even for the sake of his rest, give up her hour. “Let’s begin then, shall we?”

He scrubbed a hand over his face then glanced around the room, as if looking for his wayward manners. “I’m imbibing. Would you care to join me?”