Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

Explore to your heart’s content.”

A pulse beat at the base of his throat. She touched two fingers to it. “It’s late, you don’t owe me—”

He kissed her, a gentle, admonitory kiss, like Jock’s cautionary growl.

She took his meaning: no more trying to coax enthusiasm from Elijah for her company, no more trying to inspire him to reassurances that he felt something special for her. He would permit her curiosity and nothing more.

The perishing, damned man was going to model kisses for her.

Jenny rose up over him, pushed his dressing gown off his shoulders, shrugged out of her dressing gown, and framed his face between her hands. If it was curiosity he was prepared to indulge, then curiosity she would give him.

Eight

As a boy, Elijah had argued vociferously with his father that Christmas ought not to fall in the dead of winter. How was a fellow supposed to be good at the very time of year when keeping mud out of the house was an impossibility? How was he to avoid snitching a treat or two in that season when the kitchen was the only consistently warm room in the entire, cavernous Flint family seat?

How was a young man to avoid breaking the occasional vase when the weather was too cold to let off high spirits in the out of doors, and his younger brothers must plague him without ceasing and challenge him to a cricket match against their sisters in the portrait gallery?

As heat ignited in Genevieve Windham’s eyes, Elijah felt the same sense of consternation, of temptation and reward colluding to foil a man’s good intentions.

The devil was not some wrinkly old fellow savoring of brimstone and perdition. Eternal damnation came in a lavishly embroidered nightgown, had warm hands, and kissed like…

His mind went blank as Jenny brushed her mouth over his again. She’d trapped him with those warm hands, cradled his jaw in a grip both gentle and unbreakable. Her kisses were like brushstrokes, creating the contours and shadows of a yearning not entirely sexual.

Though sexual enough. Drink hadn’t dulled Elijah’s base urges one bit, but then, he’d barely opened the bottle when Jenny had come wafting into his room. Images of genies and odalisques went winging through his brain as Jenny took a kissing-tour of his features.

“I like your nose, Elijah. Were you teased about it as a boy?”

She teased him, kissed the indelicate feature that rendered him drunk on the scent of jasmine, then sat back as if to study her brushwork.

“I like your eyes too.” She ran her tongue over his eyebrows, and Elijah groaned. He planted his hands on either side of her waist as if to steady himself, lost any semblance of balance as a result, and went on the offensive, lest the blighted woman part him from his reason.

He lashed his arms around her and covered her mouth with his own. She tasted of whisky and sin, of curiosity and all that was irresistible in a beautiful female late at night behind a locked door.

He’d checked that lock twice, and as Jenny’s fingers tangled in his hair, Elijah was glad he had.

Dangerous, stupid thought. A bacon-brained enough scheme that Elijah broke off the kiss and rested his forehead on Jenny’s heaving chest. “We have to stop, Genevieve. Did your brothers tell you to apply perfume to your breasts?”

He didn’t realize the extent of his non sequitur until he beheld the confusion in her eyes.

“They did not.”

“Your scent is stronger here.” He nuzzled her throat. “Jasmine and insanity.” A lovely combination. Her pulse raced at the base of her throat, matching the throbbing behind his falls.

“Genevieve.” He swallowed and tried again. “Your nightgown sports a number of bows, my dear.”

She smoothed her hands back through his hair, a caress that rippled over his skull, down his spine, and went right, straight to his bollocks. “Elijah, what—?”

He untied the first bow with his teeth, mostly in the hope that, because teeth were not as dexterous as fingers, some sanity might return between bows number one and six.

“Never, ever put the bows on your nightgown or your chemise in the front,” he warned as he undid bows two and three in a similar fashion. “A man can take only so much temptation.”

He glanced up at her, hoping for a cooling of the passion in her eyes.

God help them both, she was smiling a smug smile. Elijah stopped and canvassed his self-restraint. What she wanted, whether she knew it or not, was to be driven beyond the bounds of a self- discipline so ingrained she mistook it for her soul.

Obliging her would kill him, leave him to expire in a ditch of guilt, misery, regret, and plain old heartache.

These thoughts passed through his mind in the time it took Jenny to caress his hair again. “Elijah?”

He undid bows number four and five, exposing the soft swell of luscious, jasmine-fragrant breasts. “Undo your hair, Genevieve. Undo it completely.”

She reached up, making her breasts shift under the gossamer of her nightgown. Were he in his right mind, Elijah would probably have recognized the exact type of silk she’d used from the way it reflected and absorbed light. In his present condition, he had access to only small increments of vocabulary and reason.

Soft, sweet, hot, luscious. Dangerous.

He had full complements of determination, though. In that moment, he had more determination than Genevieve Windham could conceive of, because one more thought managed to materialize in his mind as she shook out the golden glory of her hair.

Genevieve Windham had experimented boldly with her drawing master nearly ten years ago. For years, she’d watched and waited, until she’d chosen Elijah for her next venture into self-exploration and intimate pleasures.

What’s-his-name, the scapegrace itinerant Don Juan of the paint brush, had disappointed Genevieve Windham, badly. She’d even given the blighter a second chance, and he’d not improved his marks.

Elijah was not going to disappoint her. Though it might cost him his sanity and his soul, he would not suffer his Genevieve to be disappointed again.

* * *

“Percival Windham, what are you up to?”

His Grace’s pen paused at the duchess’s tone of voice. When he’d been a younger husband, that Wrath of the Goddess inflection had been enough to freeze his blood—or heat it. Coupled with Her Grace’s posture—spine straight, arms crossed, fire flashing in her green eyes—that tone still made a prudent husband pay close attention.

He sat back but did not put the pen down. “In what regard, my love?”

She advanced across their private sitting room, nightgown and robe swishing, and appropriated the chair on the other side of his desk. “Do not think to dissemble, sir. I had tea with Lady Carruthers and Lady Hornby.”

Percival twirled the quill pen, feeling both irritated and proud. The irritation was at having been found out so quickly; the pride was because Esther would always be able to unravel his small stratagems.

“And how are their ladyships?”

“They are leaving for the country tomorrow, and taking their spouses and offspring with them. Neither Hornby nor Carruthers will be underfoot to obstruct any of your bills in committee, contrary to all of your grumbling for the past week or more.”

A duke didn’t grumble, but a husband looking for excuses to bide in Town might.

“I suppose they’re leaving the obstructing to Flint and Matheson, then.”

“Flint has been at his family seat for more than a month. He’s popped up to Town only to indulge her ladyship’s holiday shopping.”

“And is your holiday shopping complete, my love? My own is not.”

Some of Esther’s ire dimmed. She excelled at the quick rage, at least in private, but she also excelled at swift