Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

For a man seeking full Academician status, you’ve chosen a deuced inconvenient time to absent yourself from Town. Buchannon dreads the admission of Pritchett and Hamlin, but Fotheringale is adamant that their talent exceeds yours. In my opinion, Fotheringale’s position presages the aerial perambulations of pigs. It is nonetheless true you have no juvenile portraits to your name.

Can one hope you’re rectifying that oversight in the hinterlands of Kent?

If not, my only hope for seeing you join the Academy would be to reveal Pritchett and Hamlin to be women in disguise. If there’s one thing Old Foggy despises more than your portraits, it’s the idea of women contributing anything of substance to the world of art.

I’m having the committee to dinner this Saturday, and you must tear yourself away from the charms of country life to join us—hopefully with a juvenile portrait or two in hand.

West

The journey to London would take much of the day, but would allow Elijah to meet with his man of business and show the flag before the nominating committee. Fotheringale was stubborn, but not without artistic sensibilities. Some charm, some diplomacy, some…

Elijah paused in the midst of sorting his brushes as a wretchedly inconvenient thought popped into his head. Fotheringale would want assurances that Elijah could not countenance the admission of women to the Academy, not as associates, not as RAs.

The old dog, Jock, still sprawled before the studio hearth, let out a slow, hissing fart. A gloriously foul stench wafted up.

“My sentiments exactly, though what will Lady Jenny care? She’ll be in Paris, where she’ll be feted and flirted with.”

Where her gender would not hold back her art, and conversely.

Resenting the French was never difficult for an Englishman. Sitting on the hearthstones, a half-dozen brushes in his hands and a flatulent dog for company, Elijah resented the French, Mortimer Fotheringale, and… his life.

“I was an idiot,” he informed the dog. “Everybody is an idiot when they’re young. My father was an idiot too, but he’s not the one begging at the Academy’s door just so he can put in an appearance at the family seat.”

Which did not explain why, ten years later, Elijah was still an idiot.

He banked the fire and evicted the dog, lest a foul miasma render the studio uninhabitable by morning. Tomorrow might be Lady Jenny’s last day at Sidling, which was a sufficiently dolorous thought that it drove Elijah through the darkened house and up to his rooms.

When he beheld Jenny Windham asleep in his bed, he revised his status from idiot to lunatic.

Ten

“Genevieve Windham, get out of my bed.”

In keeping with his new status as lunatic, Elijah had whispered those words, not shouted them. The lady was asleep, probably worn out from chasing Kesmore’s daughters, helping them build a snow fort, and bellowing instructions to them for how to best thwart their father’s and Elijah’s efforts to steal the precious bag of carrots that had been declared the afternoon’s prize.

The ladies had soundly trounced the gentlemen. Kesmore’s poor aim was in part to blame—at least half the time his snowballs had pelted Elijah instead of the opposing team, and much merriment had ensued as a result.

Elijah brushed a strand of golden hair from Jenny’s cheek. “I had fun today.”

He’d also ended up with a sorry case of holiday heartache, that particular brand of homesickness that afflicted him when in company with happy families this time of year.

Jenny’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re here.” The sleep faded from her gaze as a smile rose in its place.

“And you, my lady, are leaving.” When had he taken a seat at her hip?

The smile ebbed, though she made no move to obey him. “I am leaving. Louisa told me Their Graces left Town today and will likely be by to collect me tomorrow.”

She rolled away from him, which meant Elijah could see she wore nothing—not her frothy nightgown, not a robe, nothing—beneath the covers.

He shook off a fascination with her bare nape and focused on her words. “Your parents’ arrival means you must help yourself to my bed?”

Her parents’ arrival meant he would never see her like this again. The artistic grief of that reality was eclipsed only by the sexual frustration of it. She said nothing for a moment, then rolled back to face him. Her hair was in a thick braid, one he could wrap around his wrist several times.

If he were fool enough to touch her now that she’d awakened.

“Our paths are not likely to cross again, Elijah. Not unless you travel to Paris, or I come back here to visit family.”

Elijah turned his back on her and pulled off a boot. “I have had a bellyful of Paris. It stinks, and the French are mean, though in fairness to them, they’re as mean to each other as they are to the rest of the world, and I miss —”

The French were not mean—practical was not at all the same thing as mean—and Elijah’s mother had been born in France. Elijah was grousing because he missed his brothers and sisters. He missed Flint Hall. He missed his parents, and he hated Christmas more each year as a result.

“What do you miss, Elijah?”

He yanked off the second boot and draped his stockings over the tops. In some regard, this casual disrobing was more personal than all the kissing and petting he’d indulged in with Jenny previously.

“I am missing my wits, if what I’m contemplating is any indication.”

The covers rustled, and the bed bounced beneath him. “I want it to be you, Elijah.”

He knew exactly what she meant and nearly strangled himself getting his cravat off as a result. “No, you do not. You do not want it to be anybody. Can’t you save yourself for your art?” His favorite waistcoat went sailing across the room to land in a rumpled heap near his easel.

“Now you are being mean.” She’d trotted out her Aunt Jenny voice, the same tone she might have used to convey disappointment in one of her nephews.

“I do apologize.” Elijah got two buttons undone before wrenching his shirt over his head and tossing it toward the nearest chair—and missing. “I am not in the habit of finding naked women in my bed, particularly not women who regard a second deflowering as an item to attend to before taking ship.”

One cannot be deflowered a second time. He knew she was thinking those very words even when he could not see her. He could smell her, smell jasmine and soap and a hint of peppermint tooth powder.

“You weren’t like this last night.”

Only his breeches remained on his person as evidence that he possessed a shred of honor or sense.

“Last night, I set limits, if you’ll recall. I indulged your whims and dealt with, with—” He’d brought himself off. How did one discuss vulgar realities with a near virgin who happened to be naked in one’s bed?

“You denied yourself.”

Elijah felt a hand stroke over his shoulders. Jenny’s caress was gentle and platonic, and yet, he felt it directly behind his falls.

“I expect you deny yourself often, Elijah, and think little of it, but must you deny me?”

Curses started piling up in his head. How was a man to know what honor required when a naked woman—a lonely, innocent, determined naked woman—turned the thumbscrews of guilt so easily?

“Do you want more pleasure, Genevieve?” He turned on the bed to face her, hoping he might placate his guilt and her determination with more half measures. “You can bring such pleasure to yourself, you know. There’s no reason a woman—”

The rest of his homily on female self-gratification flew from his head. Jenny reclined against the headboard, the sheet draped across her lap. Her braid fell over one pale shoulder and her breasts…

The artist in him noted that her left breast was ever so slightly lower and boasted a bit more fullness than