Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

Denby had been a selfish, inept boy, just as Jenny had been a selfish, inept girl, while Elijah was… a man, a skilled, generous, passionate, caring, talented…

Jenny very much feared that intimacies with Elijah Harrison were going to have consequences tragic for her, though she couldn’t quite fathom how. She could still feel him, feel the pleasurable fullness of him inside her body, and suspected she’d feel him in her heart for far longer than was prudent.

“Elijah?” She could not say these things to him, and yet she wanted to say something.

“Love?”

The sensation of him using her braid like a paintbrush on her back was peculiar and soothing. He gathered her closer, and she kissed him, kissed him with all the regret and longing in her, with all the sorrow and loss too.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, because the missing had already started. “I will miss you so very much.”

His hands went still on her back, and Jenny’s heart stopped beating.

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and studied her, guardedness replacing the tenderness in his eyes. “You said you wanted it to be me, Genevieve.”

“I did, and it was, and I thank you for that.” One did not thank a man for indulging one’s passions. Jenny realized that as she watched the guardedness cool yet more.

“You’re pleased then, with this night’s work?”

Work? He’d emphasized the word slightly, or maybe Jenny had heard emphasis where none had been intended.

“I am—I was. I’m not now.” Their bodies were still joined—she was more or less lying on him—and yet, something was off, something was terribly, terribly off, and she was desperate to right it.

He closed his eyes, heaving up a sigh that Jenny felt bodily. “Why are you going to Paris?”

To study art. That was what she was supposed to say to him. Jenny folded down against his chest, relieved beyond measure when his arms came around her.

“I cannot bear…” She tried to stuff the words back into her mind, back so far under propriety and familial regard even she didn’t have to acknowledge them. “I can no longer tolerate the company of my family. They don’t know me, you see, and yet they love me.”

This was as honest as she knew how to be, and yet, the answer didn’t feel complete.

His hand moved on her back, no braid-paintbrush in his fingers, just his hand, slow and warm. “They know you. Our families know us even when we wander off for years, Genevieve.”

He sounded so sad and faraway, and yet he was holding her close too.

“My family thinks I’m good, and when I see them gather together every Christmas, I’m reminded that I’m not good at all. I don’t want the things I should want, and I do want things I shouldn’t—selfish things.” The feel of him inside her was diminishing, and Jenny gave up any notion that he’d indulge her in yet more passion. The pain of that loss helped dilute the pain of the topic she’d raised.

“My sentiments regarding you lie near your family’s, Genevieve, and under most circumstances, I am not accounted a foolish man. You are a good woman. Headstrong, passionate, and misguided, but good.”

Her brothers called her pigheaded, her sisters made her the subject of despairing looks, and her parents smiled and expected her to grow old in their keeping, and yet, they were all convinced of her goodness too.

Of them all, she could be honest only with Elijah.

“I hate them sometimes, with their cozy glances and knowing smiles. My sisters and brothers never used to nap, and now it has become something of a family institution. Mama and Papa are in some ways the worst. The grandchildren—”

Elijah kissed her temple, a small gesture full of encouragement.

“Their Graces see their own children through the grandchildren. Westhaven is father to the next heir, St. Just dotes on his daughters, Valentine dedicates sonatas to his, while I… I want to paint. I have to paint and sketch.”

“Has nobody offered for you, Genevieve? A woman can paint and sketch while married and raising children. My mother certainly did.”

His question was reasonable. She hated that his question was reasonable, and yet she could never hate him.

“I’ve had a few offers, but they all put me in mind of—”

Two fingers pressed themselves to her lips. “Don’t say his name.”

Elijah was right. That name did not belong in this bed. “Those men wanted a Windham daughter, a lady, a pretty, sweet, proper, well-dowered, biddable—I’m getting angry just thinking about it. If I’d told any one of my suitors I’d sneaked into drawing classes, if I’d told them I went to the workhouses to sketch the children, if I’d told them I still want to sketch those children, they would run shrieking in horror.”

Elijah was silent for a time, his hands moving more slowly. “Don’t go to the workhouses alone, Genevieve. Promise me that.”

His tone was uncompromising, though his touch remained gentle. How Jenny wished she’d gone to those bleak, diseased, miserable places alone. “I promise. One need not frequent such locations to see poverty in London, and besides, I’ll be in Paris.”

Where there would be no indulgent, blissfully married, surviving siblings, but where—according to Elijah—the stench was miserable. How could a woman enjoy her croissant and coffee on a street corner that stank?

“Where in Paris, Genevieve?”

The same uncompromising note underlay his question, and entwined with him bodily, Jenny did not even consider dissembling. “I don’t know exactly. I was hoping you might have some suggestions.”

“Of where to live?”

Something else lurked in his question, but Jenny had nobody else to ask.

“That, and other things. Antoine said his friends are all dead or no longer teaching. I’m sure there are galleries and shops—”

She went still, very much aware that Elijah had left off stroking her back.

“Genevieve, Antoine has been teaching in London since my father came down from university. He knows everybody with artistic aspirations here, on the Continent, and probably in darkest Africa. If he did not offer to aid you in establishing yourself in Paris, then it’s because he chooses not to. Very likely his patrons and familiars would be offended to learn of it if he did, to say nothing of what your parents could do to him.”

Gone was the tender lover, and in his place was a fierce, frustrated stranger. One who spoke aloud the conclusions Jenny had tried to spare herself.

“You could help me.”

The words cost her, particularly when she could feel something shift in Elijah’s body. Beneath her, he was no longer a warm, relaxed, naked man, he was Satan Summoning His Legions, full of ire and power though he had not moved.

“I would be more comfortable with that observation, Genevieve, had you made it fully clothed and somewhere other than my bed.” His body might have been that of a ferocious, dark prince; his tone was colder than the ninth circle of hell.

“You think I’d—” Offer sexual favors in exchange for his connections and knowledge of the Paris art world. The thinking part of Jenny, the part that had come up with Paris as a solution in the first place, saw how he might reach such a conclusion.

He lifted her away from his body and arranged her against his side. “I do not think that. I would not think that, and I shall not think that of you, particularly if you desist in your importuning. Many fashionable women have seen Paris since the Corsican’s defeat. I’m sure you’ve asked them what they know.”

Jenny was leaving in the morning, and that inspired boldness sufficient to overcome her dread of his disapproval.

“You know more than they do, more than probably anybody but Antoine knows. The rumors are you were in Paris even during the war.”

He remained silent, and something bright and brave in Jenny’s heart sank. “Shall I leave, Elijah?”