Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

rejection was a lovely consolation that had to do with chivalry and respect.

“So I’m to content myself by painting with you instead?”

“You want to go to Paris. Painting with me seems a good use of your time while you’re making arrangements for your travel.”

His words reminded her that she still hadn’t read the packet schedules, or started filling those trunks. “Come sit.”

He obliged, but he would not look at her. Instead, he interrogated the last bites of ham. “When will you know?”

He would not write letters of introduction for her, but he’d provide her as much artistic instruction as he could before her departure. Jenny was trying to decide whether to be pleased or disappointed when his question registered.

“When will I know what?”

He looked around, as if her brothers and brothers-in-law might have been hiding in the kitchen’s deep shadows. “Know if you are with child.”

For an instant, she thought she’d heard hope in his voice, but then common sense asserted itself. Hope and anxiety were close relations—she’d heard nothing more romantic than an unmarried, honorable man’s worry.

The next instant was spent grieving that she did not carry his child and would not ever have with him the domestic riches the rest of her family enjoyed in such abundance.

In the very next instant after that, she vowed it was time and past she made those travel arrangements he’d alluded to.

“I’m sorry, Elijah. I should have told you when I laid eyes on you several days ago. You have no need to worry about impending fatherhood. Finish the ham.”

His expression gave away nothing. Not relief, not disappointment, not irritation. Nothing.

“Was this why you came back to Kent, Elijah? Because you were concerned about a child and you did not trust me?”

His lips quirked up. “I trust you, Genevieve. I came out to Kent to accept a ducal commission, and now it has turned into a double commission with the possibility of an entire gallery of juvenile portraits to follow. I do not regret my decision, but it’s late. Let me escort you to your room.”

She wanted to argue, but he hadn’t given her anything to argue about. Her entire family would descend tomorrow, and even the thought of their noise and activity was wearying.

Elijah took the tray to the counter. Jenny rinsed out his mug and let him hold the candle as they walked through the house.

“You don’t need to see me to my room, Elijah. I’ve been sleeping in the same place for nearly a decade, and I know where it is.”

He said nothing, but rather, winged his arm at her. Jenny wanted to slap him on the elbow. She wrapped her hand around his sleeve instead and let him lead her through the chilly house.

“You’ll miss your room when you’re in Paris.” His tone was regretful rather than taunting, and he was right. She would miss her room.

Even her room.

“I expect Timothy will have abandoned me again tonight,” Jenny said. She’d miss Timothy too.

“He does keep one’s feet warm. This is your room?”

She dropped his arm. “My very own. Good night, then. You’re going back to the studio?”

“Perhaps. Sleep well, my lady.”

“You too.”

When she should have turned and slipped into her room, Jenny instead indulged in a spot of folly—necessary folly. She wrapped her arms around Elijah’s waist and held on. For a moment, he held still. Then, he set the candle down on the side table and returned her embrace.

He gave her no words, but he did hold her until she stepped back, kissed him on the mouth, and withdrew into her room. She stood on her side of the closed door, listening to his footsteps fade, not in the direction of his room but back toward the studio.

And, of course, there was no sign of Timothy anywhere in Jenny’s room.

“Elijah Harrison is the only person who takes my art as seriously as I do,” she announced to the room she would miss.

Jenny lay awake for some time, wondering why she wished it were not so, and trying to get her feet warm.

Thirteen

Genevieve Windham was an unscrupulous, lovely, audacious fiend who also happened to be a genius with paint. Elijah leaned closer to her and tried not to inhale jasmine and folly through his nose.

He gestured at her canvas, toward the beginnings of a fire in the hearth. “How did you do this?”

“You put yours closer to the corner of the canvas, where it won’t be structural,” Jenny said. “I wanted mine to anchor the illumination in Her Grace’s expression as she listens to her husband’s voice.”

“Your father reads Shakespeare very well.”

She stepped back from the paintings just as Elijah’s hand—without any communication with his common sense—came up as if to touch her hair.

“I’m sure Papa has Her Grace’s favorite sonnets memorized by now, just as I’m sure Her Grace will send a footman up any moment to fetch me. The hordes will start arriving ere long.”

“Then let her send a footman, Genevieve. Let her be the one to think, ‘Jenny certainly is intent on her painting.’”

She studied the beginning of her portrait, which was like no work Elijah had ever begun. Her use of color vaulted over the rules—rules for the oil medium she’d likely never been taught—to achieve results that stunned, intrigued, and pleased.

“If Her Grace were going to get the message that I’m intent on my painting—if anybody in this family yet living were—they might have gotten it when I was sixteen. I’ve managed to knot my smock…”

She turned around, presenting Elijah with temptation in the form of her exposed nape. He knew how that skin tasted, knew the warmth and sweetness of it against his tongue.

He stepped closer. “Are you doing this on purpose, Genevieve?”

She sent him a cross look over her shoulder. “Yes. I typically knot up all my smocks so I’m held prisoner in them until a passing stranger rescues me.”

She had made a knot, probably because she’d been too proud to ask him to tie her a simple bow. He had to bend down to study it. “Hold still.” The thing was stubborn, so stubborn that when Elijah gave it a stout yank, Jenny stumbled back against him.

“Oh, damn.” He used his nose first, drew it along the top of her collar where warmth and fragrance threatened to annihilate his balance. “Your painting is a wonder.”

So was her hair, so soft against his cheek. So was the place beneath her ear, where a man was doomed to kiss her. So was—

A tap sounded on the door. Had it been the deferential scratching of a servant, Elijah might have missed it, but it was a stout tap, more of a loud knock.

“It’s stuck,” he said, stepping back. “Perhaps it will have to be cut off.”

Cut off, indeed.

She gave him a curious look and went to the door. The squealing when she opened it was deafening.

“Maggie! Oh, my dearest, dearest Mags! I’ll get paint all over you. I’m so glad to see you!”

And at the same time: “Jenny! Oh, you’re painting. Of course you are. Hang the paint and tell me everything. Let me see you. Oh, I’ve missed you so!”

Elijah had been forgotten, relegated to such insignificance he might as well have never existed, and yet he