“Compassion is not pity, woman. I find it puzzling that a lady who’s about to turn her back on all she’s known—family, friends, and familiars—exhorts me so relentlessly to go home.”
The paintings were coming along nicely, which Jenny suspected was symptomatic of her first brush with channeling one kind of frustration into another kind of creativity. She would likely paint masterpieces in Paris as a result of the same frustration.
Though in Paris, a woman could take a lover. The notion was incomprehensible—a procession of Denbys and glorified flirts who would only leave her feeling lonelier.
“We are not going to marry, Elijah. My family stopped even pretending to chaperone us days ago, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“I noticed, though I drew a different conclusion entirely.” He took her hand, and she not only allowed it, she reveled in it. His touch was never presuming, but neither was it hesitant. “You will face challenges in Paris, Genevieve. When things go well, you’ll tell yourself that’s reason to stay longer. When things go poorly, you’ll tell yourself you can never leave in disgrace, and you’ll use even the setbacks and criticisms as justification for staying far from home.”
He spoke from experience, and she hurt for him. Hurt for the very young man who’d taken on an unlikely profession and made himself successful at it.
“I am not you, Elijah. I have nothing to prove. I want only to paint and to be taken seriously. My brother Victor died—”
Jenny blinked, the lump in her throat turning painful and sharp without warning.
Elijah drew her close, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and kissed her cheek again. “Let’s not argue. We have a few days left, and then we’ll part. What did you think of the green I added to the curtains, hmm? Did it pick up on the green in Her Grace’s eyes? I can tone it down, but I think I like it.”
Jenny fell asleep, cradled against his body. When she woke up, she was in her own bed, alone but for the cat curled up at her feet.
The cat whom she’d also miss when she went to Paris.
“I’ve come to let you know that your portrait is all but finished.”
Elijah had much more he wanted to say to Moreland, but the old fellow was a whirlwind, taking a batch of grandchildren out for a sleigh ride, escorting his duchess on various calls, and then disappearing into this very study to wreak God knew what mischief-by-correspondence with his cronies in the Lords.
The stack of letters Elijah had sent in response to his siblings’ pleadings was dwarfed by the volume of Moreland’s epistles, and each was written in the duke’s own hand.
His Grace sat back but didn’t rise from the monstrosity of a desk at which he was ensconced. Mistletoe hung above the desk, only a few berries remaining among the leaves.
“Good work, Bernward. You’ll stay long enough to see all and sundry admiring your handiwork, though. Her Grace delights in the Christmas open house, and I won’t see her deprived of a chance to show you off.”
Elijah turned his back on the duke, which was rude, but necessary if civilities were to be observed and His Grace’s Christmas decorations admired. “Her Grace would do better to show off Lady Jenny’s talents, my lord.”
A chair scraped back. “Jenny enjoys her dabbling, but I was rather hoping she might enjoy your company more. Was I mistaken?”
Behind the genial bonhomie of a doting father and relaxed host, Elijah heard a thread of ducal steel.
A cloved orange was beginning to turn brown in the middle of a wreath on the back of the study door. “We enjoy each other’s company, Your Grace, but you have to know your daughter is not content.”
Moreland came around the desk to stand beside Elijah at the window. “You’re not going to ask my permission to court her, are you?”
The honesty was unexpected, also a relief, like the cold radiating from the window provided relief from the fire’s cozy blast. “She would not welcome my suit. You underestimate your daughter’s devotion to her art.”
The duke snorted. “You’ve spent what, a couple of weeks with her, and you presume to tell me her priorities? I’ve known that girl since she first drew breath, Bernward. She’s no better at hiding her discontent from me than is her mother. The holidays are hard on them both is the trouble. Come calling when spring is nigh, and you’ll be well received. Both ladies are preoccupied now, with all the family underfoot and entertaining to be done.”
His Grace’s voice had dropped with that observation, revealing sadness and possibly bewilderment. The latter made him less a duke and more like a man who had many children to love but only a father’s resources with which to solve their problems.
“I expect to leave on Christmas Day at the latest, Your Grace. It’s time I went home to Flint Hall.” Outside, in the sprawling back gardens, a snowball fight was in progress. One was probably under way at Flint Hall as well.
“Your mother will be pleased to see you.”
His Grace had the most arrestingly blue eyes Elijah had ever beheld, also the most shrewd. “My father will not be glad to see me?”
“Oh, of course, though Flint will likely refer to it as relief rather than sheer joy—if he refers to it at all. You took Jenny out to the family plot the other day.”
Moreland was reputed to leap about like a March hare in his conversation, but Elijah grasped that the duke did little without premeditation—witness the impact of a complete verbal ambush on Elijah’s wits. “Lady Jenny and I went for a walk. I believe we were in view of the house for most of it.”
Though not when they’d come to the graveyard and Jenny had wept silent tears against Elijah’s chest.
“Her Grace and I remark the occasion of Victor’s passing with a visit to his grave, and we do as much for Bartholomew, my parents, and late brothers too. You mustn’t allow Jenny to feel obligated to make the same effort.”
The footprints Elijah had seen in the snow made more sense. Not servants, not even a duke and duchess, but rather, two parents whose heartache would never entirely abate where two of their sons were concerned.
“I sought to get her away from the paint fumes, Your Grace.” A lame answer, but the older man merely regarded the melee beyond the window, in which the women and children were administering a sound drubbing to the gentlemen.
“Jenny is lonely, Bernward. With all her family around her, she is yet lonely. To the extent your painting afforded her a distraction, you have my thanks.”
For a moment, Elijah considered the possibility that he’d been commissioned to paint the duke and duchess solely to distract Lady Jenny as the holiday approached and the Windham horde descended.
Not even Moreland could be that calculating, could he?
“You’re in correspondence with my father, Your Grace.”
“I am. He and I do not see eye to eye on the Catholic question. I am a staunch Tory but cannot find much threat in allowing Catholics to vote when so few of them hold land or wealth adequate to qualify them for the privilege. Moreover, the entire debate has gone on too long and taken up far too many resources, and Wellington both agrees with me and has a grasp of Irish politics that eludes many an English lord. Your father’s views are to the contrary.”
And for ten years, Elijah had been allowed to breathe paint fumes, when as successor to the Flint title, he ought to have been paying attention to issues such as this.
“Do you have any artistic inclinations, Your Grace?”
The duke turned back to his desk. “Her Grace is in charge of sweetness and light in this household, if that’s what you’re asking. I cannot sing, draw, paint, or otherwise account for whatever airs and graces my children claim. I plot and scheme to safeguard the realm, and that suffices to justify my existence in Her Grace’s eyes—also in the eyes of the Almighty, one hopes.”
The duke was apologizing for Flint in some way, or distracting Elijah from the fact that Victor Windham’s brothers had not remarked the anniversary of his death, but Jenny and Their Graces had.
And for that reason, because she still remarked her brother’s death, Elijah owed Jenny one more charge on the citadel of His Grace’s paternal obliviousness.
“I’ve enjoyed my time here, Your Grace, but I cannot caution you strongly enough that Lady Jenny’s abilities should not be ignored. Talent such as hers deserves to be supported, not humored.” Any more blunt than that, and His Grace would likely eject Elijah from the premises bodily.
