Moreland resumed his seat, his expression amused. “My thanks for your words of advice, Bernward. Now hadn’t you best be joining the battle outside or that game of nine pins in the portrait gallery? One hears the entire mad idea originated with you, though I caution you that the young ladies will find a way to cheat if they can.”
Nine pins in the portrait gallery—how apt. “My thanks for your patience, Your Grace. I think you’ll be pleased with the portrait you commissioned.”
Though if Jenny’s plans came to fruition, Moreland would probably burn the thing, and his duchess would send the ashes to the Academy’s nominating committee.
“You look as if you’ve just lost your best friend.” Eve took a place beside Jenny on this observation, which leavened Jenny’s sense of desolation with a spike of resentment.
“With all my family around me, how could I possibly be in want of companionship?”
Eve watched their mutual siblings stepping through a minuet while their brother Valentine held forth at the piano. “The same way I can long to dance while the minuet plays all around me.”
Marriage had settled Eve, and impending motherhood had only honed her already formidable instincts.
“You’re admiring your husband, Lady Deene, even when you can’t dance with him.”
“He’s promised me a waltz, though Valentine will probably find one to play at the speed of a dirge.” She fell silent for a moment as the dancers one-two-three’d around the space created by the music room and an adjoining parlor. “You would make a wonderful mother, Jenny.”
The worst pain was not in the words Eve offered, but the combination of pleading and pity with which she offered them.
“Becoming a mother usually contemplates becoming a wife first, and I’ve no wish to wed some man for the sole purpose of bearing his babies.” Not the sole purpose… As the dancers twirled and smiled, it occurred to Jenny that Victor had made her promise not to stop painting, but he hadn’t said anything specific about eschewing motherhood.
Had he?
Another pause in the conversation, while the music played on. Eve, however, was notably tenacious, so Jenny waited for the next salvo, and Eve did not disappoint.
“You look at Bernward the way I look at Deene, the way Maggie looks at Benjamin, the way—”
“Louisa looks at Joseph, I suppose.” And Sophie at her baron too, of course. They needn’t start on how the Windham brothers regarded their respective wives.
“Louisa’s gaze is a touch more voracious. I was going to say, the way Mama looks at Papa.”
Ouch. Ouch, indeed. The duke and duchess turned down the room with the grace of a more elegant age, and yet, their gazes spoke volumes about the sheer pleasure of sharing a dance.
Jenny stated the obvious as matter-of-factly as possible. “Their Graces dance beautifully.”
Eve’s feet were propped on a hassock. She wiggled her toes in time with the music, the left and right foot partnering each other. “Bernward also dances quite well.”
Elijah was dancing with Valentine’s lady, Ellen’s preferred partner being ensconced at the keyboard, as usual. “Bernward is dancing carefully, lest Valentine take exception.”
Eve twitched her skirts. “Bernward is dancing with one eye on you, you ninnyhammer, and with the certain knowledge that all three of our brothers are waiting for him to come over here and get you to stand up with him. How many more times do you think you can check on the punch bowl between sets without Bernward taking insult?”
Check on the full punch bowl, offer to turn pages for Valentine when he was playing from memory, or trim the wicks on the lamps that the footmen had trimmed not fifteen minutes earlier. This Christmas gathering was driving her mad.
“I’m going to Paris after the holidays.”
Jenny hadn’t planned on making the admission, but Eve’s good intentions—her meddling—were enough to pluck confessions from a saint.
“Do you need money? My pin money is generous, and though one hears the Continent is affordable, I will worry about you.”
Eve had been the second-to-last sibling to marry, and perhaps Jenny ought to have anticipated her reaction. Except she hadn’t.
She absolutely had not. “You won’t try to stop me?”
Eve’s feet went still. “I know what it’s like, Jenny, to be one of the few remaining Windham daughters without an offer, but I also know you could have had offers. I know you’re afraid if you don’t do something drastic, you’ll compromise and accept a wrong offer. I could not live with myself—”
Eve’s gaze went to her handsome husband, her expression conveying nothing short of besottedness.
“You feel guilty for abandoning me in favor of Deene’s charms,” Jenny concluded slowly. “Who is the ninnyhammer now, Lady Deene?” She couldn’t make it a reproof. She was too grateful for her sister’s concern.
“We love you,” Eve said, keeping her voice down as the music came to a close. “Of course we’re worried. Their Graces are challenge enough when one has reinforcements, but all you have is that dratted cat and the occasional sympathy visit from the rest of us.”
“I’m not dead. I don’t need condolence calls.” But she did need Paris, if she wasn’t to lapse into the very creature Eve described.
“Bernward has apparently taken the hint and given up on you.”
Jenny watched as Elijah led Ellen off the dance floor and chatted up Valentine, who showed no signs of leaving the piano bench.
“Genevieve, it’s time you obliged your old brother and took a turn down the room. Anna says I’m neglecting you.”
Not Elijah, but Westhaven, the biggest, handsomest mother hen ever to stand in line for a ducal coronet— also the most meddling of older brothers.
“Might as well dance, Jenny. If you refuse, Westhaven will only nag you and send the rest of them over,” Eve remarked. “I’ll set Deene on you, and he is a very good dancer.”
“Come.” Westhaven held out his hand. “If you sneak off to your studio now, Her Grace will send one of us to retrieve you, and you’ll end up right back here anyway. If you dance, you can plead fatigue then be credibly excused.”
His green eyes held such understanding, Jenny wanted to flee the room. Her cat at least kept quiet and couldn’t compel her to dance.
She took her brother’s hand and rose. “The pleasure will be entirely mine.”
True to Eve’s prediction, Valentine chose a very decorous pace for the ensuing waltz.
“Jenny, what can I do to help?” Westhaven’s expression was merely genial, but in his words, Jenny heard determination and that most dratted of holiday gifts, sibling concern.
“Help?”
“You’re quiet as a dormouse. Maggie says you’re chewing your nails. Louisa reports that you’re taking odd notions, and Sophie won’t say anything, but she’s clearly worried. Her Grace muttered something about regretting all the time she’s permitted you to spend among the paint fumes.”
“What would Her Grace know of paint fumes?” What would the duchess know of anything relating to painting?
“She’s our mother. Where knowledge fails, maternal instinct serves. Is Bernward troubling you?”
Westhaven was an excellent dancer, and if Jenny did not finish the dance with him, Her Grace would casually suggest that tomorrow be a day to rest from the activity in the studio. The idea made Jenny desperate.
“Westhaven, you must not involve yourself in anything to do with Elijah.”
“Elijah.” Westhaven’s gaze shifted to a spot over Jenny’s shoulder. “And does he call you Jenny?”
“He calls me talented and brilliant but uneducated and unorthodox too. I’ve enjoyed working with him these
