tried for a while after my come-out to work with Antoine, but the subterfuge was too much, and he became… He humored me.”
“And yet, you still painted. When you couldn’t paint, you drew. When you couldn’t draw, you embroidered.” He turned to aim a glower at her. “You are relentless.”
He’d all but growled the words, and yet, she was smiling a bemused smile. “After Victor died, I didn’t want to paint, but he’d made me promise, and he was right. I am … relentless. His Grace is relentless too—so’s Mama.”
She started in painting, still not getting the duke quite right in Elijah’s opinion. The portrait was all but completed, and recasting the sitter’s personality was not easily done in touch-ups and finishing work.
His Grace was relentless, and tireless in pursuit of his ends, but he was also a man capable of asking for what he wanted, even demanding what he wanted, and Jenny had far to go if she were to emulate her father.
He paused, his brush poised above the duke’s heart. Jenny had been very forthright on the dance floor. Elijah considered the curtains, decided they needed more work, and allowed Jenny to paint away the afternoon in silence.
“Elijah didn’t even suggest Sindal’s portrait should be sent to the nominating committee.” Jenny turned at the mantel and paced back across the parlor the ladies had taken over for the holidays. “He didn’t mention the Academy at all. Just told me to pack the thing up and send it along to Sidling.”
“Sit down,” Louisa muttered. “If I only have an hour before the baby wakes, I don’t want to spend it watching you careen about like a kite in the wind. Maggie, send that teapot over here.”
Maggie rose from her rocker by the fire and set the teapot—a porcelain confection of green leaves and pink cabbages roses—down before Louisa. “Jenny is worried for her artist. If the committee doesn’t see this portrait, then some old curmudgeon—Farthingdale?—will keep Bernward from being nominated to the Academy.”
“Fotheringale,” Jenny said, taking a seat next to Louisa. “He holds a grudge against Elijah’s parents. I believe Elijah has given up any hope of becoming an Academician.”
Sophie glanced up from her embroidery hoop. “Men have been known to give up when they receive no encouragement whatsoever.”
The door opened, admitting a flushed and flustered Lady Eve. “I have ruined Christmas!”
“Close the door,” Louisa groused. “We can at least be cozy while we endure this ruined Christmas.”
Eve flounced down onto the sofa on Louisa’s other side. “I’m serious. Deene and I agreed to exchange our presents on Christmas Eve under the mistletoe, because we wanted a tradition, and that’s today, and amid all the commotion and the coming and going, I left his p-present at L-lavender C-court!”
Louisa put an arm around Eve, who took to weeping, while Jenny exchanged looks with her sisters. Eve and Deene’s first kiss had been beneath a sprig of mistletoe, just as Elijah and Jenny’s had been.
“We’ll send a footman,” Maggie said.
“Can’t,” Eve replied, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “Mama has them running all about in preparation for the open house later today.”
“A groom?” Louisa ventured.
“They’re still decorating the ballroom,” Eve wailed.
“I’d send Sindal, but he’s gone off to fetch old Rothgreb,” Sophie said.
Jenny rose, before her sisters could stop her. “I’ll go. I’ll be there and back in a trice, and Mama won’t notice my absence, because you lot will distract her if the preparations don’t suffice. You will not tell our brothers, either.”
Another round of looks was exchanged: Louisa’s thoughtful, Sophie’s dubious. Eve looked hopeful—also quite gravid and in no condition for any upset—while Maggie looked… Maggie’s expression was hard to discern.
“Go then,” Louisa said. “Eve, describe this dratted present, and, Genevieve, you will not tarry or end up in a snowdrift, lest we’re left explaining to Mama why she has a portrait to show off to the neighbors this evening but no Lady Jenny, hmm?”
Jenny listened with half an ear as Eve described an oblong box left on a sideboard. Lavender Court wasn’t far at all—it adjoined the Morelands park on the other side of the woods—and far more important than Eve’s sentimental intentions toward her husband, this errand would free Jenny from Morelands for the space of at least an hour.
“Lady Maggie told me I’d find you here.” Clearly, had Elijah tarried even another minute above stairs, he would have missed Jenny’s departure.
Jenny paused as she fastened the frogs of her cloak. “And why would you be looking for me, my lord?”
He tugged her hands away and went to work on her cloak—
The look she sent him gave away nothing, except perhaps general displeasure. His mother had perfected that very expression early in his boyhood.
“It’s snowing, my lady, and while you are yet in England, you will allow a gentleman to escort you on any cross-country
He frenchified the word but kept most of his exasperation behind his teeth.
She held his greatcoat out to him, which Elijah took for a compromise. He might walk by her side on this short outing, but only because a week or a month hence, she’d be free to dodge the offal on the streets of Paris without even a footman to attend her.
The notion was increasingly hard to tolerate. “Take my scarf.”
“I have bonnets—”
He looped his scarf over her ears and around her neck, but did not wrap it right over her fool mouth. “Bonnets will not keep you warm, and bonnets do not fare well when snowed upon.”
She fussed with the drape of the scarf but did not hand it back to him. “It’s not snowing that hard.”
“Not
God help him, it felt good even to argue with his Genevieve. The duchess had been fretting over the weather all morning, though, worried that guests would not be able to attend her open house, worried they’d be snowed in if they did. Worried for her duke, who was serenely content to organize the loudest scavenger hunt in history for the children—or perhaps for his grown sons, who had apparently secreted bottles of French potation in various locations.
Lady Jenny pulled on gloves. “If it’s going to snow, then the sooner we’re off, the less we’ll have to contend with.” She gestured at the door, her posture and tone reminiscent of her mother.
Elijah did not attempt to offer the lady his arm, but rather, accompanied her out the front door, down a shoveled path past the stables, and on toward the home wood. When he could tolerate her freezing silence no longer, Elijah opened a topic he thought safe. “Is the scavenger hunt a tradition?”
Jenny crunched through the snow beside him, her pace approximating a forced march with the enemy in mounted pursuit. “Yes.”
“Do the ladies take part?”
“No. We enjoy some peace and quiet or we help Mama and the staff put the final touches on the public rooms for the open house.” She came around a holly bush and stopped short. “This didn’t use to be here. I could swear this wasn’t here the last time I rode through these woods.”
An oak of considerable proportions had fallen across the path ahead. “The way looks clear around to the —”
She was already scrambling over the horizontal trunk, despite the wet snow, despite the availability of a gentleman whose stated purpose was to provide escort.
Off to Paris, she was. She’d probably departed weeks ago—years ago, even. If Bartholomew’s death hadn’t purchased her a ticket for Calais, then Victor’s certainly had.
Elijah vaulted across the trunk, turned, and pulled her the rest of the way over the fallen tree. “You’ve snow all over you. Hold still.”
She tolerated his brushing at her cloak, stood still like some martyr enduring blasphemy. “Will you tell me
