Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

about Paris?”

A small, chilly question, though it lit a flame in him. He finished dusting her off. “Anything you want to know. Ask me anything.”

To his relief, she wanted to know practical things: where to stay, where to procure food, where to never, ever go, even with an escort. To whom might she apply for instruction, where might she display finished works. How did one procure a horse and keep the beast and any conveyances, grooms, or coachmen? Where did one find domestics?

The last question comforted most, because it meant Jenny contemplated a cozy establishment, not some drafty garret where she’d enjoy only mice as companions.

Their pace slowed as they wound through the home wood, and at some point Elijah took Jenny’s hand. When they emerged from the trees, she stopped again but kept her fingers laced with his.

“I want to paint this. I want to paint Eve’s cozy little manor house, the snow coming down, the greenery adorning the windows. I want to paint it for myself.”

Because she’d miss this too. Elijah let her look her fill, the wind whispering through the trees behind them, flurries dancing on the frigid air. Snowy days had a scent to them, a subtle, different feel to the air.

Jenny was talented enough that she could probably paint even the scent of snow.

“Come, my lady. You’ll become an ice sculpture if we stand here long enough.”

She turned the same regard she’d shown the house onto Elijah, a memorizing sort of look that conveyed both affection and impending loss. He marched away from her, intent on escaping her scrutiny and the longing it held.

“Have you any more questions about Paris?”

She huffed out a sigh that made a little cloud before her. “I have nothing but questions, though I didn’t want to distract you from your painting. Have you ever come across a female sculptor?”

“I have not, thank God. Do you have a key?” The knocker was down, and staff likely let off for the holidays.

Jenny withdrew the key and handed it to him. “Why ‘thank God’?”

He pushed the door open, admitting them to an entryway that on a sunny day would glow with the light of polished wood, but at present was gloomy and cold.

“Thank God, Genevieve, because you probably have some notion of becoming the first internationally renowned female sculptor. Do you favor the proportions of a stevedore on a duke’s daughter? Bad enough you’ll heft heavy canvases. Sculptors wrestle their art from stone, you know, and—”

She stared at the floor immediately inside the doorway, making no move to free herself from his scarf or her gloves. He’d probably driven her clear off to Moscow this time.

He unwrapped his scarf from her, shook the snow from it, and draped it over her shoulders. “You aren’t listening to me.” Her gloves came next. “If you want to become a sculptor, then you must, because you’ll be brilliant at that too, but I cannot—hold still.” He used his teeth to get his own gloves off and went to work on her frogs. “I cannot countenance that you will face difficulties and you will have no support. You will have no one. Your art must stand or fall on its own merit—such as merit can be subjectively determined—and as much as I want to, I cannot be there to temper the winds of fortune for you.”

He stepped back and yanked at his buttons, lest he start shouting. She wasn’t asking him to temper any winds of anything for her, and she never would.

She stood there, her cloak hanging open and his scarf adorning her shoulders like some bishop’s stole. “That’s why you’ve taken me to task so much over my painting? You’ve carped and criticized because you think that’s what awaits me in Paris?”

The daft woman was smiling as if he’d given her some sort of holiday present.

“The French regard criticism as sport, Genevieve, and none are immune. Your gender, your birth, your looks —nothing will preserve you from their verbal violence if you cross the wrong Frenchmen in the wrong mood. They are utterly democratic in the sense that no one, not they themselves, not the masters of antiquity, and certainly not English aristos are spared when inspiration strikes—”

She stopped his ranting with two chilly fingers pressed to his lips. “Get your coat off, and let us find Eve’s present.”

So calm, and yet humor lurked in her green eyes. He was mad with worry for her, and she was amused. He pitched her cloak and his coat onto hooks, tossed his hat onto a sideboard, and let Jenny lead him through the gloom.

“This is a pretty little place. Was it part of your sister’s dowry?” And why, even when barely heated, did it have to smell so wonderfully of pine, cedar, and something else, something comforting—lavender?

“It was. Our grandmother thought, as the youngest, Eve might be older when she settled down, having to wait for her sisters to wed first. Eve got property, and the rest of us got competences, which have been invested for us. Westhaven has agreed to continue handling my finances for me after…” She started up a wooden stair. “After the holidays.”

Elijah followed her, resisting the urge to tackle her on the landing and make her say the words: After I leave everyone who loves me, and every comfort I’ve ever known, because I must be a martyr to my art.

She led him down a dim hallway then opened the door to a peculiarly cozy guest room.

“Ah, there it is.” Jenny crossed the room and picked up a little box done up in green velvet with red ribbon. “Eve was beside herself. Whatever this is, Deene had best appreciate—why are you staring at me like that?”

He closed the door and stepped closer. The room was unusual, built with a small balcony overlooking a conservatory that might have been added as an afterthought, hence its relative warmth and humidity, and the lush scent of foliage blending with all the other fragrances wafting through the house. “Looking at you like what?”

“Like… you just lost your best friend? Won’t it be wonderful to go home to Flint Hall, Elijah?”

Elijah was better than my lord, and because she seemed to need it, he lied for her. “Wonderful, indeed. Have you told your parents yet that you’re going to Paris?”

He had the sense she was waiting for him to leave Morelands first, unwilling to have his support even tacitly.

“Not… not yet.” She set the perfect little gift down. “Louisa says I must, and she grasps tactics with an intuition I can only admire. I wish…” Her gaze went to the elegant little parcel. “I wish…”

While Elijah watched, Jenny lost some of that distant, preoccupied quality that had characterized her since they’d finished their paintings. She gazed on that parcel as if it held secrets and treats and even a happy ending or two.

Once they completed the twenty-minute walk back to Morelands, they’d have no more private moments ever. He’d leave for London at first light; she’d sail for Paris, probably before the New Year.

“What do you wish, Genevieve?” Because whatever it was, he’d give it to her. His heart, his soul, his hands, passage to Paris—passage home from Paris. How he wished she’d ask him for that, but passage home was something she could only give herself.

“Will you make love with me, Elijah? You’re leaving tomorrow, I know that, and I shouldn’t ask it. I shouldn’t want it, but I do. I want you, so much. Please?”

Sixteen

Not touching Elijah Harrison over the past days had been the hardest thing Jenny had asked of herself, ever. Harder than admitting her mistake with Denby, harder than giving up Antoine’s instruction, harder, even, than watching her siblings find true love, one by one.

She blinked at Eve’s gift and expected to hear the sound of the door slamming. A lady would never proposition a gentleman, especially a gentleman who’d gently, even kindly, already rebuffed her advances.

A lady would never run off to the Continent and abandon every notion of familial support and love.

A lady would never curse, though if Elijah stalked away, Jenny was going to curse loudly and at length. Also weep, damn it.