They would visit her in Paris, the lot of them, and bring their children and stay for weeks. They wouldn’t wait ten years to send a few letters, and leave the rest up to her.
Jenny felt as if she were dwelling a short distance from her body, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and from her heart. Even Papa saw the quality of her art, and Elijah…
“You aren’t subject to ducal decrees, Elijah. I can manage Mama and Papa.”
He paused where two hallways intersected, one leading to the public rooms, one to the family chambers. “That’s not just a mama and a papa you’re facing, Genevieve, it’s also a duke and duchess. They’re used to ruling by divine right, and quelling insurrection merely by raising an eyebrow. I daresay their daughters don’t defy them, though their sons likely have.”
Jenny went up on her toes and kissed him—the happiness in her compelled it, as did the sadness. “You must not worry, Elijah. Papa himself admitted that I paint as well as you.”
Better than Elijah—and that had been so, so sweet, though one painting did not an impressive body of works create.
“Admitting you paint well will not get you to Paris.” He took her hand and led her down the hallway, his grip firm, his stride determined.
Foreboding edged happiness away. “What are you about, Elijah? Papa himself vouched for my talent.”
Elijah stopped outside the parlor door and dropped her hand. “If you get to Paris, it will be because your family loves you, and only because they love you. I’m counting on it.”
He left her no time to argue or refine on his point—of course her family loved her—before he planted a swift, no-nonsense kiss on her lips, then opened the parlor door and ushered her through.
“Your Grace, if I might have a word with you privately?”
At Elijah’s question, the duke stopped pacing and aimed a glacial stare at his guest. “A
“A medicinal tot is in order,” the duchess declared. “For both of us, and, Jenny, you must not let your papa’s temper dismay you. He’s… he blames himself when I’m upset, and he’s surprised.”
Which was exactly what Louisa had warned Jenny against.
Jenny glanced at the door, foreboding expanding in her middle to the proportions of dread. When she accepted a drink from her mother, the duchess’s fingers were cold.
“What can they be discussing?” Jenny asked nobody in particular.
“A marriage proposal?” the duchess suggested.
“I doubt it.”
Her mother gave her a considering look from the sideboard. “If Bernward offered, Genevieve, would you choose Paris over him?”
Her Grace was a pragmatic woman, also a mother who would cheerfully kill for her children or for her dear Percival. Her instincts were not to be discounted, ever.
“I did.”
“Oh, my dear, whatever could be more important than love?”
And now the dread moved up, north of Jenny’s belly, into her throat, because that one question befuddled and hurt and made a hash of Jenny’s ability to think.
The door opened, and His Grace rejoined them, though of Elijah there was no evidence. To Jenny’s eye, the duke’s paternal fire had been snuffed out, and where his blue eyes had held the promise of retribution for anyone fool enough to cross him, now he looked… sad.
“Ah, you’re drinking. My love, might I have a tot as well?”
Something was wrong. When His Grace’s temper was so completely replaced with what looked for all the world like regret, something was dreadfully wrong.
The duchess held her drink out to him. He brought it to his lips but kept his gaze on his wife, as if imbibing courage with the very sight of her.
“Bernward is a canny young man,” the duke said. “Shall we sit?”
Jenny did not want to sit. She wanted to find Elijah and wring from him a recounting of what had aged the Duke of Moreland ten years in less than two minutes. She wanted to take the worry from the duchess’s eyes, and she wanted to go to Paris right that very instant.
Her Grace took one end of a small sofa and Jenny the other. The duke peered around the room as if he’d not spent many and many an hour reading to his wife in the very same location.
“Bernward claims you are not determined on Paris so much because you want to paint,” the duke said. He set his little glass down on the sideboard and turned his back on Jenny and her mother.
That was rude, and His Grace was never intentionally rude to his duchess. Jenny’s heart began to thump a slow, ominous tattoo in her chest.
The duchess’s hand stroked over Jenny’s shoulder, an it-will-be-all-right caress Jenny knew like she knew her own reflection, though it brought no comfort.
“Genevieve, Bernward claims…” The duke’s shoulders heaved up and down, slowly, as if he were sorely fatigued. “Bernward is of the opinion that you seek the Continent not because your talent compels it, or not solely because of your talent, but because you blame yourself”—behind his back, the duke’s hands were laced so tightly his knuckles showed white—“you blame
The duchess’s soft gasp sounded over a roaring in Jenny’s ears.
“Bernward claims,” the duke went on softly, “you must exile yourself out of guilt, because you are of the daft notion that only your happiness will atone for the loss of your brothers’ lives, though he suspects you disguise these sentiments even from yourself, or you try to. I cannot credit this. I simply cannot, and yet… you are our daughter. We know you, and Bernward, God
An ache grew and grew inside Jenny. An awful, choking, suffocating ache, an ache she thought she’d learned long ago how to manage. She wanted Elijah. She wanted to sprout wings and fly from the little parlor where she’d sat on her mother’s lap and learned to embroider with her sisters. She wanted, in some way, to die rather than contain the pain pressing at her very organs.
When His Grace turned from the cold, dark window, Jenny did not look away quickly enough. Even through the sheen blurring her own eyes, she could see that tears had also gathered in the eyes of His Grace, the Duke of Moreland. She looked down, seeing nothing, while her misery increased without end.
“Oh, my child.” The duchess enveloped Jenny in a ferocious embrace. “Oh, my dear, dear child. How could you think this of yourself? How could you possibly— Percival, more drinks and your handkerchief.
Fortunate indeed was the man whose wife had the presence of mind to keep him busy when sentiment threatened to render him… heartbroken. His Grace poured himself a shot of whisky, downed it, and poured another. This one he considered, while across the room Her Grace held a quietly lachrymose daughter, a young lady exhausted by her emotional burdens and by a failure of trust in her parents’ love.
And dear Esther… Percival fished out his second handkerchief—Windham menfolk were prepared for the occasional domestic affray, particularly around the holidays—and passed it to his duchess. She pressed it to her eyes while keeping an arm around the girl plastered to her mother’s shoulder, then gestured toward the sideboard.
“Of course, my dear.”
Brandy for the ladies. More brandy. Percival dallied by pouring just so, arranging the glasses just so on a tray, and opening and closing the drawers to the sideboard until he’d found two clean serviettes. When the weeping sounded as if it was subsiding, he brought the tray over to his womenfolk.
