Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

Fourteen

Marriages developed a language as sophisticated and subtle as any code devised by the War Office—more so, for being flexible. The better a man understood that code, the more peacefully his marriage would proceed.

Charlotte glanced up from her embroidery hoop in a manner that told Lord Flint she’d been patient long enough. “What does your son have to say for himself, Flint?”

He did not pass her the letter, not with Prudholm lurking by the window, gilding the shine on some adolescent sulk. “Elijah? Just the usual. His commission is coming along. He’s in good health. Lady Jenny Windham has more than a bit of talent. He encloses Her Grace’s recipe for wassail, along with a warning to imbibe it in moderation. He’s having to keep his studio locked when not in use to keep all the Moreland progeny from coming to harm with the paints and such.”

“Your son is a trial to a mother’s heart, but he understands the little ones.”

From a reading chair in the corner, Pru let loose a snort that might have resembled a cough.

“Moreland’s letter is more interesting.”

Her hand paused in midair, the needle drawn as far from the fabric as it would go without snapping the thread. “His Grace wrote to you?”

“Moreland has ever been a reliable correspondent. He says Her Grace has insisted that the artists be left to their work and disturbed as little as possible, lest her present not be completed by the Christmas Eve open house.”

“I have eleven other children to look after, Flint. I am not spending my Christmas Eve in some bouncing sleigh, freezing my—” She fell silent, her French grasp of subtleties stealing the rest of her outburst. “Artists?”

“Elijah has asked for Lady Jenny’s aid in the studio, but His Grace says it has turned into some sort of art lesson for his daughter. She’s handy with a paintbrush, according to her father.”

Flint leaned closer to the candelabrum, as if to see the words more clearly. He was in fact thwarting his wife’s impulse to snatch the letter from his hands.

Charlotte stabbed her fabric as if it were the villain in a bad farce. “Handy with a paintbrush? That is ridiculous. That is a man who does not comprehend portraiture. That is a papa who is not paying attention. If Elijah says the girl is talented, then she’s likely a genius.”

“Perhaps.”

She looked over at him, arching a Gallic eyebrow that had captivated him across many a ballroom and every one of their bedrooms. “Flint, you try my patience worse than all your sons put together. What else does His Grace say?”

He chose his words carefully, because Prudholm had stopped shifting and sighing and using every other aggravating means to remind his parents of his presence. If Oxford was to continue benefiting from Flint’s largesse, they’d give in to his pleading and start Hilary term on Boxing Day.

“He implies that his sons and daughters have a tacitly agreed-to schedule, upon which they routinely intrude on the studio—to look for missing children, to extend an invitation to tea, to inquire about the whereabouts of a particular cat.”

His marchioness made an impatient wave with a graceful hand.

He got to the point, to the troubling, puzzling point. “They none of them report anything of a questionable nature when they drop in unannounced, though neither Elijah nor Lady Jenny is willing to let anyone inspect their works in progress.”

For a moment, Lady Flint was silent, and this was exactly why Flint hadn’t waited to bring matters to her attention. What could it mean that Elijah was closeted with an artistically talented, pretty, available young lady for hours at a time, and not one hint of impropriety could be discovered in his dealings with her? What did it mean that for the first time in nine years—nearly ten—their firstborn had mentioned a young, lovely, unmarried, well-dowered woman of suitable station in his correspondence?

“Elijah is probably preoccupied with whether to join us here this year for the holidays,” her ladyship observed. She held her hoop at arm’s length, studying a scene of snowflakes and pine trees so real, Flint expected it to reek of pine boughs.

Pru shifted on his chair and turned the page of a book. The first page he’d turned in more than fifteen minutes.

“Elijah will join us,” Flint muttered. “I have every confidence he’ll heed his mother’s summons.”

“I do not summon anybody, Flint.”

Prudholm’s book snapped closed, and he exited the room without a word to either parent. A subtle and wearying tension left with him.

“Your youngest son makes a poor spy for his siblings,” her ladyship said. She glanced at the door through which their baby boy had just stalked. “Flint, you must not worry. That Elijah does not trouble the young lady means he respects her, and better still, he respects her art. The lady’s siblings collude with her to keep any mention of longing glances and little touches from Their Graces’ notice. All will be well.”

Ah. When she explained it that way, it made perfect sense. As a younger man, Flint had been heedless with many a merry widow, willing chambermaid, and courtesan, but never again once he’d met his Charlotte.

“What is that you’re embroidering, my dear?”

“A shroud for the fools at Oxford who think young men ought to be sent home for the holidays to stomp about the house, nip their papa’s brandy, and tease their sisters.”

“You love that scamp,” Flint said.

She sent him a look, part parental commiseration, part exasperated wife.

“Pru reminds me of you, Flint. He makes the grand gestures and is full of posturing, and it’s all a diversion. The boy is plotting something. Elijah likely is too. The Harrison male is a crafty creature and determined on his goals, something I love about every one of them.”

She counseled, she flattered, she pretended to inspect her embroidery. He would adore this woman until his dying day.

Flint passed her the letters and a pair of his reading glasses.

“I am going to heave this cat at the next Windham sibling who just happens to come through that door without knocking.” Jenny kissed the top of Timothy’s head, so the cat at least would know she was blustering.

Though only just.

Elijah glanced at the clock then resumed studying the side-by-side portraits of the duchess. “We have at least another twenty minutes before the next sneak inspection. Your portrait of Her Grace is superior to mine.”

She put the cat up on the mantel, having realized the room’s higher spaces were warmer than any place closer to the floor. When she turned back to the easels, Elijah was still before them, arms crossed, lips pursed.

What had he been—?

“I beg your pardon. What did you say, Elijah?”

He held out a hand. “I said, your portrait of Her Grace is superior to my own.”

She did not take his hand. “You spend better than a week carping, criticizing, and sniping at my work then pronounce it better than yours?”

He dropped his hand. “I do not snipe.”

“The Duke of Moreland is not a pair of old riding boots, Genevieve,” she quoted, folding her arms.

“He’s not. I’m trying to figure out how your portrait is better,” he said. “I’m trying to find the technical terms, the details of execution, the subtle compositional differences, and I can’t. It’s simply… better.”

She wanted those details too, wanted him to enumerate them, write them down in triplicate. She wanted him to send a copy to The Times, give the second copy to her, and post the third copy on the door to the breakfast parlor. “Both portraits are fine likenesses, and I’m having more trouble with His Grace.”

“I think most people have more trouble with your father.” He stepped back. “Color is part of your secret. Your palette is more varied. You have different colors of shadow.”

She was not going to let him start on her shadows. Not when he’d paid her such a fine, rare compliment. “It’s time we took a walk.”

“Yes. Because in”—another look at the clock—“seventeen minutes, one of your sisters will burst in here, all smiles, and ask if you’d like to take the children down to pet the horses’ noses, or get up a game of hoodman-blind.”

She gave Timothy a farewell caress. “I’ve always hated that game. Nothing about being without sight has ever struck me as enjoyable.”

The door swung open, and a shaggy canine behemoth padded in, followed by a dark-haired little girl. “Hullo, Aunt Jen!”

“Bronwyn, hello. Please tell Scout not to knock anything over.”

On the mantel, Timothy had come to attention, though he remained sitting. He hissed at the dog and added a low, menacing growl for good measure.

“Scout, come.”

The dog ignored his owner, another Windham grandchild, this one down from the North with St. Just and his countess. The scent of Elijah’s boots was apparently more compelling than the punishment for indifferent hearing.

“Scout, come here this instant.” Bronwyn sounded like her papa, the former cavalry officer, but the dog had apparently never bought his colors.

Elijah nudged the beast in the direction of the door with his knee. “Miss Winnie, was there something you were looking for? Something you wanted to tell us?”

“Yes!” The dog walked over to the girl while Jenny steadied a jar of brushes his tail had nearly knocked to the floor. “I forget—oh, I remember. Aunt Eve is here. You have to come get kissed. She’s going to have a baby, and Papa says from the size of her he thinks it will be a baby horse.”

Jenny hoped St. Just hadn’t said that within Eve’s hearing—though he probably had. “We’ll be along presently. You can tell everybody we’re coming.” The child whirled and darted from the room, and the dog trotted after her. “Elijah, do you have your key?”

He produced the key from his watch pocket. “Always. Yours is in the lock. If Lady Eve’s arrival merits as much celebration as Rose’s and her parents’ did, then we won’t get a thing done for the rest of the day.”

He was right, and that was fine with Jenny. She wanted to treasure his judgment of her portrait for at least a few hours before she again tackled the challenge that was her dear papa.

Eve was, indeed, well along in her pregnancy. Deene, her husband, hovered like a mother cat, until Westhaven suggested the ladies might want their sister to themselves for a bit, and Deene was all but forcibly dragged off to the billiards room by the menfolk.

While Jenny and Elijah slipped out the door.

When Genevieve Windham was allowed to paint for hours, she became luminous, exhausted, and serene—as if she’d been well satisfied in bed. Observations like that were only one reason Elijah found it increasingly difficult to work beside her day after day.

As they crossed the back terrace, he wrapped her hand over his arm. “What do you find difficult about your father’s portrait?”

“I find Papa difficult,” Jenny said. “He’s noisy, arrogant, absorbed with his bills and committees, and yet, he’s devoted to Her Grace, well intended, and would cheerfully—cheerfully—endure endless torture or lay down his life for any member of his family.”

That was all likely true, particularly the protective and devoted parts. “You’re afraid he’ll forbid you to go to France.”

She tucked closer, and Elijah cast around for something comforting to say besides, “So why the hell are you going?” Particularly since he’d seen that sketchbook full of dying children and Jenny’s departed brother, he’d understood why she was going, though she likely did not admit all of her motivations to herself. Unless he was very much mistaken, she had equally skilled sketches of her brother Bart secreted somewhere too.

“How do you like my portrait of Sindal’s boys, Genevieve?”

“I adore it. Sophie and Sindal adore it, and Lord and Lady Rothgreb will be crowing to all of their neighbors about it. You made two busy, grubby, noisy little boys charming, and yet, it’s them. It really is them.”

He wanted to kiss her, and not for the usual reasons. He wanted to kiss her because something about having her on hand when he’d done those sittings had given him the courage to come out of some sort of artistic exile and enjoy his work again.

They left the terrace, moving across the snowy wasteland of the Moreland gardens. “That’s what you have to do with His Grace. You have to be honest but compassionate, so your rendering really is him.”

“Because the portrait is for Her Grace, I tell myself I must try to see Papa as she sees him. He is her dear Percival, and whatever there is about him to love, Her Grace focuses on that.”

They were moving farther and farther from the house, far enough that Elijah let himself take Jenny’s hand. “My parents are the same way. Her ladyship might seem like a manipulative, scheming French baggage to some. To Flint, she’s charming, determined, and adept at managing a big family. He isn’t some fellow who likes outlandish waistcoats, he’s her dear Flint. I couldn’t see that when I was younger, but they are a team in ways I could not appreciate then.”

She paused before a gate in a tall wrought iron fence, her expression concerned. “You’re going to go home, aren’t you, Elijah?”

“Everybody goes home, eventually.” He took her hand in his again. The snow was deeper here, more than a pretty dusting. “I miss my family, and they miss me. My mother claims the Academy will never allow me full membership.”

“You think she’s scheming?”

“I think I’m as talented as the next four contenders put together, and there are two vacancies.” Though talent had never been necessary or sufficient to gain entrance. “I think a man, particularly an arrogant young man, should pay the consequences for giving his word.”

And yet, how long were those consequences supposed to last, and upon whom were they to devolve?

“I will miss my family too. I know that.”

Not the way she’d miss them when the winter wind on the Channel hit her in the face like a slap, and nobody and nothing could turn the boat around. “You’ll be fine. You’ll make new friends. You’ll have your art.”

And far from her family’s benevolent meddling, she’d effectively eliminate any and all possibility of having children and a family of her own.

She said nothing until they reached their destination, and then she turned a slow circle, taking in each gravestone and marker. “You remembered. Oh, Elijah, you remembered.”

He would remember this too, remember Jenny Windham wrapping her arms around him as the wind picked up and the flurries danced down. He’d remember that when he might have argued her away from her course, when he might have offered her marriage and frequent trips to Paris, he’d instead held her and held her and held her.

And then he’d let her go.

“Jenny has taken a daft notion to go to Paris.” Louisa knew she sounded worried, but it couldn’t be helped. The parlor door was closed, the syllabub had been served, and this was likely the only privacy the children, spouses, and parents would allow her with her sisters.

“Paris in springtime is supposed to be lovely,” Sophie observed. “Sindal says he’ll take me one of these years, but there always seems to be a baby on the way or one just arrived.”

Petite, blond Eve, her feet up on a hassock, patted her belly. “Please, God, let one arrive before I explode or Deene frets himself into a decline. Lou wouldn’t be worried if Jenny were making a quick shopping visit.”

Maggie left off poking at the fire—no footmen would disturb this gathering—and took up a rocking chair. “Jenny told me the same thing. Told me not to be angry with her, but if she didn’t leave now, she’d never go.”

“She needs a fellow,” Louisa said. “We all needed a fellow, and the boys needed their ladies.”

Sophie considered her drink. “I don’t know, Lou. Your fellow lets you write all the poetry you want, and has you dedicate the racy verses to him. Ladies have been writing poetry for eons. Jenny’s art is a different matter.”

“Deene let me ride King William,” Eve said. “Before I got as big as King William. Maybe the right fellow will encourage Jenny’s painting.”

There was a point to be made here, and Louisa had not the patience to make it subtly. “It’s not just that Jenny paints, it’s that she paints well—better, I think, than half those buffoons in the Royal Academy. My poetry is all well and good, but it hardly ranks with Milton and Shakespeare. Joseph says Jenny is brilliant.”

And Joseph, as anybody with any brains knew, was nigh infallible.

“Amateurs can be brilliant,” Maggie said, though her tone suggested they seldom were.

Eve appeared to study her feet as if she hadn’t seen them in some time. “I gather the difficulty is not only that Jenny is talented, it’s that she’s English. Frenchmen do not limit their ladies to dabbling in watercolors and lounging about like brainless ornaments. The Germans let their ladies paint too, as do the Italians.”

Louisa glowered at her sisters. “Frenchmen no longer understand gallantry, what few Frenchman are left between the ages of five and fifty. They will pillory the daughter of an English duke on general principles, despite their convenient reversion to monarchy at the end of Wellington’s sword.”

A silence descended, not even the clink of a spoon disturbing it. Glances were exchanged. Eve, the most recently married, spoke up.

“Mr. Harrison is gallant, and he understands art. Deene says the menfolk chatted away an entire afternoon while Jenny eavesdropped, and Mr. Harrison had eyes only for her.”

Maggie picked up Timothy, though how he’d gotten into the room was a mystery. “Mr. Harrison insisted Jenny be free to help him complete his commissions, though when I pop into the studio, Jenny’s always before her own easel, spattered in paint and looking…”

“Happy,” Sophie said. “She looks happy when she paints.”

The cat started purring in Maggie’s lap, loud enough for all to hear.

“We’re agreed, then,” Louisa said. “Mr. Harrison makes Jenny happy, and Paris would make her miserable.”

Eve yawned, Maggie stroked the cat, and Sophie picked up an embroidery hoop. “Paris would make her miserable, if she were allowed to go, which will never come to pass as long as Their Graces draw breath. Shall we order another syllabub?”

Tea was an occasion for parents to leave their offspring in the nursery and gather below stairs for some sustenance and conversation. Because Jenny and Mr. Harrison remained in their studio, it was also an opportunity to compare notes.

“So what will you do?” Joseph, Lord Kesmore, asked his brothers-by-marriage.

Westhaven glanced around and noted Their Graces were absent, and the ladies were gathered near the hearth on the opposite side of the large, comfortable family parlor.

“Do? I wasn’t aware we were required to do anything besides eat and drink in quantities sufficient to tide us over until summer of next year,” Westhaven said.

The Marquess of Deene patted his flat tummy. “Hear, hear. And make toasts. One must make holiday toasts.”

St. Just shifted where he lounged against the mantel. “Make babies, you mean. My sister looks like she’s expecting a foal, not a Windham grandchild, Deene.”

Gentle ribbing ensued, which Westhaven knew was meant to alleviate the worry in Deene’s eyes.

“The first baby is the worst,” Westhaven said. “His Grace confirms this. Thereafter, one has a sense of what to expect, and one’s lady is less anxious over the whole business.”

“One’s lady?” Lord Valentine scoffed. “You fool nobody, Westhaven, but Kesmore raises an excellent point. Every time I peek into the studio in search of my baroness, all I see is that Harrison and Jenny are painting or arguing.”

“Arguing is good,” Kesmore informed a glass that did not contain tea. “Louisa and I argue a great deal.”

Respectful silence ensued before the Earl of Hazelton spoke up. “Maggie and I argue quite a bit as well. I daresay the consequences of one of our rousing donnybrooks will show up in midsummer.”

Toasting followed, during which Lord Valentine admitted congratulations were also in order regarding his baroness, and St. Just allowed he suspected his countess was similarly blessed, but waiting until after Christmas to make her announcement.

When every unborn Windham grandchild had been recognized by the assemblage, Westhaven said what they’d all been avoiding.

“My countess tells me Genevieve has taken it into her head to remove to Paris. I suspect she wants to avoid being aunt-at-large, while her own situation admits of no change. We are Jenny’s family, and Christmas is upon us. Harrison paints, he argues with her, and he has all his teeth. What say you, gentlemen?”

“Paris reeks,” Lord Kesmore said. “Harrison’s scent is rather pleasant by comparison.”

“He smells of linseed oil,” St. Just observed.

“A point in his favor,” Hazelton murmured, “from Lady Jenny’s perspective.”

Westhaven glanced around the group. “Then we are agreed. Lady Jenny will have no need of the dubious sanctuary of France. None at all.”

Paris began to loom like salvation for many reasons.

Jenny had checked the packet schedules. She’d made lists of what she’d take with her. She’d quietly packed up several boxes and stowed them in the bottom of her wardrobe, and just as quietly interrogated Aunt Gladys and Aunt Arabella about where a lady might find proper quarters in a decent part of town.

Gladys had given her a long, pitying look, but had shared what she’d known.

“You could do more with that necklace,” Elijah said, peering at Jenny’s portrait of Her Grace. “Pick up the highlights from the fire and Her Grace’s hair. Make them resonate with the ring she wears and the candles.”

Elijah was a great one for making things resonate. Jenny was tempted to make his skull resonate with her retort, but she kept her tone civil.

“I could tell you that your portrait is of a duchess, while mine is of a wife and mother. She doesn’t even like jewels, Elijah, but wears them so as not to hurt His Grace’s feelings.”

Elijah wiped his hands on a rag and glanced around the room. “Your cat has abandoned us, and you’re peckish. Tea came and went an hour ago, and you’ve hardly left this room since you took a luncheon tray some hours before that. I was making a suggestion, Genevieve, not a criticism.”

Outside, darkness had fallen. Jenny had painted for hours, not in an attempt to keep up with Elijah, but simply to be near him.

“Is your portrait of Sindal’s boys done?” she asked, stepping back from her easel.

Elijah used his rag to wipe paint from the handle of a brush, the way a soldier might wipe blood from a sword. “As done as it will be. West has written that Fotheringale harps on the lack of a completed juvenile portrait from me, though I showed them all the sketches.”

Jenny passed him her brushes—Elijah was meticulous about tidying up at the end of each session—and took a seat by the hearth. “You can send them the completed portrait. Rothgreb wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

Instead of cleaning the brushes, Elijah dunked them in a jar of turpentine—also across the room from the fire—and sat on the hearth beside Jenny. “Will you marry me, Genevieve?”

He kissed her cheek while Jenny flailed about for a response, any response at all. “The paint fumes are affecting you, Elijah, or you’ve spent too much time imbibing His Grace’s wassail.”

“You affect me. I paint better when you’re near, and I was warned about His Grace’s wassail—or Her Grace’s—by the regent himself. Marry me.”

She wanted to say yes, even if this declaration was not made out of an excess of romantic love. “If I marry you, I cannot go to Paris.”

He leaned back, resting his head against the stones behind them, closing his eyes. “I’ll take you to bloody Paris, and you can appreciate for yourself that the cats have ruined the place. Rome isn’t much better, though I suppose you’ll want to go there and sniff it for yourself too.”

He’d promise to take her there, probably to Moscow as well if she asked.

“Babies put rather a cramp in one’s travel plans.” Because if she were married to him, and Windham proclivities ran true, babies would follow in the near, middle, and far terms, and all hope of painting professionally would be as dead as her late brothers.

“Your siblings all managed to travel with babies. What’s the real reason, Genevieve? We’re compatible in the ways that count, and you’re dying on the vine here, trying to be your parents’ devoted spinster daughter. Marry me.”

He was tired, and he felt sorry for her. Of those things, Jenny was certain, but not much else. She hadn’t foreseen an offer from him that would ambush her best intentions and be so bewilderingly hard to refuse.

“You need to go home, Elijah. I need to go to Paris. Painting with you has only made me more certain of that. If I capitulate to your proposal, I will regret it for the rest of my days, and you will too. You feel sorry for me, and while I appreciate your sentiments, in Paris I will not be an object of pity.”

Nor would she be the object of marital schemes, and that… that was important too, though exactly why it was important, Jenny could not fathom.

Elijah was silent for a moment, while beside him, Jenny tried to swallow around the lump in her throat, because she would also regret not capitulating to this proposal, even though giving up on a life’s dream for a man who’d proposed out of pity wasn’t prudent.

“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.

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.