* * *

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.”