Grace Burrowes - Lady Jenny’s Christmas Portrait

The arrogance, condescension, and lurking bitterness of his pronouncement made Jenny want to spit out the apple he’d just shared with her. “Are you mocking me?”

He paused with a dollop of butter on a wooden knife poised above the bread. No, not bread. They’d baked the year’s first batch of stollen today, a holiday sweet bread made according to Jenny’s German grandmother’s recipe.

He set the stollen on her plate. “I am envying you, dear lady. I trust you enjoy butter.”

“Of course.” She did not precisely enjoy his company, though being around him made her feel more… more. “If you’re unhappy with your art, why not give it up?”

The same question she’d asked herself countless times.

“I am not unhappy with my art, and now you are trying to distract me.” His tone was gentle, coaxing, and implacable. “Tell me about your drawing. When did you become interested, and when did you become aware you were different from the other girls?”

Those who sat to him said Elijah Harrison was a comfortable fellow to spend hours with. Jenny had found the notion preposterous. Elijah Harrison was big, quiet, and self-assured. He moved through life with a knowing, confident quality that struck her as incompatible with comfortableness.

She’d come to that conclusion without ever having talked to the man, though, and here, late at night, over informal victuals, his coat gently steaming two yards away, he regarded her with such, such compassion, that she wanted to entrust him with all her silly secrets and dreams.

When she had sketched him, his eyes had been bored, lazy, and slightly mocking: Here I stand, more confident in my nudity than you lot cowering in your fashionable attire behind your sketch pads.

In hindsight, and with the passage of a few years, she had realized that in a room full of young men with varying degrees of artistic talent, he’d adopted that attitude more for their ease than his own.

“Genevieve?”

Zhenevieve? She ought to remonstrate him for his presumption, but the sound of her name on his lips was too lovely.

“I’ve always been different. I’m different still. Everything you said… that’s who I want to be. I am a duke’s daughter, though, and probably more significantly, the daughter of a duchess. Were I to give vent to my eccentricities, it would break my parents’ hearts.”

A quantity of food had disappeared, and now Mr. Harrison appeared content to feast on her silly notions. “So you choose instead to break your own heart?”

She left off staring at his hands and rose to tend the fire. His question had not been challenging, but worse—far worse—gently pitying.

“One can love others, Mr. Harrison, or one can love one’s own ambitions. A woman who chooses the latter is not highly regarded in our society. A man who chooses the former is regarded as weak or possessed of a religious vocation.”

He did not pop to his feet when she knelt before the hearth and arranged an oak log on top of the stack already burning. Oak was heavy, though, and the weight of the additional log collapsed the half-burnt ones beneath it, sending a shower of sparks in all directions.

“Careful. Your skirts might catch.”

He’d seized her under the arms and hauled her away from the hearth in one smooth, brute maneuver. When she ought to have been offended or unnerved, Jenny was impressed.

“Thank you. While you finish your meal, I’ll check on your room.”

She left him there by the fire for two reasons. First, she’d offered him quite enough of her confidences for one night and had failed utterly to wring any from him—professional or personal.

The second reason Jenny fled into the cold, dark corridor was that she liked standing close to Elijah Harrison far too much.

As Elijah accompanied his hostess through the chilly, dimly lit house, fatigue hit him like a runaway freight wagon. This was what came of trying to make a winter’s journey when sane people were holed up with one another, tippling brandy and making gingerbread.

No, not sane people. Sentimental people.

“Your room is here,” Lady Jenny said, opening a door. She led him into a blessedly, gloriously cozy space, into a bit of heaven for a man who’d considered he might end both the day and his life shivering in a snowy ditch.

“Lady Kesmore takes her hospitality seriously,” he said. The appointments were in a cheery blue and cream with green accents—again, not quite the green of Lady Jenny’s eyes—giving the chamber a feminine air even by candlelight. A fat, black cat kitted out as if in formal evening attire—black fur tailcoat and knee breeches; white fur cravat, boots, and gloves—rose from the bed and strolled for the door, tail held high.

When a room was truly clean, light filled it easily. A beam of sunshine or flicker of candlelight could bounce from a sparkling mirror, to a gleaming hardwood floor, to a polished lamp chimney or sconce mirror.

The room was very clean, and in the hearth, a wood fire crackled merrily.

“I have never regarded the scent of wood smoke as a fragrance,” he said, “though tonight, I certainly do.”

“You were quite cold, weren’t you?” she asked, lighting the candles by his bedside tables. “I forgot to get you a book.”

“I would not read a single paragraph before succumbing to the charms of Morpheus.” Where, if God were merciful, Elijah would dream of Lady Jenny illuminated by candlelight.

Another scent came to him as she moved around the room, a light, spicy perfume that started off with jasmine and ended with feminine mysteries.

“I’ll have one of Lord Kesmore’s dressing gowns brought to you,” she said, peering into the pitcher on the hearth. “A footman remains on duty at the end of the hall until midnight, and then we rely on the porter through the night.”

“I’m sure I won’t waken in the night, and I might have to be roused to break my fast as well.”

Small talk. She ought not to be in this room with him, though for present purposes, she was his hostess and had left the door a few inches ajar as a nod to propriety.

“I’ll bid you pleasant dreams, then.” She bobbed a curtsy and withdrew, leaving Elijah alone in his heaven.

Somebody had brought his things in from the stable and set his bag on the chest at the foot of the bed. Lest his worldly goods rot by morning, Elijah took out each damp, wrinkled article of clothing and draped it over the furniture, making sure at least a clean shirt and cravat were in proximity to the fire. As he saw to his wardrobe, he munched on one of the three pieces of gingerbread he’d filched from his supper.

The last order of business on this difficult and interesting day was to wash off before climbing into the fluffy blue-and cream-wonder that was his bed. He peeled his damp shirt and waistcoat from his body, hung them from the open doors of the wardrobe, and set about using the water left considerately near the hearth.

The water was scented with something bracing—lavender and rosemary?—and was small compensation for the lack of a steaming hot bath. Elijah had just finished with his ablutions when a knock sounded on his door.

That would be the footman with a nice, cozy dressing gown, no doubt, courtesy of the absent Lord Kesmore. “Come in.”

“I’ve brought—”

Lady Jenny closed the door behind her and stood across the room, clutching a green velvet dressing robe that would probably wrap around her three times.

“My dressing gown.”

He’d long since grown comfortable sporting about in the altogether for inspection by others, provided the surrounds were comfortably warm. Around Genevieve Windham, his state of partial undress slammed into him like two freight wagons galloping at each other from opposite directions.

The practical part of him spoke up: She’s seen you in less than this. You’re exhausted. Take the bloody dressing gown and bid her good night.

But that sensible, familiar voice could barely be heard for the greater din created by what he saw in her gaze.

She was visually consuming him, taking in every muscle and sinew, cataloguing joints and textures even as she clutched the dressing gown to her like a shield.

“Were I modeling,” he said as he approached her, “my exposed skin would probably be oiled, or, when needs must, coated with butter, the better to catch the light, particularly if the scene depicted is dark. I apologize for the lack of attire, my lady.”

He tugged on the dressing gown. She didn’t give it up.

“What kind of oil?”

“I prefer…” His brain became befogged with… her. Yes, he wanted to sketch her, wanted to unearth all the artistic and female confidences she’d denied him, but he also wanted her to sketch him.

Though he’d have to keep his breeches on.

Bid her good night.

“What kind of oil?” she asked again.

“Fragrant, soothing scents.” Jasmine appealed strongly. “When one must hold the same position for a length of time, the more relaxed one is, the more successful the exercise.”

She ought to tell him she hadn’t known he modeled—small talk relied heavily on polite untruths—and then he could tell her he hadn’t provided that service to anybody for years, which was not an untruth. He no longer needed the money, and he no longer had the time.

More to the point, the woman ought to be running from the room in high dudgeon or at least sporting a furious blush.

Lady Jenny handed over the dressing gown and watched him shrug into it with something like grief in her eyes.

“My lady, I bid you good night, and my compliments to Kesmore on the quality of his wardrobe.” The garment was lined with silk, and yet, Elijah wanted to drop it to the floor so Lady Jenny might continue to regard him so ravenously.

“Will you model for me, Mr. Harrison?”

She might have challenged him to a duel, so fiercely had she thrown down the question. He’d once had the same kind of determination, willing to travel through war zones to see an obscure Caravaggio.

“My lady, you flatter me, but my journey will take me away…” No true gentleman would have obliged her request. No true artist who understood the limitations of her station and the relentless clamoring of her artistic inclination would refuse her. Among all the dilettantes and dabblers to pass through old Antoine’s studios, Lady Jenny was one of few students to possess a germ of real talent.

“You said you had only a few more miles to go, Mr. Harrison. Give me half an hour in the morning—the nursery has excellent light, being at the top of the house.”

“I cannot be private with you when I am en dishabille.” He should not be private with her when in a coma, and they both knew it.

“I did not expect that you would be. Fleur and Amanda would find it most curious were you to appear unclothed. After breakfast, then?”

The prospect of traveling even a few more miles in miserable weather had no appeal, and she’d taken him in when he might have perished for his stubbornness. Then, too, given how fiercely she’d regarded Kesmore’s daughters, Lady Jenny wouldn’t be focusing for long on a sketch when the children were underfoot.

“A half hour then. My thanks for the dressing gown.”

She left, and this time didn’t bother with a curtsy, nor he with a bow. He ran the warmer over the sheets then hung the sumptuous dressing gown in the wardrobe, where the scent of jasmine was even stronger.

When he laid down on the lovely warm sheets, the same fragrance assailed him.

Elijah’s last waking thought was that Lady Genevieve had given up her bed for him and taken a colder, more humble chamber elsewhere in the house. This eased his last, lingering hesitance about giving her a half hour of his time in the nursery.

A half hour lounging about in the morning sun was small recompense to the lady who’d provided a virtual stranger food, clothing, shelter, and a night surrounded by her fragrance.

* * *

While tossing and turning in a strange bed, Jenny had given considerable thought to which part of Elijah Harrison she’d capture for her own on paper. His hands appealed—his big, elegant, so talented hands. With those hands, he’d done a portrait of the regent even Prinny himself was said to like. She considered those hands as Fleur and Amanda galloped around the hearth rug in the nursery.

“And where shall you pose me, my lady?” Mr. Harrison asked.