She turned around, presenting Elijah with temptation in the form of her exposed nape. He knew how that skin tasted, knew the warmth and sweetness of it against his tongue.
He stepped closer. “Are you doing this on purpose, Genevieve?”
She sent him a cross look over her shoulder. “Yes. I typically knot up all my smocks so I’m held prisoner in them until a passing stranger rescues me.”
She had made a knot, probably because she’d been too proud to ask him to tie her a simple bow. He had to bend down to study it. “Hold still.” The thing was stubborn, so stubborn that when Elijah gave it a stout yank, Jenny stumbled back against him.
“Oh, damn.” He used his nose first, drew it along the top of her collar where warmth and fragrance threatened to annihilate his balance. “Your painting is a wonder.”
So was her hair, so soft against his cheek. So was the place beneath her ear, where a man was doomed to kiss her. So was—
A tap sounded on the door. Had it been the deferential scratching of a servant, Elijah might have missed it, but it was a stout tap, more of a loud knock.
“It’s stuck,” he said, stepping back. “Perhaps it will have to be cut off.”
Cut off, indeed.
She gave him a curious look and went to the door. The squealing when she opened it was deafening.
“Maggie! Oh, my dearest, dearest Mags! I’ll get paint all over you. I’m so glad to see you!”
And at the same time: “Jenny! Oh, you’re painting. Of course you are. Hang the paint and tell me everything. Let me see you. Oh, I’ve missed you so!”
Elijah had been forgotten, relegated to such insignificance he might as well have never existed, and yet he listened to Jenny and her oldest sister greeting each other and felt the sweetness of it like a punch to the chest.
His sisters carried on in exactly the same way, every time they ran into him. The twins would likely squeal him halfway to Surrey.
Jenny gestured awkwardly behind her back with one hand. “Help me with this stupid knot, and you must greet Lord Bernward.”
Elijah pulled his thoughts away from the notion that an artist need not have good hearing, and smiled at Jenny’s sister. Maggie Windham, now Maggie, Countess of Hazelton, was taller than Jenny, red-haired, and lushly curved. Her beauty was more grand and severe than Jenny’s, and Elijah would have bet his Associate Academician status that Jenny could do a phenomenal portrait of her.
“Your ladyship, good day.” He did not pick her hand up because his fingers sported splatters of brown and white paint.
“Lord Bernwood.” Her smile was cool, her green eyes full of mischief. “Good day. You will wish Jenny a Happy Christmas now, because I must have her all to myself for the duration. We have much, much to catch up on. Jenny, get out of that old winding sheet and come along. St. Just got a later start from Town than we did, but I’m sure he’s right behind us.”
The espionage of women had started up already.
“Turn around, Genevieve.” Elijah saw the countess’s eyebrows rise at his tone, but Jenny—biddable, sweet Jenny, now that her family was in evidence—turned around and swept tendrils of golden hair off her neck. The pose was incendiary, it had such erotic overtones.
Elijah picked up a penknife and sliced through her knot. “You’re free. Enjoy visiting with your sister.”
Jenny shot a fleeting glance at her just-begun portrait, a glance of such longing Elijah nearly wished the countess Happy Christmas before pitching her into the corridor on her pretty bum.
“I’ll tidy up here, my ladies. Lady Hazelton, a pleasure.”
The women linked arms as Elijah closed the door behind them, the countess’s head bent close to Jenny’s. “Jenny, what on earth has gotten into Their Graces? I’ve never seen so much mistletoe in my life!”
While Elijah could no longer see the mistletoe, because his vision was consumed with Jenny Windham. The New Year could not arrive soon enough, but as Elijah studied Jenny’s painting, his unease on her behalf grew.
The French took their art seriously, and Jenny’s unconventional approach might draw their fire. Bad enough she was a woman, and worse yet she was a talented woman. If some of the established portraitists perceived that she was a brilliant, talented woman, the result could well be savage. Was that what she sought in France? Persecution rather than freedom?
Jenny’s cat, who had taken to following Elijah about in the secret way of cats, stropped itself against his shins. “She’s not taking you either, old boy. Best find some other lady to dote on you.”
Another rap on the door interrupted Elijah’s study of Jenny’s handling of fire.
A tall, dark-haired, green-eyed man stood there, looking fierce and disgruntled. “You’re not Jenny.” He had the same angle to his chin as Jenny, and eyes that had seen the world at less than its best.
“You must be her brother. Elijah, Earl of Bernward, at your service.”
“Rosecroft. It being Christmas, you address me as St. Just or suffer dire consequences.” The man’s bow was the merest gesture. “Where is my little sister?”
A small, dark-haired girl came galloping down the corridor. Timothy shot through Elijah’s feet and made it to the mantel in a single determined bound. “Papa! Papa, Mama says to tell you she and Baby Belle are with the aunties in the library. The aunties want to kiss you hello. They already kissed me on both cheeks, and so did Grandpapa and Grandmama!”
The fierce expression became fiercer yet. “If you value your life or your sanity, Bernward, remain above stairs until dinner.” St. Just’s daughter led him away, a man facing inescapable doom—a man who also hadn’t even glanced at the paintings.
Elijah had barely collected Jenny’s brushes for cleaning when yet another rap sounded on the door. When Elijah glanced at the mantel, Timothy was nowhere in sight.
A liveried footman held out a silver tray. “The post, your lordship.”
Elijah took the letters—three again—with a sense of foreboding that had nothing to do with the servant’s use of his title. Three letters meant his siblings were doubling up, or the cousins and aunties had been recruited for the siege, which was a drastic tactic indeed. Pru in particular hated putting pen to paper, being more a man of action—or impulse, which amounted to the same thing at his age.
Elijah tidied up thoroughly, cleaned every brush and palette knife, stacked sketches neatly in several piles, and generally procrastinated as long as he could. The portrait for Sindal was coming along nicely. He considered starting on a session with it, decided that would be rank cowardice, and opened his letters instead.
By the time he’d finished reading the third one, he looked up to find Joseph Carrington, Earl of Kesmore, standing in the doorway, Timothy in his arms. “I thought I’d find you here.”
“Are you going to kiss me? I have declared this space a kiss-free zone.” The declaration was recent but well intended.
Kesmore sauntered into the room and paused to study the portraits. Elijah could hear the cat purring and tried not to feel betrayed. “No mistletoe here, God be thanked. Downstairs, it’s a veritable gauntlet. His Grace must have appointed himself Lord of Misrule early this year. How goes the painting?”
Joseph Carrington was the closest thing Elijah had to a friend on the premises, so Elijah understood the question was not about painting per se.
“My family has taken a notion to bludgeon me into submission.”
Kesmore settled into one of the rocking chairs, the cat curling up in his lap. “You have a deal of family. I gather from the various lamentations of my in-laws that sisters are the worst.”
Sisters were bad enough. Brothers were bad enough.
Elijah brought a fragrant, single-page missive to his nose, set it aside, and took the second seat. “My mother has explained to me—ten years after it might have done some good—that I will never ga
in admittance to the Royal Academy.”
“Mothers, even your mother, can be wrong. Her Grace’s judgment was not infallible where Louisa was concerned, and His Grace knew not how to intervene between two such strong-willed and dear ladies.”
“You are a good friend, Kesmore, but my mother’s logic is unassailable. She not only turned down the suit of one Mortimer Fotheringale, she told him at the time he had not one-tenth of my father’s artistic talent, no imagination, and no respect for what women could contribute to art. Mind you, my father was an amateur caricaturist only—though I gather Fotheringale was among his targets, and Papa must rely on his marchioness to match his coats and waistcoats. According to my mother, the only way I might meet with more enmity from Fotheringale is if I were her daughter rather than her son.”
Kesmore scratched the beast’s white chin. “Who is this Fotheringale person? Shall I shoot him for you?”
Tempting thought, because Kesmore was only half jesting. “Dear Mortimer is the wealthiest member of the Academy’s nominating committee, though Mother was right about his talent. He paints only academic subjects, takes forever to do them, and then gives them away, probably because nobody would pay money for them. The assassination offer is appreciated but hardly in keeping with the spirit of the holidays.”
The door opened, and Sindal slipped through, closing it quickly behind him. “I thought it might be safe in here. It’s Bedlam downstairs—children, dogs, His Grace producing sweets for the little ones at every turn, mistletoe everywhere. I’ve brought fortification.”
He held up a bottle as if it were the price of admission to the studio.
“Come join us,” Kesmore said. “Bernward here is not going to get into the Academy, and, of course, true love is to blame. He wants cheering up.”
Sindal pulled up a hassock and uncorked the bottle. “What academy?”
Hazelton came next, though how such a big man moved without making a sound was a mystery. He too brought fortification and had dragooned a passing footman into supplying more of same at regular intervals, as well as quantities of sweet breads with butter.
The cat made the round of various laps; the bottles made the rounds. Stories of Christmases past came out, and Elijah even offered a few of his own—cricket in the portrait gallery, freezing his arse off with two of his brothers to see if the animals spoke at midnight on Christmas Eve, hitting his granddame with a snowball by accident and having to visit her as penance thereafter.
“Bet she spoiled you rotten,” Hazelton groused. “Old women know best how to spoil a little fellow. My son’s nurse is eighty if she’s a day.”
Sindal took exception. “She is not. She just looks eighty so she’ll be safe from you.”
“I’ll have you know…” Hazelton began, while Elijah’s attention wandered to his brothers’ letters. His mother’s news was disturbing, because Fotheringale had no motivation for giving up his various grudges. Artistic insecurity had a prodigious memory, one that typically magnified slights and forgot praise.
Hazleton left off defending his manly honor, or his eyesight, or something. “Bernward’s brooding. Pass him the bottle.”
Kesmore passed Elijah the cat instead. Timothy’s claws went to work directly on Elijah’s thigh. “Come, young man. Tell us what afflicts you, and we’ll ridicule you for it accordingly.”
How inchoate inebriation had added years to Kesmore’s standing, Elijah did not know. “My brothers miss me.”
Looks were exchanged all around, and then the door opened. Jenny’s brother, St. Just, slid through. “I’ve brought more refugees. The carnage on the battlefield is terrible. My own dear wife kissed the butler and was sizing up the senior footmen when I escaped.”
St. Just opened the door widely enough that two more men could scurry in behind him. They both had what Elijah was coming to think of as Windham chins—a trait from the sire’s line. They had green eyes, and those green eyes looked harried if not haunted.
Kesmore gestured with the bottle. “Bernward, some introductions: The mean-looking one is St. Just. Around his mama we call him Rosecroft. The prissy one is Lord Valentine, and the sniffy one is Westhaven. Cowards, the lot of them. Afraid of a few shrieking children, a bowl of wassail, and some holiday decorations.”
“I don’t see you down there,” Westhaven said, taking a place on the raised hearth and looking, indeed, sniffy about it.
“I have three children, and I am married to Louisa,” Kesmore said. His smile was fatuous. “And don’t be fooled, Bernward. St. Just is a dear, Lord Valentine more stubborn than the other two put together, and Westhaven only looks sniffy when he’s not beholding his countess. I say this with the authority of a man who loves them sincerely and is only a bit the worse for drink.”
Lord Valentine took the place beside Kesmore; St. Just simply sat on the floor.
“Your brothers might miss you, Bernward,” Sindal said, “but we’ve a few brothers to spare. In the spirit of holiday generosity, we’ll lend them to you. You may have Westhaven here on indefinite loan, for starters.”
By the time they’d gotten around to wondering how His Grace not merely endured but thrived on the holiday mayhem, Elijah had reached an insight that did not provide even as much comfort as the four-ton cat contentedly shredding his breeches.
His sisters missed him, and his mother was threatening essentially to cut him off if he remained “as stubborn as his father.” She might make good on her threats, though Elijah could ambush her in Town and wear her down over the next few years. That prospect was daunting, much like facing the melee below stairs daunted these happy, tipsy men who were delighted to spend time with one another.
Elijah’s brothers missed him too. He’d known that.
What he hadn’t known was how badly he missed his family—the entire lot of them—and how difficult it was going to be to ever gain entrance to the Academy. The latter realization didn’t disturb him nearly as much as it ought to, while the former disturbed him far more than it should have.
***
“Look at me.”
Elijah muttered the words, as if the effort of speaking had been snatched from the orts and leavings of his ability to concentrate. He got like this when he painted—gruff, absorbed, and to Jenny, fascinating.
She looked directly at him. “I am not my mother.”
He studied her for perhaps ten consecutive, silent seconds then went back to scowling at the image taking shape on his canvas. “You have the same shade of green in your eyes, you have the same—” His brush paused, and he fired another glance at her. “Almost the same shape of upper lip.”
He would not have heard anything she said in reply, so Jenny resumed work on her own effort, which was His Grace’s portrait. Without planning it, she and Elijah never worked on the same subject at the same time.
And thank goodness her brothers had appropriated the studio yesterday afternoon, or Elijah would have been much further ahead.
“You are displeased about something. I can feel it.” Elijah spoke without shifting his focus from his canvas.
“Not displeased. I’m glad you got nothing done yesterday. I like to watch you work.”
He wrinkled his nose then added a touch of paint to Her Grace’s shoulder. “You’re daft.”
“Look at me.”
He obliged. He had a smear of white near his chin, his hair was sticking out in all directions, and his eyes were not the same blue as His Grace’s, but Jenny studied them as if they might be.
“I know you spied on us yesterday,” he said, touching his brush to his palette.
“I came in the same door as everybody else, Elijah. How can you call that spying?”
“Nobody noticed you. They were all too absorbed with Sindal’s tale of winning the fair maid over a pile of dirty nappies.”
They had been, the sentimental, kissable, happy lot of them.
Jenny had eavesdropped in a quiet corner, wondering why Sophie—her own sister—had never shared so much of her courtship.
“I believe there was mistletoe involved, and my brothers claim to have had a hand in matters.”
They fell silent. Fifteen minutes from now, Elijah might reply to her comment, or he might curse the fact that he’d run out of green paint, or he might decide he’d reached a place to pause in his own efforts and rip up at her morning’s work.
Jenny had listened to Sindal’s tale yesterday, then listened to Joseph add his Christmas recollections, but she’d also used the time to study her brothers. Each man bore the stamp of His Grace’s paternity, in the eyes, in the chin, and oddly enough, in the way their hands joined their wrists.
His Grace had beautiful wrists, and he’d passed that trait down to his progeny.
“Why are you staring at your wrists, Genevieve? The portrait won’t paint itself.”
“I have my father’s wrists. I wonder if His Grace ever had artistic aspirations. I can’t imagine he did.” And why had she never noticed this?
“My father did—amateur aspirations, from what my mother has said, though his sense of color is abominable. I need to mix up more brown. Why must all wood be brown?”
Wood was not brown. It was red, blond, black, sable, and many other colors that only looked brown. Jenny did not correct Elijah. She’d realized, in the first hour they’d painted together, that she sometimes disagreed with him for the… spark of it.
Minor tiffs and spats formed some kind of verbal mistletoe, having to do with the way Elijah’s eyebrows rose, his nostrils flared, and his chin turned an inch to the right.
“Have you ever seen your father’s work, Elijah?”
He stepped back from his canvas and wiped his hands on a rag. “A few caricatures only. My mother has talent, though. What on earth are you doing with His Grace’s boots?”
The duke had chosen to wear riding attire, which Jenny thought showed his excellent figure to good advantage and helped with the informal nature of the rendering.
Grace Burrowes - [Windham Sisters 05] Page 20
