Страница 25 из 68
Je
“I won’t need my curses in Paris, because I’ll have something to write about besides… my bloody, perishing, damned cat.” She’d surprised him—she’d surprised herself. “Now I feel I must apologize to Timothy.”
“Timothy owes me an apology,” Elijah said. “Damned beast about disemboweled me. I invite you to do the same.” He took a breath, and because Je
He trailed off and scooped up a half-dozen sketches from the low table. These he deposited in her lap on a huff.
“Why don’t you fetch our drinks,” Je
He obliged, and even detoured to poke up the fire before he set Je
The Artist Before Retiring. Je
“These are technically stu
He pushed away from the doorjamb and came down beside her without putting his arm around her. Je
“This is technically adequate,” Elijah said. “If I can’t structure an adequate composition by now… The dog is truly amazing. Not my drawing of him, but that old hound. I’ve never seen a beast as tolerant of children.”
The image on the page was William astride a recumbent Jock, the old dog somnolent in contrast to the child’s gleeful countenance. Whereas Jock looked as if he would be found before that hearth until spring was well advanced, William’s bare foot was raised, and his hand grasped one of Jock’s floppy ears like a rein, as if to urge his canine steed to take flight.
“You’ve caught the trust between the dog and the child,” Je
“I drew a sleeping dog.”
“You drew a sleeping dog who is also part guardian angel. Jock holds all of Rothgreb’s confidences, you know. Lady Rothgreb says she had best die before the dog, so somebody adequate to the task can comfort his lordship in his bereavement.”
Elijah set the drawing aside. “The elderly can take a morbid turn with their humor.”
“The elderly have courage we can only guess at, like soldiers facing battle. That is a good sketch, Elijah. You should consider it for your portrait of William. Rothgreb would love it.”
Je
“I was commissioned to do one portrait of both boys.”
He leaned forward to move the sketch to the bottom of the stack, and Je
“You’re not wearing a shirt or waistcoat.”
The corners of his lips turned up, the first real humor she’d seen in him—and at her expense. “You spent a half hour sketching me, and you’re only noticing this now?”
An hour sketching him, taking him apart visually and putting him back together on the page as a composition, a study. As he’d hunched over his letter, his chest had been a shadow she’d avoided.
“I noticed.” Though she’d noticed by omission. Her gaze traveled down. “What is this?”
“The cat…” He didn’t move, didn’t leap off the couch and hold the door open for her.
Je
She touched the welts, surprised they weren’t hot. Elijah’s stomach went still beneath her fingers, as if he’d stopped breathing.
“Timothy was an uninvited guest at a kiss,” he said. “An ill-advised kiss. He absented himself from the proceedings as best he could.”
As Je
And her family would not understand, though Elijah would understand. She wanted to kiss his bare, warm belly, kiss the hurt and make it go away. She settled for ru
“Genevieve…” He sat directly beside her, his flat abdomen exposed to the firelight, his expression suggesting he’d welcome eagles tearing at his flesh rather than endure her touch.
“I wanted to sketch you without your shirt, but I was afraid to ask. I wanted to sketch you—”
The look he gave her was rueful and tender. “You will be the death of me, woman.”
He sounded resigned to his fate, and Je
“You will note the absence of any felines,” Elijah said, hands falling to his sides. “And yet, I must warn you, Genevieve, indulging your curiosity is still ill-advised.”
He thought this was curiosity on her part, and some of it was, but not curiosity about what happened between women and men. Je
“My parents will be home in a few days, Elijah, possibly as soon as this weekend.” The notion made her lungs feel tight and the whisky roil in her belly.
He trapped her hands and stopped her from tracing the muscles of his chest. “It’s all right. I understand. Explore to your heart’s content.”
A pulse beat at the base of his throat. She touched two fingers to it. “It’s late, you don’t owe me—”
He kissed her, a gentle, admonitory kiss, like Jock’s cautionary growl.
She took his meaning: no more trying to coax enthusiasm from Elijah for her company, no more trying to inspire him to reassurances that he felt something special for her. He would permit her curiosity and nothing more.
The perishing, damned man was going to model kisses for her.
Je
Eight
As a boy, Elijah had argued vociferously with his father that Christmas ought not to fall in the dead of winter. How was a fellow supposed to be good at the very time of year when keeping mud out of the house was an impossibility? How was he to avoid snitching a treat or two in that season when the kitchen was the only consistently warm room in the entire, cavernous Flint family seat?
How was a young man to avoid breaking the occasional vase when the weather was too cold to let off high spirits in the out of doors, and his younger brothers must plague him without ceasing and challenge him to a cricket match against their sisters in the portrait gallery?