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“And yet, you still painted. When you couldn’t paint, you drew. When you couldn’t draw, you embroidered.” He turned to aim a glower at her. “You are relentless.”
He’d all but growled the words, and yet, she was smiling a bemused smile. “After Victor died, I didn’t want to paint, but he’d made me promise, and he was right. I am … relentless. His Grace is relentless too—so’s Mama.”
She started in painting, still not getting the duke quite right in Elijah’s opinion. The portrait was all but completed, and recasting the sitter’s personality was not easily done in touch-ups and finishing work.
His Grace was relentless, and tireless in pursuit of his ends, but he was also a man capable of asking for what he wanted, even demanding what he wanted, and Je
He paused, his brush poised above the duke’s heart. Je
“Elijah didn’t even suggest Sindal’s portrait should be sent to the nominating committee.” Je
“Sit down,” Louisa muttered. “If I only have an hour before the baby wakes, I don’t want to spend it watching you careen about like a kite in the wind. Maggie, send that teapot over here.”
Maggie rose from her rocker by the fire and set the teapot—a porcelain confection of green leaves and pink cabbages roses—down before Louisa. “Je
“Fotheringale,” Je
Sophie glanced up from her embroidery hoop. “Men have been known to give up when they receive no encouragement whatsoever.”
The door opened, admitting a flushed and flustered Lady Eve. “I have ruined Christmas!”
“Close the door,” Louisa groused. “We can at least be cozy while we endure this ruined Christmas.”
Eve flounced down onto the sofa on Louisa’s other side. “I’m serious. Deene and I agreed to exchange our presents on Christmas Eve under the mistletoe, because we wanted a tradition, and that’s today, and amid all the commotion and the coming and going, I left his p-present at L-lavender C-court!”
Louisa put an arm around Eve, who took to weeping, while Je
“We’ll send a footman,” Maggie said.
“Can’t,” Eve replied, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “Mama has them ru
“A groom?” Louisa ventured.
“They’re still decorating the ballroom,” Eve wailed.
“I’d send Sindal, but he’s gone off to fetch old Rothgreb,” Sophie said.
Je
Another round of looks was exchanged: Louisa’s thoughtful, Sophie’s dubious. Eve looked hopeful—also quite gravid and in no condition for any upset—while Maggie looked… Maggie’s expression was hard to discern.
“Go then,” Louisa said. “Eve, describe this dratted present, and, Genevieve, you will not tarry or end up in a snowdrift, lest we’re left explaining to Mama why she has a portrait to show off to the neighbors this evening but no Lady Je
Je
“Lady Maggie told me I’d find you here.” Clearly, had Elijah tarried even another minute above stairs, he would have missed Je
Je
He tugged her hands away and went to work on her cloak—my lord, indeed. “I wasn’t looking for you. I was enjoying a comfortable spot of tea in the agreeable company of your feline familiar, when Lady Maggie said you were haring off across the countryside, intent on some errand for your younger sister.”
The look she sent him gave away nothing, except perhaps general displeasure. His mother had perfected that very expression early in his boyhood.
“It’s snowing, my lady, and while you are yet in England, you will allow a gentleman to escort you on any cross-country sorties.”
He frenchified the word but kept most of his exasperation behind his teeth.
She held his greatcoat out to him, which Elijah took for a compromise. He might walk by her side on this short outing, but only because a week or a month hence, she’d be free to dodge the offal on the streets of Paris without even a footman to attend her.
The notion was increasingly hard to tolerate. “Take my scarf.”
“I have bo
He looped his scarf over her ears and around her neck, but did not wrap it right over her fool mouth. “Bo
She fussed with the drape of the scarf but did not hand it back to him. “It’s not snowing that hard.”
“Not yet.”
God help him, it felt good even to argue with his Genevieve. The duchess had been fretting over the weather all morning, though, worried that guests would not be able to attend her open house, worried they’d be snowed in if they did. Worried for her duke, who was serenely content to organize the loudest scavenger hunt in history for the children—or perhaps for his grown sons, who had apparently secreted bottles of French potation in various locations.
Lady Je
Elijah did not attempt to offer the lady his arm, but rather, accompanied her out the front door, down a shoveled path past the stables, and on toward the home wood. When he could tolerate her freezing silence no longer, Elijah opened a topic he thought safe. “Is the scavenger hunt a tradition?”
Je
“Do the ladies take part?”
“No. We enjoy some peace and quiet or we help Mama and the staff put the final touches on the public rooms for the open house.” She came around a holly bush and stopped short. “This didn’t use to be here. I could swear this wasn’t here the last time I rode through these woods.”
An oak of considerable proportions had fallen across the path ahead. “The way looks clear around to the—”
She was already scrambling over the horizontal trunk, despite the wet snow, despite the availability of a gentleman whose stated purpose was to provide escort.
Off to Paris, she was. She’d probably departed weeks ago—years ago, even. If Bartholomew’s death hadn’t purchased her a ticket for Calais, then Victor’s certainly had.
Elijah vaulted across the trunk, turned, and pulled her the rest of the way over the fallen tree. “You’ve snow all over you. Hold still.”