Grace Burrowes: Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

He smiled as if she’d just explained to the Archbishop of Canterbury that Christmas often fell on the twenty-fifth of December.

“I like hands,” he said, taking his seat. “They can be windows to the soul too. What shall I do with these hands you intend to immortalize?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead, it being sufficient challenge to choose a single aspect of him to sketch. Fleur and Amanda came skipping back into the room, each clutching a sketch pad.

“You will sketch the girls, and I will sketch you, while the girls sketch whomever they please.” The plan was brilliant; everybody had an assigned task.

Amanda’s little brows drew down. “I want to watch Mr. Harrison. Fleur can sketch you, Aunt Jen. You have to sit very still, though.”

“An unbroken chain of artistic indulgence,” Mr. Harrison said, accepting a sketch pad and pencil from Fleur. “Miss Fleur, please seat yourself on the hearth, though you might want a pillow to make the ordeal more comfortable.”

Amanda grabbed two burgundy brocade pillows off the settee, tossed one at Fleur, and dropped the other beside Elijah’s rocker. Jenny took the second rocking chair and flipped open her sketch pad.

Her subject sat with the morning sun slanting over his shoulder, one knee crossed over the other, the sketch pad on his lap. Amanda watched from where she knelt at his elbow, and Fleur…

Fleur crossed one knee over the other—an unladylike pose, but effective for balancing a sketch pad—and glowered at Jenny as if to will Jenny’s image onto the page by visual imperative.

“Your sister has beautiful eyebrows,” Mr. Harrison said to his audience. “They have the most graceful curve. It’s a family trait, I believe.”

Amanda crouched closer. “Does that mean I have them too?”

He glanced over at her, his expression utterly serious. “You do, though yours are a touch more dramatic. When you make your bows, gentlemen will write sonnets to the Carrington sisters’ eyebrows.”

“Papa’s horse is Sonnet. Tell me some more.”

While he spoke, his pencil moved over the page in short, light bursts of activity. “Notice the way Miss Fleur’s eyes, as beautiful as they are, aren’t pitched at exactly the same angle. Nobody’s face is perfectly symmetrical, not if you study them closely.”

“What’s symmet—that word you said?”

While Jenny sketched, and Fleur sat a little taller on her burgundy pillow, Mr. Harrison provided Amanda a concise, understandable explanation for symmetry, then went on and described the ways asymmetry made an image interesting.

“Have you ever drawn a crow?” Amanda asked. “Or a pitcher?”

“I’m sure I have. Crows are a challenge because they want you to think they’re black, but in the sun, they’re many colors.”

From across the room, Jenny saw her nieces consider crows in a whole new manner, not as rough-voiced avian nuisances, but as peacocks in disguise.

“So what do you do when you want to draw a crow?” Amanda’s nose was less than an inch from Mr. Harrison’s sleeve.

His pencil did not stop moving, though Fleur was beginning to fidget now that her soon-to-be-legendary eyebrows were no longer under discussion.

“I try to draw the crow as he sees himself. They’re curious fellows, flying about as if the entire world were available as their perch. I’ve seen a crow light on the back of a cow, for example, and the cow had nothing to say to it.”

Amanda grinned, a child who might like to fly through the clouds and light on the back of a cow.

“I’m curious too,” Fleur said. “I don’t want to sit on a cow. I want to sit on a pony.”

“What would you name your pony?” Mr. Harrison asked.

Jenny listened with half an ear to the earnest and protracted discussion that ensued. Naming a pony was apparently a holy undertaking in the opinion of her nieces, but then, their father was a former cavalry officer.

As Jenny’s father was. Her pencil stopped moving, as her mind started a roll call of family members who’d served in the cavalry:

His Grace; her uncle Tony; her oldest brother, Devlin St. Just; her brothers-by-marriage, Kesmore and Deene; her late brother, Bartholomew… Thoughts of Bart brought both grief and anger.

And, of course, guilt.

The clock chimed the quarter hour, prodding Jenny out of her reverie. Across the room, Elijah Harrison had made two conquests by virtue of simply talking with Fleur and Amanda. He’d glanced over at Jenny occasionally, his gaze amused and patient.

While she had only fourteen more minutes to give vent to years of artistic frustration.

And yet, when she looked down at the page twenty minutes later—Fleur would remain still no longer, not even with a book on her lap—Jenny had not sketched Mr. Harrison’s talented hands, or not just his hands.

“Shall we have a critique session?” he asked as he rose. “I’m sure the young ladies would be happy to assist us.”

His hand settled on Fleur’s dark curls, and the little girl went still beneath his touch—even Kesmore didn’t have that effect on his daughter—while Jenny felt her insides take flight. A critique session with Elijah Harrison?

“I have used up my half hour and then some, Mr. Harrison. I would not impose further.”

“Nonsense. My model has been very patient, as has my assistant, and I’m sure they’d be fascinated to see what we’ve created.”

“I can show you my sketch,” Fleur volunteered.

“What’s a critique session?” Amanda asked.

A critique session was when you put your heart in the middle of a busy thoroughfare and hoped at least some of the passing traffic didn’t roll directly over it.

Mr. Harrison smiled down at Amanda. “A critique session is when people who share a similar passion try to help each other improve their work. Like when you read your papa’s poetry and suggest a better rhyme to him.”

“Mama does that,” Fleur said. “She makes Papa smile. I know a lot of rhymes. Do you want to see my sketch?”

He held out a hand. “Of course.”

In one gesture and two words, he’d given Fleur a gift of confidence no one would take from her. Jenny envied her niece and understood now why people enjoyed sitting to Elijah Harrison.

He was quiet; he was reserved. He was not the most cheerful individual, and he could be brusque, but he was kind. She had not appreciated this about him when he’d joined in the critique sessions at Antoine’s, though her recollection was of a man who’d offered suggestions and observations, not criticisms.

He appropriated the brocade pillows and arranged them on the hearth, then held out a hand to her. “Come, Lady Jenny. Let us assemble the jury.”

His hand was warm, and he seated her as graciously as if they were at one of the Duchess of Moreland’s entertainments. Fleur and Amanda each tucked themselves against an adult, and Jenny tried to quiet her nerves.

He would not laugh at her work in front of the children, would he?

“Miss Fleur, your work comes first, lest you burst with excitement and rain feathers all over the room.” He took Fleur’s proffered sketch pad and regarded her efforts in silence for some moments.

“You are an honest artist,” he remarked. “You have chosen to present your aunt without even a hint of a smile. That was brave of you, but also accurate, given how hard Lady Jenny concentrates on her art. Lady Jenny, what can you add?”

Jenny took the little sketch, prepared to wax enthusiastic about some lines and squiggles, only to be brought up short.

“Fleur, you have a good eye.” On the page, a lady sat hunched in a rocking chair, the composition a heap of dress, chin, and severe bun, as if crabbed with age. No particular features were evident, and proportion was a lost cause, as was perspective, and yet, the child had managed to catch something of an unhappy intensity about Jenny’s posture. “I’m very impressed.”