Grace Burrowes: Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

I will kill my sister, even though her husband is a flawless marksman.

Her Grace slowed in the act of clapping her hands, so what resulted was instead a prayerful pose. “Percival? Might Arabella—?”

In the years—the decades —of travel Jenny’s family was planning for her, Elijah would find some other lady to become his marchioness. He’d find a woman without troublesome artistic inclinations, one who’d never ask him to pose for her or argue with him over the proper use of the color green.

Never need him to tell her she was brilliant, never smile at her as she built a house of cards any child might topple in an instant.

Jenny shot up from her seat at the escritoire. “ No .”

Three heads turned toward her, as if noticing she was present for the first time. The duchess’s hands fluttered to her sides. “No? You don’t want to see Pompeii? I suppose it is a sad place, full of ruins and death—but very artistic too.”

The place was full of naughty frescoes and objets d’art a lady wouldn’t even be allowed to see—without a husband along to insist she be permitted.

“No Pompeii, no Rome, no Italy.”

His Grace frowned. “Straight to Vienna, then? I suppose that makes sense, particularly if you’re interested in seeing Moscow and—”

“No Vienna, no Moscow, No Buda, no Pest. No anywhere .”

A slow grin broke across Louisa’s face, and Jenny’s parents both, doubtless by coincidence, found it necessary to study the carpet.

“What about Paris?” Louisa asked. “Surely you don’t intend to give up Paris?”

The duchess admired a wedding ring she’d likely worn every day for thirty-some years. His Grace said nothing.

But they were listening. Jenny had told them no, and they were listening to her every word.

“What I might have with Elijah is worth more than all the art in the entire world. Maybe Paris is in my future. I don’t know. All I know is that I must take myself to Surrey before I go anywhere else.”

Her Grace studied her for a moment, and Jenny braced herself for a lecture about being steadfast in pursuit of one’s goals and travel arrangements having been made. Papa would chime in with comments about young ladies not knowing their own minds. He would profess to be confused, while dripping disapproval from every syllable, Her Grace having taught him a thing or two about raising daughters.

No matter. “Where I need to go isn’t Italy or Russia or Paris. I need to go to Surrey. I’ll walk there if I have to, but I must leave within the hour.”

His Grace laced his hands behind his back, which signaled not a lecture but an entire speech in the offing. The duchess, however, slowly raised her arms and opened them wide.

Jenny was preparing to deliver a speech of her own when she noticed her mother was smiling. “I thought we were going to have to send you abroad for you to find your senses, Genevieve.”

Jenny went into her mother’s embrace, while the duke muttered something that sounded like “About damned time.”

“Joseph says Bernward is headed off to York for another commission,” Louisa said. “If you don’t want to travel two hundred miles north in the dead of winter, you’d best make haste to Flint Hall.”

“You, sir, are a fraud.”

In the privacy of the Marquess of Flint’s study, Elijah toasted his father as he made that accusation. His lordship looked pleased, though Elijah had spoken in complete earnest.

“Your mother accuses me of being a rumgumptious scalawag, which in a French accent sounds dire indeed, and now you promote me to the status of felon. It is wonderful to have you home, Elijah.”

“And it is wonderful to be home.” An understatement among understatements, also beside the point. “Explain these, if you please.”

Elijah passed over the leather case Buchanan had given him and watched while the marquess unrolled the lot.

“Oh, my. I’d never thought to see these again. I suppose Buchanan passed them along?”

“He did. They’ve been collecting dust in some cupboard or other for the past few decades.” And yet, the drawings were brilliant, each and every one a masterpiece in pen and ink. “I was told you were a skilled caricaturist, nothing more, and yet you can draw like this.”

His lordship remained silent, gazing at a drawing of a much younger George III. His Royal Majesty had two small princesses on his lap, everybody attired for court, but the image was redolent of love and affection nonetheless.

“They say old George still asks for his dear little Amelia.”

Such regret, such commiseration.

Such talent . “Papa, I do not understand. Your ability easily eclipses my own, and yet you put your art aside. What could have possessed you to stop creating when you have an eye like this?”

Every detail was superbly rendered, every nuance of expression carefully drawn. Elijah had spent half his trip down from London and a long night wondering why such skill had disappeared into a dusty cupboard. Through a joyous reunion with siblings, mother, and father, he’d kept that question to himself, but in the cold, bright light of day, he needed an answer.

He got another silence, though this time, his lordship directed his attention over the fireplace, where a lovely Reynolds portrait of her ladyship held pride of place. “They call it Daltonism now. Seems to afflict us fellows more than the ladies.”

“I do not know what Daltonism is. You draw brilliantly.”

“Your mother said as much, but you paint brilliantly, and hence your ambitions deserved support.”

Support. Elijah tried to wrap his mind around the notion that years of living from commission to commission, of enduring a status that hovered between tradesman and guest, of missing his family was a form of support.

“What is this Daltonism?”

His lordship continued to study the portrait. “I cannot see colors, apparently, or at least some colors. Your mother says I lack a proper appreciation for red, and I must believe her. My attempts at portraits and even landscapes were disasters.” Flint’s gaze flicked over Elijah’s face. “Hard to do a rendering of a lady’s smile or her blushes, when a fellow doesn’t understand the color red.”

The words made no sense.

“How can you not understand a color, for God’s sake?” And what a curse would that be, to perceive line, composition, and emotional content, but not color ?

“Your mother asked me to paint a small study of flowers, using the colors I saw, and she explained to me that I’m using greens, browns, and oranges in places where I ought to use red. Red, she claims, is a color like the taste of a pomegranate, the scent of roses, or the feel of the flame between your fingers when you pinch out a candle. She says it’s like orange without yellow, though I cannot imagine such a thing.”

Elijah dipped them both out a glass of wassail, despite the early hour. “So you do not perceive even the blood in your veins as red?”

His lordship smiled. “What matters the color of my blood? It beats through my veins effectively enough, particularly when I regard your mother.”

That smile was sweet and pleased. The smile of a man who’d made hard, correct choices. “This puts Mama’s preference for you over Fotheringale in a somewhat different light.”

His lordship’s brows came down. “Fotheringale is blind to much more significant matters than whether a tree is red or green. He could not see your mother’s talent, and he bitterly resented my little scribblings.”

“He still does.” Which also mattered not at all. “You all but dared me to try for the Academy, knowing he stood against me?”