“Can’t,” Eve replied, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “Mama has them running all about in preparation for the open house later today.”
“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.
Jenny rose, before her sisters could stop her. “I’ll go. I’ll be there and back in a trice, and Mama won’t notice my absence, because you lot will distract her if the preparations don’t suffice. You will not tell our brothers, either.”
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 Jenny, hmm?”
Jenny listened with half an ear as Eve described an oblong box left on a sideboard. Lavender Court wasn’t far at all—it adjoined the Morelands park on the other side of the woods—and far more important than Eve’s sentimental intentions toward her husband, this errand would free Jenny from Morelands for the space of at least an hour.
“Lady Maggie told me I’d find you here.” Clearly, had Elijah tarried even another minute above stairs, he would have missed Jenny’s departure.
Jenny paused as she fastened the frogs of her cloak. “And why would you be looking for me, my lord?”
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 bonnets—”
He looped his scarf over her ears and around her neck, but did not wrap it right over her fool mouth. “Bonnets will not keep you warm, and bonnets do not fare well when snowed upon.”
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 Jenny pulled on gloves. “If it’s going to snow, then the sooner we’re off, the less we’ll have to contend with.” She gestured at the door, her posture and tone reminiscent of her mother.
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?”
Jenny crunched through the snow beside him, her pace approximating a forced march with the enemy in mounted pursuit. “Yes.”
“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.”
She tolerated his brushing at her cloak, stood still like some martyr enduring blasphemy. “Will you tell me about Paris?”
A small, chilly question, though it lit a flame in him. He finished dusting her off. “Anything you want to know. Ask me anything.”
To his relief, she wanted to know practical things: where to stay, where to procure food, where to never, ever go, even with an escort. To whom might she apply for instruction, where might she display finished works. How did one procure a horse and keep the beast and any conveyances, grooms, or coachmen? Where did one find domestics?
The last question comforted most, because it meant Jenny contemplated a cozy establishment, not some drafty garret where she’d enjoy only mice as companions.
Their pace slowed as they wound through the home wood, and at some point Elijah took Jenny’s hand. When they emerged from the trees, she stopped again but kept her fingers laced with his.
“I want to paint this. I want to paint Eve’s cozy little manor house, the snow coming down, the greenery adorning the windows. I want to paint it for myself.”
Because she’d miss this too. Elijah let her look her fill, the wind whispering through the trees behind them, flurries dancing on the frigid air. Snowy days had a scent to them, a subtle, different feel to the air.
Jenny was talented enough that she could probably paint even the scent of snow.
“Come, my lady. You’ll become an ice sculpture if we stand here long enough.”
She turned the same regard she’d shown the house onto Elijah, a memorizing sort of look that conveyed both affection and impending loss. He marched away from her, intent on escaping her scrutiny and the longing it held.
“Have you any more questions about Paris?”
She huffed out a sigh that made a little cloud before her. “I have nothing but questions, though I didn’t want to distract you from your painting. Have you ever come across a female sculptor?”
“I have not, thank God. Do you have a key?” The knocker was down, and staff likely let off for the holidays.
Jenny withdrew the key and handed it to him. “Why ‘thank God’?”
He pushed the door open, admitting them to an entryway that on a sunny day would glow with the light of polished wood, but at present was gloomy and cold.
“Thank God, Genevieve, because you probably have some notion of becoming the first internationally renowned female sculptor. Do you favor the proportions of a stevedore on a duke’s daughter? Bad enough you’ll heft heavy canvases. Sculptors wrestle their art from stone, you know, and—”
She stared at the floor immediately inside the doorway, making no move to free herself from his scarf or her gloves. He’d probably driven her clear off to Moscow this time.
He unwrapped his scarf from her, shook the snow from it, and draped it over her shoulders. “You aren’t listening to me.” Her gloves came next. “If you want to become a sculptor, then you must, because you’ll be brilliant at that too, but I cannot—hold still.” He used his teeth to get his own gloves off and went to work on her frogs. “I cannot countenance that you will face difficulties and you will have no support. You will have no one. Your art must stand or fall on its own merit—such as merit can be subjectively determined—and as much as I want to, I cannot be there to temper the winds of fortune for you.”