Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, love_history
ISBN: 9781402263835
Google: nfJbAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: 140226383X
Goodreads: 15713735
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Published: 2013-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

Allowing intimacies with Denby had been stupid and disappointing but not tragic. Marriage to Denby would have been tragic. These thoughts, along with both satisfaction and loss, coursed through Jenny as she sprawled on Elijah’s chest.

Denby had been a selfish, inept boy, just as Jenny had been a selfish, inept girl, while Elijah was… a man, a skilled, generous, passionate, caring, talented…

Jenny very much feared that intimacies with Elijah Harrison were going to have consequences tragic for her, though she couldn’t quite fathom how. She could still feel him, feel the pleasurable fullness of him inside her body, and suspected she’d feel him in her heart for far longer than was prudent.

“Elijah?” She could not say these things to him, and yet she wanted to say something.

“Love?”

The sensation of him using her braid like a paintbrush on her back was peculiar and soothing. He gathered her closer, and she kissed him, kissed him with all the regret and longing in her, with all the sorrow and loss too.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, because the missing had already started. “I will miss you so very much.”

His hands went still on her back, and Jenny’s heart stopped beating.

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and studied her, guardedness replacing the tenderness in his eyes. “You said you wanted it to be me, Genevieve.”

“I did, and it was, and I thank you for that.” One did not thank a man for indulging one’s passions. Jenny realized that as she watched the guardedness cool yet more.

“You’re pleased then, with this night’s work?”

Work? He’d emphasized the word slightly, or maybe Jenny had heard emphasis where none had been intended.

“I am—I was. I’m not now.” Their bodies were still joined—she was more or less lying on him—and yet, something was off, something was terribly, terribly off, and she was desperate to right it.

He closed his eyes, heaving up a sigh that Jenny felt bodily. “Why are you going to Paris?”

To study art. That was what she was supposed to say to him. Jenny folded down against his chest, relieved beyond measure when his arms came around her.

“I cannot bear…” She tried to stuff the words back into her mind, back so far under propriety and familial regard even she didn’t have to acknowledge them. “I can no longer tolerate the company of my family. They don’t know me, you see, and yet they love me.”

This was as honest as she knew how to be, and yet, the answer didn’t feel complete.

His hand moved on her back, no braid-paintbrush in his fingers, just his hand, slow and warm. “They know you. Our families know us even when we wander off for years, Genevieve.”

He sounded so sad and faraway, and yet he was holding her close too.

“My family thinks I’m good, and when I see them gather together every Christmas, I’m reminded that I’m not good at all. I don’t want the things I should want, and I do want things I shouldn’t—selfish things.

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