At least Fotheringale was predictable. “No one would like to see that, but West has a point: it is the Royal Academy. I’ll have a word with the regent, not because he will ever dictate our membership to us, but because his taste is excellent and his support unceasing.”
In other words, Fotheringale’s money was important, but not as important as the prince’s favor.
“Meet with whomever you damned please,” Fotheringale said, sitting back and tugging his waistcoat down over his belly. “Won’t make a damned bit of difference. Harrison will not do. Next thing, you’ll be nominating women again.”
Dear God, not that old argument. Buchanan scraped back his chair, trying to signal that the meeting was over, but Alywin Moser spoke up.
“Two of our founding members were ladies, I’ll remind you. The ladies exhibit wonderful work as amateurs, and artistic talent doesn’t—”
“Bother that.” Fotheringale heaved himself to his feet. “Mary Moser drew flowers. That made her hardly more than a drawing-room talent, but her father wedged her into the Academy at a time when judgment was lacking and enthusiasm high.”
Moser, who was not officially related to the late lady artist, was on his feet too. “Angelica Kaufman traded portraits with Sir Joshua himself, and Mary Moser’s flowers were worth the notice of Her Majesty!”
“Gentlemen.” Buchanan did not stand. “We can agree that Frogmore is lovely, and that there are not any ladies among this year’s candidates, so perhaps we might adjourn to the drawing room, where a bottle of excellent cognac will fortify us against the night’s chill.”
Or against the committee’s inane pettifogging and posturing.
“Cognac’s one thing the damned Frenchies do right,” Fotheringale grumbled. “But the only thing worse than admitting that Harrison to the Academy—a man who has done no academic work and not a single juvenile portrait, may I remind you—would be admitting a female. I trust I make my meaning clear.”
Behind Fotheringale’s broad back, Henry West sent Buchanan a sympathetic gaze. Harrison was talented, titled, congenial, and had done a number of academic subjects earlier in his career, though portraits were of course more lucrative. Harrison had offended nobody except, apparently, old Fotheringale—the deepest pockets on the Academy’s board.
Buchanan gestured West closer. “Have we ascertained why old Foggy is so set against Harrison?”
West glanced at the rest of the party as they shuffled from the room. “Something to do with a woman.”
Well, of course. The good news was Mr. Harrison wasn’t prone to inconvenient left-handed tendencies. The bad news was Prinny could turn up prudish with all the zeal of a true hypocrite.
Then, too, Harrison had not done a single juvenile portrait.
“Keep digging. We have only a few weeks, and I, for one, do not want to celebrate the holidays listening to Fotheringale’s bile, nor do I want to listen to the hue and cry if Pritchett and Hamlin are elevated to Academician status.”
Elijah used two fingers to shift Genevieve’s chin a half inch to the right, wanting the firelight to catch her at three-quarter angle.
His model flinched minutely. “I’ve never done this before.”
Urgency pulsed through him, an urgency to capture her, and yet, experience came to his rescue. One must put the subject at ease. If one was going to take a true likeness from a subject, one had to make the experience comfortable.
“Yes, you have.” He adjusted the tilt of her head as if handling beautiful women with transcendently soft skin were an everyday occurrence for him. And because he was a man who so rarely handled anything at all beautiful, he also traced his fingers back along her hairline, indulging in yet another pleasure as if it were of no moment. “You regularly sit in chairs before fires, thinking about…”
He rose to move the candle on the mantel so it would cast a touch of back light. “What is it you do think about, my lady?”
“I’m supposed to think about paying calls, stitching samplers, and reading the Society pages.”
He resumed his seat, close enough that his knee bumped hers, and still not close enough. “And none of that bears any interest for you. Stay just like that.”
Where to start?
Old lessons, lessons from his first boyhood ventures into sketching came into his head. One begins by paying attention.
“I was under the impression that rendering a sketch involved moving the pencil across the paper, Mr. Harrison.”
Still, he did not make the first mark on the pristine page. “You’re nervous. I should think a woman with your looks would be used to men gawking at her, and you’ve dodged my question, so I’ll ask another. You said my interest was preferable to your family’s pity. Why should they pity you?”
Though her position did not shift, her expression did, and now—now—the sketch he would make took shape in his mind.
“I’m not quite on the shelf, and yet my fate has taken on an inevitable quality, like a prisoner awaiting sentencing when there were no witnesses for the defense.”
His pencil began to move, long, curving strokes first. The outline of her came first: graceful, pensive, and full of passion dammed up by a massive, determined reserve.
“You don’t want a husband and children? I can’t believe you haven’t had offers.” He tossed the question out to keep that infinitesimal furrow to her brow, also to establish that between him and his subject, there need not be any secrets. He would be as a blank page to her—no judgments, no opinions, nothing but a sympathetic ear. When he completed her sketch, he would still be a blank page, while every line and shadow on the paper would be imbued with her secrets.
“My sisters are the ones who’ve gotten the offers, usually. There was a bishop last year, old enough to be my father.”
“Bishops can usually provide well.” And were known to have large families. The idea nudged unhappily at his concentration.
“My family can provide well. If I must be a doting maiden aunt, then a doting maiden aunt I shall be.”
Her features were rife with the small imperfections that made beauty interesting: Her mouth was not perfectly symmetrical, which gave her the appearance of considering a smile moment by moment, even when her eyes were serious. Her brows were a trifle darker than her hair, and her chin, upon close examination, bore a hint of stubbornness.
She hadn’t answered his question about why she was unmarried; she hadn’t answered his question about what filled her pretty head. He focused on her jawline and forgot all about putting the subject at ease.
His downfall as a boy had been Albrecht Dürer’s watercolor of a young hare, a rendering so precise, the animal’s nose practically twitched as one beheld it. How did so much life, so much vitality, fit into a simple two-dimensional rendering? And not even an oil, but a watercolor?
Elijah had become desperate to comprehend Dürer’s genius. Somewhere along the way—Rome, maybe, or Vienna, possibly Copenhagen—he’d acquired technique and lost sight of the desperation.
“You are very quiet, Mr. Harrison.”
He was supposed to say that she was a very absorbing subject, then smile and compliment a particular feature.
“I’m busy. What are you thinking?”
She wouldn’t tell him, that was clear by now. Genevieve Windham was a master at keeping her cards out of sight.
“I want to go to Paris.”
The ear was a curious organ, more complicated than most people thought, like a horse’s hoof. Lots of angles and shadows to the typical ear, but an ear could also be beautiful. “Paris in spring is lovely.”
“I want to go now.”
The point of his pencil broke, and he muttered an oath. Still her features did not shift from the serene, contemplative, secret-veiling expression she’d worn for long moments. Da Vinci would have been desperate to sketch her—nobody did justice to a sensual madonna like he had.