And yet, she’d hate him did he thwart her scheme.

“Maybe I could take a turn building the house of cards,” Elijah suggested. “Though I would, of course, need an assistant.”

“Me!” Kit yodeled.

Lady Jenny was indeed an experienced aunt. She affected a pout. “And then what am I to do? You fellows will have your fun, and I shall be left to sit by myself, with nothing to do, all alone, not even Jock to play with—”

“C’mon, Aunt Jen. I’ll help you too.”

Elijah suggested Kit choose the cards, making sure that knaves were paired with knaves, and queens with queens, and Jenny was to build the structure. William mounted up on his sleeping canine steed and sang a happy-little-boy tune no composer would recognize and no parent would mistake.

As William took up the reins of Jock’s ears, Elijah sat on the raised hearthstones and sketched. Excitement hummed along in his veins, a visceral recognition that he’d found the arrangement that would make a worthy portrait.

The point of view was only slightly from above, so that the shining crown of Jenny’s head was in evidence as she bent to peer over Kit’s shoulder. The feel of the angle was intimate, though, a child’s-level view of a relaxed morning.

Lines and shadows arranged themselves into a small boy’s smile and a sleeping dog’s contentment. While the fire crackled cheerily, the house of cards steadily grew, and Genevieve Windham’s hands became a subtle point of interest in the sketch.

When she sat back to admire her little card palace, Elijah caught her smile—loving, but always a bit wistful when in company with the children. He caught the way the boys looked at her too. They adored this relation who was as pretty as their mama, and never quite so stern. They adored her humor and affection, her gentleness, and her abiding regard for them.

The house of cards rose higher. Jock’s back leg twitched as he dreamed his doggy dreams, and William left off riding his gallant steed long enough to accept the knave of spades from his brother.

“Careful,” Jenny cautioned. “William is going to want to—”

On a gleeful cry from William, the knave went sailing into the upper stories of the palace, destroying twenty minutes of careful work.

William clapped his chubby hands then turned to Elijah, arms outstretched. “I-unt-up!”

The palace rose and fell several more times, Jock rolled over, and Elijah completed a detailed sketch of Jenny with her nephews. William occasionally supervised from Elijah’s side, then toddled forth to wreak destruction like a one-boy Vandal horde.

Jenny presided over it all from her spot on the rug, a serene, smiling presence with endless patience for busy little boys and their portraitist.

She would be wasted on Paris. Elijah started another sketch on the strength of that conclusion, a study of Jenny’s face as she regarded Kit’s efforts to find “an ace with a blood-colored diamond” on it.

Her smile, indulgent, tender, and yearning, said she even loved the child’s choice of words.

The door opened, something Elijah perceived with the part of his brain set aside for keeping track of matters not related to his sketch, like a porter’s nook in the front chamber of a grand house.

“Beg pardon, your ladyship. Shall I be taking the boys now?”

The nursemaid’s arrival would have been cause for much relief the day or two previous. “Another moment,” Elijah muttered, pencil flying.

“Soon, Norquist,” Lady Jenny said. “We were about to finish up.”

As he forced himself to retreat from the world of his sketch, Elijah realized the boys were trying to start a squabble over some lower order of card—a three?

“I-unts” became increasingly vocal, interspersed with “It’s not your turn,” until Elijah had to set his drawing aside and scoop William up in his arms.

“What you want,” he informed the child, “is a stout tickling.” He scratched lightly at the boy’s round tummy, provoking peals of merriment. William’s laughter, surprisingly hearty coming from so small a body, sounded to Elijah exactly as Prudholm’s had when that worthy was still small enough to tease and tickle like this.

“Elijah…” Jenny’s tone bore patience and a warning.

Don’t get the little ones all wound up, Elijah. You’re the oldest, and they look to you for an example of proper decorum.

He lifted the happy little fellow up over his head and slowly lowered him. “Enough, my lad. Time to go with nurse and have some bread and jam. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Or maybe some of your mama’s delicious stollen. Mmmm.”

“I want some of Mama’s Christmas bread too,” Kit announced. “Come along, Aunt Jen. We’ll share.”

Elijah stood, passed Sweet William off to his nurse, and took Aunt Jen by the hand. “I’m sure your aunt longs to accompany you, Kit, but she must stay here and help me clean up this awful mess.”

Kit’s gaze darted to the scattering of cards on the rug. To a small child, a deck held thousands of cards, none of which little hands found easy to stack. Such a pity, that.

“I’ll save you a piece of stollen, Aunt Jen.” Kit took his nurse’s hand and towed her toward the door. “’Bye, Aunt, ’bye, Mr. Harrison.”

“Au revoir,” Elijah murmured. When the door closed, he still had Genevieve firmly by the hand lest she attempt an independent retreat.

“The cards,” she began, turning away.

He swung her back to face him—“Hang the perishing, damned cards”—and kissed her.

“Elijah Harrison!”

He kissed her again, more soundly. “That’s for thinking you needed those children to protect you from me this morning. Which gave you more worry, Genevieve, the idea that I might take liberties, or the notion I could possibly look upon you with indifference by the broad light of day?”

She peered up at him. “Both?”

One syllable held a world of uncertainty, a world of feminine anxiety that Elijah could not bear for her to suffer. He wrapped her in his embrace. “Neither, you daft creature.”

Those words were no kind of reassurance, so Elijah cast around for others while he restored himself in some regard with lungfuls of jasmine scent. “I prosper as an artist, in part, Genevieve, because I’m a sober, hardworking fellow. I make no silly wagers. I rise early and tend to my work. I deliver on every commission I accept. You know this.”

Her arms came around him; her cheek rested against his chest. “I know you are a man.”

If she wasn’t convinced of that by now…

“I am a gentleman. I would not take liberties before others.” He fell silent as he realized the door—the very door not ten feet distant—was unlocked. Then, too, a gentleman would not take liberties at all.

Perishing, damned inconvenient business, being a gentleman. He turned her face up to him by virtue of kissing her cheek. “And as for indifference, my dear, I am not capable of it where you are concerned. I rarely show intimate attentions to others, and do not share yours lightly.”

Those were still not the words a woman wanted to hear the morning after encountering the second man with whom she’d been intimate. Elijah knew this. He also knew she was determined to go to Paris, and more effusive sentiments would not be appreciated.

“You did not make love with me, not truly.”

She’d spoken softly, though Elijah heard the bewilderment in her voice—the hurt.

“I wanted to.” He stepped back, because making love with her right here and now was, in the opinion of his breeding organs, an increasingly fine notion. “I went back to my rooms, blew out the candles, thought of you, and committed the sin of Onan.”

The lady knew her Bible, as evidenced by the smile tipping up the corners of her mouth. “You thought of me?”

“I could not get the image of you out of my mind, Genevieve. By firelight, your skin is luminous, and your hair…”

She sank onto the hearthstone while Elijah dropped to his knees and started picking up cards. “You have to know you are beautiful. Shall I make a list of your features?”

“I think you already have. Elijah, this is a wonderful picture.”

His morning’s work was in her hands. “It will do, I think. Something about the boys having fun in the same space, but not exactly playing together, works. It’s a brotherly composition.”

Whatever that meant. He was on his hands and knees, turning low cards face up, and pretending not to hang on the next words out of her mouth. His artistic soul teetered between destruction and glory on the strength of her next pronouncements.

“You’ve somehow caught the love, Elijah. I cannot wait to see the finished work.”

He sat back, relief lifting through him in mind and body. “You like it?”

She looked right at him. “I adore this.”

Elijah’s next youngest brother, Joshua, had once careened into him as they skated across a frozen pond. Faster than thought, faster than anything in Elijah’s experience, he’d seen his own skates silhouetted against a blue winter sky, a strange, incomprehensible image. He’d absorbed the perfect blue of the sky in the barest instant before finding himself flat on his back, unable to breathe.

Genevieve’s three little words, fired straight at him—I adore this—had the same effect. She adored their shared passion, she adored his painting, she quite possibly—he reached a shaking hand for the last card—adored him.

He passed her the full deck, rose, and collected his sketch. “I must thank you for all of your patience this morning with the boys. I could never have caught that little tableau were you not in the center of it.”