Follow My Lead (9 page)

“Not formally,” she whispered, but she doubted George heard it.

“Half your life, you’ve known we are going to be married. Our mothers planned it. But now that your father . . . quite frankly, no longer needs you to take care of him, you build up these ridiculous notions about running across Europe and being a scholar and you postpone
us
.” He came and sat across from her, in the chair Totty had abandoned by the fire. He reached across the gap between them and took Winn’s hand, held it, forced her to look at him. “I’ve loved you my whole life, Winnifred. Please, put this idea of a grand adventure out of your head and come back to Oxford, and we’ll get married—we won’t worry about your father’s paintings anymore, because they’ll be right there; you can visit them any time you like. And life will go back to what it should be. It will go back to normal.”

Winn looked up into George’s face. The same face she had adored as a child, gone angled and scruffy with time, his eagerness pushing itself against her. She should acquiesce. She knew Oxford’s ways; she would be a perfect professor’s wife. She had been trained to it, some might say. She should give in. Marriage to George was what everyone around her had expected of her. . .

But there was no one around her anymore.

She was the only one left.

“Normal for you,” she began quietly, “is to have me correct all your students’ essays and to lay out your lesson plans.”

“That’s not—” He tried to interrupt, but Winnifred would have none of it.

“I have written your lectures, fixed your papers for publication, hell, I’ve
written
long passages of them . . . Damn it all, no
wonder
Lord Forrester mistook you for C. W. Marks . . .”

“You shouldn’t swear, Winnifred,” George scolded, but Winn paid him no heed.

“You want me for an assistant, not a wife,” she argued.

“That is most certainly not true!” George denied. He would have made a clumsy attempt to kiss her—she could see it in his face—to prove his passion for her had she not immediately stood up and began to pace the length of the carpet.

“And tangentially, how is it that I am intelligent enough to write your lectures and yet not clever enough to be C. W. Marks? How could you say those things to Lord Forrester? How
could
you?”

“Winnifred, I . . . didn’t think you authored . . .”

“Yes you do. Whether or not you think I could have authored those papers, you know I would never try to take credit for my father’s work, as you led him to believe. You should be ashamed.” She met his gaze and said again for good measure, “You should be ashamed.”

And he was. George had the good grace to let his face burn raw, like the young boy she remembered him to be.

“You don’t understand . . . How can a man have a wife who is more famous in his field than he is?” George whined weakly. “It’s preposterous. You can’t be C. W. Marks.”

“Now thanks to you I have to go about proving it.” She shook her head. “I barely recognize you anymore. This past year . . . I should have been able to rely on you after my father’s death, but instead . . . What happened to my cousin? To my friend?”

George’s spine stiffened. “Your friend grows tired of waiting for you to grow up. You’re not a girl anymore. You can’t run after adventures. We have a life waiting for us—it’s been planned for ages.”

And they came to the same place again. The circuitous argument. One they were too deeply entrenched in to resolve. In the past, she had tried to extricate herself from it. Tried to voice her concerns, but instead of allaying her fears, George had merely dismissed them.

And now, if she said she didn’t wish to marry George anymore . . . well, she would never see her father’s paintings again, certainly . . . but more than that, she would be saying good-bye to the map that had been laid out before her, by people who wanted only the best. And George . . . He had been her friend once. It was hard to let go of that.

But if she did marry him, that fresh air, where she could breathe . . . the excitement of discovering something new and seeing the world first hand—not just in books . . . it would never be hers.

It was time to bring the argument to an end. Its true end.

“You’re right,” she said, causing George to look up, startled. “I’m not a girl anymore. I spent my youth in a library. And gained knowledge that I used to make a reckless wager with Lord Forrester this afternoon. So, since I’m in the mood to make reckless wagers, I have one for you.”

She took a deep breath, while George waited, perfectly still, for what she had to say.

“Let me go to Europe and try to discover the origin of the Adam and Eve painting. If I manage to prove conclusively that it is not a Dürer work, then you stop backing the university’s assertion that the paintings are theirs, thereby letting me have my inheritance.” And letting me go, she added silently to herself.

“And if you fail?” George asked, taking two steps forward, closing the gap between them.

“And if I fail . . .” Winn steadied herself. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want, Winnifred.”

She swallowed and nodded. “If I fail, I . . . I will come home and marry you immediately.”

“No more delays?” His eyebrow went up.

“If that’s what you want,” Winn declared, her heart racing. “So . . . is it a bargain?”

As the door clicked closed behind George a few minutes later, Winn could not help but let out a huge sigh of relief. More and more the past few months, she had begun to look at George as not her cousin and friend, but as her jailer. As the man trying to keep her in her tidy little box. But now, with this wager in place, at the highest stakes anyone could play, she saw her chance for freedom. She simply had to win it.

“Well, my dear?” Totty said from the staircase. “Did you come to any new conclusions?”

“Some,” she replied, then, staring contemplatively at the door, “I just wish I understood why he’s acting this way. Why he feels the need to force my hand in such a manner.”

Totty shook her head. “He can feel you slipping away. You have been his future for as long as he’s been yours. Some men don’t take well to having their plans altered.” She came and took Winn by the arm. “Come, we have to dress for the theatre.”

“More than that, Totty. I have to plan a trip to the Continent!”

When George stepped out onto Bloomsbury Street, he was whistling. Certain in his heart that Winnifred would fail and he would earn his professorship and, therefore, they would finally marry. Within two to three years, with Winnifred’s help, he would be dean of the History of Art Department. He would be admitted to the Historical Society, take his place among men of understanding and learning, and with her as his wife, be able to pontificate on German gilding or Italianate architecture or whatever happened to be modish at the time. Maybe even get appointed to the government for some cushy job as a historical consultant . . . certainly those positions existed. And they would grant him stature, position, and money. And life would go on as he had anticipated.

Now, all he had to do, George thought with a small spike of fear, was make certain that Winnifred failed.

O
VER the next few weeks, Jason would have forgotten that afternoon at the Historical Society with Winnifred

Crane. He would have gone about his life, his hunt for a bride with the same hope and trepidation that had marked his suit until now. Yes, that afternoon would have faded into a mere anecdote, lost in the back of his brain until some mention of an Adam and Eve painting, or a girl who looked like a sparrow, reminded him.

He would have forgotten. If he had been allowed to.

“I
just
heard!” Jane cried as he walked in the door to Rayne House that evening for supper. Located in Grosvenor, Rayne House was suitably old and suitably large to impress upon their neighbors the magnitude of the Rayne name. It was also suitably cavernous to create an echo effect, so when Jane made her declaration, it was as if thirty women did at the same time.

“Phillippa just left. Apparently she is adamant that she’ll be the first to grab Winnifred Crane as an associate. ‘I don’t care how bluestocking she is,’ Phillippa said, ‘if she has the gumption to walk into one of those stuffy societies and claim entrance, she’ll have the gumption to sit next to me at the theatre.’ ” Jane beamed. “You were
at
the Historical Society this afternoon, correct? What was it like? What happened?”

“She’s not a bluestocking,” Jason said absentmindedly. At least, he didn’t think she was. Never having really had any contact with bluestocking women, he sort of assumed he’d manage to pick them out by the color of their socks. “She’s a . . . direct sort.”

Jane’s eyes, if possible, went wider. “Did you actually meet her? Winnifred Crane? What was she like? You cannot imagine all the dust this kicks off of every ladies’ society and salon in town.”

Did he actually meet her? Jason almost laughed aloud. “Yes, I met her. Spoke with her. Sort of . . . maybe blackmailedthestafftoletherinside,” he mumbled, surprised to find himself blushing.

Jane’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

“You were
involved
?” she screeched. “Tell me everything. Now! I must have the whole story before Phillippa does . . . er, I mean, before she hears it from someone else . . .”

As Jane pulled him into the sitting room, forced him into a chair, and played the rapt audience, Jason told her how he had spent the afternoon, from getting unceremoniously brained by Miss Crane’s errant hand to how she had marched into the Historical Society great rooms, and his small role in the farce of getting her an audience with Lord Forrester.

“Honestly, I thought we were going to have to go across the hall to the Royal—steal some of their medically minded men, because everyone in the room turned a shade of white unseen this side of Queen Elizabeth.” Jason sighed, taking the small plate of food handed to him by a very efficient and quiet footman, and shoving the first of many small sandwiches in his mouth. The events of the day had lead to his skipping repast—and he was starving.

“But, Jason, I don’t understand,” Jane said, shaking her head, taking the baby handed to her by a very efficient and quiet wet nurse. Little Lissa, Jason’s newest niece, cooed and gurgled in the pleasant state that followed her feeding—fat, dumb, and happy, Jason had taken to calling it. Watching his sister be a mother was perhaps the greatest argument for marriage. And watching his niece spit up on her was perhaps the best argument against procreation.

“Oh, Lissa,” Jane groaned, handing the baby to Jason as she took a rag from a servant and dabbed at the spittle that drenched the shoulder of her deep green gown. “This is a new Madame Le Trois!”

“You’re the one who wore it while holding a five-month-old,” Jason rationalized.

“So I should give up on looking modish once I’ve had children?” Jane countered. “No, thank you. And Byrne would agree with me.”

“Where is the man responsible for producing this wriggling mass of flesh?” Jason asked, holding up Lissa, who cooed merrily and reached for his nose as he made faces at her.

“Helping his brother with something at the War Department,” Jane replied. “And don’t try changing the subject. You deeply respect your fellow members of the Historical Society. I don’t understand why you decided to give all these old men heart seizures by assisting Miss Crane.”

“Why did I do it?” Jason stuttered. “Well . . . I mean, logically . . .”

Why did he do it? A question he’d been asking himself all day. In all honesty, he didn’t have a clue. He had been the one assaulted, true. He could have just walked away at that point, accepting her apology. Then, of course, it was only basic manners that had him fishing the wet paper out of the fountain. After that, he could have easily made his escape. But then again, they had been headed to the same place. It would have seemed strange, wouldn’t it, if he hadn’t escorted her?

But he didn’t have to encourage her. He could have agreed with that annoyingly persistent George Bambridge and discouraged Winnifred Crane from her course. But then again . . . she was correct, the charter did not specifically ban females. And as out of place as a woman was at the Historical Society, Jason had an absurd love of logic, especially the way it turned on autocratic old rules when applied. He could easily rationalize and argue that . . . Oh to hell with it—the truth was . . .

The truth was, he’d done it because it was fun. A small mischief that caused no real harm and caused a great stir.

And it had been so long since he’d had a little mischief.

But as Jason fumbled and flummoxed for an answer to Jane’s question, bouncing his niece on his knee, she finished mopping up Lissa’s mess and took her back from him.

“Did she make an impression on you?” Jane asked. “Granted, I know little of Miss Crane’s people, but if Phillippa has her way she’s about to become the most famous debutante this year.”