Follow My Lead (33 page)

“Which is . . .”

“That George Bambridge was not raised with the benefit of a sister.”

She laughed at that, a happy sound, coming in the midst of this bleak story. Her laughter died quickly though, and she grew serious again.

“But the next thing I knew,” she said, sighing, “George had exercised his influence over my inheritance. And I cannot be who I wish to be without it. To walk into the world with nothing: no money, position, or friends . . .” She bit her lip. “A man could do it, but not a woman. I will earn the other two through hard work, but I need to start with one. And without the hope of winning me back, he would never have made the wager in the first place.”

“I take your point,” Jason said after a moment, with an easy shrug.

“You do?” She looked up, bewildered.

“Yes,” he replied, somewhat bemused by her shock. “One of the reasons I have been at your heels this entire journey is because I know that the world is so much harder on the fairer sex. Whether or not you require a man’s protection, people are far more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you have it. You’re right—a woman needs one or other of money, position, and friends to make her way on her own. And if you’ve had to resort to some muddleheaded things to get what you need out of life . . . well, we shall simply have to make sure that you succeed in winning your wager. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” she repeated dully. Then suddenly, her eyes welled with emotion. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Jason said warily, not being at ease with the threat of female emotions. “Er . . . what for?”

“For understanding,” she replied, sniffing away any sign of tears. “I would have judged myself far more harshly.”

He leaned across the table, beckoning her closer, as if to tell a secret. She leaned in.

“That’s what friends are for, Winn.”

Her gaze, already moist, threatened to become water again. A circumstance Jason would avoid heartily if he could. And so he leaned back and turned his eyes to the fire.

A silence fell between them, and Jason struggled with what he wanted to ask next. Why he wanted to ask it, but as soon as the idea popped into his head, it would not do him the courtesy of popping back out.

“Er,” he said, then coughed, and started again. “So, you never loved him?”

“Loved who?” Winn asked dazedly. “George?” she asked as her eyes grew wide. “No. Of course not. At least not in that respect.”

“In what respect?” Jason asked, suspicious. “Because I warn you, running across a continent after you is the act of a man in love.”

“Or the act of a man corralling what he thinks of as his belongings,” she replied tartly. Then, she grew pensive. “I never loved him romantically. In fact, I don’t think I know what love is. I know the love a parent gives a child, and vice versa, and the love of friendship, and, growing up in a place with a high volume of young men, I am familiar with physical lust . . .”

Jason nearly choked on his beer, almost unmanned then and there at the thought.

“. . . But to be
in
love?” she continued. “Romantic love?” Winn shrugged, a quiet little movement that bespoke of both innocence and sadness. “I’ve studied hundreds of paintings that supposedly depict the moment of love, and still its understanding eludes me. I have no idea what it’s like to fall openly to someone like that.”

The corner of Jason’s mouth went up, his mind fuzzing over in memory. “It is surprisingly easy,” he said. “You simply sort of, leap. Open yourself up to the other person. Start telling them things about yourself you didn’t even know, and yet they still accept you, and vice versa. It’s heady and quiet and a secret you want to shout to the world.”

Winn met his eyes then, and again, as it had all evening, his breath caught.

“So, you’ve been in love? Er . . . are in love?”

Jason’s mind flashed briefly to Sarah Forrester—her cool, quiet loveliness and her happy wit. The person he was supposed to be falling madly for. And yet . . . she was so far away. Not just the miles that spanned continents, but she had been a distant thought in his mind for weeks now. And meanwhile, at the forefront of his thoughts, consuming his every waking beat of his pulse, had been this strange woman in front of him, keeping him constantly on his toes and making him laugh at the most curious moments. The one whose hand for the past two weeks he had not been able to let go of.

Too many thoughts, running too deep, he admonished himself. Instead, looking into Winn’s eyes, Jason took his first step out on the tightrope and answered honestly.

“No, I’m not in love. But I have been. As in love as a boy of nineteen can be, I expect.” He blushed a little at the rose-tinted memories. “Penelope Wilton. I wrote some particularly bad poetry and saccharine letters. A summer romance—at the end of which I went back to school, and later she married a nice barrister in Manchester. I loved her before I knew what it was to be in love with someone.”

Winn’s gaze did not falter from his, as she asked him, in her most academic, dry tone, “And now?”

Jason had to pause and think for a moment. “I’ve seen my friends paired off into marriages, some turning out very happily, others turning into little more than a steady dinner companion, others barely speaking to each other, living separate lives. And I’ve seen my sister’s marriage, to a man of lower status, one who shouldn’t have even contemplated a Duke’s daughter for a mate—and yet, they fought for what they have. And I shall not lie—initially, I was one of the more obstinate obstacles they had to combat. But with each other in their back pockets, the fight . . . well, it looked easy. Looking at her, I think I know better what romantic love is.”

Again, in that clinical, academic tone, as if she were studying him like she would a painting, examining for unseen secrets, she asked, “And what is it?”

“It is parental love,” he answered thoughtfully. “Wanting to protect and keep the other person safe. As well as the love of friendship—esteeming the other person, even desiring each other’s company beyond all others. And it is lust,” he said, meeting her eyes, and was rewarded by seeing them darken, her breath becoming slightly unsteady, one little word jerking her out of her clinical assessment. He smiled, a predatory, seductive grin. “The physical needing of the other person, the quickened pulse, the sweaty heat.” His hand, which still rested on hers, began slowly moving, his fingers dancing over her skin. “Combining them makes the result greater than its individual parts. Because it produces something else. It creates . . . a steadiness. A strength. I can’t explain it well—being only an outside observer—but I only know that out of all my friends’ relationships, my sister’s marriage is the epitome of grace.”

He held her gaze as she studied him, her analytical sense locking something into place. What, he did not know, but she smiled at him then—that knowing half smile, that turn of her lips that made her seem the possessor of all knowledge. She leaned forward, willing him to do the same.

“It sounds marvelous,” she said, her voice pitched low for the telling of secrets, and seductive in a way that she likely didn’t even realize. “But I don’t know if I could do it.”

“Do it?” he asked.

“Fight for the whole. I can manage the parts—parental love, friendship. I can manage lust.”

She looked him dead in the eye when intoning that last word, making Jason think that Winn Crane—bookish, scholarly Winn Crane—knew
exactly
what she was doing to him. “But I don’t know if I am destined to find them all together. Make myself responsible for someone else’s happiness. I don’t think I’m built for it.”

Built for it. Jason wanted to counter, to disagree. To assure her that anyone who cared as diligently for her father and as passionately about her work as she did, indeed had the capacity for love. And the will to fight for it.

But when he opened his mouth for such a speech, he found his throat dry and his courage fleeting. Because one thought flew to the front of his mind. One niggling little thought that displace all others:

While he was certain Winn had the strength to fight for what she loved, he didn’t know if he did. And he doubted it.

Better to joke. Better to stay on an even keel. Than admit to fears out loud.

“I don’t think I could, either,” Jason agreed, with a smile. “Try and make one other person happy? Might as well tell me to read all my estates’ account books cover to cover. I’m far too lazy and irresponsible an individual,” he replied, silently exhaling a sigh of relief. Whether it be the air or the ale, the conversation had become far too close to meaningful, and he was glad for the chance to be a bit jovial. But Winn did not laugh at that bit of sarcasm, as expected. Instead, she looked at him queerly.

“Are you?” she asked.

“Am I what? Lazy? Irresponsible?”

“As . . . self-deprecating as that statement was meant to be, I think you think you
are
irresponsible and lazy.”

Jason didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he bought time with a slow drag on his ale.

“And what do you think?” he asked slowly, unable to meet her eyes.

“I’m not entirely sure. You claim to not know how many stable hands are in your employ, yet you cleaned and maintained those horse stalls today with pride and accuracy. You pretend to have no head for details, but quirk or no, you keep track of your bills. Hell, you read the Historical Society’s charter before you joined; I doubt there is one man in a hundred who can say the same.

“You pay lip service to duty,” she continued shrewdly, “and don’t seem to have any pressing obligations in life beyond your own pleasure, and yet you abandoned those pleasures and comforts to go out of your way to help me. Say what you will, but those are not the acts of the lazy.”

Jason was caught for a moment. In her hazel eyes, firelight dancing in their depths, and in the accuracy of her assessment.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why have you been helping me? And don’t say it’s because Lord Forrester asked you to. I think we both know you have gone above and beyond that particular call of duty.”

He could play it off. Shrug casually, make another sad attempt at a joke. But they had breached new ground with their honesty tonight, and Jason . . .

He didn’t want it to end.

“Many reasons,” he said on a laugh, which did nothing to hide his vulnerability. “I felt a bit guilty. It was my fault your father’s letter of introduction got knocked into the fountain.”

“No, we lay the blame for that at George’s door,” she argued, a twinkle coming into her eye.

“And if I hadn’t egged you on once you got into the Historical Society’s doors, you wouldn’t have managed to see Forrester and challenge him into this crazed journey.”

“First you blame yourself for hindering me and then for
helping
me? For giving me something I wanted?” Winn mused. “The workings of the male mind are twisted indeed.”

Jason’s gaze flicked down to the buttons of her shirt again as he replied, “You have no idea. But . . .”

“But . . . ?”

“I became involved,” he explained. “With you. And your scheme, at a very early stage. And I think . . . for once I wanted to be the person to finish something. My sister—she made a comment I don’t think she realized would stick with me the way it did.”

At her unblinking and rapt gaze, he continued awkwardly. “When I was younger, and my father was falling into ill heath, I wasn’t like you. I didn’t care for him or help run the estates in his stead. I avoided responsibility altogether.”

“But . . . surely you don’t avoid it anymore.”

“No, I don’t, but that was a hard lesson learned. Yet according to my sister, while I no longer abdicate responsibility, I do . . . delegate it. I don’t have to pay particularly close attention to my life—I have stewards and secretaries and butlers and gardeners that run the machine. And I could have easily done that with you. I could have left you in Dover and driven away, handing you off to the next person. But, I think some part of me looked for you on the docks, and spotted you on the wrong ship, stayed with you in Hamburg, then Nuremberg, because . . . I didn’t want to delegate this. I want to see this through.”

He held his breath while she watched him. The fire cast the shadows of those dancing around it, flickering light across her face—giving her expressions that might not be there. One moment she looked pensive, another lost, another powerful—all without changing the set of her mouth, the slight rise of the corner of her brow, the tiny, wicked purse to her mouth.

It was only a moment, bare seconds passing. But later, in the cold air of winter, when Lupburg and
Sonnenwende
were just a distant memory, Jason would come to recall this moment—the firelight and shadow playing across her features as the moment that he knew.

But it passed, as moments tend to do. This one pleasantly, as Winn’s sly smile came back to her face.

“So,” she drawled. “I suppose that’s one thing we can cross off your list of new things to try.”

“What?” he asked, his eyebrow going up, matching her smile.

“Seeing something through.”

“But I’m not finished yet,” he countered.

“And I’m not finished getting drunk,” she said, raising her glass of ale, “yet you’ve already crossed that one off mine.”

“Yes, well”—he laughed, gently pulling her stein back down to their hay table—“feeling the effects of alcohol is something better judged from outside.”

“As is nobility,” she replied, far more sober than Jason feared he was.

He held her gaze again as the musicians started up a new tune, fast and lively. Her eyes flicked over to the sound, where the drum and violin players were being met by cheers and, of course, more dancing.

“There is something else I would like to cross off my list,” Winn said confidingly.

Jason’s other eyebrow joined his first, his mind going places they should not, but would not alter from.