Follow My Lead (16 page)

But that was a lifetime ago. Now, he was more or less responsible. Adult.

It must be the five days at sea. It must be the delirium of this maddening situation.

Or maybe it was her.

He made his way over to the port side of the ship, letting the breeze take some of his cares downwind. But as he meandered over, he discovered that while he had been busy disturbing Reinhardt, Miss Crane had moved on from her vantage and disappeared below decks.

Whatever Jason had thought he might say to her was gone. And, he thought as he pulled on his rather tasteless and nasty cheroot, it was better that way.

Because he was
not
entangling himself with Winnifred Crane any further.

The
Seestern
sailed quietly up the Elbe River that night, docking in Hamburg just as dawn broke the sky. And once again, the only person to beat Jason down the stairs (or gangplank, in this instance) was Winnifred Crane. This time, however, they were not met with serenity of an empty breakfast room, but the focused chaos of the Hamburg ports.

It was more like London than Dover, Jason decided. Dover’s seeming sole purpose was shipping, while London (or in this instance, Hamburg) was a thriving metropolis with shipping capabilities. Even though daybreak had barely lit in the sky, the docks teemed with activity, men tying heavy ropes to cleats or posts, calling up to the crewmen on deck, pushing and shoving merchandise onto flats attached to pulleys. It was as it had been six days ago in England, just in reverse, and in German.

Once his feet hit the unmoving surface of the docks, Jason gained his balance and breathed deeply his relief.

And then was pushed by the traffic directly into Miss Crane’s small form.

“Ouf!” was the expected, strangled sound from both colliders. Miss Crane turned and looked up at her assailant with murderous eyes. Then seeing it was him, her expression softened into one of awkward bewilderment, as if she did not know how to address the man.

Jason could only imagine his expression was somewhat similar.

“So . . .” he tried, his mind failing to come up with the appropriate thing to say, therefore letting his voice flounder.

“So . . .” she replied, one hand going to the locket at her throat, the other clutching her portmanteau, her eyes focused somewhere around his earlobe.

“You know how to get where you’re going from here?” he blurted out.

“Oh!” Her eyes widened in surprise. “Yes. Mrs. Schmidt—that is, the captain’s wife—said she’d show me where to catch the public coaches.”

“She said she’d show you?” Jason asked, his brow coming down. He had spoken to Mrs. Schmidt. She’d told him she would make certain Miss Crane got to where she needed to go. But did that entail merely putting her on a coach?

No. No, Jason thought. You are not allowed to be concerned. You are not allowed to get involved.

“Yes, I’m sure she’ll disembark shortly. She was very concerned about the unloading of her birds. She brought over a menagerie in England, did you know?”

Jason could only nod briefly. Yes, he was all too aware of the menagerie.

“Besides, I studied maps of this city extensively before we came here. The coaches cannot be far,” Miss Crane replied. “I would assume most travelers want to get where they are going.”

“Yes. And you need to get to—”

“Nuremberg,” she supplied. “And you have to go to the shipping company offices. Get your money back for your inconvenience.”

“Right,” Jason agreed dully. Then, realizing, “Actually, it’s your money. You bought my ticket.”

“And some day you can buy me a bottle of Burgundy ’93 in return.” She smiled. “Let’s call it even.”

Then, a moment held between them. Neither knowing how to end their conversation and start with the farewells. Until . . .

“Ah, Miss Crane!” The trilling voice of the stout English Mrs. Schmidt called, as she regally maneuvered down the gangplank, any number of beleaguered porters behind her, bearing the squawking contents of Jason’s ship quarters. “There you are. I thought you had run away from me.”

“Understandable,” Jason said, his gaze locking with Miss Crane’s. She glared at him, but all he could do was shrug his shoulders.
Well
, those shoulders said,
it’s true
. And she rolled her eyes, a nonverbal disagreement.

“Well, have no fear, I’m here now,” Mrs. Schmidt was saying. “Your Grace, the shipping company offices are that way—take your first three rights and a left. Oh no! Be very careful with that red-breasted woodpecker! Imagine, you’d think they were handling a common sparrow. Now, Miss Crane,” she continued without taking a breath, “we need to get you to the south of my adopted country. Never fear, Your Grace, I’ll take her where she needs to go.”

And with that, their good-byes were said. Mrs. Schmidt tucked Miss Crane under her arm and conveyed her around the maddening crowds of goods and men, and disappeared.

Three rights and one left later, Jason found himself staring up at the whitewashed doors of the Schmidt und Schmidt Shipping Company, and found himself feeling a little bit the fool. Not simply because it was fast becoming clear that Captain and Mrs. Schmidt were principal shareholders in the company, and therefore
were
the mythical overseers who balanced the books and struck fear into the men by the docking of their pay. But also because, as it was just past dawn, the building was closed. Whatever clerks and secretaries and managers worked there were likely still at their breakfast tables, just starting their days, and would not be at this door for a few hours.

As a peer, Jason should be enraged. He should thunder about and demand his due respect as such. The difficulty was, without a penny on him, no servants, no obvious declaration of his status, no one would believe him. Or if they did, they wouldn’t care.

But that did not mean he had to take such disrespect from Captain Schmidt.

What he should do once he got home, he thought as he meandered back toward the docks, was purchase this little outfit and have it stripped into nothingness. But no, that would leave Captain Schmidt far wealthier than he deserved to be. Better still, he should purchase their competitor and grind their business to dust. He was acquainted with a man who made his fortune in shipping, Mr. Holt. He would have his stewards arrange a meeting, ask his opinion . . .

But as it was, he was stuck in Hamburg for at the very least a few hours. His options were limited. However, when he was last here, on his grand tour with Charles and Nevill, the hotel they had stayed at was the only place that traveling aristocracy might stay. If he could find someone he knew there, some Englishman abroad, he would be vouchsafed, surely. He would be able to get back to London . . .

A sensible plan of action. The first bit of sense he’d come across in six days. And so, for the first time in six days, a smile crossed Jason Cummings’s face. There might be hope for him yet.

As he turned his last left, he expected to see the Elbe River ablaze with the morning sun and the unceasing activity on the docks. But he must have taken a right somewhere when he should have turned left, because instead of seeing the docks where he would be content to kill some time, he was assaulted by the sight of Miss Winnifred Crane.

Alone.

She had managed to find her way to the coaching yard of a large inn and was speaking very animatedly with a man who was loading luggage onto a public carriage. Other such coaches were being loaded and unloaded, passengers moving to and from the small restaurant attached to the inn. Men yelling, horses being hitched, shoed, fed. And in the middle of it, the little sparrow, waving her arms like a maniac, trying to get her point across, and skittishly jumping every time the horse next to her tried to snuffle her uncovered hair.

Damn it all, she had been out of his sight no more than half an hour, and already she was in some sort of jumble. And where the hell was Mrs. Schmidt?

His mind clicked suddenly on the fact that if he felt Captain Schmidt was less than accommodating, it was probable Mrs. Schmidt followed suit.

Likely what the two saw in each other, he thought grimly.

No, his brain leapt into the fray. Don’t do it. Don’t get involved in her mad schemes. Just go to the hotel. Continue on your path. You have your plans and she has hers.

Then he saw her shoulders sag and her hand go to that locket around her throat. She seemed to collect herself for a moment and then, with a deep breath, begin trying to communicate to the man again.

And in that instant, he knew that no matter what his mind was trying to tell him, what self-preservation it was trying to enact, he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t keep telling himself to not get involved. If he walked away now, his guilt would eat at him, and push him and pull him until his feet brought him right back around to this spot.

He couldn’t run.

The idea of finding a friend at the hotel fell from his mind as he took that first step toward the coaching yard. By the time he had crossed it, it was likely common sense had fled him completely. Because when he finally reached Miss Crane’s side, and she turned her face up to him in surprise and shock, the only thing he could think to say was—

“So, where are we headed again? Nuremberg, was it?”

“Y
OUR Grace, this is completely unnecessary . . .” she began after a few false starts.

“It likely is, but I’m doing it all the same.” Jason looked up at the straight-faced coachman, then let his eyes fall on the sign at the entrance of the coaching yard. It read
Schmidt und Schmidt
. Of course it did. “We are trying to get to Nuremberg, correct?”

“
I
am, Your Grace,” she began, but he cut her off.

“Then I have a feeling you are at the wrong coach.”

“I am not. I was simply trying to ascertain—”

“Coachman!” he called up to the man and then switched his language to the proper dialect of German. “Does this coach go to Nuremberg?”

“Da,”
the coachman said.

“You see?” she claimed. “Mrs. Schmidt told me this is the coach I should take, and I was simply trying to find out—”

“How much is the ticket?” Jason asked the coachman in German, who responded with an outrageous sum. “Why so much? We simply wish to go to Nuremberg.”

“
Da
, but this coach also goes to Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt . . .”

“I see.” Jason’s eyebrow went up. “And you go to all these cities before Nuremberg?”

“Da,”
was the only reply. At that point, Jason could no longer ignore the tugging on his sleeve and turned to Miss Crane.

“What on earth did you say to him? And what did he say back? I’ve spent the last twenty minutes trying to get a straight answer out of him.”

“Miss Crane, do you even speak German?” Jason asked, surprised.

“Of course I speak German,” she said, affronted.

“Really?” Jason asked coolly. “Which dialect?”

She opened her mouth and closed it, like a fish. “At least, I can read German very well.” And then, after a moment, “Renaissance German.”

Jason rolled his eyes but withheld from giving in to his great desire to hang his head in his hands.

“In that case,” he said, sighing, “did you have any great desire to see all the sights of the Germanic provinces? Because this carriage will have you crisscrossing the land like a row of needlepoint stitches. It’s a tourist vehicle.”

“But . . . no!” she cried. “I told Mrs. Schmidt specifically I needed to get to Nuremberg as quickly as possible!”

Jason simply pointed to the Schmidt und Schmidt sign above the yard. “And I believe the price of the roundabout ticket was more to Mrs. Schmidt’s liking than the more direct path. Whether or not it put you five days behind schedule.” He forced her gaze to meet his. “Sometimes people have their own motives for providing assistance, Miss Crane.”