Follow My Lead (32 page)

“They said Blume and Wolfgang won’t leave you alone because your hair is the color of summer hay.”

“No, it’s not.” She frowned. “My hair is brown. Plain brown.”

But it wasn’t. At least it wasn’t anymore. At some point in their travels—and possibly because he hadn’t seen her in a bonnet since they were on board the
Seestern
, her hair, which had indeed been a plain pale brown when they had first met, had taken on lighter strands, honeyed, sun-kissed tendrils drifting down and framing her face.

She had changed.

Even now, as he looked at her in the reflected light of the bonfire, across their makeshift hay bale table, he could see the change in her. Her hair was no longer plain brown. Her face was no longer small and lost under a hat, but instead open and bright. Those eyes—those startling light brown eyes, had grown to sparkle like amber in the sun, darkening to burgundy in the evening, and shifting to nearly black when she read intensely by candlelight.

But one mustn’t suppose his observations about her changes were reserved for above the neck.

At some point, Winnifred Crane had grown breasts.

Not that she hadn’t had them before, because obviously a woman of thirty didn’t grow breasts overnight. But that is to say, Jason hadn’t taken particular notice of them before. At least, not when she was this little bird of a woman in the courtyard of Somerset House—nor when she was traveling with Bambridge and Totty to Dover, exasperated but accepting of her companions. No, it must have happened sometime between their arrival at the Stellzburg Inn, where their marriage ruse began, and their departure from Nuremberg. He remembered very clearly her breasts heaving with her labored breath as she ran up to him in the marketplace, the discovery of her letters filling her body with energy and light. And of course, he remembered them with perfect clarity moving up and down in cool, systematic anger after she had slapped him some hours later.

But the reality of them, of her easy curves on her small body, came into his mind when he had held her last night, kept her from shivering to death. It awoke something in him—something that his sleeping self had been well aware of, and now his mind had to acknowledge.

Never before had she looked like she did in the light of the bonfire. Her body being completely at ease, watching the dancers, did something to Winn—something Jason was not poetic enough to describe nor artistic enough to put to paint. But it was glorious, glowing. And her breasts . . .

Her dress—the one she had worn for the last two weeks—mimicked a man’s shirt on top, with a row of buttons up the middle to a starched collar. Normally, she wore it buttoned all the way to the collar, practically to her chin, with her coat over it. (And her nightdress, in the few glimpses Jason had allowed himself before she dove under the covers every night, boasted a similar restraining neckline.) But her coat was long gone, and today, after a morning of walking and an afternoon of being mooned over by a stable full of horses, after an evening of joyfully imbibing a full pint of Wurtzer’s excellent beer, she had opened the first few buttons of her dress’s collar, allowing a tantalizing glimpse of elegant neck. The light from the bonfire played off the hollow at its base, where her mother’s locket rested, the point on the end of its heart shape directing where Jason’s gaze should continue . . . down into a valley, disappearing beneath unfortunately still-closed buttons . . .

His fingers twitched, just looking at those buttons. They were nothing special, just small, round, and white. But, oh, what lay beneath them! His hands became tight as every nerve ending became enraptured with the idea of touching those buttons . . . working them free . . . the soft skin to be found beneath . . .

“Did I spill some?” Winn asked, breaking through Jason’s hazy thoughts.

“I’m sorry?” he stuttered, his eyes flying to her face.

“Did I spill some ale?” she clarified, straightening and looking down at her shirt, where his gaze had been but a moment ago.

“I, uh . . . I don’t . . .” Jason mumbled, taking a swig of his own beer. Where the hell had his brain been? It was the ale, he decided. Strong Bavarian beer, the undoing of better men than he, had clouded his brain and had him thinking things he shouldn’t. That, combined with the hard labor he had performed for hours that afternoon, had weakened his resolve. After all, it was very hard to think of Winn as a little sparrow who he could tuck under his arm and who needed his help and protection (whether she admitted it or not) when taking far too much notice of her breasts.

And a little bird she would have to remain, he thought as his eyes flicked downward once again. It would be . . . healthier for all involved.

“No matter.” Winn shrugged, the inspection of her shirt-front coming up with little to spare him the embarrassment of having been caught staring. “I’m sure I’ll manage to before the night is over,” she said with a laughing smile, before taking another swig of her beer.

Jason cocked his head to one side. “I think you’re a little drunk.”

“I think you’re right,” she replied easily, then her brow came down in concentration. “But only a little.” She cocked a brow at him. “I think you think I’ve never been drunk before.”

“I . . . I wouldn’t presume to know—”

“I think you’d be right, again,” Winn interrupted before he could continue. “What a terribly boring life I’ve led, don’t you think?”

She smiled at him, that grin practically taking his breath away. (It must be the beer. It had to be.) And he found himself smiling lazily back. “Well, it’s another thing you can check off your list,” he drawled.

“Hmm?” she asked, her eyes flying to his face. Strange, but they had seemed to be fixated in the general vicinity of his mouth, and when he had smiled at her, she’d . . .

That same strange darkening took over the edges of his vision, directing all light to fall on Winn. It was the same focused sensation that had occurred when she had unexpectedly kissed him in the Dürer House and when she had asked him if he thought she’d ever been kissed before, just that morning on the road. That unsettling . . .

Jason immediately set his face in a stern expression. Oh, this wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. It was fine if he reacted to her in certain ways, he was certain he could control it. But if she began reacting back . . .

“Is there any water here?” Jason asked, clearing his throat conspicuously. “This beer is a little, heavy.”

“I think there is some wine, over in those jugs.” Winn gestured to the far side of the bonfire, where other revelers made merry watching the dancers, occasionally joining in themselves.

Wine was not a viable replacement, so Jason simply shrugged again and took another swig of his beer. It may be the cause of his current mindset, but drinking it kept his hands and mouth otherwise engaged; therefore, it was the lesser of the evils presented.

“You think the beer too heavy?” Her eyebrow went up as she questioned him.

“It is,” he hedged, and, not about to tell her the true reasons behind his gulping, continued. “I doubt even a giant like George Bambridge could down it like a local. But it’s better than nothing.”

Her face went still, contemplative. She looked down at her beer, her fingers tapping lightly against the tankard in a slightly nervous rhythm.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something you said yesterday.” She took a deep breath. “I think you think I have been cruel to George Bambridge.” She bit her lip. “That I’ve been playing games with his affections.”

Jason blinked twice, gaping. “Winn, I never meant to infer—”

“It’s all right,” she said in a rush, waving away anything he might say. “I know what it seems like—that I’ve strung him along . . . that I would position myself so that if I don’t succeed in this mad scheme, that I would at least land comfortably, into a marriage with a man who I may not love, but at least know.” She exhaled a great rush of air. “Women throughout time have done much worse for their own comfort. Why would you think any different of me?”

Jason opened his mouth to speak, to protest—but then he thought better of it. There was an explanation coming, and he was eager to hear it. But she stalled, her mouth opening, her lips moving, but her voice getting stuck in her throat.

And so Jason reached his hand across the hay bale table and sought hers. Taking it into his, he began to rub his thumb gently across the back of her hand, trying to soothe her fears. Never mind that his own nerve endings sighed in relief from the contact. Never mind that having her watch his thumb’s movements was almost as entrancing as the act itself.

“Winn, you have no obligation to tell me anything. I am not owed an explanation.”

“But I want to tell you!” she cried, looking up from their joined hands. “I want you to understand . . . but to understand, I’d have to take you back to the beginning.”

“The beginning?” he asked, teasing. “Are you going to regale me with a lecture on the origins of man? Adam and Eve from the painting?”

“No.” She smiled, which had been his intention. “I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for the origins of Winn Crane.” Her face grew serious then. “I was a very headstrong girl, and sometimes very lonely because if it. And there was a time when George Bambridge was the only friend I had.

“I don’t claim to have many now, or to have thrown him over for better society—nothing like that. But when you’re fifteen, every feeling feels ridiculously important. A thousand young men around me and none of them taking notice—it left the rather indelible impression that something was lacking in me. Height, beauty, a winning personality, breasts . . .” (Jason could not deny that his eyes flicked down to those entrancing buttons at that point—but he just as quickly brought them up again.) “Whatever it was, I did not have it.”

“So eventually,” Winn continued, “when a man takes notice—even if your mothers are cousins and he is therefore forced to acknowledge your presence—it means something.”

“When you’re fifteen,” Jason surmised.

“When you’re fifteen,” Winn agreed. “Although I grew out of this particularly depressing mindset within a few years, just in case you were frightened for me.”

“Frightened for you?” Jason replied. “Never. Frightened
of
you, maybe. . . . Ow!” he cried with a laugh, Winn taking his teasing back with a bit of bite, and pinching the thumb that had been lazily stroking over her hand. “All right . . . all right, you win, Winn.” He shook out his hand. “You are getting alarmingly better at being teased.”

She giggled—Winn Crane giggled! Like the coquettish child she hadn’t known how to be, and for the briefest of moments, Jason was completely certain his heart had stopped beating. Just a second, frozen still, the world around them lost, and the only thing that occupied it was Winn’s happy, girlish laugh.

So. This is trouble, he thought, his body slowly catching up to the rest of life. Slowly drifting down into someone’s laugh, until you realize you’re stuck.

But just as soon as the giggle had occurred, it was over, and the serious, slightly vulnerable expression took over her features once again.

“George could never tease me like that, you know. He would think it unseemly.”

After all, she still had a story to tell.

“I could not say if he proposed out of true, deep feeling for me, or if it was because it was expected of him, but I had only enough stars in my eyes to hope it was the former and suspect it was the latter. And my father suspected the same.” She looked down at their joined hands and sighed. “My father did many marvelous things for me—made me his prize pupil, didn’t send me to live with a relative when my mother died—but the best thing he ever did was insist that the betrothal not be made public—that is, that there would be no formal engagement until I was older. And then he didn’t specify when older would be.

“Shockingly, George didn’t mind. Once he had secured my hand, he put me aside. After all, he had what he wanted. And while one year turned into three or four, my father started having those dinner parties for his students, partially because he wanted me to realize there were other people in the world.”

“But you didn’t enjoy those,” Jason recalled.

“No, it all seemed embarrassingly obvious to me. But then again, I barely thought about George then, either. I was too busy studying. Too busy dreaming of old paintings and what life was like outside of Oxford, outside of England. George may have put pressure on my father, but it was pressure I was shielded from. And then another decade passed . . . and when my father died, I then came to understand that George had certain expectations about how we would live. And suffice to say, they did not involve me pursuing my own studies, or even the outside world. The best I could hope for with him is writing papers under someone else’s name, while correcting my husband’s work.”

She took a deep breath, the air coming out from her lungs on a laugh. “It’s harder than you think to let go of the life that was planned ahead of time. It may have taken far too long to come to this conclusion, but come to it I have.”

She looked down at her hands again, her voice soft but resolved. “I am not doing this out of a desire to teach him a lesson, or anything so characteristically female. I just know I want something different from my life . . . something grander, and more frightening.”

“But why didn’t you walk away the moment you discovered this about yourself?” Jason asked. “Why did you give him the hope of you losing this wager and coming back to him?”

She laughed, a little sadly. “At some point—whether it be in the last year or the last decade—George stopped listening when I spoke. He . . . can be very dictatorial. And so, when I would broach the subject, he simply patted me head and said, ‘It’s the grief, Winnifred. Don’t worry, I shall take care of you.’ ”

“Well, that settles it,” Jason said with mock severity. “Such condescension tells me what I had long suspected.”