Follow My Lead (6 page)

“Well then, perhaps it would be best—yes, perhaps it would, if I were to have a chair and table—maybe a small settee, set here for me. Right here, in front of the main doors.” She grinned, then turned her suddenly bright eyes to poor Edwards. “A nice blanket over my lap, a tray of tea. I could even bring in my tatting, get that done while I wait.”

At the prospect of having a woman faint in their hallway while waiting for an audience—or turn the great rooms of the Historical Society into her sitting room—Edwards conceded a modicum of defeat.

“Perhaps Lord Forrester can be located,” Edwards assented in a low voice. “What name shall I give him?”

“Miss Winnifred Crane,” she said, her voice clear as a bell. That started a whispering. “Winnifred Crane?” Jason heard from more than one cluster of gentlemen, who had been watching the entertainment with rapt interest.

“Crane?” Edwards’s eyebrow shot up.

“I’m the daughter of Alexander Crane,” she elaborated. And then she said something so outrageous, so completely undoing, that it stopped the conversation in the room altogether.

“But his lordship may know me better by a different name,” she said, her voice suddenly less steady, her face frightened and determined at the same time.

Edwards’s face remained impassive. Until she said . . .

“C. W. Marks.”

C
.W. Marks.

It was not a name that held a great deal of interest outside the walls of Somerset House. It wasn’t as if she had just claimed to be the Scarlet Pimpernel or the Blue Raven, for instance. But inside these walls, inside the realm of learned societies of Britain and those across Europe, it was a matter of great speculation, interest, and mystery.

Amazing, Jason thought. Imagine, just a few hours earlier he had been bored to death at a garden party.

The ripple of Miss Crane’s words—
C. W. Marks!
—spread across the great rooms like wildfire, gaining momentum as Edwards crossed the room to that far door and whispered to the servant waiting there, who slipped inside. Leaving Edwards to wait at that door, and leaving Jason to wait with George Bambridge and Miss Crane. Or, it seemed, C. W. Marks.

“Are you really?” he couldn’t help but whisper. His eyes found hers, but before she could answer, George did for her.

“Of course she’s not.”

Her head whipped around so fast, Jason nearly got smacked for the second time that day—this time by the brim of a ladies’ straw hat.

“How would you know?” she nearly spat.

“I am a professor of the history of art at Oxford, and I am telling you, you are not C. W. Marks.”

“You are an associate lecturer and don, not a full professor.” She took a deep breath, more confident this time in her declaration, as if repetition strengthened her will. “And I
am
the author of the papers by C. W. Marks.”

“Miss Crane.” Edwards had rejoined their side, and again Jason had to lean back to avoid being assaulted by woven straw. The steward seemed to hesitate before saying, “This way please.”

There seemed no question that Jason was included in that invitation, and he was meant to follow. He had thrown himself in with her lot merely to . . . to what? To see that she got her interview, in spite of her cousin. He shot a look at George, who also felt there was no question of his attending. Her cousin, in the ten minutes he had known the man, did manage to set his back up remarkably well. He seemed the type to dismiss and coddle a woman at the same time.

Obviously the man did not have a sister, Jason thought wryly.

Whatever the reason Jason had taken up Miss Crane’s cause, he should have been able to leave her to her own devices once Edwards invited her back to see the president of the Historical Society of Art and Architecture, Lord Forrester. But the prospect that she was C. W. Marks . . . well that changed the game entirely.

Two years ago, just as Jason was presenting his long overdue paper on medieval architecture that would allow for his admittance to this society, C. W. Marks had published three papers.

And set the academic world afire.

The first was a detailed analysis of all pluralistic thought in the court of King Henry VIII, in which intellect seemed to foster brutality. A very well-received work, published in the back half of the Historical Society’s quarterly scholastic journal. The second was a piece on the modern glorification of war in battlefield art—the paintings of great ships firing on each other at sea, the epic works of soldiers dying romantically on the battlefield, typified by Benjamin West—and how it refused to reflect the true hardship of war.

This was the paper that had the dusty academics sitting up and taking notice.

It wasn’t simply the analysis of the paintings themselves, but how they fit into the broader cultural prism—everything that came before and everything that came after culminating in this one work or movement of art.

And contrary to what conventional wisdom would allow for an academic paper, it was a ripping good read.

This, more than anything, had the name C. W. Marks on everyone’s tongue. Academic papers weren’t supposed to be interesting! They were by design obscure, so the very educated people who read them could feel superior for having the ability to follow along. But by the time the third treatise came out, this one on Hogarth’s
A Rake’s Progress—
a collection of paintings often written about, but rarely so amusingly and deeply—everyone within the academic realm was wondering who this C. W. Marks was, and where on earth had he come from?

But that last paper had been over a year ago. While the mystery of the identity of C. W. Marks never died down, the fervor to uncover it did.

Until today, it seemed.

They crossed the great rooms, every single man therein standing at attention and absolutely silent, the only sound the click-clacking of Miss Crane’s small boot heels on the polished wooden floorboards. By the time they reached the doors to Lord Forrester’s office, Jason thought surely some of their audience’s heads would snap off their necks, twisted as they were. Miss Crane, to her utter credit, kept her eyes straight ahead, did not look back nervously as Jason could imagine she wished to. Once they were admitted to the room beyond and the door closed, then and only then did they hear a cacophony of voices from the assembled gentlemen behind them.

But those voices didn’t matter anymore. The only voice that did belonged to the man dwarfed by the gargantuan desk before them.

“Miss Winnifred!” Lord Forrester, a man of such girth and general cheerfulness he could pass for Father Christmas if he grew a beard, popped right out of his chair and rushed to greet them.

“You’ll have to forgive me the familiarity. Your father wrote to me so often over the course of your life, even though we have never met I feel as though I’ve watched you grow up in front of me.” He took her hand and then, regarding her with as much pride as a favorite uncle might, became a bit wistful. “Your father’s passing—left the world without such light. Not only the Historical Society, but Oxford, and of course, he was one of my dearest friends.”

Suddenly Jason was hit with a flash of recognition. “Alexander Crane!” he cried, causing the assembled party to look at him queerly. “I completely forgot. Of course, he was one of my professors at Oxford. A damn hard one at that.”

“Dean of the History of Art Department, founding member of the Historical Society for Art and Architecture, author of more than a dozen treatises on the British contribution to human culture, of course he was a damn hard professor,” Lord Forrester replied jovially. “And he would have been gratified to hear you say so, Your Grace. By the bye, how did you become mixed up in this business?” He wiggled his hand in the air vaguely at “business,” as if he himself didn’t know what to think of what his servants had relayed to him.

Jason couldn’t blame him.

“I suppose I walked right into it, Lord Forrester.” Jason smiled. Forrester shrugged, taking that for what it was worth, and turned to the third member of the party.

“And Mr. Bambridge, down from Oxford again, I see.”

“I took leave just for the summer courses,” George hastened to explain. “My cousin felt a desire to come to London, and I couldn’t let her be friendless here.”

Jason’s glance went straight to Miss Crane’s face. She looked murderous but kept her counsel.

“Careful,” Lord Forrester chided George. “If you keep taking sabbaticals, your students will forget where your classroom is, and the school will forget why you’re the one to teach in it.”

While George flushed scarlet, Miss Crane took the opportunity his silence allowed to state her business.

“Lord Forrester, I know you find my appearance here today surprising,” she began, her voice stronger than Jason would have expected.

“To say the least,” Lord Forrester intoned seriously. “And I’m sorry to say that you will have to leave posthaste. Surely you understand this is a gentleman’s learned institution. We chart serious matters of history.”

“There’s no rule—” she began, but was cut off by Lord Forrester’s wave of his hand.

“There are unwritten rules, things that are simply understood,” he said. “I do not wish to upset you, but neither do I wish to face a riot from the fellows of the Society.”

“Sir,” Miss Crane said, her voice stronger still with the conviction of her argument, “I came here today at your expressed invitation.” And with that she pulled a piece of paper (not the damp one, thankfully) out of her folio and placed it in front of Lord Forrester.

“This is a letter you wrote to my father, a little over a year ago. It came a month or so before he . . . passed.”

Lord Forrester perused the document. He grunted as he read, a small smile coming across his face here and there.

“Well?” George strained, completely overcome with curiosity. “What does it say?”

“It tells him of my family, how they’re doing . . . how the Society is progressing, and of course how greedy the art and antiquaries market has turned in the last year,” Lord Forrester drawled. “But I suppose you would like to hear the pertinent bit, Bambridge. Yes, here it is. I wrote:
The Society and I are most impressed by your young protégé C. W. Marks. Please keep sending us his articles; they are most compelling. Better than that, however, bring us Mr. Marks himself, at his earliest convenience. The Society would be overjoyed to receive him, and I would be happy to see my old friend
.”

Lord Forrester put down the letter, a smile on his face even as sadness touched his eyes.

“My father was too ill at the time to travel,” Miss Crane said quietly. “But he planned to come when he recovered. Which, unfortunately . . .” She cleared her throat and began again. Reaching into her folio, she produced three thick packets of papers. “Here are my first drafts of my papers written as C. W. Marks. In my handwriting, all my own corrections and cross outs.”

“You’ll have to forgive me, Miss Winnifred,” Lord Forrester said, and he, too, took a moment to clear his throat. “I never thought to wonder why Alexander had not sent me Mr. Marks.” He flicked his gaze to George. “Because, you see, I thought he already had.”

Winnifred followed his gaze and went pale. George, for his part, looked just as flushed as Miss Crane was white. “I never . . . That is, I never said I was C. W. Marks,” George strangled out.

“I asked you once, when you first came to me to apply for membership,” Lord Forrester said, “why you were so bold as to published under a pseudonym.”

“Yes, and I said I had no idea what you were talking about,” George explained, flustered.

“I’m certain you did,” Miss Crane replied hotly, “with the barest wink and a nod, and suddenly everyone wants to sponsor your admittance to the Society! I should—I should just . . .” Frustrated, unable to finish that sentence, she took three steps toward George, her free hand a balled-up fist, her intent clear in her eyes.

That, Jason decided, was the signal to intervene.

He quickly stepped forward and steered Miss Crane away from her cousin. Placing a far too familiar and proprietary hand on the back of her neck, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “You’ve got him halfway believing you. Don’t lose him now.”

Her gaze shot to his, that maddening hazel refinding its focus through her anger. She nodded quickly, and Jason removed his hand from her person, once she was steadied.

Unfortunately, the fraction of time it took to calm down Winnifred Crane was just the amount of time George Bambridge needed to tip the scales. The oversized man straightened, cleared his throat, and smiled ingratiatingly at Lord Forrester.

“I never claimed to have been C. W. Marks, my lord,” he said smoothly to their genial inquisitor, “because I knew the truth.”

“You did?” Forrester asked at the exact same time Miss Crane did.

“Yes. The truth is C. W. Marks is none other than Alexander Crane himself.”

A pin could have dropped and been heard across the hall, the room had become so still.

So much for not losing Lord Forrester, Jason thought wryly.

“How da—” Miss Crane began, but her own strangled voice thwarted her efforts.

“I’m afraid my cousin feels the need to make a name for herself now that she is no longer under her father’s supervision. I have tried to fill that capacity as best I could—and had I known what she planned today, I would have put a stop to it immediately.” His voice was smooth, melodic. Whatever else George Bambridge was, he was a compelling speaker. “But I have long known that my uncle Crane wrote the articles of C. W. Marks.”

“But . . . but he didn’t,” Miss Crane cried. “Lord Forrester, my first drafts . . .”

“Winnifred, isn’t it true that in the last years of your father’s life, his hands became rather unsteady, due to his illness? And that you became akin to his stenographer, writing his notes on student papers, taking down his thoughts, writing his letters?”