Follow My Lead (15 page)

“No!” they answered together.

“Good,” the captain said, his expression suddenly stern and serious. “My ship is a respectable one. Any instance of bad behavior will be met with an overboard voyage. Fräulein Crane”—he turned his attention to her—“my wife is traveling with me, and since you are alone, she would be pleased to have you as companion for the journey.” Then with a few sharp German words barked to his crew, the crowd dispersed, back to their labors and their schedule.

Leaving Winn to face Mount Vesuvius alone.

“Hmm.” She giggled nervously. “I didn’t know the ship was called the
Seestern.
I know it means starfish, but it sounds like a cis—”

“No,” he intoned, the final word on any matter.

She sighed. “I’m terribly sorry that you got muddled up in this. But you shouldn’t have chased me!”

“No,” he agreed.

“Don’t you see I had to do it?” she pleaded. “I had to get rid of George. He would only try to slow me to the point of a crawl, and stop me altogether if he could. Totty knew what I had planned, and while she may not have liked it, she went along with keeping George busy, and this way I can get to those letters and—”

“No!” Jason growled, taking two advancing steps. “Are you out of your idiotic mind? Even if George was trying to stop you, you had an escort waiting for you on the other side of the Channel! You have abandoned your escort, and young ladies cannot gallivant about the Continent alone!”

“I am thirty years old, hardly in need of a chaperone—”

“No!” he said again, this time holding up a hand to silence her. “And what’s more, if you were so hard pressed to get to Basel, Switzerland, the fastest way to get there is through France!”

“But I’m not going to Basel,” she replied proudly. “I’m going to Nuremberg. Where Dürer lived. I lied when I told Lord Forrester the letters were in Basel, because George was listening and I didn’t want—”

“No!” He held up his hand again. “I do not wish to hear any more about your schemes. I will not become involved.”

“Your Grace, again I am sorry, I did not intend to involve you—”

This time instead of simply holding up his hand, he used it to cover her mouth. Then he sighed, the sigh of the long suffering.

“I have to confess, from the moment I met you, getting my face smacked by the fountain at Somerset House, I have had an . . . adolescent compulsion to play along. After all, there’s no harm in tweaking the nose of the establishment. Just a little fun. And when I was asked to convey you to Dover, it was only a bit of an inconvenience, and I was satisfied that your trip was well laid out, and thanks to Lord Forrester and Totty, you would be well protected. I comforted myself with the thought that your mischief is only academic. Nothing wrong with a little well-planned adventure.”

Then, Jason’s eyes darkened even further, taking her down into the depths, past their usual warm chocolate and into coal and pitch. “But since I have been abducted, extorted, and
robbed
in the space of the morning, I am now convinced Forrester was right—you do require protection, but from yourself!”

“I beg your pardon, I do
not
—”

But Jason didn’t let her get a word in edgewise, replacing the hand that she had wrenched free. “I am no longer in the mood to play along. I refuse to be dragged into your schemes. I am starving, angry, and stuck on this ship, or one much like it, for a fortnight, so for that time, I do not want to hear a single word from you.”

And with that, he released her mouth from his soft grip, turned on his heel, and stormed below decks.

Leaving Winn alone.

She rubbed her cheek, still warm from his touch. She shouldn’t feel as insulted as she did. After all, Winn was very capable of seeing the situation from his perspective, and he had every right to be angry at his predicament and outraged by her behavior. She
had
run off, leaving her companions to worry. She
had
boarded a ship, a female alone, intent on bearing her to a place she had never been before, where she had no friends to meet her. And he
had
been hit over the head trying to, from his way of seeing things, help her, and forced to journey all the way to Hamburg without so much as a note to his family or servants, displacing him from his life for likely just enough time for said family and servants to go mad with worry.

And since she was magnanimous enough to see the situation from his perspective, perhaps he would, once he calmed down, be gracious enough to try and see it from hers.

All of her actions, every last one, were borne out of necessity.

It had been a year of awakening for Winn, from realizing that the cruelty of time had robbed her of her youth and locked her in a library, to seeing men she had known her entire life turn to bickering and backstabbing, all for want of adding a few paintings to the school’s enormous collection. To the utter betrayal of George, who had decided his own interests topped that of his cousin.

Therefore, she had to lie, telling Lord Forrester that the letters were in Switzerland, when really they were in Nuremberg. She’d had to play along when George insisted on accompanying her, even though she secretly tried to dissuade him with expectorants. And she’d had to make a run for it, with Totty’s assistance. And to Totty’s credit, she had not approved of the plan, but had some experience with mischief of this kind, and had faith in Winn.

That was all Winn wanted from the world. A little faith. That she could have written the papers by C. W. Marks. That she could make this trip on her own, explore the world, and not have to be shut away in some library for her own protection. That, she thought as a gust of wind lifted her hair under her little straw hat and she gripped the railing for support, and the freedom to enjoy it.

The ship listed slightly to port with the wind, and Winn nearly stumbled into a pile of massive rope, being wound by two crewmen around a giant spool. She was not used to the movement of a ship, having never been on one before. She would have to acquire . . . what did Reinhardt call it? Oh, yes, sea legs. She couldn’t help but giggle at the thought. Here she was, on a ship! Never having boarded so much as a rowboat before, she was on a ship to Hamburg!

Impulsively, she took the pin from her hat and removed that scratchy covering from her head. And then with an impish smile, and more guts than she knew she had, tossed the hat into the water.

For the first time since her father had passed, Winnifred felt no weight of other people’s expectations. Only her own ambitions fueled her. With the wind in her hair she felt free, because she had pulled off her little plan. Thus far, she had succeeded. The only wrench in the works was the surprise appearance of Jason Cummings.

Who would have thought that the gawky, pompous nineteen-year-old Marquis that she remembered from her father’s supper parties, whose main focus in life was architecture, whether it be a buttressed cathedral or the impressive cantilevering of a maidservant’s breasts, would, a decade later, be the Duke who came to try and play her rescuer? More than once, including his assistance at Somerset House. And still, she couldn’t decide if she found his interference bothersome (he did, after all, cost her the price of another ticket—and since Lady Worth’s patronage did not fund this hasty secondary plan, money was going to be tight) or kind and useful (would she have made it to Lord Forrester’s offices without him?).

However, considering his current sour attitude, Winn doubted that she would have to put up with his interference any longer. Which was exactly how she wanted it. And how it needed to be.

After all, she had come to understand that if she wished to make her way in this world, ultimately, she could rely on no one but herself.

It was to be a long six days for Jason—a fact he became reconciled to when he discovered his “quarters” were little more than a sleeping berth wedged in between several barrels of salted fish and crates of Shropshire pottery. The other passengers on board had more accommodating accommodations, but, as he was told by the captain when he complained about the salted-fish smell in his space, he
was
the last passenger to purchase a ticket—all the other berths were already assigned.

“But, as a boon to you,” the captain said silkily, “I will have the salted fished moved.”

And they were. They were replaced by birds. Living, squawking, caged birds.

When he wasn’t in his quarters, it wasn’t so bad. Aside from the captain and his crew, there were only six other passengers on board, including Miss Crane. They had varying levels of education and English, from a young Hanoverian couple that had visited their aunt in York, to an English pastry chef (a dichotomy in and of itself) who was following his master to Saxe-Coburg for a three-month stay at that duchy. And when Jason tried to make conversation with them, or when they dined, they were all very amiable, sympathized with his situation, and stayed at least six feet away from him at all times.

It was the downside of having only one set of clothes and having to sleep with fish and birds.

But being up on deck was tolerable. Most of the crewmen would look at him, mutter something under their breaths in German, and then laugh and stay out of his way. Having spent a year abroad in his youth, Jason spoke passable German. He had a good handle on the Lower Saxon dialect and could muddle through the Austro-Bavarian, as well as the standard German. As such, he was fairly certain that one comment he overheard from the crew roughly translated to “runaway Duke.” They then speculated that he must be a very poor aristocrat, if common little Fräulein Crane had to buy his ticket.

And then he saw her. Fräulein Crane herself. She was leaning on the port-side railing, her face turned to the wind, the sun illuminating her profile and little wisps of hair coming out of her bun and dancing about her ears. He wondered briefly where her little straw hat was, but without it he could see that she was surprisingly lovely in the afternoon light, wearing an expression of utter happiness.

Happiness? Well of course she was happy; she was getting what she wanted. Jason had spent most of his energy the last five days avoiding Winnifred Crane. And she seemed wholly content to let him. There were no hysterics, no “Please forgive me, I’ve done a terrible thing”; she was simply, silently intent on her course.

It irked him.

Could she be so foolish to think that she could pull this whole gambit off? What he should do is take her aside . . .

No. No, he couldn’t let himself get involved. He had done his duty and deposited her in Dover. That was as far as his obligation to Lord Forrester went. When they docked in Hamburg tomorrow, he was quitting himself of her entirely. He had his own life to get back to, of course. And Winnifred . . . she was headstrong, stubborn, and completely mad. She’d have to be to be on this ship, headed for Hamburg, and happy about it!

Perhaps he should speak to the captain’s wife. The lady was thoroughly English; perhaps she would understand his concerns. She and Winnifred had been in each other’s company the whole journey. Maybe she could find means of procuring Miss Crane some protection on her mad quest.

He could do that. But that would be as far as his involvement would go.

“Probably spends all his money on clothes,” one of the crewmen said in German, cutting into his train of thought. The man waggled a brow, eyeing Jason’s once-fine driving coat, which now smelled of five days’ wear. The men hadn’t stopped speculating on his wealth, or lack thereof, it seemed.

“Nein,”
the other, who happened to be Reinhardt, Miss Crane’s erstwhile protector, replied. “He lost it at cards. All English lose their money at cards.” He chewed on his cheroot. “Or, he spent all on women, and his fat, ugly wife chased him off the island!”

Oh for God’s sake—could no one believe that his coin purse had been lifted? And it was not as if he had been prepared for this particular journey, he thought, narrowing his eyes. As the crewmen were laughing at the image of his fictional rotund wife chasing him onto the ship, Jason sidled up to them.
“Guten tag,”
he said, and continued in his conversational German, “have you another cheroot? May I have it?”

As the unnamed crewman wordlessly fished in his pocket and produced a spare cheroot, Reinhardt had the grace to blush under his glower.
“Tschuss.”
Jason smiled, taking the end of Reinhardt’s cheroot to light his. “And for the record, I’m not married.” Then for good measure, looked Reinhardt up and down, and winked.

Jason walked quickly away, laughing under his breath, and from the shocked blubberings he heard behind him, felt certain that he had just given the crew of the
Seestern
a hell of a lot more to speculate about than his financial state.

He felt like giggling. What on earth had possessed him to act so ridiculously? Mischief used to be a forte of his. Hell, there was a time when his skills had been surpassed only by those of his sister. That time he and Jane had stolen their neighbor’s dinghy and got it on top of the fell . . .