Follow My Lead (18 page)

“We do eventually. And if we are on top of our business, we actually
read
our bills. Call it a quirk.” He waved his hand, dismissing the line of inquiry. “But I doubt anywhere we stop is going to be willing to delay payment . . . Suffice to say I would rather avoid the trouble altogether.”

She regarded him, tilting her head to one side. “Then how should I address you?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “Sir? Jason? ‘Hey, you?’ ”

“How about Mr. Cummings?” she ventured. The idea of calling him Jason (whether or not it was how she thought of him) was at once too interesting and too overwhelming to consider. “I don’t think you’d answer to ‘Hey, you,’ ” she offered with a wry smile.

“Mr. Cummings,” he tried the words on his tongue. “Sounds . . .”

“Common?”

“Clunky,” he countered. “But it is the best option, I suppose.”

They fell silent again, the carriage rumbling along. They were well out of the city now, and the window (which Winn had opened fully as soon as His Grace—no, Mr. Cummings—had given her the freedom to acknowledge the stench) offered a view of pastoral countryside. Rolling green hills, small villages in the distance. Cows. Many, many cows.

Discreetly, Winn checked her watch again. Oh heavens, this was going to take forever.

“It’s only been sixty seconds since you last checked the time.”

She looked up and found his eyes on her. She must not have been as discreet as she thought. Then she saw that his eyes were more on the watch at her breast than on her, and she felt herself blushing . . . for a few reasons.

“It’s tin. The watch,” she clarified. “If I thought it was worth anything, I would have sold it—not just this morning, but weeks ago, as I was planning the trip.” She saw his eyebrow go up. “Truly. I sold anything I could of value to supplement my C. W. Marks money . . . I had to spend some of it getting to London in the first place and making myself presentable. And the only thing I kept of any worth was this locket, and it was my mother’s—it’s really the only thing I have of hers—so I wasn’t about to give it up . . .” she rambled to a stop only when she noticed the set of his jaw and the direct gaze of his dark eye.

“Miss Crane, did I say anything about your watch or its value?”

“No, but I could tell you were looking, and—”

“I was looking because I was curious if we were close to luncheon and wondering if we were going to stop for it.”

“Oh,” was all she could muster. She looked sheepishly at her little tin watch for a moment, then could think of nothing else to do but look out the window again.

“I’m curious,” Jason drawled, breaking through the snores of their companion. “You mentioned you received your current funds for publishing the C. W. Marks articles. You could have offered up that money as proof of authorship.”

“Ah, I did consider that. Unfortunately, the bank notes were sent care of my father, and he cashed them without signing them over to me, instead giving me coin. No bank in the world can trace a coin’s lineage, unlike bank notes.”

“Very true,” Jason conceded. “But the fact that you have the money itself must have
some
weight.”

She just laughed at that. “According to George, I could have just as easily gotten the money from selling my hair.”

Jason peered at the mass she had loosely pinned at the back of her neck. “Strange. I do not see that you cut your hair.”

“I haven’t.” Her hand went unconsciously to a fallen tendril. “But logic was never George’s strongest suit.”

As she smoothed that tendril back into place, she looked away briefly, lost in a memory. “I almost did though. To supplement my funds for this journey. However, I may not have a claim to any just vanity, but I do like my hair.”

She blushed herself mute when she realized what she had said. It was one thing to fill a silence with inane chatter, but another to reveal yourself as vain in the process!

“But it does bring to mind a question,” he supplied, bringing a quick end to the silence, which had been magnifying her mortification. “If your funds are so very tight, why risk the trip in the first place?”

She blinked twice, astonished at his bluntness. “Because I am very good at what I do and would like the credit for it,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“No. That is one reason, but it is not
the
reason.” He leaned forward again. “Why the . . . desperation?”

She met his eye then. “Because I want my freedom.”

As his eyebrow went up, she knew he was asking for the whole story. And while some part of her acknowledged that telling him this information was an act of intimacy far more personal than calling someone by his Christian name, another part of her could only think it somehow inevitable that she let him in. After all, he had taken her to Dover, jumped on the wrong ship after her, and now was rolling down to the southern provinces with her. For better or for worse, he was on this journey, too, and he might as well know why.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” she began, glancing over at the German, reassured in the consistency of his snores. “Were you aware that my father collected paintings?”

And so she told him. Haltingly at first, but the whole story rumbled out eventually. About the school tying up her inheritance with its claim, and George’s support of it. Of George’s machinations to move into the vacant professorship at the school. Then she told him of her bargain with George, and the stakes involved.

“Wait a moment,” Jason interrupted. “You’ve been engaged to George Bambridge since you were fifteen?”

“Not engaged.” She sighed. “Intended, perhaps. And I don’t intend to be any longer.”

“For God’s sake”—a look of disbelief crossed his face—“what were you doing in the intervening years?”

“Helping my father,” she replied. “He had a long decline, and without my mother, someone had to look after him. Besides, he loved nothing more than to teach, and I proved to be his best student. He needed an assistant for his work, I was there for him. He needed someone to keep his house, I was there for him. And as his illness progressed . . .” She broke off, unwilling or unable to complete that sentence. “He needed me,” she finished simply. “For a very long time, he needed me.”

“And that was burdensome to you.”

She blinked, taken aback. “No . . . no. I love my father. It was my duty to care for him.”

“But it was still a burden.” He shook his head. “Be as polite as you please, but my sister and I went through the same thing with our own father. There is a weight to that need. And it can crush you if you let it.”

She found herself nodding, awed by his honesty and the truth of his assessment. “Yes, all right. Perhaps that weight was a bit heavy. Perhaps that’s why I invented C. W. Marks—to give voice to all this education I had . . . and to find an outlet, so I would not be crushed under the weight of my father’s needs.” Her eyes narrowed, and she filled her voice with conviction. “And while I miss him, now that the weight is gone, I refuse to be tied back down again, to the same place.”

He nodded at that. Seemed to digest, to understand. And a curious sensation spread through her body. What a strange thing, to find someone who would understand.

“I understand, you know,” he said, somehow snatching the thought out of her brain. “The need to prove yourself.”

She could not help it, she had to laugh. “Please, Your Gr—
Mr.
Cummings. When have you ever had to prove yourself?”

He seemed stumped by that, his mouth gaping but no sound coming out. Until . . .

“Your father’s class,” he declared. “I never worked harder in my life.”

“I remember how he spoke about you,” she replied with a smile. “He said it was a pity that you were a Duke—or I suppose a Marquis at the time. ‘A waste of a good mind,’ he would say.”

“You seem to remember me rather well from Oxford,” he drawled. “Did I cut such a dashing figure?”

She could barely keep from snorting in derision. The boy she remembered could hardly cut a dash through anything. Gawky, self-important, maudlin, and dressed in the most ridiculous fashions of the time. And puffed up enough to believe he was the next Brummell in a puce-colored coat.

“I remember you because I attended those dinners my father held for his favorite students.”

“You did?” He blinked back his surprise.

“Yes, and you mistook me for the cook’s eleven-year-old daughter.” Her lips twisted wryly. “Twice. A product of my height I’m used to living with.”

As he began to gape, she took pity on him and continued. “I think my father decided when I was about eighteen that he should introduce me to some gentlemen my own age. Hence, the dinners.”

His eyebrow quirked at that. “What about poor Bambridge? Or didn’t your father know of his . . . intentions?”

“He did,” she replied, but then swallowed the rest of the explanation. After all, she couldn’t claim to know her father’s mind, his best student or no. Instead, she avoided the Duke’s eyes by folding her hands in her lap. “But it was proved time and again that the vast majority of young men at school were interested in their books and their barmaids, but not respectable professors’ daughters.” She shrugged. “In any case, I stopped going after a few years—I was constantly getting older and all the students remained annoyingly young. But the years I attended overlapped with yours. Hence, I remember you.”

“And what do you remember?” Jason asked with a grin. “My fierce intellect? My witty repartee?”

“I remember you ate so much you practically devoured whole platters of food.” She smiled. “I also remember you were so thin, I speculated to my father that you must be wearing a corset.”

The grin vanished almost immediately. His expression became so contemplative, so serious, that Winn began to panic. Oh dear, had she overstepped some bounds?

“But you’re not now!” she blurted. “Wearing a corset, I mean. Obviously.” If possible, she turned even redder. “Not that you need one! You have become very . . . even. Balanced.”

“Miss Crane, would you care to change the subject?” Jason asked.

“Yes, please,” she replied immediately.

But the trouble was, what topic of conversation could they move on to? Despite their few moments of shared history (which he did not remember, she thought wryly), common subjects were eluding her. And awkwardness descended again.

It really was going to be a very long trip, she thought, her gaze finding the window yet again.

Apparently, Winn was not the only one to note the uncomfortable silence (well, as silent as it could be with the crocodilian snores beside them), because Jason was the first to venture into the void.

“Is it all you hoped it would be?” he asked.

“Hmm?” was her quizzical reply.

“The Continent.” He blushed, pointing to the pastoral vista that surrounded them. “You mentioned you had not travelled much—”

“Never out of the country, and rarely out of Oxford,” she supplied helpfully.

“Right. And I . . . wonder if the German countryside is living up to your expectations.”

“Oh! Yes,” she said immediately, but then a frown creased her brow as she looked out over the rolling hills of pasture, the sheep and cows that dotted the landscape. They were too far from the Alps to see mountains in the distance, and as such . . . “Actually, it reminds me rather closely of England. I thought it would be different.”

He smiled at that, possibly suppressing a chuckle. “Yes, sadly. Sheep and cows on a hill look like sheep and cows on a hill no matter what country you happen to be in. But the mountains to the west and south change the landscape.” Then his face turned introspective, his hand went to his new beard, stroking his chin. “Italy looks different. So does France—well, the countryside doesn’t so much look different as
feel
different. Some sort of intoxication in the air. The southern parts of Spain . . . once you reach the Mediterranean, the world is a blue that you have never seen before and will never find thereafter, no matter how hard you search.”

She could picture it in her mind’s eye—the breeze on the wide-leafed trees that dotted the white sand shores of a sea so blue . . . She’d seen it before, but only in paintings. Only in the library.

“You’ve been? To the Mediterranean, and all these places?”

He nodded. “The way the sun hits the water . . . Trust me, watercolors cannot do it true justice.”

“And yet you choose to stay in England?” she inquired. And watched as he found something of remarkable interest on the toes of his shoe—so much so, his eyes would not stray from it.

“It’s my home. Everyone needs a home. Besides, I am the head of one of the largest ducal estates in the country. Living in England isn’t so much a choice as it is—”

“A duty?” she guessed with a smile. “You do seem rather caught up in doing your duty.”

Either he decided to ignore that sideways comment or he tacitly acknowledged it—in any case, something dark flashed through his eyes, before they changed to an expression of wistful remembrance. “But I am glad I got to see it. The sea. I don’t think I would be content with my life without having seen that color blue.”

“Then that’s the first place I’m going to go, once I complete this journey.” She smiled.

“You should make a list.” Jason smiled back at her.

“Oh, I already have one.”

“Can I see it?” He sat up in his seat, his interest peaked.

“It’s not written down,” she countered. “But it exists. A list of places I’ve yet to go and things I’ve yet to try or see.”

An eyebrow went up. “List of things you’ve yet to try? Give me an example.”

She thought for a minute. “Ice cream. I’d never had opportunity to try it until a party two weeks ago that Phillippa—Lady Worth—made me attend. Marvelous stuff.” Then, she qualified, “The ice cream, not the party.”

He laughed, just a little, just enough to make Winn’s brow furrow. “Now, why is that funny?”