Follow My Lead (46 page)

She walked along the ridgepole, almost losing her balance in her haste, to the bell tower at the end closest to the madness. She squinted into the setting sun, still unable to see Jason anywhere. Oh God . . .

“He’s still inside,” she breathed in horror. She had to get down, had to get to the dormitory . . . She had to find him . . .

How was she to get down?

She looked about her wildly, her eyes halting at the large iron bell in the tower and the long rope affixed to the top, dangling down to the floor below. Gingerly, she hauled herself over the ledge of the bell tower and, as gently as she could, took hold of the rope and slid off the ledge.

For all her intelligence, this, perhaps, was not Winn’s best idea.

The world vibrated as her weight rang the bell, shaking her vision, forcing her up and down as the bell rang back and forth.

She struggled to keep her hands gripped tight around the rope as the bell steadied itself.

Slowly, she put one hand beneath the other, her arms burning with the effort of lowering her body. Hand over hand, she went down, down . . .

The rope started whipping violently back and forth.

“Need some help getting down, Winnifred?” George’s malicious voice came from below her. She chanced a look down and saw that George, covered in dust, had the bottom of the bell pull in his thick hands, whipping it back and forth, shaking her down like an apple from a tree.

“No!” she cried, holding on for dear life as she was rattled in midair, halfway down the rope. “Stop! Please!”

But he kept shaking the rope, his entire face red with the effort and his temper. She had to hold on . . . She just had to hold on . . .

And suddenly the doors of the church burst open, and there was a great roar . . .

And she wasn’t being whipped about anymore.

Winn chanced another look down.

A figure of smoke and flame had tackled George to the ground, was wrestling him with the fury of a beast from hell.

But it wasn’t fire, the flame that she spied. It was red hair, shining through the dust and soot.

“Jason!” she cried, working her way down the rope. But if he heard her, his attention was elsewhere. George had inches and a stone as advantage, and was using it, fighting tooth and nail.

“You don’t get to have her!” George growled, scratching and kicking against Jason, and quickly gaining the upper hand.

Winn quickly worked her way down the rest of the rope, her feet happy to be on the ground. But the happiness was not to be reflected on, for at that moment, George managed to grab hold of one of the beams of scattered scaffolding, fallen to the ground. He hoisted it high over his head and was about to bring it down when Winn ran with all her might and jumped on George’s back.

And, well . . . she didn’t really know what inspired her.

She bit down. On his ear.

“Argghhhh!” was the astonished cry of the ogre she rode. He reared back, came off Jason, dropping the wooden weapon, and throwing Winn to the ground. She landed on her back in the center aisle, banging her head against a pew.

The world, already gone mad, suddenly swum in colors.

But that moment of distraction, that bite, was all that was needed. Winn saw the vague black figure of George reaching down for her, about to grab, when Jason—dusty, sweaty, bloody Jason—rose behind him.

With that discarded piece of scaffolding in his hand, swinging down with a mighty fury.

George fell in one great lump to Winn’s side.

And then, it was Jason alone staring down at her.

“Are you all right?” Jason asked, breathing hard.

“I think so,” she replied, her whisper echoing off the walls of the church.

“Try to sit up,” he said, kneeling before her, helping her. The world spun before it righted itself, but she was steady enough with his hand at her back, and another around her shoulder. Her eyes met his, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

Because everything was there.

Every feeling she’d ever thought to avoid, she saw buried in his eyes. Of course, he kept a straight face, a stern countenance, as he gruffly helped her to her feet. He would give nothing away.

Except to those that knew how to look for it.

But then,
everyone
was there.

The main doors of the church, which had been flung open by Jason, were filled with Altons, Mr. Ellis, and a good deal of nuns.

“We put the fire out!” Gail Alton cried.

“It wasn’t very much of a fire, just some chairs and things,” Evangeline told them.

“Who the devil is this beast?” Mother Agnes asked sternly, her vulgarity gaining more than a few gasps and self-crosses from those holy present. George moaned on the floor.

“Miss Crane, what is this remarkable thing you have found?” Mr. Ellis elbowed his way in, the triptych still held delicately but securely in his hands.

“It’s not fair . . . She’s mine . . . She’s always been mine,” George whined deliriously.

“No she’s not,” Jason spat. And then, he took the triptych from Mr. Ellis’s hands.

And looking into her eyes, handed it to Winn.

“She never belonged to anyone but herself.”

As the Alton girls enveloped her with questions, as the nuns surrounded George in a black cage, as the world became a cacophony of emotion and explanation, Winn, the world still swimming slightly, sought the comfort of Jason’s hand.

And did not find it.

For in the madness, he had allowed the crowd to swallow her up, and moved out the doors.

And slipped away.

 

T
HIRTY-ONE is an excellent age for a man to marry. An age at which adventure is abandoned and responsibility embraced. It is an age for proper dignity, neither too old nor too young, but more important, no longer thought of as young whatsoever. For Lord Jason Cummings in particular, it was the age at which he could finally and completely consider himself grown-up. And that adulthood was cause for the celebration tonight.

And it was a beautiful night for a party. The snow was just beginning to fall, lightly dancing to the ground. The first snowfall of the winter season, coming just after the New Year’s dawn, as everyone returned to town from their sojourns at their country homesteads.

It had been over Christmas that Jason had finally proposed.

It seemed silly, really, to delay any longer. After all, they had spent every minute of the past months in each other’s pockets. And Jane had told Jason if she had to stay in London and act as chaperone any longer, she was going to send Byrne after him, with a gun and a special license, to be used at his discretion. And so, while visiting at her home over Christmas, Jason had gotten down on one knee, as was customary, and ask for Miss Sarah Forrester’s hand in marriage.

She gave it.

Naturally, her parents were ecstatic. Lady Forrester nearly crying—now that she had the first of her three daughters practically settled (to a Duke, no less!), she could move her worry onto the next. Lord Forrester gruffly took Jason’s hand and shook it, beaming, as he declared himself grateful that his daughter had chosen a Historical Society man.

Jane was ecstatic, too—but her joy looked suspiciously like relief. Her mind may have been tuned to Byrne’s, who, after six months in London, was chaffing himself raw to get back to the little town of Reston and the Cottage in the Lake District, and therefore shook Jason’s hand vivaciously before calling for their trunks to be packed . . . this of course, before Jane told him they couldn’t leave before the wedding.

“The north roads are likely unsurpassable right now,” Jane reasoned to her moping husband. “Might as well stay until spring.”

Byrne grumbled, and shot Jason a look of utter contempt. As if snow in winter were his fault.

Indeed, most everyone was pleased for the happy couple. Phillippa Worth, however, was livid. Oh, not at Jason and Sarah and their joy, but because she had been denied the chance to throw the engagement ball.

“But they were introduced at my garden party!” Phillippa argued under her breath.

“Yes, but the engagement ball duties fall rightfully to the bride’s family. Would you deny Lady Forrester the pleasure of planning her own daughter’s ball?” Jane replied, hiding the roll of her eyes by taking a sip of punch from the cut-glass cup.

Phillippa looked around the ballroom of the Forrester mansion, the dancing couples, the happy conversation. To any other eye, it would have been a resplendent affair. However, Phillippa could only grumble. “If I had been able to put my hand in, this would have been the affair of the Little Season. But instead we are stuck with off-white table linens and too many stuffy Historical Society members than one can reasonably keep track of.”

“Jason is a member of the stuffy Historical Society,” Jane reminded her friend.

“Which made it terribly difficult for me to find him a bride,” Phillippa concluded.

“For
you
to find him a bride?” Jane nearly dropped her punch glass. “Are you rewriting history now?”

“I beg your pardon, but
you
are the one who asked
me
to throw a garden party, because
you
were incapable . . .”

At this moment, Jason decided it was prudent to step away from his sister and Phillippa, and get some air.

As he crossed the ballroom, Jason was congratulated by every person he passed, more than one trying to pull him into conversation. About their plans for the wedding, the procurement of St. Paul’s Cathedral for the ceremony (of which Jason had to admit he knew nothing—he intended to simply be told where to go when and then show up). About his recent endowment of a search for a new professor of the history of art at Oxford—being as they were lacking a suitable candidate since George Bambridge had been discharged in disgrace. About the latest Historical Society gossip, involving one of their newest members and a book she was rumored to be writing.

That last one reminded him of his desperate need for air.

Somewhere in all this, Jason had lost track of his intended bride. He’d had her by his side most of the evening, but before he went to talk to Jane, Sarah was pulled away by her mother for some little emergency, likely involving centerpieces or cutlery. However, she should have been back by now. He scanned the crowd, relievedly finding her surrounded by a gaggle of young females talking and laughing and admiring his mother’s emerald ring, which he’d placed on her finger no more than a fortnight ago.

A sense of calm washed over him as he caught her eye. That was why he had finally decided to ask her to marry him. That feeling, that sense of contentment. Sarah was everything the Duke of Rayne needed in a Duchess. She was lovely, well-bred, kind, and intelligent. As a bonus, she had a cunning sense of humor and was generally a pleasant person to be around. He wanted that in his life.

Her gaze lit with joy when she saw him from across the room. But she was caught in her group of girls and could do nothing but roll her eyes, indicating that her friends had her in their clutches.

Jason smiled at her. He pointed to the door to the terrace, waving his hand in front of his face, shorthand for
I’m hot, I need air
.

She waved her hand in front of hers.
Heavens, yes. Me, too.

He motioned for her to come to him.
Well, come on, then.

She held up five fingers.
I’ll meet you in five minutes. Go.

He nodded, holding up a comparable five fingers.
Five minutes.

And then she turned back to her conversation, leaving Jason with nothing to do but slip through the terrace doors and out into the crisp winter air.

And directly into the outstretched hand of one Miss Winnifred Crane.

It was as if the world stopped, and time with it. She had been reaching for the door handle, turned away, looking behind her. She didn’t hit his face this time, thankfully, her hand landing instead somewhere in the vicinity of his midsection.

A punch to the gut. And when he met her eyes, huge with shock, that accidental punch spread throughout his body, down his spine, rooting his feet to the ground even as it made his knees shake with the effort to keep his body upright.

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “I . . . I didn’t see you.”

“It’s all right,” Jason said vaguely, unable to come up with anything more. He’d thought about this moment for the last six months, and suddenly he was robbed of speech.

Six months. That was the last time he had seen her. Clutching her triptych in the nave of the little convent church in Döbling. He’d handed her the triptych, handed her her freedom, and walked out of the church.

He did not look back. He’d relied on Mr. Ellis to lend him funds to put up at a hotel, then for passage home. While Winn had stayed with the Altons, where Totty joined her.

He hadn’t seen her since.

Oh, he’d stayed in Vienna for the next few days, making certain that George Bambridge was made to pay for what charges were brought against him—including destruction of church property, when he set the altar and chairs on fire. However, those chairs proved to be nearly four hundred years old and therefore, quite precious.

It took all of George Bambridge’s savings to pay for them.

That left him, unfortunately, with no money to buy off the proprietor of a trinket shop in Linz, from whom he stole a ring and a pistol and broke a vase. And as such George had to spend a few months in an unpleasant German prison.

However, destruction of church property and lifting a few trinkets abroad would not rank as much more than an amusing anecdote in England. Why Winnifred and Mrs. Tottendale did not have charges of assault or attempted murder filed against George, Jason did not to know for certain. He could have easily done it himself and was more than ready to, but Sir Geoffery Alton (whose own connections would have assisted mightily) told him that the ladies requested they do not. George was family, after all. He would not be forgiven, but nor would it go down in legal books that one member of a family filed charges against another. Instead, Jason was told, “women have better ways than men to exact vengeance.”