Free Follow My Lead by Kate Noble Page B

that’s what you want,” Winn declared, her heart racing. “So . . . is it a bargain?”
    As the door clicked closed behind George a few minutes later, Winn could not help but let out a huge sigh of relief. More and more the past few months, she had begun to look at George as not her cousin and friend, but as her jailer. As the man trying to keep her in her tidy little box. But now, with this wager in place, at the highest stakes anyone could play, she saw her chance for freedom. She simply had to win it.
    “Well, my dear?” Totty said from the staircase. “Did you come to any new conclusions?”
    “Some,” she replied, then, staring contemplatively at the door, “I just wish I understood why he’s acting this way. Why he feels the need to force my hand in such a manner.”
    Totty shook her head. “He can feel you slipping away. You have been his future for as long as he’s been yours. Some men don’t take well to having their plans altered.” She came and took Winn by the arm. “Come, we have to dress for the theatre.”
    “More than that, Totty. I have to plan a trip to the Continent!”

    When George stepped out onto Bloomsbury Street, he was whistling. Certain in his heart that Winnifred would fail and he would earn his professorship and, therefore, they would finally marry. Within two to three years, with Winnifred’s help, he would be dean of the History of Art Department. He would be admitted to the Historical Society, take his place among men of understanding and learning, and with her as his wife, be able to pontificate on German gilding or Italianate architecture or whatever happened to be modish at the time. Maybe even get appointed to the government for some cushy job as a historical consultant . . . certainly those positions existed. And they would grant him stature, position, and money. And life would go on as he had anticipated.
    Now, all he had to do, George thought with a small spike of fear, was make certain that Winnifred failed.

Five
    Wherein our hero makes a bargain of his own.
    O VER the next few weeks, Jason would have forgotten that afternoon at the Historical Society with Winnifred
    Crane. He would have gone about his life, his hunt for a bride with the same hope and trepidation that had marked his suit until now. Yes, that afternoon would have faded into a mere anecdote, lost in the back of his brain until some mention of an Adam and Eve painting, or a girl who looked like a sparrow, reminded him.
    He would have forgotten. If he had been allowed to.
    “I just heard!” Jane cried as he walked in the door to Rayne House that evening for supper. Located in Grosvenor, Rayne House was suitably old and suitably large to impress upon their neighbors the magnitude of the Rayne name. It was also suitably cavernous to create an echo effect, so when Jane made her declaration, it was as if thirty women did at the same time.
    “Phillippa just left. Apparently she is adamant that she’ll be the first to grab Winnifred Crane as an associate. ‘I don’t care how bluestocking she is,’ Phillippa said, ‘if she has the gumption to walk into one of those stuffy societies and claim entrance, she’ll have the gumption to sit next to me at the theatre.’ ” Jane beamed. “You were at the Historical Society this afternoon, correct? What was it like? What happened?”
    “She’s not a bluestocking,” Jason said absentmindedly. At least, he didn’t think she was. Never having really had any contact with bluestocking women, he sort of assumed he’d manage to pick them out by the color of their socks. “She’s a . . . direct sort.”
    Jane’s eyes, if possible, went wider. “Did you actually meet her? Winnifred Crane? What was she like? You cannot imagine all the dust this kicks off of every ladies’ society and salon in town.”
    Did he actually meet her? Jason almost laughed aloud. “Yes, I met her. Spoke with her. Sort of . . . maybe blackmailedthestafftoletherinside,” he mumbled,