Follow My Lead (23 page)

Winn’s fingers gripped Jason’s arm, pulling him to a halt.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know . . .” Jason mused. “Excuse me,” he called out to the nearest of the young gentlemen, who Jason realized could not have been more than twenty, and self-important enough to make him cringe.

“Ah, thank Christ, someone who speaks English!” the young man cried, drawing the attention of some of his friends. Jason watched wryly as the young man pocketed a small flask. “Do you speak German?” At Jason’s nod, he continued. “Can you tell us what on earth our guide is saying?” He waved his hand toward the two arguing Germans. “We paid him to show us the sights, and Henry over there—we’re all studying at Cambridge, but he’s the only one who really studies—insisted we see this stupid house. And now it seems that this . . . housekeeper won’t let us in.”

Jason quirked a brow at him. “Well, I . . .”

The young man eyed Jason’s wrinkled and Winn’s serviceable clothes, and obviously made some sort of decision. “We’re taking our grand tour. Do you know what that is?”

“I think so,” Jason replied, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Darling, you know what he means, correct?”

“I believe so,” Winn answered, playing along naturally. “Young men travel the Continent and see the world’s wonders.”

“Yes, well, I’d much rather we see the wonders inside a pub right now,” the young man replied. “But Henry won’t leave, and we don’t understand a word that’s being said.”

“Should have paid better attention in your language classes,” Jason admonished kindly, but was met with a cold glare by the young man.

“Yes, well, I find that being a member of the aristocracy is time-consuming enough. I am Frederick Sutton, son of Baron Sutton?” His supercilious raised brow said that it was a name Jason should recognize. Sadly, he couldn’t. “And you, sir? May I ask your . . . profession?”

“A bank clerk,” Jason answered, just as Winn said, “Fishmonger.”

“I’m a bank clerk who used to work for her father . . . as a fishmonger,” Jason quickly amended.

“Fishmonger to bank clerk. That’s terribly ambitious of you,” Frederick Sutton replied. Then he fished in his pocket and held out a few coins. “Since you are so ambitious a person, perhaps you would be so kind as to translate for us?”

Jason looked at the shillings, then to Winn, who was admirably holding back a smile as she just shrugged. She reached forward, took the coins, and shoved them into the top of her dress. Then, with an alarmingly broad accent, said, “Oh, thank ye, sir. Yer grand. Me pap will never believe we met with a real live baron. Darling, go listen to the Germans and tell us what they say?”

She nudged Jason toward the arguing men, who had kept up a steady stream of undifferentiating conversation this whole time.

“Your guide is saying he’ll give the lady a higher cut of the money,” Jason drawled. “And the lady, the . . . she says she’s the owner of the house . . . is saying there is no way, she will not allow any more guests . . . the last group the guide brought in destroyed . . .” His gaze immediately went to Winn. “They destroyed some papers.”

He watched as Winn went desperately pale. Then she straightened her spine and steeled her jaw. Jason almost smiled at her, oddly touched by her resolve. But before he could turn back and follow more of the conversation, it abruptly ended with a
“Nein!”
, a slammed top portion of a door, and the finality of hearing locks turn.

“That seems to be your answer,” Jason supplied for young Frederick Sutton.

Frederick gave a sigh of relief. “Finally. Well, lads!” he called to the group. “I think we’ve had enough education for today.”

“But Freddy,” replied the one who must be the studious Henry, “we haven’t seen anything yet, not the castle, not St. Lorenz Church . . .”

“Education tends a different way, Henry,” Frederick answered. “Time to learn about the local varieties of that delicacy known as beer!”

Most of the young men cheered, while Henry moped, “But it’s not even ten thirty! Oh all right—but only if it’s in a pub with some historical influence . . .” And so, Henry was appeased, and the motley group of young gentlemen went on their way without a glance back at the fishmonger-turned-bank clerk and his wife.

“So what’s it like?” Winn asked after the group turned the corner out of sight.

“What’s what like?”

“Meeting your younger self.”

Jason scoffed for a moment. “I wasn’t . . . that is, I was never that bad when I was twenty.” Then he hedged, uncertain. “You think I was?”

Winn simply shrugged and smiled sympathetically.

“Well, that’s highly disconcerting,” Jason answered glumly. But Winn had already moved forward and knocked on the door to the Dürer House.

No one came to the door, so she knocked again. And again.

“Herr Heider!” she finally yelled. “Herr Heider, I know you are in there!”

The locks finally rumbled and the half door was cracked open.

“English, yes?” The lady who had been guarding the door from the assault of young marauding English university students only minutes before peeked out through the small opening.

“Yes, I’m here to see—” Winn began with relief but was abruptly cut off by the half door being thrown wide open.

“No more English! No more tourists! This house is closed to the public! Go . . . make migration elsewhere!” The woman’s eyes flashed steel again, and she made to slam the top portion of the door shut again, but this time, it was stopped.

By Jason’s hand. And rather painfully, too.

“Madam,” Jason ground out through his teeth. “Before, you said you own this house. Are you, perhaps, Frau Heider?” he asked with a pointed look to Winn.

“Da,”
Frau Heider replied, alleviating the pressure on Jason’s hand.
“Ich bin Frau Heider.”

“Frau Heider, I’m here to see your husband,” Winn cried, not wasting any more time. “It’s Winnifred Crane . . . Alexander Crane’s daughter!”

As they were admitted into the house where Albrecht Dürer had lived and painted, Jason expected to be awed. To feel the hallowed light of residual genius. Instead, he was fairly certain he entered a regular, albeit messy and disorganized, Nuremberg town house under basic construction.

And under a shroud.

Black drapes covered wall hangings, mirrors, clocks . . . black tablecloths fell in folds over surfaces. Even the relative clutter of stalled construction work could not mask the grief this house existed in.

“I apologize for the mess, Miss Crane, but ever since my husband purchased the house we have been invaded by students and artists from every single country!” Frau Heider explained in her strong English, stopping to rest at one of the two massive pillars that marked the entrance to the home. She dabbed at her brow with the edge of her serviceable apron, weary from a trying morning.

“Herr Heider was originally from Berlin, but is a Dürer enthusiast,” Winn explained to Jason. “So much so that when he made a pilgrimage to Nuremberg a year or two ago and saw this house, he purchased it.”

“
Da
, my Wilhelm had to save it, he told me. He sold my father’s business that
I
inherited in Berlin, our house there . . .” Frau Heider paused for a moment, her gray eyes lost in thought. Then, she fluttered her hands, smoothed her apron. “But he did do a great deal. You should have seen this place before—falling down around its elbows. It cost so much and took so long to simply get it habitable!”

“The tour money must have helped financed the repairs,” Jason surmised, and watched Frau Heider’s face blush.

“Wilhelm, he wanted all the travelers—migrators . . . ?” she said, asking tacitly if she had the correct word.

Jason smiled kindly and supplied, “I think you mean ‘pilgrims,’ ma’am.”

“
Da
—pilgrims. Students, lovers of Master Dürer, they come, and my husband cannot in good faith turn them away. People of study are good, nice . . . but school boys drunk add more to the repairs,” Frau Heider replied. “We had been asking the city of Nuremberg to purchase the house, as a historical place, but the city, it has no money. So instead we try make repairs, and make lives here, and move my husband’s Dürer collection in,
da
?”

“Yes, Frau Heider, the correspondence is why I came to see your husband,” Winn began, but the woman was not listening.

“And then, last month, while unloading trunks of letters from Berlin . . . he collapsed . . . and left me.” Frau Heider’s fluttery hand came up to her eyes, covering them. Jason glanced at Winn. Winn’s sympathetic heart—and perhaps her own affections for the man—wore plain on her face.

“Oh, Frau Heider, I am so sorry—if only we had known.”

“Left me to deal with that scrounging, not good”—then Frau Heider said a word in German that Jason decided he would not translate for Winn, no matter how much she gave him that inquiring look—“tour guide and his drunken charges!”

“I do hope you don’t include us in that group,” Jason asked with a smile.

Frau Heider blinked a moment, and her shoulders relaxed. “Of course, good sir, of course. I am sorry, I have been the neglectful host. Please, follow me.” She ushered them to a set of chairs by a small fireplace in an adjoining room. “How did you know my husband?” she asked Jason.

Jason managed a, “Well, I . . .” before Winn jumped in.

“You see, Frau Heider, I am the daughter of Alexander Crane, and have been writing your husband for several years now.”

Frau Heider’s eyebrow went up. “You. Have been writing my husband?”

“Yes,” Winn said in a rush. “We have been corresponding on the works of Dürer for some time, especially since my father is a scholar—”

“I am sorry, but are you telling me that my husband has been writing with young ladies, for how long?”

“Oh, many years. And, I don’t think he wrote other young ladies, just me. I am astonished to hear of his death. He always seemed so vigorous in his correspondence.”

“Vigorous?”

“Lively. Impassioned.”

“Passioned?” Frau Heider’s voice came out as the barest strangle.

“Yes!” Winn cried, oblivious. “Why, I remember one time he wrote to me of a particular nude sketch that he had discovered—”

As Jason saw the farce playing out before him, two things became abundantly clear: First, Herr Heider had kept his correspondence to himself, and second, to keep the already emotional Frau Heider from breaking, he was apparently to lend Winn his name a few days longer.

“Darling!” Jason interrupted, smiling tightly at the look of palest, abject horror on Frau Heider’s face. “Perhaps it would be a good time to mention to Frau Heider that we are currently on our wedding trip. And the purpose of it.”

Winn looked up at him curiously, her face awash in confusion. He leaned down and kissed her cheek, at the same time whispering in her ear, “After all, you won’t get what you want if the lady thinks you’ve cuckolded her.”

“Oh?” Winn asked. Then for the first time, seeing the look of complete horror and confusion on Frau Heider’s face, understood. “Oh!” she cried again, this time with understanding. “I assure you, Frau Heider, my correspondence with your husband was purely academic. After all, I’ve only ever had eyes for . . . my darling Jason, here.” She latched her hand onto his and squeezed. The act of which crushed his fingers even as it relieved the pressure on Frau Heider’s face, and she relaxed.

“Of course,” Frau Heider said, sighing. “How silly of me. My Wilhelm only ever had eyes for Master Dürer and, if I could get his attention, for me.”

“In fact,” Winn said kindly, “we do not wish to impose, but we are on something of a mission.”

“A mission?” Frau Heider’s eyes lit up. “A mission involving my husband?”

“Precisely.”

“A mystery!” Frau Heider cried joyfully. “I love nothing more than a good mystery. Tell me, my dear, how can I help?”

“Your husband told me about some letters,” she said, taking her portmanteau from Jason’s hands and fishing out the Adam and Eve copy. “Ones he found, written to Master Dürer, about this Adam and Eve painting.”

Frau Heider took the painting from Winn’s hands and peered at it with those keen gray eyes. “I do not recognize it, but I did not involve myself in my husband’s work,” Frau Heider said.

“Well, you see, the letters he found say . . .”

As Winn laid out the purpose of her visit—leaving out the less than pertinent information regarding George and various wagers—Frau Heider followed the conversation carefully, only occasionally stopping her, asking her to speak slower or for Jason to provide a translation.

“Frau Heider, please, tell me you still have those letters. I would be eternally grateful,” Winn concluded.

Frau Heider slid her eyes between Jason and Winn once more, and Jason held his breath. “Yes, my dear, I do. At least, I hope so.”

At that pronouncement, she rose and beckoned for Winn and Jason to follow her. And they did, up the stairs to the third floor, where the repairs had not gotten as far as they had on the rooms downstairs, but which at least seemed sturdy and clean. Except for one space.