Follow My Lead (31 page)

“Then put your nose in the air and act like Frederick Sutton. Oh, give him a court bow!” she exclaimed.

Jason glared at her, but he stood abruptly, his nose in the air as directed, and gave his best flourishing court bow, as if Herr Wurtzer was King George IV himself. And just for good measure, Jason then twisted the ring on his finger, showing the skeptical innkeeper the line where tan skin met pale—this ring had been on his hand for years.

Luckily, whether it was the bow or the show of skin, Herr Wurtzer seemed impressed enough to believe them, his ear hair twitching in thoughtful anticipation.

“Imagine it,” Winn was saying, “the entire village drawn away from Brauer’s watered-down beverages and second-rate meat pies, all to see an English Duke, tacking horses in your stables.”

“Tacking horses?” Jason said.

“Isn’t that the term?” Winn asked, wide-eyed.

“No—tack is the equipment you use to . . . never mind, I’ll explain later.” Jason sighed, and continued translating for Herr Wurtzer, but conspicuously changing Winn’s more uninformed phrasing.

“Of course, once they are here, the customers will realize the superiority of your fare.” Winn smiled at the mulling Wurtzer, his ears twitching with every mental cog falling into place. “And they’ll stay.”

“How much?” Wurtzer asked, his eyes narrowed shrewdly, calculating.

“Ah—this is the best part!” Winn cried. “No up-front fee.”

“No up-front fee!” Jason’s voice nearly cracked—something that had not happened in over a decade, such was his surprise.

“No up-front fee beyond the food in front of us,” Winn clarified. “But, we get fifteen percent of your profits at the end of the day.”

As Herr Wurtzer scoffed, Winn jumped quickly into the fray. “If this experiment doesn’t work, there’s no harm to you. You end up with clean stables and well-tended horses—all for the price of two plates of food.

“But, if it does work,” she continued, her voice taking on this strangely seductive, persuasive quality that set Jason’s nerves to tingling, “and you steal all of Brauer’s customers . . . isn’t that worth fifteen percent of your day’s business?”

“Fifteen percent?” Wurtzerreplied. “
Nein
. But ten percent . . .”

“Twelve,” Winn negotiated, adding, “and a room for the night.”

“Twelve,” Wurtzer agreed, “and you can bunk in the stables. There’s a space in the loft for the stable hands. Which is what the Duke is today.”

Winn listened as Jason finished translating. He held his breath as he watched her face, alight with the excitement of the barter, the art of the deal . . . He couldn’t help but imagine how glorious she would be in the markets of Budapest, Morocco, or Egypt.

When she said, “Deal,” and stuck out her hand for the sealing handshake, rather than be delighted by her broad, transformative smile, or the idea that he got to finish his plate of food, he was instead struck by a lowering, (almost) appetite-killing thought.

That when the time came, he would not see her bargain in the markets of Egypt.

Because he wouldn’t be there.

T
HAT evening, after a long day of stable work, Jason decided that his and Winn’s comfortable spots near the warmth of the bonfire in the town square were well earned. As were the tankards of beer that Herr Wurtzer had winkingly given them, along with the promise of continual refills. All part of their payment, Wurtzer said. They sat on bales of hay, mixed in with other couples and townsfolk, watching as the dancers performed the last of the unstructured
Sonnenwende
rituals, hopping and moving in happy circles around the fire that rose so high it obscured the stars. Musicians, all local men and women, none professional, played their instruments with joy and vigor, if not skill.

And Winnifred Crane sat opposite him, a hay bale serving as their makeshift table, the light of the fire reflecting the utter peace on her face.

So this was Winn content, he thought, a small smile peeking out through his beard. Normally he could see the thoughts whizzing past, going faster than a gallop . . . even in her sleep. Although after the events of the day, there was little reason for such contented bliss on her features, but there it was.

“How can you know they won’t trample me?” Winn had shrieked in the stables as one of the horses showed a decided interest in chewing on her hair.

Jason had just laughed heartily, as did the massive gathering of townsfolk watching and eating and laughing nearby.

Winn’s plan had worked marvelously, although not necessarily as she had intended. After they had downed their meals, Jason took to the stables immediately, wanting to see what he was working with. What he found was a fairly well-maintained set of boarding stables and a dozen bored, unattended carriage horses. Unattended, he assumed, because without any of the festival’s delights coming this way, the stable lads had abandoned their posts to chase said delights.

While Jason had located the feedbags, the oats and hay mixture that made up the feed, the brushes, and the brooms, Wurtzer had commandeered his beloved Heidi to start spreading the word of their newest hire. A younger woman than Jason had expected, she immediately went down to the bakery and told the extraordinary story of the starving young man and his diminutive companion, who in true folk-story fashion, had turned out to be a man of nobility from distant shores. Beloved Heidi, being a native to the village of Lupburg and therefore well ingratiated with the other women therein, knew well enough that her visit to the baker’s wife, and shortly thereafter, the butcher’s wife, and then a sprinkled word here and there throughout the crowd would be more than enough to start a wildfire of gossip and piqued curiosity.

After all, there is not a Bavarian in the world who can resist a good story.

But when the crowd began to gather and saw a well-dressed if unkempt man of strong disposition forking away old straw and strewing new onto the stall floors, they were bemused but not delighted. Oh, at the whispered words of Wurtzer, they strained for a view of the gold ducal ring on his hand (he had been told to leave off the thick leather gloves he had found, a circumstance his palms would pay for later) and took casual sips of the ale they purchased, but there was very little in the way of a show.

That is, until Winn entered the stables, bringing Jason his own tankard of ale.

The small English woman seemed deeply ill at ease in the presence of horses, but the horses were the exact opposite. Every single one, given the opportunity, nudged her, nickered as she passed their stalls, and when they were out of the stalls (so Jason could thoroughly clean them) danced right up to her, delighted by her presence.

And
her
antics—her screeching, her skittishness, her running away from what had to be the gentlest animals in all of Bavaria—not the Duke’s brushing down work and carriage horses, became the entertainment that kept the masses engaged, and kept them purchasing food and drink. So much so that when she had made a move to escape the barn, Jason had to stop her.

“They are not going to trample you, Winn. They like you too much.”

“No, they like how I taste. Just let me leave . . .” she moaned, biting her lip as one horse—an older lady with a lovely gray mane named Blume, which meant “flower”—nudged at Winn’s hand to see if she had any treats.

“You’re right.” Jason sighed as he shoveled another forking of old hay into a pile to be removed later. “I’m certain Wurtzer has earned enough by now for our twelve percent to get us to Vienna . . .”

Winn’s eyes went directly to the crowd, who it seemed she had just noticed, and saw they were not watching Jason but her, and every strange little thing she did, every little squeak she made . . . their eyes following with laughing engrossment.

She had become the show—not him.

Sighing, her shoulders raised tensely, she turned back to Blume and hesitantly reached out her hand.

And drew it back immediately when Blume tried to nip at her, sending up a roar of laughter from the growing observers.

“You’d think they had never seen someone who was afraid of horses before,” she mumbled.

“They probably haven’t. Horses are a way of life in the country—you can’t be afraid of them when you have to work with them every day,” Jason responded, wiping his brow with his sleeve. “Which begs the question—you grew up in the country. How is that you are so unacquainted with horses?”

“I am not unacquainted. I have ridden in carriages, they have horses,” Winn answered petulantly, taking hedging steps back from Blume . . . which had the effect of putting her within hair-chewing reach of the horse in the next stall, who was named Wolfgang (and couldn’t have been less of a wolf, given that he practically bent in half in his plea to get Winn to pet him).

“I think you’re not answering the question,” Jason countered with a smile.

“I think you’re being purposefully annoying!” Winn cried—but when Jason turned to look at her, he could see that that particular comment had been directed at poor Wolfgang. “And I didn’t grow up in the country,” Winn argued—this time to Jason. “I grew up in Oxford. Practically on the university. And as you know, since you went there, Oxford is very much not the country. I never had to go very far for what I needed, and when I did, I walked.”

“Yes, but what about visiting people?” Jason countered. “Surely you went to seek a change of scene and society once or twice.”

But Winn simply shook her head, which attracted far too much of Wolfgang’s attention. “Oxford has a new group of people invade every year—I never had to seek a change of scenery. The scenery in Oxford changed on its own.”

Jason stopped working for a moment and could only contemplate what she had told him. He knew that she had not been to London prior to her trip to the Historical Society, and she had said that she had not travelled before, but he didn’t think that it had meant
ever
or
anywhere.
But before he could comment, Winn started squeaking again, as Wolfgang had managed what none of his stable mates had managed, and pulled Winn’s hair out of its haphazard, half-fallen bun and commenced chewing.

“No! Stop it! Bad horse! Bad horse!” she wailed, pulling her hair free but unfortunately coming within Blume’s reach in the process.

“Take two steps this way.” Jason sighed, pulling her toward him. “Stay directly in front of them. Their field of vision is weakest there.”

“This begs the question,” she repeated dubiously, “how is it that you are so good with horses? Don’t you have fifty stable hands to do this kind of work for you?”

Jason just laughed out loud. “Not fifty.” Then his brow furrowed. “At least not fifty all at one residence. It’s quite possible I have fifty stable hands in total.”

“Jason . . .” Winn said warningly.

“I am good at this.” Jason smiled as he finished up one newly clean stall and began on another, “because my father made certain I knew how to do various jobs all over the estate. He thought it terribly important that I know how to do things.”

“Really?” Winn asked.

“When I was growing up. As you can see, only one of those things truly stuck with me.” Jason could remember his father . . . his father from before the man’s health had begun to decline, this large, imposing, gregarious figure whose sternness was matched only by his indulgence. When Jason had been ten or so, in between fencing masters and Latin lessons, his father would send him out with the groundsmen, so the boy would learn how to mend a fence. Then he turned Jason over to the gardeners, so he would learn how to plant a hedge or a tree. Then he was turned over to the falconer, then the gamekeeper, and then the head butler, to learn how to . . . polish silver, apparently.

And he had been bored to death by all of it. Almost as bored as he had been by fencing masters and Latin lessons.

But the one person he had not been bored by was the stable master. A thin wire of a man, the stable master had awed Jason with his ability to calm and control any horse, no matter how unruly and wild. And when Jason had insisted, as a nose-in-the-air ten-year-old lord and master was want to do, that he be taught how to mesmerize an animal like that, the stable master had said he would, just as soon as Jason could prove his worth in the stables.

So Jason had learned. He had learned to brush down a horse and clean its stall. He had learned how to pick out rocks in its shoes. He had learned how to take a horse through its paces in a training pen. Hell, he could even act as farrier in a pinch. And in the end, he’d found himself addicted to horses, to riding, to life in the stables.

“You know, I even find it somewhat soothing,” he said as he finished telling Winn about the wiry stable master and his demanding training. “Cleaning out stalls and such. It clears the head.”

“Clears the head?” Winn repeated, taking a step backward to allow Jason—and his dirtied pitchfork—to pass with ease. “How can it possibly, with the stench?”

Jason forked another pile of soiled straw. “You get used to it.” He looked pensively for a moment, his mind going back in time. “It reminds me of my home.”

“Well, I can promise you, I will never get used to it.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.

Which she should have learned by then, was a mistake.

Having stepped backward to allow Jason to pass, and having shook her head to make her point, Winn was now within reach and within sight. So much so, that both Blume and Wolfgang reached out and found a chunk of her hair to chew on lazily.

“Think of it this way,” Jason said cheerfully. “You said once that you liked your hair. Well, the horses simply concur.”

As Winn moaned in agony again, the crowd laughed and cheered, and one or two gentlemen called out advice.

“What did they say?” she asked Jason, her voice slowly pitching up to panic.