Follow My Lead (29 page)

“And that’s another thing,” Jason’s voice broke through the silent walk and Winn’s own thoughts. Upon seeing her raised brows, he continued haltingly. “Speaking of Frederick Sutton, that is. When we met him, you said I had been exactly like him.”

“I . . . I didn’t mean to offend—” she began, but he held up a hand.

“I know you didn’t, and it didn’t. Mostly because it was untrue. When I was Frederick Sutton’s age, I wasn’t like him. I was like his friend Henry.”

“Henry . . .” Winn’s brain relived the encounter. “The one who actually
wanted
to see the Dürer House?”

“But was easily dissuaded and then persuaded into mischief,” Jason concluded. “In some ways, I think I would have rather been Frederick. At least he didn’t make a pretense of his intentions.”

Winn came to a stop, turning to face Jason. “But I said that days ago. You can’t have been thinking of it all this time.”

Jason shrugged. “It has been bothering me. I wanted to clear it up.”

“Oh,” Winn replied. And then, as they resumed their walking, “As long as we are clearing up misconceptions, there is something that has been bothering me.”

Jason then quirked his brow and nodded for her to continue.

“I’m not five-foot nothing,” she declared. Then, with a concessionary grumble, “I’m five-foot-one.”

“Oh,” Jason replied in kind. And then, he couldn’t help it. He began laughing. A small chuckle that was all Winn needed in way of an apology. And perhaps, when she joined in laughing, too, he would know she apologized as well.

They resumed walking, continued chuckling, right up until Jason’s stomach growled again, adding a third voice to their wordless conversation.

“We need to get you fed,” Winn surmised, putting her hands on her hips.

“You as well, little sparrow,” Jason replied.

Winn paused as she gave Jason a curious look. “Sparrow?”

But Jason ducked his head, blushing under his beard, unwilling to answer Winn’s question.

“Come on,” he said gruffly. “We have to come to a village or town eventually.”

And this time, when Winn put her hand to her side, his hand fell right beside hers, and when their knuckles grazed like she thought they might, his hand grabbed on to hers under the pretense of pulling her along quicker to their unknown destination.

And as she fell into a trot beside him, Winn could not say that she minded in the least.

T
HE little village of Lupburg was as unpretentious and, at the same time, as staunchly Bavarian as they come. Built into a small hillside in the rolling farmland that dominated the eastern parts of Bavaria (as opposed to the Alp-ridden southwest), it was dominated by a medieval, now crenellated keep on top of the hill. Just below the keep was the town church, and just below that, the winding main street, marked on one end by the bakery, and on the other by the butcher’s shop. The village square was anchored on one corner by a shrine to the Virgin Mary, and on the other by a posting board for local news. Under the blazing blue summer sky, the town was a ribbon of neatly whitewashed buildings, and a beacon of hope to two weary travelers who veered off the main road when they saw it.

Or rather, heard it.

As Jason and Winn had been walking along the road, every footfall accompanied by either a stomach rumble or an annoying hunger pang, their discussion had waxed and waned as they each thought of misconceptions they wanted corrected.

“I think that you think that I don’t know the value of a shilling,” Jason said, his brain making sense of that convoluted sentence, and hoping Winn’s did the same.

“So you
do
know the value of a shilling?” Winn asked Jason, who nodded vigorously.

“Absolutely. It’s the value of a dozen pounds, if I win at cards that day.”

“That’s horrible.” Winn laughed, shaking her head. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I think that you think that I have absolutely no concept of time.”

“Only when you’re in a library,” Jason replied. His hand was still wound around hers, and he gave her a small squeeze. “Or searching through three-hundred-year-old letters. Or perhaps, when I’m trying to sleep in the morning and you’re banging around like a giant in the forest. Other times you are as precise as clockwork.” Searching for other topics, his free hand came to his chin, rubbing the now almost two weeks’ worth of growth there.

“I think that you think that I need a shave,” he said finally.

Winn paused, considering his face. Jason felt himself blush underneath his beard and her scrutiny. “Never mind,” he mumbled before she could answer. “That one happens to be true.”

Winn smiled at him, that odd, considering smile that lit up her eyes like amber jewels. “Oh, I don’t know . . .” she whispered, then let the thought drift off. Her eyes played over his face, his jaw . . . Then, after thinking for a brief moment, she hesitated before venturing into the gulf. “I think that you think that I haven’t been kissed before.”

Jason’s vision turned dark, his body stuttered. What was she up to?

“Not true,” he countered, deciding to play along.

“You don’t?”

“I know you’ve been kissed,” Jason smiled lazily. “By me. Twice. Although once was sort of you kissing me, so I don’t know if that counts . . . hey!”

His teasing line of thought was cut off by her playful punch to his arm, but then, self-consciously, she pulled back. Perhaps remembering the last time she hit him, and its less than friendly intent. Jason did the only thing he could do, which was give her hand another kind squeeze.

“You may have been kissed before, but I know you are new to being teased,” Jason replied softly.

It was one of those moments that had been happening all too frequently in Nuremberg, and perhaps, before, where they had both stopped talking, both stopped searching, and simply stayed in each other’s gaze. Jason wanted to take that half step closer to her, pull her to his side, and fill the gap of cool air that separated them with her warmth. And if he didn’t misread the light in her eyes, she wanted something similar.

But before he could move, before he could take that half step, Winn’s head cocked to one side, like the sparrow he knew her to be, as she listened to the wind.

“Do you hear that?” she asked, looking past him, her body taking shuffling steps around him, away from him, that dratted cool space growing wider between them. “It sounds like . . . horns.”

Jason concentrated, putting his ear to the breeze. “And . . . cheering?” he asked, surprised.

“It’s coming from this way,” Winn said after a few more minutes of listening. She pointed through a thicket of woods, separating the road from what lay beyond. She began to move toward the woods, but Jason, his hand still wrapped around hers, pulled her to a stop.

“Hold a moment. You want to cross through a darkly shrouded wood in rural Bavaria?” Jason asked, his entire body wired with skepticism.

“Yes,” Winn answered slowly. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Tell me,” Jason replied, “in all your time in the library, did you ever come across any folktales? They tend to heavily feature Bavarian forests. And the things you find in them.”

Winn smiled at him again, this time in a quizzical, disbelieving fashion that, if possible, lit her face further. “You know what I think about you right now?” she asked, closing the gap between them, her sudden nearness momentarily fluttering Jason’s thoughts.

“I think you’re a little too old to believe in folktales.” And with that, she pulled him into the forest.

As it turned out, in this particular patch of trees, there was very little in the way of ogres, monsters, talking wolves, fairies, or anything else one might think to find in a Bavarian forest. Which Jason found slightly disappointing. As much as Winn had spent their walk through Nuremberg craning her neck for the sight of lederhosen, Jason would have loved to take back to England a story about his trek through a Bavarian forest, and the ogre he met there. Not that he believed in ogres. But still, some childhood glee at scary thoughts never really goes away.

No, they simply followed the sounds of trumpets and cheers, which got louder as they wound their way through the woods, and came out on the other side, finding a similar road to the one they had just left, but instead of leading toward unending farmland, this road led directly to a small hillside dotted with that ribbon of whitewashed houses that bespoke of a village. The sound of trumpets and cheering were now accompanied by the sight of people and flags moving slowly up what Jason guessed was the village’s main road.

“It’s some kind of parade.”

Just then, Jason’s stomach grumbled, louder than previously. Hell, likely louder than it ever had.

“My goodness,” Winn said, her eyes wide with astonishment. “It’s as if your stomach knows that food is within a mile perimeter.”

“Ha-ha,” Jason replied, unable to quiet his internal growling.

“You see?” Winn grinned up at him. “I may be new to it, but I think I’m getting the concept of this teasing thing you value so highly.”

“I will have you know,” Jason said, following after Winn as she took to the road that led to the village in the distance, “that there is a decided echo in this forest.”

Jason’s guess of a parade turned out to be correct, but only partially. When he and Winn entered the village of Lupburg, they found themselves entering a full-blown village festival. Ribbons strung between roofs hung over the main street, the entire town turned out on the sidelines to see their chosen sons march up and down the parade path that lead from the main street up to the church, blowing horns and making merry. There was even a giant paper and leather cow, operated by four men, one for each of the cow’s legs, mooing and careening down the street, a girl upon its back tossing sweets to the children in the audience.

And everyone was eating and drinking.

Jason nearly doubled over in bliss at the smell of the fatted chicken legs held in the greasy hands of some of the laughing townsfolk nearby. The loud guffaws were silenced only when the people took a swig of beer from the tankards they held in the other hand.

“Oh my God, this is torture,” Jason moaned. He turned to Winn, surprised to see her attention entirely caught and held by what looked like a marzipan turtle being stuffed into the greedy mouth of a young child. Jason held back a grin, and he yanked her back to face him.

“Hmm . . . What did you say?” she asked finally, her attention now removed from the sweets.

“You looked like you were seriously contemplating
literally
taking candy from a baby,” he said sardonically. Then, “Come on, let’s find the source.”

They wound their way through the crowd, and Jason pigeonholed a local and asked him where the food came from. He was pointed in the direction of the food stalls on the other side of the parade route, near a pub and inn that was packed to the gills with people enjoying the festivities, the view, and most of all, the beer.

“How can everyone be intoxicated already?” Winn asked with one eyebrow up in the air. “It cannot be later than ten o’clock in the morning.”

“It’s also a festival of . . . something,” Jason replied. “Revelry starts early when there’s a party to be had.” When she looked up at him quizzically, Jason had to sigh. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to a festival. Oxford had them all the time! I know, I attended them!”

“They tended to be for the students, not the professors’ daughters,” Winn replied.

“Well then, another thing to cross off your list—‘attend a village festival.’ ”

“If only I knew what it was for,” Winn grumbled, and then
her
stomach joined in the complaining.

“Aha!” Jason crowed. “You do get hungry! For a while there I thought you were one of those inhuman, abstaining types who can go a month on a crust of bread.”

“Just because I don’t have to eat an entire
cow
for every meal . . .”

But their burgeoning bickering would have to wait, because just then Jason spied the latest tray of chicken legs being delivered by a stout woman to a beefy, happy man, who was quickly attacked by the joyful crowd, throwing coins at him in exchange for his delicious goods.

“That stall, right there,” Jason leaned down and whispered in her ear, directing her attention to the spectacle before them. “If you can distract them, I can nab a piece or five, and then we hare out of here.”

“How would you have me distract them?” Winn asked, the worry pricking through her voice.

“I don’t know. Scream? Faint? Do something womanly?” her replied, and was met by the hard stare of the unamused Winn. “You know what I mean. Do you think you can do it?”

Winn nodded, her hand going to the locket at her neck, giving it a slight tug.

“What is it?” Jason asked, his face suddenly concerned. “You only pull at your locket when you are contemplating something.”