Follow My Lead by Kate Noble Page A

. . . the imagination necessary to be C. W. Marks? Would you take my suit seriously then?”
    Lord Forrester regarded her suspiciously for a moment, his eyes flicking to the black-clad gentlemen crowding the door behind her, looking like a crowd of vultures, waiting to feast upon the remnants of Miss Crane’s career.
    “I suppose if it was put past doubt, I would have to,” he said finally, drawing no amount of angry and scandalized titters from the gathered crowd. “But doubt is a difficult thing to surmount. And I’m not at all certain it can be done away with entirely.”
    She nodded, swallowing, allowing herself one nervous look down to her hands. But when her eyes came up, they had that sparkle of newfound fire. Of determination.
    “That painting behind you”—she pointed—“of Adam and Eve.”
    “The Dürer?” Lord Forrester replied, following her finger to the appropriate piece. “A particularly splendid representation of the German Renaissance.”
    “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “But what if I told you it was not painted by Albrecht Dürer?”
    A jolt of shock rolled through the assembly. Monocles were dropped. Even an utterance of “I say!” drifted over the mutterings and cries.
    Meanwhile, Winnifred Crane simply took a deep breath.
    “And what if I could prove it?”

Four
    Wherein our hero does not appear, except anecdotally.
    “T HIS really is the limit, Winnifred, even for you!”
    George stomped through Totty’s small foyer like a giant fee-fi-fo-fumming his anger out at the world, making small crystal and china knickknacks shake on their various surfaces. Winn followed George through the door quietly, calmly closing it behind her. Now that the interview with Lord Forrester was over—the moment that she had been preparing for, working toward, and building up in her mind for more than a year—Winnifred could feel nothing but a peaceful calm. Let George rant and rave. Let him argue and wheedle—she had done what she set out to do, and now . . .
    She was on her way. She had taken the first step down the path to the life she wanted. Now all she had to do was take the others.
    “A painting? A bloody painting! That’s how you decide to compromise our entire future?” George turned on her, running his hands through his dark hair. “One that is a Dürer, no matter how much you pretend otherwise.”
    She had been caught by that painting, almost from the moment she had entered Lord Forrester’s office. She had known that her father had given it to the Society in his will, of course, but the luck of it appearing on Lord Forrester’s wall . . .
    At first it had amused her. It was as if her father were watching over her even now. But then, as everything began to fall apart around her ears, her hopes of recognition as C. W. Marks fading away, she quickly realized it was the lone, last chance she had to succeed.
    “Lord Forrester,” she had said, once the murmurs and cries in the Historical Society’s rooms subsided at her last announcement, “you must know that my father spent the last few years of his life attempting to compile a comprehensive life history, thesis, and list of works of Albrecht Dürer.”
    “Of course, he wrote of it often.”
    “Over many years, he acquired a number of works for Oxford and a few for his personal collection. Including that one.” She pointed to the untitled painting, which she had always referred to simply as the Adam and Eve . It was a graceful painting, one Winnifred had admired for years. A small canvas, no more than a foot and a half long by two feet wide. Adam to the left, leading the painting, Eve looking youthful and innocent to the right. Fig leaves protected their modesty, and the Tree of Knowledge between them, lit from behind, beckoning like the siren it was. The apple was in Eve’s hand, shining and true. But whereas most depictions of this most important moment in human history had the snake hanging from the tree and whispering in Eve’s ear,