Totty finally found her voice. "Yes, we have some idea as to the rumors, thank you."

"Don't know if you do, as one of the crewmen said the gentleman winked at him, but that's neither here nor there," Mrs. Schmidt continued pertly, unhappy to have been interrupted in telling her juicy story. "I wish my husband were here, but he had to set out on another voyage. He could tell you more about the chap, but I really had very little to do with him."

After they left the offices of Schmidt und Schmidt Shipping, and rid themselves of their money-grubbing company, George grew alarmingly silent as they stalked in the direction of the coaching yard Mrs. Schmidt said she had directed Winn toward.

He remained alarmingly silent while they were told by the stable lad at the coaching yard that a woman matching Winn's description had purchased tickets to Nuremberg with a man with red hair.

And silence reigned now, as Frau Heider sat across her kitchen table from them and told them that Winn had introduced herself as Mrs. Cummings, and the red-haired gentleman as her husband.

It was the silence that worried Totty more than anything. Mr. Tottendale, God rest his soul, was a genial sort who had an occasional hot head . . . one that Totty herself seemed to set off more than any other person. He would stomp around the house in a fit of pique but then be back to himself.

George was not stomping around the house, burning off his justified frustration. And from that flash of unreasonable anger that she had seen earlier, she knew he was capable of such stomping. No, instead he was keeping it bottled up. And playing Frau Heider like a fiddle.

"I cannot believe Mrs. Cummings would be so heartless as to jilt her fiance and marry another man," Frau Heider said after George had laid out a particularly glassy-eyed version of his romance with Winn to his captive audience. Totty couldn't help but be impressed by George's eloquence in German. The things that boy could have done if he'd actually cared to apply himself.

"It is not heartlessness on her part. I am afraid it is my fault. We quarreled about these letters, and she took off. I did not support her as I should. And she has been so sheltered and naive . . . I fear this man with the red hair, Mr. Cummings, is taking great advantage of her. Tell me," George said, his voice warm and controlled, "did Miss Crane . . . er, Mrs. Cummings, did she, perhaps, find these letters?"

Frau Heider hesitated a moment. A moment long enough for George to make his voice crack with emotion. "I'm so sorry, I just . . . finding those letters was her father's dying wish . . . He put all of these notions into her head, and all I want is my darling Winnifred back, and if she found those letters perhaps . . . perhaps there is no marriage. Perhaps she will return home."

Frau Heider looked to Totty for confirmation of George's story. And what was she to do? He was not lying to the woman, merely playing it out from a different side. "He's very upset," Totty said dryly, in her schoolgirl German. "And was wondering if Winn had found the letters she sought."

Frau Heider clucked at George's almost teary eyes and stood up to fetch the teapot. As she poured hot water into the pot and left it to steep, she placed a tray of bread and cheese in front of George with a sympathetic smile.

"Yes," she told Totty and George, "Miss . . . Mrs. . . . Winn left here not a half hour ago, saying she found the letters and she had to go tell her husband. He had walked to the market."

George wasted no time standing and oversetting the chair on his bid to get out the door.

"They should be back soon!" Frau Heider cried to his retreating form. "At least I hope so. Oh dear, oh dear." The delicate-looking woman worried her hands in a decidedly un-German fashion. "Did that young woman truly get married? Or didn't she? I should like to get this whole thing sorted out."

"As would I, Frau Heider," Totty agreed from her chair. She would have gotten up to follow George, chase right after him and make certain he did not find Winn immediately . . . if she hadn't already seen, out of the corner of her eye, Winn and-lo and behold-the Duke of Rayne, when they were still outside.

"Don't worry, he won't find her," she said, only to receive a quizzical look from Frau Heider. "You don't happen to have anything stronger than tea, do you?"

Thirteen.

Wherein our hero's attempt at subterfuge goes awry.

"WINN, stop!" Jason hissed, finally catching up to her halfway across town, near the entrance to the coaching yard where they had first come into town two days ago. His legs might be longer, he thought grimly, but that did absolutely no good when she was not only able to duck and weave through the flow of traffic with impunity, but also desperate enough to do so.

"Winn!" He managed to grab her arm, pulling her to a stop. Then, bending over, gasping for breath, "Hold on . . . one . . . moment . . ."

She was breathing as heavily as he, her skin flushed aglow from her exertions. But whereas Jason needed a minute to recover from his running after her-and possibly from her appearance-Winn apparently did not.

"We haven't got a moment, Jason. We have to get out of here now!" Winn replied in a rush, her eyes shining with fear and excitement.

And before Jason could ask why or how or where they were going, Winn pulled her arm free and set off into the madness of the coaching yard.

Almost a week in Germany, and two days of doing nothing but reading cramped Renaissance German handwriting must have elevated Winn's skills with the language considerably, because she read down the chalkboard list of coaches and their destinations, chose one, and headed for it decisively.

That or she was quickly choosing at random.

But whatever the explanation, Winn had chosen the one carriage that was rigged to depart. It would be leaving in very few minutes.

"Why that one?" he whispered in her ear.

"It's going to Vienna," she whispered back. "And it's the only one going today."

"Vienna?!" he exclaimed, causing no small number of heads to turn their way. "Why on earth are we going to Vienna?"

"I'll explain on the way, but it's about to leave . . . Come on!" she cried, taking his hand and pulling him toward the carriage door.

"Wait." He pulled her up short. "You don't have your bag."

"A sacrifice we'll have to live without," she replied.

"All of the money is in your bag," he hissed in her ear. "We can't purchase tickets."

As he watched her turn pale, then tug at the heart-shaped locket around her neck, Jason groaned. "All right," he said with resolve. "Just follow my lead."

He took a few seconds to eye the situation. There was no driver on the carriage yet, but all the luggage was loaded on the back. The last of the porters turned away and started to load packages onto a different carriage. The only one watching the Vienna carriage was a young boy, holding the leads of the horses while taking the fares handed him by passengers who then loaded themselves on.

Jason straightened, and turned to the young boy who was holding the horses. "Excuse me!" he called out jovially in German. The young boy looked up, and the horses danced and shuffled. Jason realized his luck when he saw just how young the boy was and how unused he was to controlling horses. Perhaps he was new enough to his position that he could be intimidated.

"Where is the driver? I absolutely must speak with him about these appalling accommodations!"

The young boy looked left and right, blanching. He stuttered a moment before saying, "He's gone inside . . . to get his kit for the voyage."

More likely to finish off his pint, but Jason declined to dwell on that.

"Well, I'll talk to you, then. What kind of slipshod business is it when I am expected to share carriage space with others? I am the son of a baron. Surely you have something better for the likes of us?" Jason continued in what he hoped was a dead-on impression of Frederick Sutton, son of Baron Sutton, turning the young boy away from facing the carriage door.

"It's . . . it's a public carriage," the boy answered, uncertain of himself.

"It's a disgrace is what it is. All I want to do is go see the opera dancers in Vienna, but do I have to put up with this madness to do it? Crammed next to any old fishmonger or bank clerk?" As he gave this speech, Jason fleetingly locked eyes with Winn and urged her into the carriage.

"The upholstery isn't even velvet!" Jason decried with a sigh.

The young boy could only shrug and say, "I'm sorry, sir."

Jason sighed the sigh of the righteously put-upon. "I'll be the laughingstock of all my friends. You're lucky I don't make a mockery of this whole operation and walk to Vienna."

"No sir! Please don't do that!" the young boy cried, terrified. "I just got this job, and I'll lose it for certain if a passenger decides to walk."

Jason eyed the young boy circumspectly. "Well, just this once, I suppose I can be accommodating. I won't mention it to your driver if you don't."

The boy nodded vigorously, and Jason turned on his heel and stepped up into the carriage.

Inside he was met by indifference from the few other travelers, and the decidedly interested gaze of Winnifred Crane. He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to ask one of probably four thousand questions, cutting her off into silence. The seconds ticked by, falling into a few minutes, before the sound of shuffling feet outside the carriage met his straining ears.

"Hans," a deep German voice called out, followed by a belch. "Are we ready? Everyone loaded?"

"Yes, sir," the young boy replied.

Then there was the sound and motion of a significant amount of weight climbing up to the driver's seat.

"Good!" the driver replied. "Any problems?"

There was the slightest of pauses, wherein Jason could feel the tiny bead of sweat form at the back of his neck. But before it could break, the tiny voice of Hans the stable lad answered directly. "No, sir. No problems," the boy said from beside the driver.

The driver snapped the reins, and they were off, Jason and Winn comfortably aboard.

Of course, it was not two hours later that they were uncomfortably kicked off board.

It couldn't have lasted, in any case. They would have never made it all the way to Vienna. There would be stops to change horses, feed the passengers . . . and an overnight stop wherein they would be discovered as not paying and not able to afford the rooms they were made to take. But still, Jason had hoped to make it farther than they did.

It did not assist that he still had no idea why they were going to Vienna. Winn was unable to give her explanation in the carriage, as two of the other passengers, ladies, began a conversation that did not stop, except for every time Jason or Winn tried to open their mouths to say something. Then it got so quiet Jason could swear that he could hear the ladies listening.

So Winn and Jason had to ignore each other, until finally the ladies settled down into snoozing. Which turned out to be Winn and Jason's undoing.

Really, they would have been better off just keeping quiet the entire time.

"Now, do you mind telling me why we had to escape Nuremberg so quickly that we had to leave all our money behind?"

And that was it. That was the one sentence that had to be said that shouldn't have been said. Because, as Jason should have learned by now, snoozing, carriage-bound Germans have the suspicious ability to hear (and understand) English extremely well.

"Driver!" one of the ladies cried, sitting bolt upright and banging on the roof of the carriage. The carriage lurched to an immediate stop, and the driver climbed down, followed by the light footsteps of Hans, the boy Jason had to bamboozle.

While the boisterous and, now that Jason thought about it, ugly and warted woman divulged-in rapid German, of course-through the window of the carriage everything she had just heard Jason say, he watched as the young boy's eyes grew wide, and then as his face paled when the driver turned to him, his hand raised in a fist.

"No!" Jason bellowed as he leapt from the carriage, ran around to the other side, and came in between the driver and the boy. "He did nothing to earn a beating," Jason growled, catching the driver's arm.

"He cost me money!" the driver sneered. "He needs to learn a lesson. Or do you want to learn it for him?"

Jason breathed in the fumes of the beer on the driver's breath and eminently regretted his decision to put his nose in the man's face.

Now, Jason had only ever been in a single fight in his life, and it had been decidedly one-sided. And that side was his, facedown in the mud outside of a pub called the Oddsfellow Arms near his sister's home. But he liked to think he could hold his own in one-on-one combat.

He was wrong.

Even a lifetime of beer drinking could not allay the sheer strength the driver had earned from controlling a team of horses all day, every day. Even as Jason managed to land a combination of blows to the man's impressive gut, the driver's fist came down onto Jason's face and ribs in quick succession, felling him to his knees. Followed by a swift kick to the body, and Jason was sprawled on the side of the dusty road, reeling in pain.

Out of the corner of his red, addled vision, Jason could see the driver raise his fist again to little Hans. He moved to come between them, tried to sit up in time, but he had been incapacitated too neatly. He could not save Hans from his beating.

But Winn could.

She leapt out of the carriage and wedged the whole of her petite frame in between the large driver and his frightened charge.

"Don't you dare!" Winn ground out, her eyes boring into the driver's face. "Shame on you." Jason struggled to his feet and watched as the sparrow confronted the elephant. "Shame on you!" she yelled, loud enough that it echoed through the rolling hills of the empty countryside.

Even though the driver may not have understood Winn's English words, he understood the look in her eyes and lowered his arm, hesitating. He turned his head when he heard shuffling from the carriage.

"I knew they were trouble when they first boarded, didn't I tell you, Uta?" the more rotund of the two ladies was saying in German as she maneuvered her weight to better see the dramatics unfold outside.

"Oh, leave them, driver!" the other lady, Uta, said. "We must be on our way." She held up a pocket watch and shook it at him, as if to remind him of the time.

"Not worth it in any case," the driver grumbled. He shot one last disparaging look at Jason, who had struggled to his feet and come to stand next to Winn, between the driver and the boy, his breaths coming in sharp, painful bursts. Whatever his condition, the driver dismissed it, and them, by climbing up to his seat on the carriage, flicking the reins, and pulling away with all possible haste, disappearing down the road.

Leaving Jason, Winn, and the young Hans on the dusty side of the long road, Nuremberg behind them, Vienna in front of them, and nothing but rolling hills dotted with farm animals in between.

Now, Jason liked to think of himself as a fairly reasonable man. He had only truly lost his temper once, and to be fair, alcohol had been involved, and the result had been, as it was so mentioned, to find himself facedown in the mud. But having, in just the past few hours, been forced into becoming a fugitive, his nerves a fraying wire, and then subsequently beaten by an oversized Bavarian, he was holding on to his good sense with both hands.

But there was Winn to think about-and the small, soft fingers prodding at him.

"Gah!" he cried when said fingers not so gently came across a sore spot on his ribs.

"Oh! I'm sorry," Winn cried, immediately poking him again in the same spot. "Does it hurt there?"

"Yes, that's what 'gah!' means!" Jason growled, enough of a warning so that Winn backed away. Instead, she turned to the boy, Hans, who was standing silent, shaking.

"Oh, Hans!" she said in English, so whether or not the boy understood her was suspect, but he looked up into her face with his big innocent eyes. "Are you quite well? No bumps and bruises? You should be thanking Jase-er, Mr. Cummings for his help. He took a beating for you."

Hans nodded solemnly and, escorted by Winn, took tentative steps toward Jason . . . and promptly kicked him in the shin.

"You cost me my job!" the child cried, and then, turning on his heel, began running in the other direction, back toward Nuremberg.

"Wait!" Winn cried after him. "Where are you going?"

"Home!" the boy shouted behind him, and continued down the path, faster than either Jason or Winn would be able to catch up with him.

"What do we do?" Winn asked, the worry creeping into her voice. "Should we go after him?"

And it was the worry that did it. That small change in her pitch, the concern, the fear. It broke his anger free like no punch or blow ever could.

He began to laugh. But not his normal, amused laugh. This laugh sounded as though it were coming from another body, one that was quickly losing any sense of self-control.

"What the-?" Winn asked. "Did you get hit in the head? Have you gone addled?"

"Have I gone addled?" Jason repeated with disbelief. "Probably. But it's nothing compared to you."

"What-"

But she didn't get very far into whatever question she was going to ask, because Jason's laughter abruptly stopped.