"She could take a page from you, Miss Crane. And to think, the whole thing over a painting!"

Sir Geoffrey chuckled heartily at that. "My Evie is mad about her paintings . . . and my Gail about her history. I think you've hit upon the one story they both would sit still for."

And then, the story concluded with their rescue, already well known to all in attendance, attention turned to the neglected food in front of them, and conversation began to be colored by comments on card games at White's, English pudding, and peas in stew.

But it was after most of the plates had been cleared that attention again returned to Winn's story of their adventures, and Mr. Ellis-free from the possibility of a splattered pudding-produced the letters from the safety of drawer he had placed them in and began to inspect them.

"They have held up remarkably well, given their age," Winn commented.

"True . . ." Mr. Ellis commented, his eyes never leaving the page. "But you are right to seek a secondary evidence. These provide doubt but not proof of your painting's authorship." Then he looked up and addressed another member of the party. "Gail, would you come and look at this? My German is atrocious."

"If you need a translation, I think I've managed the whole," Winn said, but a chuckle from Sir Geoffrey deterred her.

"Don't worry about the letters, Miss Crane," he said. "My Gaily girl knows how to handle herself with such important things, don't you?"

"Yes, Papa," the girl replied, her jaw setting as she became quite serious, stilling her normal, eleven-year-old bounciness.

"Besides, Gail has a bit of a knack for languages. We've been here only two months and I'd swear up and down she was a native Austrian if I hadn't seen her every day of my life."

Gail sat down next to Mr. Ellis and began to peruse.

"There is no last name to her signature-where do you intend to start looking?"

"I have to surmise that this woman met Master Durer first and perhaps only in Basel, when he was apprenticing, but they kept up a correspondence, even though these were the only two letters found. The simple fact that it is a literate woman in the year 1500 points to her being well-off. Add to it that she is obviously trained in art, and since they met in Basel, at one time had means to travel, she must have been very wealthy indeed," Winn explained. "The only location mentioned is St. Stephen's Cathedral, so perhaps there is a slim chance they still have some records of who the wealthy or aristocratic families were who worshipped there."

"You won't find her family at St. Stephen's," Gail piped up from her position bent over Mr. Ellis's shoulder. "At least not her biological one."

"What do you mean? She mentions her mother in one letter, doesn't she?" Jason asked, trying to remember the exact phrasing from Winn's excited retelling in Nuremberg.

"My mother who is my superior in all things-when she has been scolded for having too much pride in her work," Winn added, apparently reading Jason's thoughts . . . but then, a funny look crossed her face and her hand went to her locket. "Unless . . ."

"Exactly." Gail smiled at Winn. "You misidentified the article. Understandable, since it's a bit smudged, but . . . there it is."

Mr. Ellis beamed at Winn the way an instructor looked on his favorite pupil, and Winn was shaking her head, practically laughing at her own foolishness, but the rest of the table was on the edge of their seats, eager to be clued in.

Unsurprisingly, Jason was the one who couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "Well then, what does it really say?" he cried impatiently.

"It says my Mother Superior," Winn answered, smiling. "The author of this letter is a nun."

"Which makes sense," Mr. Ellis supplied for the edification of all. "In that era, a woman of talent would have had more of a chance in a nunnery to foster it than in a marriage."

"Excellent," Jason said. "But is there an abbey associated with St. Stephen's?" he asked the table.

"Er . . . well, there are dozens of nunneries in Vienna who worship at St. Stephen's at major ecclesiastical holidays," Sir Geoffrey supplied. "Let me reach out to some people, see if I cannot get the parish priest to provide you with a list."

"So, to paraphrase Shakespeare, we shall get ourselves to a nunnery." Winn smiled.

"Nunneries, it sounds like," Jason grumbled. But the rest of the table was far too taken with excitement to note his skepticism.

"Oh, Jason, this is wonderful. This might actually work!" Winn cried excitedly. Jason let her voice saying his name, which she had refrained from using over dinner, wash over him, settling into that place in his spine that relaxed at the sound.

"How so?" he asked. "I'm sorry to play devil's advocate, but we still have to locate half of a three-hundred-year-old correspondence that it is very unlikely to have been kept as important, if at all."

"True," Winn agreed, "but when have you ever known a church to throw anything away?"

"I'll toast to that!" Sir Geoffrey called out. "Richards"-he addressed a servant who had blended effortlessly into a wall-"bring out the Burgundy. A '93, I should think!"

Jason's gaze shot to Winn's. And together, the both of them burst into starry-eyed laughter, leaving the rest of the room out on the joke.

And if they had been alone, he would have taken her into his arms then and held her there. For as long as he could.

Because as they toasted with the long-ago promised Burgundy'93, Jason could not help thinking with a touch of melancholy that tomorrow . . . tomorrow was the beginning of the end of the adventure.

Twenty-three.

Wherein we catch up with other travelers.

TOTTY was fairly certain that George's head was shortly going to explode. Which would be a tragedy, as it would be impossible to get blood and brain matter out of her travel gown, and she only had three with her.

Of course, Frau Heider could lend her one, and the two of them were of a size. But really, she would prefer it if George's brain stayed in his head altogether.

Yes, Frau Heider had taken up a place as a co-traveler on this journey. Well, it had been so long since Totty had had a friend her own age to chat with, and George was not the best of company on this journey, as he was becoming progressively more surly and erratic as every day ticked on.

The search for Winn had not gone well in Nuremberg. George was unable to locate any trace of her for almost two days-and indeed, had almost assumed they'd headed for England, letters in hand-when his inquiries at the stable yard bore fruit. They had yielded a young boy who had been duped by a woman and her flame-haired companion, and the child was scathingly eager to tell them where they went-or rather, where the coachman had left them on the side of the road.

"And we are off!" Frau Heider had cried. "Oh, how exciting!"

This elicited strange looks from both Totty and George.

"Well," Frau Heider reasoned, "I am owed a holiday. Besides, I am keenly interested to learn if the young lady really was married to the nice young gentlemen she travelled with."

When she said that, Totty could hear George's teeth grinding.

And so, against George's increased objections, the Durer House was closed, shutters put up on the windows (this took an extra half day, as George told them more than once), and all the poor drunken students for the next several days would simply have to be disappointed.

The spot where the lad said Winn and the Duke had been dropped revealed little information, but at least it put them in the same direction as the objects of their pursuit. They travelled down the roads, toward Munich, and had stopped for the evening in a little village near the Austrian border before they discovered they had to turn around.

It was Frau Heider's happiness to be among people that lead them in the right direction. While George was always eager to be conversational with men he felt the need to impress, he was not one to bother speaking to those he felt could not be of use, and so took a private dining room, where the rabble would not annoy him.

Totty, likewise, was one for the avoidance of rabble, and finding it best to keep an eye on George at this juncture, who was becoming increasingly on edge, ate with him.

She had just been sipping on the heaviest beer she'd sampled this side of Ireland when Frau Heider came through the dining room door with two pleasant looking, if working-class, men in her wake.

"Tell her what you just told me," Frau Heider said, in her native tongue.

"We were at our sister's, in the village of Lupburg, for the Sonnenwende festival," the more egregiously smiling of the two gentlemen said, "and you'll never guess what we saw."

"No they never will, so I'll tell you," Frau Heider interjected. "They saw an English Duke cleaning out stables, and his companion lady being chased by the horses."

Suddenly Totty's beer tasted very sour indeed.

But Frau Heider was so pleased with herself and so happy to have been of use on the journey, that Totty had to wait until George, who popped out of his chair immediately at the news, was readying the horses to dampen her enthusiasm.

"My dear-the next time you discover something like this," she said in a whisper, "come to me first, and me only."

"But why?" Frau Heider asked wide-eyed.

"Because I feel it might be necessary to buy Winn and her friend some time to find what she's looking for," Totty reasoned, shooting a pointed look in George's direction, who yelled in his agitated German at the slow pace of his loading of the trunks.

She turned back toward her new friend and found her nodding solemnly, looking somewhat fearful and heartbroken-so much so that Totty, in a manner quite unlike herself, felt the need to pacify her. "Never fear, you did no wrong. We will find them . . . but why such a rush? No reason we can't be a bit leisurely about the matter, is there?"

But leisurely was not George's state of mind. One would have thought that since Frau Heider was instrumental in discovering the direction of Winn and the Duke, George would have been more tolerant of her presence.

One would be wrong.

"Why do I feel certain this will be another waste of time," George grumbled. "Coming back the way we came to follow a rumor?"

"It's better than anything else we have, George," Totty said pointedly. "Besides, the following of a rumor is simply another name for research . . . a skill your profession prizes, does it not?"

George settled against the cushions of the carriage and grumbled. But at least it stopped his glaring at Frau Heider.

The rumor of Lupburg boasted the true article, as everyone in town pointed them quickly in the direction of an inn owned by a man named Wurtzer.

And Wurtzer pointed them in the direction of Regensburg. Even gave them the name of the stable yard where they'd stopped next. Although, he felt he would not be able to tell them precisely where to find it and so decided it best that he himself accompany them in the carriage, to point out the exact turns to take to find Hohenfelser Strasse.

"After all," the kind innkeeper reasoned, "I did not pay them the amount I owed them, and I would like to settle accounts. My beloved Heidi would not hear of me shortchanging the young lovers."

While George's expression darkened, Frau Heider's expression-with whom Herr Wurtzer had been having the most enjoyable conversation-took on a more quizzical vulnerability. "Oh? You have a beloved Heidi?"

"Da. My daughter. My wife passed some years ago, I'm afraid."

After that, a great deal of conversation was had between Frau Heider and Herr Wurtzer, in German rapid enough to be completely unfollowable by even the most fluent of the nonnative members of the quickly crowding carriage.

Regensburg pointed them to Linz, Austria. Totty did her best, with some assistance from Frau Heider (although truth be told, that lady was now very much engaged with Wurtzer), to require George to stop the carriage perhaps an hour earlier than he might normally, or that they make certain to have the horses' shoes checked and then double-checked when hiring them. But they travelled on at a pace that made it seem as if they were bearing down upon Winn's heels.

That is, of course, until they got to Linz. In Linz they had to look for clues. And it was in Linz that Totty found one.

And it was in Linz that everything changed.

They had been there for two days, unable to find any trace of Winn and her fictitious husband. They apparently had left the posting inn and disappeared into thin air. All inquiries at local inns and hotels yielded nothing, although that was considered a long shot to begin with, as Wurtzer had provided them with particulars of their financial state, or lack thereof.

"I cannot bear to think of the poor girl, sleeping out in the cold night!" Frau Heider cried, clutching Wurtzer's arm tighter.

"She deserves it," George growled, "for disobeying me."

"What was that?" Totty replied, turning her quizzical gaze on George. And for once George did not turn away in chagrin. Instead, he met her gaze dead on, as if daring her to question him.

It was at a small pawnshop, on a row of shops and restaurants in the shadow of the Postlingberg Church's double spires, that it happened. George had gone up the street, inquiring at a small dining room if they had seen a petite woman with a red-haired companion. Herr Wurtzer and Frau Heider had decided to wander up to Postlingberg Church, to see if Winn and the Duke had sought sanctuary there. And Totty had decided to do a little shopping.

Besides, what was a holiday across the Continent without collecting a few trinkets?

She was browsing the selection of trinkets, brass lockets, earrings, and the like, when she saw a beautiful gold ring. With a decidedly familiar insignia on it.

Now, Totty was not always the most observant creature. Her butler Leighton had more than once decried his mistress's senses when she poured whiskey into a brandy snifter. But she had taken note of that ring, had in fact focused on it, as they drove from London to Dover, distracting herself from having to listen to George's retching out the window.

"Where did you get this?" she asked the rotund proprietor behind the counter, in his own dialect.

The proprietor, smelling a customer, smiled ingratiatingly. "That belonged to an Austrian count in the Holy Roman Empire. It has been in my family for centuries. A truly priceless artifact."

"Don't be an idiot," Totty rebuffed him. "I know it's English, and I know you purchased it within the past fortnight. But I don't care. I will pay your advertised price if you tell me what you know about the man who sold it to you, and then forget you ever saw it, or him."

The proprietor grinned lasciviously. After all, a desperate customer was far preferable to a stupid one.

"Oh, I do not know if I could part with it . . ."

Just then, on the fringes of her vision, she could see George's hulking form through the window, stalking up the street toward the shop.

"Twice your price." She turned to the proprietor, speaking in a hushed whisper as George threw open the door of the shop. "Just hide the ring, now!"

"Well, that was a waste of time," George sneered, his face fixed in its perpetual scowl. "Find any trinkets for yourself? Or did you perhaps do something useful instead?"

"No, I don't think I did. Nothing but junk in here. Shall we be off?" Totty said perhaps too brightly.

"Wait . . . what is that?" George said, his shrewd vision catching the proprietor shuffling the tray of trinkets from the display to a shelf below.

"Nothing, George," Totty tried again, but he would not be deterred.

"Bring it out," he told the proprietor. "Bring. It. Out," he growled, and the smaller man did so.

Just then, as George was sifting through the items, Herr Wurtzer and Frau Heider came through the shop door, setting its bell jangling.

"There was nothing at the church," Frau Heider cried, "but there was a lovely cart selling meat pies on our way out, and-"

"What is this?" George interrupted, the ring in his hand. "This is Rayne's ring! How could you miss it?"

"I, ah-" Totty tried, but it was of no use.

"There is no possible way you would have missed it. You meant to hide it from me," George surmised. He held it up to her face, his fingers shaking with the pressure of restraint.

"Now, Herr Bambridge," Frau Heider jumped into the silence. "She wouldn't have hidden it from you. Not forever."

"Not forever?" George asked, now actively stalking forward, forcing Totty to take steps backward. "Not forever. Which means you would have for a time. Maybe once Winn had found that proof that she's looking all over the Continent for, you would have revealed it? Maybe once we were back in England and I am in disgrace?"