Natalie almost shivered with impatience to delve into the files in the briefcase but Dom wanted to talk to the people at the tour office first on the off-chance they might remember her. They didn’t, nor could they provide any more information than the police had already gleaned by tracking her credit card charges.
Natalie stood with Dom next to the ticket booth and stared at the sleek boat now little more than a speck in the distance. “This is so frustrating! Why did I take a river cruise? I don’t even like boats.”
“How do you know?”
She blinked. “I’m not sure. I just don’t.”
“Maybe we’ll find a clue in your briefcase.”
She glanced around the wharf area, itching to get into those fat files, but knew they couldn’t spread their contents out on a picnic table where the breeze off the river might snatch them away. Dom sensed her frustration and offered a suggestion.
“We’re less than an hour from Karlenburgh Castle. There’s an inn in the village below the castle ruins. We can have lunch and ask Frau Dortmann for the use of her parlor to lay everything out.”
“Let’s go!”
* * *
She couldn’t resist extracting a few of the files and skimming through them on the way. Each folder was devoted to a lost treasure. A neat table of contents listed everything inside—printed articles from various computer sources, copies of handwritten documents, color photos, black-and-whites, historical chronologies tracing last known ownership, notes Natalie had made to herself on additional sources to check.
“Ooh,” she murmured when she flipped to a sketch of jewel-studded egg nested in a gold chariot pulled by a winged cherub. “How beautiful.”
Dom glanced at the photo. “Isn’t that the Fabergé egg Tsar Alexander gave his wife?”
“I…uh…” She checked her notes and looked up in surprise. “It is. How do you know that?”
“You were researching it in the States. You told me about it when we got together in your hotel room in New York.”
“We got together in New York? In my hotel room?”
Dom was tempted, really tempted, but he stuck with the truth. “I thought you might be scheming to rip off the duchess with all that business about the codicil so I came to warn you off. You,” he added with a quick grin, “kicked me out on my ass.”
The Natalie he knew and was beginning to seriously lust after emerged. “I’m sure you deserved it.”
“Ah, Natushka. Don’t go all prim and proper on me. We might not make it to the inn.”
He said it with a smile but they both knew he was only half kidding. Cheeks flushed, Natalie dug into the file again.
* * *
She saw the castle ruins first. She could hardly miss them. The tumbled walls and skeletal remains of a single square tower were set high on a rocky crag and visible from miles away. As they got closer, Natalie could see how the road cut through the narrow pass below—the only pass connecting Austria and Hungary for fifty miles in either direction, Dom informed her.
“No wonder the Habsburgs were so anxious to have your ancestors hold it for the Empire.”
Only after they’d topped a steep rise did she see the village at the base of the cliffs. The dozen or so structures were typically Alpine, half-timbered and steep-roofed to slough off snow. A wooden roadside shrine housing a statue of the Virgin Mary greeted them as they approached the village. In keeping with the mingled heritage of the residents, the few street signs and notices were in both German and Hungarian.
The gasthaus sat at the edge of the village. Its mossy shingles and weathered timbers suggested it had welcomed wayfarers for centuries. Geraniums bloomed in every window box and an ivy-covered beer garden beckoned at one side of the main structure.
When Natalie and Dom went up the steps and entered the knotty-pine lobby, the woman who hustled out to greet them didn’t match her rustic surroundings. Dom’s casual reference to Frau Dortmann had evoked hazy images of an apron-clad, rosy-cheeked matron.
The fortysomething blonde in leggings and a tiger-striped tunic was as far from matronly as a woman could get. And if there was a Herr Dortmann hanging around anywhere, Natalie was certain he wouldn’t appreciate the way his wife flung herself into Dom’s arms. Wrapping herself around him like a half-starved boa constrictor, she kissed him. Not on both cheeks like any other polite European, but long and hard and full on the lips.
He was half laughing, half embarrassed when he finally managed to extricate himself. With a rueful glance at Natalie, he interrupted the blonde’s spate of rapid Hungarian liberally interspersed with German.
“Lisel, this is Natalie Clark. A friend of mine from America.”