WHEN WE HAD NEARLY given up I found the first loose brick. It didn’t take long to dismantle the rest of the hiding place—the mortar was poor and most of it had turned to pebbles and dust. When Quinn finally shone a flashlight inside, the beam caught a couple of rows of dark, gleaming, dusty bottles.

For a long moment we were both speechless.

“We found it,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”

“Let’s make sure.”

He had to crawl partway into the hole before he could reach one of the bottles. When he reemerged there were cobwebs in his hair and on his clothes.

The label on the dusty bottle was handwritten in old-fashioned spidery penmanship.

For the celebration of the 4th of July 1809 with President James Madison at the United States Capitol

“There are a lot of bottles back there,” Quinn said.

“Worth. A. Fortune.”

“I know.” He looked at me. “What do you want to do? Auction them off? Keep some back?”

“I can’t even think I’m still so stunned.”

He leaned over and kissed me. “I’ll tell you one thing we’re going to do. We’re drinking a bottle at our wedding,” he said. “Okay?”

“Our wedding? And when would that be?” I asked, smiling.

“When would you like it to be?”

I caught my breath. We hadn’t talked about this at all. Until just now.

“May,” I said. “The vineyard is beautiful at that time of year. We can toast our marriage with the Madeira and share it with family and our closest friends.”

“Then we’ll get married in May,” he said and kissed me again.

Acknowledgments

If you search the words “Bruton Vault” or “Bruton Vault Williamsburg” on Google, you’ll be rewarded with dozens of websites to explore—some validating the existence of the mysterious vault, others debunking it, and each with a different version of what was or was not buried there. For my own purposes, Mystery at Colonial Williamsburg: The Truth of Bruton Vault, an ebook by David Allen Rivera that I found on the internet, was my most helpful and comprehensive reference source on that subject. Whether or not you believe the vault existed, the idea that Thomas Jefferson removed its contents and stored them in the White House is something I invented. There is also no such thing as the handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson gave his good friend James Madison. R. S. Brazil’s blog, 1609 Chronology, provided helpful information on the wreck of the Sea Venture.