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Albrecht took a breath before continuing. "Did you order Vogel to take her away?"

"The physician believed a change of scene might help her."

"The physician's son denies any recommendation for a journey by that road. Vogel says you paid him to arrange an accident."

For the first time Adelheid raised her voice. "Vogel is a coward and a liar. He would betray anyone to save himself."

"He may be both. Did you pay him?"

She put her hands together so tightly that the knuckles whitened. "I authorised expenses for her journey. I did what had to be done to protect her from herself."

"Protect her from what?"

There it was, the question she had escaped for more than twenty years. Adelheid had imagined that if she were ever confronted, she would deliver a speech so persuasive that Albrecht would remember their marriage and disbelieve the accusation. Instead she found only the truth's ugly outline, which could not be softened by a choice of words.

"Friedrich was going to marry," she said.

"I know. I was pleased for him."

"You were pleased because you never considered what it would mean. His children would inherit. Our son would live forever in their shadow. You would become the dependent younger brother, grateful for whatever income Friedrich's generosity allowed you."

"I was never dependent upon his generosity. I possessed my own provision. We had a home and children."

"Not enough. Not for what our children deserved."

"Who decided what they deserved?"

Her gaze dropped. Mr. Harcourt had kept his pen still while the family discussed its sorrow; he now opened his memorandum book, careful to distinguish his own observations from the words the speakers used. Lord Matlock glanced at Albrecht, ready to intervene if the prince needed the conversation to end. Albrecht shook his head slightly.

"Tell me about the terrace," he said.

Adelheid looked toward the window. "I asked Friedrich to speak with me after supper. I wanted him to consider a settlement for our children before he married. He laughed at me. He said a man ought not to bargain away the future of sons he had not yet fathered because his brother's wife was frightened of poverty."

"That sounds like him," Albrecht whispered.

"He thought me grasping. Perhaps I was. I was frightened of returning to the dependence I had known as a girl. I had grown up among grand rooms in which every portrait belonged to someone who owned more than we did. I could not endure that for our children."

"So you killed him?"

Her lips trembled. "I had given him wine before we went outside. There was a draught in it that was meant to make him uncertain on his feet. I told myself that if he stumbled, the blame would be his own. We quarrelled. He turned toward the doorway. I took hold of him. He tried to free himself. I pushed him away, and the stone balustrade was behind him."

She stopped. In memory the moment had lasted both an instant and a lifetime: the grasp at her sleeve, the torn lace, the terrible emptiness when his weight vanished. Her hand had not been forced; that was the knowledge she had kept hidden even from herself.

"He fell," Albrecht said.

"Yes."

"And Minna saw it."

"She came onto the gallery. I thought she would run away. Instead she ran to him. I could hear her calling his name. She looked up at me as though I were a stranger."

Albrecht's face had gone white. He steadied himself against the back of a chair.

"You told me she was distraught because she found him already fallen."

"She was distraught. That much was true."

"Do not offer me fragments of truth as though they excuse the lie."