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"My lord," Richard said, "shall I take you home?"

Albrecht looked toward the stair. "I do not know where home is, at present."

Richard put a hand upon his arm. "Then come with us. Mother will have a room ready, and Saye will pretend he does not care whether the fire is lit. Elizabeth will insist that we provide too many cushions. We are very tiresome people, but we shall not leave you alone."

For the first time since the meeting began, Albrecht permitted someone to lead him without choosing the direction himself.

Elizabeth was in the small drawing room when they arrived. She rose, using her good arm to steady herself. Albrecht looked at her and saw not Minna returned, but Minna's daughter: a woman with her own life, her own courage, her own happiness to defend.

"I have learned the truth," he said.

She did not ask him to repeat it. She stepped forward and embraced him as well as her injured shoulder allowed. He began to weep against her hair.

Saye and Richard remained a little apart. Saye quietly went to ask their mother for a room to be prepared, while Richard closed the drawing-room door against the household's curiosity. Elizabeth stayed with Albrecht until he was ready to speak.

That night Lady Matlock found Albrecht in the small sitting room staring at his sister's portrait. She asked whether he would prefer company or solitude. He answered that he did not know, which she took as permission to sit quietly beside him.

"I have lost the person I believed my wife to be," he said after some time. "Yet she is not dead. I cannot even mourn her without feeling I have abandoned our children."

"You need not decide tonight what feeling you ought to have," Lady Matlock answered. "You may love the years you believed were happy and still refuse to excuse what was hidden beneath them."

"My son will hear that his mother is accused of crimes. He will think I have permitted her to be disgraced."

"Then tell him what you know, when the time comes, and let him hear it from someone who loves him. He is entitled to truth spoken with tenderness, not a family legend preserved at the expense of others."

Albrecht looked toward her. "You speak as though this is simple."

"I speak because I raised two sons who never agreed upon the same course of action, and helped bring up a niece who considered every rule open to debate. A family is not kept together by pretending its members have never failed one another."

He bent his head. "Minna would have liked you."

"I hope she would have forgiven me for teaching her daughter to be still more opinionated than before."

A faint smile crossed his face, then vanished. Lady Matlock remained beside him until he chose to retire. She had no remedy for what he had learned. Her presence was the only gift she could offer without claiming authority over his grief.

In the hours following Adelheid's departure, the house did not become calmer. There were doors quietly opened and shut, letters carried to solicitors, and long conversations that ended when Elizabeth entered. She found herself resenting those silences until she understood that nobody wished to burden her with another decision.

At supper Albrecht did not come down. Richard brought a tray to his room, making so little noise that the servants watched in surprise. Saye went afterward to inquire whether the fire was sufficient. The Earl sent word that his own sitting room was available if the prince wanted company. Lady Matlock arranged for Minna's portrait to be carried from the library, not as an argument for cheerfulness but because Albrecht had asked whether he might see it.

Elizabeth found him standing before the portrait the next afternoon. His eyes were red, but he had placed fresh flowers on the table beneath it. She approached with care.

"I wish I could give you something that would make today easier," she said.

Albrecht looked at her, and she thought he might speak of Friedrich or Minna or the twenty-three years that had vanished. Instead he pointed to the flowers. "Do you know whether your mother liked these?"

"She loved them," Elizabeth answered. "Papa grew them badly. She never told him so."

For the first time since the confession, Albrecht smiled without immediately looking ashamed of it. Elizabeth remained beside him until the room grew dark enough that Saye came to light the lamps.

Adelheid's admissions to Albrecht were not the end of the matter. In the days ahead, Adelheid would have counsel, the English authorities would pursue the attack upon Elizabeth, and communications would be sent to the authorities in the jurisdiction where Friedrich died. Nothing about that process would be swift or simple. But for the first time the people who loved Minna knew what had happened to her, and they no longer had to carry uncertainty in place of grief.

CHAPTER 31

A Daughter's Legacy

The days after Adelheid's admission did not bring the relief Elizabeth had imagined truth might offer. They brought letters, difficult silences, and the slow work of distinguishing one person's guilt from the lives that must continue around it.

Adelheid obtained independent legal counsel. When called upon in connection with the English investigation of Elizabeth's carriage, she appeared through the proper process and gave an address at which further notices could reach her. Her counsel strongly advised her not to attempt a hurried departure; she remained in England while statements were taken, rather than being held under an unexplained prohibition on travel. The magistrate continued examining the records preserved from Vogel's office and the testimony of the clerks and messengers, leaving any charge, sureties, or further proceedings to be determined through the law. Friedrich's death was a separate matter for the authorities of the German territory, who would need original records and testimony rather than a London family's account alone. Nothing about either inquiry could be swift.