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"Your uncle left it as the law required. I have been fortunate enough to find ways to make its present master content. That is a kind of security I am grateful for, although it is not romance."

Elizabeth squeezed her friend's hand. She had once feared Charlotte had sacrificed too much, and Charlotte had feared Elizabeth demanded too much of life. Neither was required to pretend the other's choice had been the only possible one. They were still friends, and after all that had changed in their lives, Elizabeth was grateful for the simplicity of that truth.

Before leaving, Elizabeth stood for a moment beside Mrs. Ashby's window. The road below was busy with carts and hired coaches; the sight no longer drove the breath from her body, although she could still recall how sharply she had been afraid.

"Will you travel again?" Mrs. Ashby asked.

"Of course. I should not like Mr. Pike to govern the rest of my life from a prison or a hiding place."

"You have always been courageous."

"Not always," Elizabeth answered. "But I have learned that courage is often simply agreeing to go somewhere while frightened."

At Matlock House that evening, Albrecht placed Minna's childhood portrait upon the mantelpiece of his sitting room. Beside it he set a miniature of Friedrich. For the first time in years he did not arrange them as memorials to the dead. They were pictures of people whose lives had included joy, mistakes, and affection long before Adelheid made those things dangerous.

He asked Elizabeth to sit with him. She did, and together they read aloud a few pages from her mother's green book, laughing at an argument over apples and a lost hat. The sorrow remained; they made no pretence otherwise. Yet the laughter did not betray the dead. It honoured what had once been true.

CHAPTER 32

The Families We Choose

Spring came late to Hertfordshire. Rain held the fields under a silver haze, and then, almost without warning, the hedges brightened, the trees opened their leaves, and the lanes near Meryton filled with the familiar promise of green. Elizabeth watched the countryside from the carriage beside Lady Matlock and felt something ease within her at the sight of the old roads.

They were travelling to attend Jane and Bingley's wedding before returning to London for Elizabeth's own ceremony. The intervening months had been occupied by legal correspondence, physicians' visits that eventually became unnecessary, and preparations undertaken more quietly than the Matlocks would ordinarily have preferred. The English proceedings relating to the carriage attack were advancing; the inquiry concerning Friedrich had been formally placed before representatives of the appropriate German authorities, subject to the delays imposed by distance and war. Adelheid, represented by her own counsel, remained answerable for her conduct. Albrecht had declined all efforts to pretend the family's disgrace was a private misunderstanding that could be settled by returning home.

Elizabeth did not often speak of the proceedings. They were real and grave, but they did not belong at every breakfast. Life had other claims.

Jane met her at the door of Mrs. Bennet's rented house near Meryton, where the family had assembled before the wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner had come from London the previous evening and taken rooms nearby, so they might attend Jane and Bingley without crowding the smaller household. The two cousins embraced with such warmth that Mrs. Bennet, following them into the hall, declared that she had never seen two young women behave as though they had been parted for decades merely because one had been occupied in London.

"It has been months since I saw you," Elizabeth said to Jane when they escaped to a smaller parlour. "You are not permitted to accuse me of excessive affection on my first morning here."

"I should never accuse you of it," Jane answered. "I have missed you."

Elizabeth studied her cousin's face. Jane looked happier than she had at any time since Mr. Bennet's death. She spoke of Bingley with the serene confidence of someone whose affection had finally found its rightful companion.

"And Charlotte?" Elizabeth asked.

"She is well, and more than ever mistress of Longbourn. Mr. Collins has discovered that a household runs far more satisfactorily when Charlotte is permitted to decide matters he believes he has decided himself."

"An admirable arrangement."

"She has asked to see you before the wedding. Mary, Kitty, and Lydia are coming to dinner, too. They have spoken of little else for a fortnight."

"I hope their enthusiasm has left them time for other thoughts."

"Kitty has begun taking an interest in drawing, and Mary is helping teach two younger girls in the parish. Lydia is still Lydia, but she has been told she may not attend every assembly simply because the officers are present. Mama's nerves did not wholly overcome the rule."

Elizabeth smiled. The family had changed, not transformed. She was glad of it. She had no wish to return to Hertfordshire and find every difficult tendency miraculously cured by the passage of time.

Mrs. Bennet required an audience later that afternoon. She had heard every rumour concerning Minna's family, Lord Matlock's protection, Elizabeth's inheritance, and the supposed quantities of gold awaiting discovery upon a German estate.

"I always said there was something remarkable about you, Lizzy," she declared. "Even when you were little, there was a way about you that was quite unlike other children. And to think we took you in without knowing what your mother had been!"

Elizabeth remembered another occasion upon which the same woman had spoken of taking her in. The memory stung, but it did not command her. She was twenty-one, engaged to the man she loved, and surrounded by people who had never required noble blood as proof of her worth.

"My mother was Minna Bennet when she raised me," Elizabeth said. "I think that name was remarkable enough for those who knew her."

Mrs. Bennet blinked. "Of course, child. I meant nothing else. It is all very gratifying."