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Countess von Altenfeld looked up at Darcy and turned to English for his benefit. "May I ask your relation to this young lady?"

"I am her intended husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy. If there is a difficulty, I should be glad to assist."

"There may be a most extraordinary difficulty," she answered. "But I beg you not to make the matter public until I am certain of what I have seen."

Darcy looked toward Lady Matlock. "Will you allow me to ask our hostess to join us?"

The countess nodded. Elizabeth's pulse had quickened, though she scarcely knew why. Many people admired the locket. Some had remarked upon its workmanship, and a jeweller once offered to examine the damaged backing. No one had ever looked upon it with fear.

Lady Matlock came at once. At the countess's request they withdrew to the small morning room, where a fire burned and the noises of the dinner guests were softened by the closing door. Lord Matlock joined them a moment later. Darcy remained beside Elizabeth, but neither attempted to speak over the older woman.

"I knew a family in Mecklenburg," Countess von Altenfeld began. "They possessed a jewel very like this. I was young enough then to notice such things and old enough to remember them afterward. It belonged to their daughter."

"What family?" Lord Matlock asked.

"The princely house of Falkenried."

The name meant nothing to Elizabeth. She looked at Darcy and then at her guardian. Both were listening with grave attention.

"The daughter was called Wilhelmine," the countess continued. "Her family called her Minna. She was the youngest child and greatly beloved by her two brothers."

Elizabeth's breath caught.

"My mother was called Minna," she said.

The countess turned to her. "Your mother? Then I must ask you how she came by this locket."

"I told you. It was hers before she married my father. She had it when he found her."

"Found her?"

Elizabeth clasped her hands to stop their trembling. "She had suffered an accident in Germany. She could remember very little of her family. My father met her while serving abroad. She never recovered her surname."

The countess pressed a hand against her breast. "Then there is something you must understand. Princess Wilhelmine von Falkenried disappeared many years ago, after a calamity in her family. Her eldest brother had died. Some weeks later she was lost in what was said to be a fatal carriage accident. The family believed her dead."

"That is impossible," Elizabeth whispered. "My mother lived. She married. She had me."

"I do not dispute your mother's life, my dear. I only tell you that the family I knew believed their daughter gone."

Lady Matlock reached for Elizabeth's hand. The countess placed the locket upon the table with great care.

"Could another lady have possessed the same design?" Lord Matlock asked.

"It is possible. It would be wrong to make a judgment upon one piece of jewellery. But I remember this one because I was present when it was given to the girl. Her mother commissioned it with a portrait inside. Wilhelmine would not part with it even as a child. The little red stone was chosen because it matched one in a ring her mother wore."

Elizabeth opened the locket. "There is a portrait of a woman. My mother did not know who she was."

The countess bent over it. Tears filled her eyes. "That is Princess Dorothea, Wilhelmine's mother. I sat beside her while the painter took the first sketches."

The room seemed to alter around Elizabeth. She had looked upon the miniature hundreds of times, inventing possible histories for the face. To hear a stranger give the woman a name was more startling than any claim of royalty.

"My grandmother," she said softly.

"If your mother was the Wilhelmine I knew, yes. But we must examine the evidence before announcing it. There were extraordinary circumstances surrounding that family's losses, and I would not wish to cause fresh sorrow through carelessness."

Darcy drew a chair forward for Elizabeth. She sat without protest. His hand rested upon the back of it, a quiet assurance that did not demand she look at him.

"Tell us what happened to the family," Lord Matlock said.