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"To our dear Wilhelmine, from her loving mother, Dorothea. May she remember home wherever she goes," Elizabeth translated aloud after studying it through the lens.

Her voice faltered over the last words. The jeweller waited respectfully while she recovered herself. Beyond the open study door, the household went about its ordinary business, unaware that a sentence engraved for a child had crossed more than twenty years to find another daughter.

"There is also a maker's mark," the jeweller said. "I cannot name the shop from this alone, but a record may survive in Germany."

"We shall inquire," Saye said, writing it down. "Without supposing that a craftsman's book, even if found, can prove everything."

The careful distinction pleased Elizabeth. No one was trying to make her into a princess through enthusiasm alone. They were trying to know who her mother had been.

That afternoon Lady Matlock wrote to Countess von Altenfeld, asking whether she would set down her recollections of Princess Dorothea, the locket, and Wilhelmine's disappearance. The Earl drafted guarded inquiries for acquaintances who maintained channels of correspondence with the German states. Mr. Hale undertook to obtain certified copies of the English records. Darcy examined Henry's surviving letters, as though somewhere in their affectionate domestic observations there might be a clue too ordinary to have been valued by those who first read them.

Elizabeth read them with him after dinner.

Henry had written to Thomas in 1790 that his bride was learning to laugh at English weather, though she had not yet learned to forgive its habit of raining through every season. In another letter he described how she had corrected his pronunciation of a German word so often that he feared their future children would side with her in every argument.

"He was right," Elizabeth said, smiling through tears. "I always sided with Mama when it came to languages."

"And with your father in everything else?" Darcy asked.

"Certainly not. He said I disputed the sun's right to rise when I was in a contrary temper."

Darcy unfolded another sheet. Henry wrote of Minna's nightmares, which had lessened after their marriage but sometimes returned with extraordinary force. He did not describe their contents. He only said that she woke frightened and unable to explain why, and that he would never compel her to return to a place she feared.

Elizabeth read the passage twice.

"He was determined not to know, if knowing would hurt her," she said.

"He was determined she should be safe," Darcy answered. "The two are not quite the same."

"I wonder whether I was wrong to think her memories never troubled her."

"You were her child, Elizabeth. She would naturally have wanted you to feel secure."

Elizabeth folded the letter along its old crease. "I have often imagined I could ask Mama one question if she were returned to me. I thought I should ask why she chose to teach me German. Now I think I should ask whether she was happy."

Darcy glanced toward the letter in her hand. "Your father gave his brother an answer to that question. He wrote it several times, in different words."

"You think he meant it?"

"I have no reason to doubt him."

In the following weeks, inquiries travelled slowly and replies more slowly still. The war had made letters uncertain companions; routes that existed on a map did not always remain open to a courier. The Earl refused to build hope upon promised dates. Saye kept a record of correspondence sent and received. Richard invented increasingly improbable explanations for every delay, none of which Lady Matlock permitted him to deliver before breakfast.

The Earl’s first letter had travelled by merchant correspondence through Hamburg, passed from one forwarding agent to another wherever the post was interrupted. A sealed packet could wait at a port for a safe sailing as readily as at an inn for a courier; the dates upon the envelopes were often weeks apart from the dates upon which they arrived. Saye recorded each intermediary as carefully as he recorded the names of the witnesses.

One letter from an elderly acquaintance in Hamburg confirmed the names of Friedrich, Albrecht, and Wilhelmine, though its writer knew nothing of Minna's survival. Another described Falkenried's mourning after Friedrich's death and the younger sister's disappearance some weeks later. Neither spoke of wrongdoing. Both treated the tragedies as accidents long accepted by the family.

Countess von Altenfeld came again before the end of the month, bringing with her an old letter written in Princess Dorothea's hand. Elizabeth examined the sloping German script until she had to blink away tears. In it the princess thanked the countess for a visit and described her children with that blend of admiration and amusement known to all fond parents.

"Friedrich takes his duties too seriously, Albrecht takes nothing seriously enough, and Wilhelmine believes herself entitled to correct both," Elizabeth read softly.

"I remember that household with affection," the countess said. "Princess Dorothea would have been delighted to know that her youngest child became a mother herself."

"May I make a copy?" Elizabeth asked. "I should like to keep the words near me."

"Of course. I brought it for that purpose."

The countess was less reassuring when the Earl asked whether correspondence with Falkenried would be straightforward. She had acquaintances in several German courts, but the war had scattered old routes and made private travel uncertain. A reply might come quickly, she warned, or it might arrive after its contents had become outdated.