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Adelheid closed the cabinet. Her hands were steady when she turned the key. She had spent twenty-three years learning that terror concealed itself most successfully beneath order.

Before leaving Falkenried, Albrecht visited the family chapel. A carved tablet commemorated Friedrich in language solemn enough to make him a saint. Beside it stood a smaller memorial to Wilhelmine, who had never been found. Albrecht had approved the wording twenty years before, when hope seemed an insult to grief. He read it now with a shame that he could not explain.

"You will have to be changed," he whispered to the stone. "She was not lost when we said she was. She lived."

His youngest daughter found him there. She had come to place flowers beneath Minna's memorial, an act she performed each year on the day the household remembered her namesake.

"Will you take down the tablet?" she asked.

"Not yet. We must be certain of everything before we change what people are told."

"But the girl in England—she is still there, whether we are certain or not?"

"Yes."

"I should like to write to her," young Wilhelmine said. "Not to ask her to prove anything. Only to say that I hope she may one day come here."

Albrecht looked at her, surprised by the simplicity of an approach that had evaded all the adults of the household.

"Then write," he answered. "And tell her what you wish her to know."

When Adelheid learned of the letter she nearly objected. Her daughter had written about the flower garden and the horses, about the portrait in the west gallery and the family dog's unfortunate fondness for stealing gloves. There was nothing dangerous in it. Nevertheless, every affectionate gesture made it harder to regard Elizabeth as an abstraction.

"You must not expect her to love us merely because the family wishes it," Adelheid told the girl.

"I do not," young Wilhelmine answered. "But I think it would be pleasant to give her something to love."

Adelheid drew her daughter close. She had known love for this child from the moment she held her. She could not bear to consider the day when the girl might turn away in disgust from the woman who had taught her to be good.

For one moment she considered confessing everything to Albrecht before he travelled. Her children might forgive a crime confessed in remorse more readily than one discovered through scandal. Then she imagined Wilhelm's inheritance endangered, the name Falkenried spoken with contempt, and Albrecht looking at her without affection. She released her daughter and instructed a servant to bring the travelling accounts.

A woman's life, Adelheid told herself, was made of decisions one could never revisit. It was a principle she had used to quiet her conscience for years, and she clung to it again because the alternative required a courage she did not possess.

In England, Elizabeth endured her own variety of waiting. The March winds brought letters from Jane about the concert in Meryton, a gown Mrs. Bennet considered indispensable, and an evening during which Mr. Bingley had remained after the other guests left to help Mary gather scattered sheets of music. Jane included that last detail in a postscript, as though it had not occupied her thoughts while writing the entire letter.

At the concert, Jane wrote, Bingley had taken a seat where he might turn her pages when she accompanied Mary, though he was himself so taken with the performance that he missed the first turn entirely. Mary had forgiven him after he asked a serious question about her favourite composer. Jane did not declare him charming. She merely copied his question into her letter and wondered what Elizabeth thought of it.

Elizabeth wrote back that a gentleman who could survive Mary's musical opinions without retreating to the card room deserved the opportunity to ask a second question. She did not write what she suspected about his heart. Jane would come to that conclusion in her own time.

Jane wrote that Charlotte had invited them to Longbourn for dinner. The invitation had delighted Mrs. Bennet almost as much as it distressed Mr. Collins, who wished to deliver a lengthy discourse upon hospitality before any guest was seated. Elizabeth smiled at the picture. She sometimes wondered how it was possible to miss a place and be grateful to have left it.

Darcy found her studying an atlas one evening.

"You have placed so many ribbons in that map," he said, "that I fear the borders of Europe will soon be entirely obscured."

"I am attempting to discover whether Prince Albrecht could come by way of the moon. Every ordinary road appears to lead through a blockade or an army."

"The routes are difficult," Darcy answered. "Not wholly impossible. Your uncle has consulted people who know the Baltic trade, and Saye has found a gentleman familiar with the northern shipping merchants and their uncertain permissions. A carriage can take a traveler to the coast; beyond it there must be ships and proper papers, not merely a line drawn upon a map."

"I do not wish him to risk his life merely to meet me."

"Then tell him so when we know what he proposes. At present, we have not received his answer."

Elizabeth dropped her ribbon into the atlas. "You are determined to make me reasonable."

"I should never entertain so extravagant an ambition."

She laughed and closed the book. He drew a chair beside hers, the door to the morning room remaining open while Lady Matlock entertained callers nearby.