Page 88

"Falkenried has two fountains," Albrecht supplied. "One in the east garden and one near the orangery."

"Then perhaps I shall know her memory if I ever visit," Elizabeth answered.

Adelheid turned to the music before she could reveal her alarm. She knew very well what lay near the east garden: the passage leading to Friedrich's terrace. A person might recall the fountain without remembering anything of the stones above it, she told herself. Yet why should Minna's dreams have retained that place and not another?

Two days later, Adelheid called upon Elizabeth when Lady Matlock was receiving only intimate acquaintances. She brought a small ivory workbox, claiming it had belonged to Princess Dorothea. The box was of excellent workmanship and sufficiently old to sustain the story. Its provenance, however, was not the reason for the visit.

"I thought you might like something your grandmother used," Adelheid said as Elizabeth examined the compartments. "Albrecht tells me he has begun to fill your room with memories. I hope you will not be overwhelmed by them."

"Not at all. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. For years I was afraid that I should forget Mama's face. Now I am learning the names of people she loved."

"You speak of her with great affection."

"She was the kindest mother anyone could wish."

Adelheid arranged her hands in her lap. "I wonder if the last years were easy for her. A woman without knowledge of her people must sometimes have been very lonely."

"She had Papa," Elizabeth answered. "He loved her beyond measure. And she had me, though I fear I must have been a tiresome little girl."

"Children are a comfort even when they try us," Adelheid said. "Did she ever speak of the accident that brought her to your father?"

Elizabeth paused. "Only that she was found injured. Papa did not wish to force her to recall what frightened her."

"Was she frightened often?"

"Not by ordinary things. She could be remarkably brave. But sometimes she woke from dreadful dreams."

Adelheid kept her eyes upon the workbox. "Dreams?"

"I remember hearing her call out when I was quite small. Papa would go to her. He always told me that dreams could do no harm once one was awake."

"Did you understand what she said?"

"I understood the words, usually. But I was too young to understand the meaning."

The room seemed to narrow around Adelheid. She heard a clock ticking on the mantelpiece and, from some other part of the house, the sound of a servant closing a door.

"How distressing," she said. "Do you recall any of those words?"

Elizabeth considered. "There was something about a terrace, I think. Or steps. Someone falling. I cannot be certain after so many years. I remember the fear more plainly than the words."

Adelheid had trained her face not to move under the most trying circumstances. She had needed all that training twenty-three years before, when Minna came from the gallery with blood upon her gloves and accusation in her eyes.

"I am sorry," she said. "I ought not to disturb you with such questions."

"You have not disturbed me," Elizabeth replied. "I should like to understand what troubled her, but perhaps she never understood it herself."

"Very likely," Adelheid said. "An injury can produce strange imaginings. One should be careful not to treat dreams as evidence of events."

Elizabeth looked up, faintly surprised. "I did not suppose they were evidence. Only memories I have of Mama."

At that instant Lady Matlock entered, smiling at the sight of the workbox. She thanked Adelheid for her generosity and steered the conversation toward music, a mercy Adelheid accepted with relief.

But the question had become one she could no longer set aside: if a little girl remembered a terrace and a fall, what else might the grown woman remember without knowing its significance?

That evening the prince returned from a long walk with Darcy and Richard in excellent spirits. They had examined a model of a new agricultural implement at Saye's suggestion, and Albrecht was delighted by the English habit of disputing every improvement before attempting it.

"Your future nephew is a very steady gentleman," he told Adelheid as she helped him remove his gloves.