Sarah and Laura sensed the change in their mother, but her maternal preoccupation made room for them also: her favourite times of day were when the girls were brought to visit her. She permitted them to clamber onto the bed alongside their new brother, and the four of them would huddle languorously together while the girls babbled about their day’s adventures, anticipated or experienced, or Charlotte told them stories, or Maria, in a chair next to the bed, read or sang to them.

The rest of the world fell away; Mr Collins receded to a distant benign presence whose visits never really impinged on Charlotte’s world of warmth, the smell of wet wool and infant skin, the hours spent staring at her baby’s perfect fingers, the long dark lashes on his milky skin, the lustre of his eyes as they cleared from blue to dark brown as the weeks passed, the pleasure and relief they both gained from nursing. It was only years later that Charlotte would realise that these months – which could so easily have been a period of sorrow and anxiety – were possibly the happiest of her life.

1819

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CHIMING OF THE GILDED clock on the mantelpiece brought Charlotte back to Miss Darcy’s rooms, to Herr Rosenstein’s gaze on her face. She scrubbed at her cheeks with her fists, and glanced over to where her daughter’s feet could be seen peeping out below the curtains of the window enclosure. Their motionlessness suggested that Sarah was either asleep or lost in the world of her book, and Charlotte could relax and allow herself to feel all the luxury of having both wept and been comforted. There were no words of thanks she could utter; she had to depend on the musician’s innate sensibility to comprehend the extent of her debt to him.

This time, as they parted, with the now-familiar ritual of detaching a sleepy child from her temporary refuge and shepherding her away from Miss Darcy’s airy nest of light and colour – a small bustle that covered any innate awkwardness between the adults or reluctance to leave – Charlotte felt exhausted, yet cleansed. And beyond either of these sensations, she felt understood.