Then they all heard a bird piping, except that the notes were too regular and tuneful to be any bird, and there was Jacob walking up the slope towards them, wearing a wide-brimmed hat that gave him a Bohemian air, his recorder at his lips. Sarah and Laura squealed with delight, dropped their baskets, and ran to meet him, an approach to which he responded with the greatest cordiality, sinking to his haunches and serenading first the one child, then the other, playing snatches of the folk tunes he had taught them to sing.

There it was again, striking Charlotte with physical force: a moment of pure happiness. Such instants were beyond price to someone paying a toll of grief every hour of the day, and she inhaled deeply, taking in every sensation almost greedily: the febrile scent of the soil, rich, friable, and almost warm to the touch; the subtle distinction between the peppery scent of the leaves and the deep sweetness of the fruits themselves as their juice stained her hands; Lizzy’s peal of laughter at the scene before them; the light glancing off the polished wood the musician held to his lips. It was like opening a grey oyster and finding a pearl within, and she shut her lids once again, although the scene was fixed in her mind’s eye – the musician and his flute, the hills a blue blur behind him, the green spreading beds around him, her daughters leaping like puppies at his knees.

When she opened her eyes again, she noticed a hawk swirling above Jacob’s head, riding the currents of air brought about by the fine weather, the way it turned the same way as the corkscrew wielded by the wine steward at Pemberley, but more elegantly and effortlessly. She knew it was prosaically waiting for some small rodent to panic at its shadow and make a fatal scuttle, but it was hard to believe those lazy sweeps were not done for the pleasure thereof, that the bird was not somehow aware of its airborne grace in the face of gravity.

Herr Rosenstein put away his pipe and came towards her as she sat back on her heels, the girls dancing behind him. He caught her eyeline and turned to follow it. She pointed, feeling sure that he would understand her delight in that small arrow holding steady on the wind.

‘Ah, a falcon. I wonder if it is one of those that belongs to Pemberley? It is too high, and the sun too bright to see if it has a jess attached. Did you know they had a hawk house here in the grounds, Frau Collins?’