After eating, the little girls fell asleep in the shade, and the adults sat quiet too, speaking now and again, the women reminiscing about their lives in Hertfordshire, telling the musician stories from their girlhood there. At last the punch was finished, the sun at an angle in the sky, and the girls stirring. They were a little fretful upon waking, but Herr Rosenstein distracted them by reminding them of the proposed tour of the hawk house. With everyone on their feet again, the little party made their way further up the hill, around and behind a grouping of trees that ran along the skyline.

They arrived at a building about half the size of the stables, built of dark wood with a roof of thatch, and fronted by a porch that supplied uninterrupted views of the estate and the distant hills. Here stood a bench encircled by arms of box, and they all rested on it and gazed downwards. It offered that magical combination of privacy, even secrecy, while also providing a bird’s-eye perspective on all happening below: the insect figures of gardeners far beneath them, the imposing bulk of Pemberley reduced to the size of a wedding cake, its great lake a silver puddle.

After sitting a few minutes to take in the scene below, they ventured inside. In the gloom pierced by shafts of light from narrow windows, the birds of prey stood silent, occasionally scratching at their heads and necks with taloned feet. The dominant impression, for Charlotte, was of dormant force; all that ability to soar housed in the soft dark, tethered to the stalls, biding their time.

She left it to Herr Rosenstein and Lizzy to answer the girls’ questions about the birds and their habits, content with looking around, her nose twitching at the sharp combination of smells, catching the gleam of topaz eyes here and there. They did not go too close to the stalls, as the birds grew disquieted and stamped their feet or rattled their wings, a susurration of feathers and claws.

Back outside, she sank down on the box bench once more and sighed deeply. She must have made some sound, of satisfaction or longing or both, and the musician’s head turned in her direction. He fixed his eyes on hers for a long minute, then nodded, as if they had entered into some compact.