‘Oh, but you must visit again! All of you!’ said Lizzy. She turned to the musician: ‘You too, Herr Rosenstein. Your companionship has been a boon. We have had such gaiety together, such entertainment – Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells must look to their laurels. I think Georgiana and I must roundly abuse the instruments in this place until they all go out of tune, and we are forced to summon you again. But perhaps you would not wish the arduousness of the journey or the retirement of this place again. Our pleasures, while satisfying, have been of a small and domestic kind. It is not what you are accustomed to.’

‘Ah, but I have benefitted greatly from the peace of this place and the pleasure of the company,’ Herr Rosenstein said with a gallant bow, neatly dodging Laura’s attack on his ankle. ‘I do not mean that idly; my time here has replenished me. I feel like one of those falcons we saw a few days ago; rested and ready to fly on possibly intemperate winds, at the mercy of weather, hunger, danger. But for now, content to enjoy your presence and fellowship.’

He smiled at Charlotte, and her hands pleating the shawl stilled: a surge of surmise rose up in her, staggering in its certainty. She had not so much an idea or plan as a sense of appointment: she needed only to appear at some juncture or special spot, and her destiny would unfold before her.

For the third time in her life, Charlotte rose before dawn in a slumbering house and went out to present herself to fate, to see where it might take her. The day was so new the sky had not yet cleared from pink and pale yellow to blue, and the birds in the garden were all yelling like hoydens.

As she hastened up the last slope and around the hedges that guarded the hawk house, she had a moment of terrible doubt: but there he was, sitting on the bench in its enclosing arms of box as if waiting for her. He was waiting for her; she had not been mistaken. Relief washed through her bones.

She stood before the musician, panting as he rose to his feet. It became necessary to speak. ‘Mr Darcy and Mr Collins arrive tomorrow.’

It had to stand for everything she could not say. We have one day left. One day.

For a long moment, time spooled to a halt as each stood on the other side of a precipice. Then Jacob spoke with great formality. ‘Frau Collins, we have already breached all rules of propriety. We did so that morning we spent in the maze, we have done so a score of times as you have vouchsafed me the great honour of showing me your heart. And yet we have broken no rules of God or man, have not really said or done anything for which outsiders can reproach us.