‘No,’ said Charlotte, fanning the smoke away with a sprig of lavender. ‘No, it is not that. I might disagree with your judgement of the three men I do know, one intimately, but I do not feel compromised.’

She hesitated. Could she speak of Jacob without betraying herself? ‘What gives me pause is that I came to know a man – no, a gentleman – at Pemberley this past summer. He was there to attend to the musical instruments. And when Sarah fell in the river, he saved her. No doubt this influenced my opinion of his good qualities, but I found him wholly sympathetic.’

‘So he told you no tales of hardship, no accounts of the various wrongdoings and injustices he suffered?’

Charlotte paused, remembering the taste of warm milk and the servant’s head pillowed on rounded arms. ‘He did, once. But that was different,’ she said, seeing Anne grimace. ‘He was a Jew.’

‘Ah, that does indeed alter the complexion of things. It cannot be easy to make one’s way in the Christian world as a Semite,’ said her companion.

The talk turned to more general matters, with Miss de Bourgh congratulating Charlotte on the accession of her family to the Longbourn estate, although, as she was quick to note, this was a matter of the vagaries of fortune rather than calculation. ‘I commend you on your management of the situation: allowing the surviving Bennet females to remain as tenants, while maintaining your home here. But what really has my admiration is that my mother considers this an excellent plan of action. This leads me to all but suspect witchcraft on your part, Mrs Collins. Did our gypsy friends weave a spell, perhaps?’

Charlotte laughed again, and demurred, and talk turned at last to matters botanical, in which she took a sincere interest: most particularly a new and creeping form of rosemary Anne had brought back from Provence, which she hoped might prove resistant to frost.

A few weeks later, Charlotte heard at the front door more than the usual commotion that announced a visitor, and her husband’s astonished voice: ‘Mr Darcy, sir! You do us great honour! Welcome, welcome to our humble abode. My dear Charlotte, see what a great compliment is paid to us here! Mr Darcy has come to call. What civility! Come in, sir, and accept such hospitality as we can offer, although it will of course be nothing as to what we received at your hands this past summer, or the welcome that no doubt awaits you at Rosings.’