Charlotte nodded at the unspoken pact: they would keep each other’s secrets. She said only, ‘I shall send over some comfrey for the bruising tomorrow. I have some dried leaves in stock, and you can ask your maidservant to prepare a tea.’

It felt like a blow to step back out into the bitter cold of the night, and she hurried home as fast as she could, driven by both the lateness of the hour and the need to keep moving against the blood-slowing chill. Safely back indoors at the Parsonage, no sound in the house, itself an innocently slumbering creature, she heated milk on the range, grated a little sugar into it and, as a special treat, broke off the end of a rare vanilla pod and stirred it in. The hot drink ran through her veins like brandy without the burn, and she was aware that sleep was no longer refusing its gifts, but beckoning seductively. She barely made it back to bed before slipping under its sway.

CHAPTER VII

THE WINTER DRAGGED ON, ONE day after another which Charlotte endured by the simple expedient of putting one foot in front of the other. Not once did Miss de Bourgh allude to their extraordinary midnight encounter, although considerable fuss was made over the ankle injury she had sustained in a night-time ‘slip on the stairs’, with a surgeon summoned from London to pronounce what was already known – that nothing more than time was required for healing. Charlotte knew it was the only cure for what ailed her too, but the hours passed so slowly. There were still nights that lasted centuries, although sometimes, as she lay in bed listening to the drumming of her own pulses, she wondered if she was indeed hearing hooves again.

The next painful milestone came in early February, on what would have been Tom’s fourth birthday. It was that time of year when all patience with winter was at an end; lanes full of slush, perpetually lowered iron-grey skies, chilblained fingers and dripping noses – these were no longer endurable, and yet spring still seemed dispiritingly distant. At family prayers that morning, Mr Collins spoke words expected of a clergyman, of a beloved son and brother gone to a better place among the heavenly choir of angels, precepts of love and gratitude, faith and fortitude, along with exhortations to accept the will of the Almighty and look to the day of reunion. But then his voice faltered.