Charlotte, in that slice of her mind that continued to function rationally, conceded that Lady Catherine had indeed been useful in the past few days. She had written messages and made arrangements, she had offered mourning garments and shades, had even sent her carriage to Meryton to fetch the elder Lucases. She had objected to Charlotte’s intention to bring Tom’s small sisters to the graveyard, claiming that at almost five and six years of age they were too young – but, for once, she had allowed herself to be overruled without argument.

Charlotte, unable to look down into the grave, stared across it at the other mourners present. Her sister Maria was in tears, and her mother sobbing into a handkerchief, supported by her father, whose usually rubicund face was pale with distress. Lizzy had arrived the night before, escorted by her husband, Mr Darcy, who was standing beside her, all bleak gravity.

On some level, Charlotte was moved – even if slightly surprised – that her old friend, the mistress of Pemberley, should have made the journey down from Derbyshire to Kent for Tom’s funeral. She and Mr Darcy were guests of Lady Catherine – an arrangement that might have been desperately awkward if not for the solemn circumstances. With pressing business to attend to, Mr Darcy would be leaving for London the next day, but Elizabeth would be staying at the Parsonage to keep Charlotte company during the first weeks of mourning.

Although, Charlotte noted – in the dispassionate way she kept noticing the crack in the glass of one of the windowpanes in the drawing room, the fungus speckling the leaves of the late roses in the garden – that Lizzy was gazing across at the bereaved family with an expression on her face that could only be described as forlorn.

Laura wriggled in her arms as the first clods of earth fell on the coffin. ‘Mama, I don’t want Tom to be cold,’ she wailed into her mother’s ear. ‘He doesn’t like the dark.’ Charlotte murmured the same lies she had been telling both girls since the day that had dawned relentlessly after the night Tom had perished: that their brother had gone to be with the angels, where there was no cold, or dark, or pain. Although how could she possibly know for certain? Was her husband certain?

She glanced over at him and Sarah, her little changeling: thin and whippy like her mother, and with her father’s dark hair, her dark brown eyes were nothing like the grey and blue of her parents. She was in as much distress as Laura, flinching as each spadeful thudded onto the coffin, but remained silent, leaning against her father’s side, a thumb jammed into her mouth.