Charlotte welcomed the invitation. She was finding the burgeoning march of spring surprisingly painful. The sombreness of winter had matched and kept pace with her mourning. While the lengthening days had at first brought a measure of relief, watching lambs waggling their snowy tails under their mother’s stomachs, and the daffodils nodding along in concert, it seemed that all she saw conspired to suggest new life and growth. From ducklings in the pond to the sugar-sprinkle of blossom on tender grass, she kept noticing things that would have given Tom innocent joy. Easter and Mr Collins’s sermons on the hope of the Resurrection, spiked with the bright light falling through the chancel windows, had stabbed at her. She knew that Derbyshire was not immune to the seasons, but it would present new scenes, a change of pace, and the journey would provide an object to weeks that trudged past, offering no respite from loss. She would regret leaving her potager so soon after setting out the lettuces and sowing lovage and fennel seeds, but Mr Collins promised not to let it become overwhelmed by weeds, and to guard it from rabbits. They were to leave after Whitsun.

A few days before their departure, Miss de Bourgh once again stopped her phaeton outside the Parsonage gate, and a servant came running to inform Charlotte that she was wanted. Anne was alone at the reins: ‘Mrs Collins, may I once again discommode you by begging you to climb into my conveyance? I wish to take you for a spin around the lanes. The trip will be brief; I have sent my maid back to Rosings, and must return home before it is discovered that I am unaccompanied.’

Charlotte hastened into her house to let its occupants know she would be unavailable for a short while, and sped back down the driveway before her husband could speak too long on such mysterious graciousness. She scrambled into the phaeton as he waved and bowed from the front door and, with a clicking of Miss de Bourgh’s tongue, they bowled away.

Charlotte had never been in such a sleek and small carriage before, and was alarmed at how vulnerable it felt, like perching in a very large eggshell. She clung to the sides as Anne’s ponies whipped round the corner of the lane without any loss of pace.

‘I am sorry to carry you away without ceremony, Mrs Collins,’ said her driver. ‘But I wished to tell you that you will be missed while you are in Derbyshire. I am not one for performances of gratitude; I have witnessed too many to trust their sincerity. But I want you to know that I appreciate the rectitude and discretion you have shown this past winter – and at a time that has been one of deep grief and difficulty for you.