Settling on the most humble piano as her goal, and not wanting her rusty notes to be heard by others, Charlotte climbed the stairs to the schoolroom and let herself in. As she closed the door behind her, she heard a muffled string of words she could not understand and a slight thump. To her astonishment, a pair of legs were to be seen sticking out from under the erstwhile governesses’ instrument. Too dumbfounded to give voice to her surprise, she watched as the legs – which were male – wriggled out from under the piano, proving to be attached to a complete stranger.

She and the man stared at each other as he scrambled to his feet, both of them momentarily robbed of the power of speech. His clothing was that of a gentleman, she thought, but he was underdressed, wearing only a white linen blouson shirt with no cravat or waistcoat, and breeches of an unfamiliar cut that were attached to tooled leather straps that ran up and over his shoulders. He was dark and slender, with a nose that beaked from his face, and a close-cropped beard, itself something that made him seem otherworldly, a character from a play of past centuries.

They both spoke at once, her to excuse her intrusion, him to apologise for startling her, and as soon as he spoke, the strangeness of his appearance was explained; he was clearly a foreigner. This in itself made him an object of interest, and Charlotte longed to know more.

The man bowed, introducing himself as Herr Rosenstein, a musician from Salzburg in Austria. His father had built the harpsichord Mr Darcy had purchased for Georgiana, an instrument of great value and delicacy, and the dampness of the English weather had caused the strings to go out of tune. To remedy this fault, it had then been stood too close to the fire, and this had cracked the wood of the belly underneath. The senior Rosenstein now being too advanced in age to travel to assess the damage and make the repairs, the son had been summoned to attempt the restoration; also to tune the other pianos in the house, as well as Georgiana’s harp. These painstaking operations promised to take some time. Mr Darcy’s plan was that Georgiana would find her instruments in perfect working, or rather playing, order upon her return from her sojourn abroad.

Charlotte now understood why she had not yet met the stranger; he was in the nebulous position of being neither a servant nor a guest. His role in the household was akin to that of a tutor, or an artist employed to paint a portrait.