Charlotte set her lips. Silently, she vowed to spend the rest of her days circumventing the law of the land so that her daughters need fear neither penury nor charity, as had been the case for herself and her sisters, and indeed many of the daughters of the families she knew. She had no idea how to proceed in this regard, and little understanding of what instruments could be useful, but she knew better than most what dogged determination might do.

Besides, she had an unexpected example of success in this regard, perhaps even an ally, right next door: Lady Catherine had inherited Rosings upon becoming a widow. Even more impressive, she had secured the inheritance for her daughter, Anne de Bourgh. And if Lady Catherine, with her strictures on rank and society, could manage such a thing, surely it was within the bounds of possibility?

CHAPTER II

SOME DAYS WERE BETTER THAN others. Somehow, the hours were endured. Letters addressed to the bereaved parents continued to arrive, and responding to these provided some object to each monstrous day. Lady Lucas wrote to her daughter almost daily, not even awaiting any reply, and although each note repeated the substance of the last, Charlotte valued these tokens of her mother’s affection. Lizzy was not the only member of the Bennet family to try to comfort her; she was touched to receive from Mrs Bingley, Elizabeth’s elder sister, a letter of condolence all the more sweet for its evident sincerity. As the mother of two young boys and a by-word for kindness, Jane was deeply affected by Charlotte’s loss and, while she had no remedy to offer for grief, the indication of her care was itself soothing.

The weeks trudged by. Charlotte found that watching how differently her daughters experienced time to adults was enlightening: there were hours when they ran, played, and whooped as joyously as if nothing more grievous than a grazed knee had ever marred their days. It was their knack for forgetting she marvelled at. There were moments when she envied them this gift; at others, she understood that they might never remember their younger brother, and the very idea made her feel as if her skin had been removed with a paring knife.

Her memories of Tom were at that stage not yet memories, but as much part of her daily life as rising, dressing, breakfasting, feeding the chickens, and all the routines to which she now clung as a means of passaging through days as thick as treacle and grey as ash. He was with her everywhere, sometimes receding momentarily, but mostly at the edge of her vision, her hearing.