He’d returned from his travels in the West Country with the conviction that Jane Adeane would be cold towards him, that there would be nothing but awkwardness between them. But it had not been the case. First, there had been their dreamlike midnight meeting in the Hot Bath, his nakedness seeming to amuse Jane and goad her to a flirtatious exchange. Then, together, they had presided over the death of Mr Latimer, conspirators in the matter of the opium, bound together by what they had decided to do. And when that was over and Mr Latimer’s body had been taken away, there had been a long moment when they had stood alone together in Sir William’s surgery and Jane had taken his hand and said: ‘I am glad. I am glad.’

What had she meant by this?

Had she been referring only to what they had done for Latimer, or did she mean she was ‘glad’ to see the person whose proposal of marriage had once been so evidently displeasing to her? She had left him then, to sleep for a while after the long vigil of the night and he had not pressed her to say more. But now his old yearning to be loved by Jane Adeane returned so strongly to him that he let himself hope that she felt something more than friendship for him. All his visions of a shared life, of sexual bliss with the woman whose magical touch everybody longed for, invaded him completely and drove almost everything else from his mind. Yet he knew that if he were to risk one last manifestation of his feelings and was rejected a second time, then his future was sealed: he would board the Rainsford; he would never see Jane again.

Noting that the weather was fair, and having no patients except those who might hope to consult him informally at the Baths, Ross set out on one of his walks to Charlcombe. On his way, he came to a decision that he knew was not logical, but rather the kind of hapless, childlike decision a gambler makes. The decision was this: he would walk in the field where he had once seen the capercaillie. He would linger there a little while and if he set eyes on one of these birds, why then he would take this as a ‘message’ from Edmund. And he would read that message as a summons to the Far East. He would consider himself bound by it. And if no capercaillie appeared … he would take his chances and announce his love a second time to Jane, hoping that all memory of the tea room proposal had somehow been obliterated from her mind. The mere thought that he might be obliged to repeat some of the words once spoken at Mrs Morrissey’s laid on his heart a feeling of suffocation.

When Ross got to the field, last observed with its covering of frost, he now saw that it had been planted with turnips. He’d learned from Edmund that capercaillies were not only rarely seen in England but that they were moorland-loving birds, feasting on insects which crawled among grass and heather. Crows might come and peck on turnip tops, but capercaillies would not.