“You are too kind,” Lady Hartley said warmly. “I do find that life is always improved by a little cake. Don’t you?” Her expression sobered, her eyebrows drawing together in concern as she came to the point of her visit. “I cannot stop myself thinking about the matter of the Top Withens bones, Miss Brontë, and this afternoon I realised at once that I could not wait another minute to come to you and lend you my support. Please, tell me more about the awful discovery at the Hall.”

Charlotte hesitated, unsure of whether a woman as fine as Lady Hartley would have the stomach for such horrors, but then again wasn’t this the campaigner who walked the slums of Bradford and Leeds, shedding light on the terrible conditions there? And it was this woman who had persuaded her husband to fund orphanages and poor schools throughout the region. Lady Hartley was not a sheltered woman; rather, she was a beacon of hope for many.

“Clifton Bradshaw, the master of Top Withens, claims he discovered the bones when he was tearing down a wall, looking for . . . Well, he says he was searching for the ghost of his wife when he came upon them.”

“The ghost of his wife?” Lady Hartley’s expression was unreadable. A person such as Lady Hartley was used to much more sophisticated company than Charlotte’s, and though in this house they might talk of ghosts as commonly as the weather, Lady Hartley would not be used to such country philosophies.

“Nonsense, of course,” Charlotte went on. “I believe he was not fully possessed of his faculties at the time. He claims not to know how the bones came to be hidden there—that he thought they must have been there for scores of years. However, the moment we heard of his scheme to rebury the bones on his land, we were resolved that they must be brought down from Top Withens Hall at once and given a Christian burial, as you know.”

“It troubles me so to think of any being so isolated and alone, even in death,” Lady Hartley said, and Charlotte was moved to see there were tears in her eyes. “Dear Miss Brontë, I must commend you for your swift and decisive action in recovering the unfortunate remains.”

“You are very kind,” Charlotte said. “But it is all any decent, upstanding person would do.”

“Well, before I visited you, I talked to Lord Hartley, and we resolved to provide the funds for a proper headstone for the child,” Lady Hartley said. “Do you have a name for them that we may instruct the mason?”