The day was cloudy and promised rain; the first cool breeze of autumn fingered the leaves overhead. Services were at ten o’clock, and all of Bakewell seemed bent upon the old Norman edifice — all except those who inhabited the great estates. Chatsworth House boasted its own chapel, where the family attended each Sunday; services were held as well in the little village of Edensor, that the fourth Duke had seen fit to demolish and reassemble at a convenient remove. I understood from Lord Harold that it had been Georgiana Duchess’s practise to visit both chapels each Sunday, as an example to the estate’s dependants — a fact that had recommended that lady to my good opinion more than anything I had yet heard of her. It was a custom I could imagine Lady Harriot continuing; she was the sort to understand the power of example, as Lady Elizabeth never should.

“Did you enjoy your evening at Chatsworth, Jane?” Cassandra enquired.

“Very much,” I replied, feeling again the rush of guilt at my own selfish joys. “Your grey silk was much admired.”

“I cannot suppose it was anything out of the ordinary way, in such a company — but for the fact that you were wearing it,” she said simply. “I am glad to know it did not disgrace you.”

“Not at all!”

“And … did Lord Harold admire it, Jane?”

I shrugged a little, as though it could not matter to me if he did. “You have been indulging our mother’s fond hopes, Cassandra. Or should I say, fears? Lord Harold is not in the way of admiring me — unless it be for the keenness of my understanding.”

“You have been acquainted now a number of years,” my sister observed in a lowered tone, “and neither of you has married. He disappears for months at a time — and then, when chance throws you in his way, renews his attentions. I cannot think that such behaviour is suggestive of true ardour—”

“No, indeed!”

“—but any woman should consider it most marked.”

Any woman, but one who had observed how he looked at Lady Harriot Cavendish. Could I have seen even half so much passion in Lord Harold for myself, I should have ordered my wedding-clothes long ago.

There was a moment, last evening — when the whist tables had just broken up, and the ladies were strolling idly about the room, and the gentlemen were lost in conversation with their boots propped up on the hearth-fender — a moment just before the cold supper was laid out at midnight — when Andrew Danforth bent his golden head over Lady Harriot’s fiery one, and drew her with him out onto the darkened terrace. No one should dare to follow them there; but I observed the eyes of more than one person in the room stray most speculatively towards the French windows.

Charles Danforth stood correctly with Lord and Lady Morpeth by the drawing-room’s far wall — a strained smile upon his face while they talked insensibly of their children. Granville Leveson-Gower maintained the liveliest conversation with His Grace the Duke, regarding the foibles of a common acquaintance — but so arranged himself that his gaze was fixed upon that open French door. The Countess of Bessborough, his avowed love, watched Leveson-Gower most narrowly over the head of a talkative Lady Elizabeth, whom I am sure she had not the slightest trouble disregarding. They were all alive to the possibilities inherent in moonlight and passion. But Lord Harold—

Lord Harold approached no one, Lord Harold said not a word. He resolutely ignored the balcony scene played out for the party’s amusement, and poured himself a glass of Port. As he stood sipping at it speculatively, his eyes rose to meet mine. I do not think there was another person in the room — besides myself — so much in the grip of agony at that moment; no other person who failed to seek relief in converse with another. His grey eyes were blank; even to myself they disclosed nothing; but one muscle of his jaw commenced to twitch.

And then Hary-O walked swiftly back through the doorway, her face flushed and her eyes alight.

“I have had a little too much of happiness tonight, and must own that I am dreadfully tired,” she told the room in general. “I would beg you all to forgive and excuse me, when I would retire. No one ever had such a family, or such friends; and I thank God that I have lived so many years among you, and pray that I may witness as many more. God bless you all — and good night!”

Then she swept away, not as a little girl over-excited by a party; but as a young and powerful woman will cede the stage, secure in the knowledge that it is hers for the asking whenever she should wish to tread its boards again. I could read nothing in her face of Andrew Danforth’s fate — nothing of whether she had accepted what must surely have been an offer for her hand, or slapped him for presumption. The gentleman in question merely took up a position by his elder brother without a word. And in Andrew Danforth’s countenance? Only the unvaried charm, the perpetual softness that must weary with time.

Lord Harold’s looks were as fixed as stone. He set down his empty glass, and devoted himself to my amusement for the half-hour remaining before my carriage was called; but in all his remarks I detected an absence of mind, as though he played a role long familiar from habit, a role that demanded nothing. His thoughts and his heart were moving through the upper halls, clutched in Hary-O’s elegant hands; they drew off her silk dress in the company of her maid, they brushed her red-gold hair in the candlelight. They stood with her in the darkened chamber, when her maid had long since gone away, and stared out once more at the moonlight that silvered the lawns of Chatsworth; and when she cried for the mother who had not lived to see her twenty-first birthday — they kissed her tears away.

“—nine children,” my mother was saying, “including an infant in swaddling clothes, who is possessed of the most malicious countenance in the world. I must suppose him to have died of colic.”

“Of what are you speaking, madam?” I enquired with effort.

“Of the tombs your cousin refers to, Jane, along the south wall of the church. They memorialise Sir George Manners and his wife, along with their nine children. But as they died in Elizabeth’s time, or thereabouts, I cannot find it very tragic. Everyone died in that period, you know.”

“And sooner rather than later,” I murmured. “Mr. Cooper—”

My cousin mopped his reddened brow with a square of lawn. “Yes, Jane?”

“Did your excellent wife disclose in her letter the reason for her apothecary’s abhorrence of black cherry water?”

“She did not. But I suspect Mr. Greene to possess a very natural distaste for the interference of females — and the strength of mind to declare it. Were the general run of gentlemen so forthright, the general run of ladies might appear to greater advantage: their conduct seemly, their ambitions modest.” Mr. Cooper eyed me with disfavour. I was not to be forgiven my insertion in the affairs of his friend, Mr. Hemming, it seemed, nor absolved of culpability for the disaster that had followed.

We had achieved the threshold of All Saints. I sent a prayer Heavenwards for all the babes who are fated to die too soon, and stepped into the dimness peculiar to God.