Inside the parsonage, I was sweeping the hall when I heard a thud outside. Puzzled, I set aside the broom and opened the door. My younger brother Branwell toppled towards me and crashed at my feet, sprawling across the threshold.

“Branwell,” I said, peering with consternation at him through my spectacles.

He pushed himself to his knees and smiled jauntily up at me. “Ah, my dear sister Charlotte,” he said, slurring the words. “How convenient that you should be here just in time to welcome me home.”

I regarded his bleary eyes and lurid complexion, his disheveled clothes and shaggy auburn hair. Rank fumes of whisky rose from his person. “You have been drinking again.” I felt the anger, disgust, and helplessness that Branwell’s inebriation always occasioned in me.

“It was just a little tipple down at the Black Bull Inn,” Branwell protested, clambering to his feet. “Life gets unbearably dull hereabouts, and surely you wouldn’t deny me a bit of amusement now and then?”

“Except that it isn’t only now and then.” I shut the door more firmly than was necessary. “And it’s not just the drink. You’ve taken laudanum, haven’t you?” Branwell had, alas, degenerated into a habitual user of that tincture of opium dissolved in spirits.

“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” Branwell said, “but I was so in need of comfort.” A coughing fit wracked his thin body. “Can you not see how miserable I am? Please forgive me.”

Reluctant compassion quenched my anger as I observed my brother. He was only thirty-one but looked a decade older, his once handsome features haggard. Still, I could see in him a vestige of the robust, bright-eyed boy who had been my favorite childhood companion.

“You had better go upstairs before Papa sees you like this,” I said.

The door of the study opened, and out stepped our father. Though in his seventies, Papa was still an imposing figure-over six feet tall, whitehaired, stern-featured, and proud of posture. Beneath his black clerical garb he wore a voluminous white silk cravat wound high around his neck to protect him from Yorkshire drafts and guard against bronchitis. He squinted at Branwell through the spectacles perched on his prominent nose, and a look of anxious confusion came over his face.