Page 17 of Caroline Bingley’s Last Chance At Love

Caroline turned to Edward, who was standing beside her with a bottle green silk in one hand and a distracted expression. So he had not yet noticed. She placed her arm on his shoulder to get his attention and then lifted her chin in the direction of the spectacle near the counter.

"You see that old hag," she said, in a carrying voice that she pitched with great deliberateness to be not quite a murmur but still believable as a whisper. The woman in question could scarcely be older than thirty, but Caroline was of the opinion that ‘old hag’ was more of a spiritual adjective meant for the most unbearably women that walked among the population than a true indicator of one's physical youth. "the one terrorizing that poor young shop girl?"

"I do," said Edward, with the careful neutrality of a man watching to see where this was going.

"A woman of her sort," Caroline continued, at precisely the same volume, "has only one way to be noticed, and that is to make herself unbearable. I find it is a great deal of effort for very little effect." She paused, appearing to consider the matter. "Though I suppose one must do something to prove their superiority when even the mirror refuses to be persuaded."

There was a sudden moment of perfect silence in the crowd that had previously been abuzz with the gentle hum of casual conversations. Then heads began to turn. Not all at once, but in the manner of an audience adjusting its focus, one by one, until the woman at the counter discovered that she had acquired an unexpected audience.

Her expression shifted, cycling rapidly through indignation and the dawning awareness that she was no longer so invisible to the attention of the room. Her cheeks flushed a deep and thorough crimson. She turned to look at Caroline nastily and found Caroline already looking back at her with an even dirtier look. The women apparently decided that she had somewhere else of urgent importance to be after that. She gathered herself and departed the shop with a speed that was rather at odds with the grandeur she had been projecting thirty seconds earlier.

The young shop assistant looked up. Her expression, which had been carefully guarded before, flickered into something very nearly resembling relief now.

Caroline turned back to the silk on the shelf and examined it as though nothing of any interest had just occurred.

"You are," Edward said, from somewhere just to her left, "entirely astonishing."

"For my skill in spotting quality? I don’t know, this silk is not quite the right weight for what I had in mind," Caroline replied.

Edward sounded a little baffled as he spoke. "What? No, I am not talking about the silk. I am talking about—this is the second time I have watched you do that."

"Do what?" she asked, setting down the silk.

"Defend someone," he said. "Using nothing but your own sharp tongue and come away with not a hair out of place."

Caroline turned to regard him then, prepared to find amusement on his face,or perhaps a touch of triumph at having unsettled her. Instead, she found something far more disconcerting. There was amusement, certainly, but it had been joined by an expression so genuinely sincere that she felt compelled to glance away at once. She occupied herself with straightening the cuff of her glove, a task that surely did not require quite so much concentration.

"You are misreading the situation," she informed him. "I was not defending the girl. That woman was merely irritating me." She began to walk toward the door, and he fell into step at her side with a natural ease she would rather not have noticed. "I am frequently annoyed by that particular variety of person. The shop girl simply happened to be standing in the vicinity and was assisted by coincidence."

"Mm," Edward replied, which was neither agreement nor disagreement. She found herself growing increasingly irritated by this conversation. This was twice now that two people had accused Caroline of being a good person in a matter of days. Worse still when she tried to correct them, they did not seem to believe her. What was wrong with these people? Did they possess no observation skills in the least?

"Besides," Caroline went on, her voice slipping into a defensive register she had not intended, "I have used my tongue for far less admirable purposes than what you witnessed today. I do not recommend assigning me any great moral credit. Certainly not on the strength of two isolated incidents."

They stepped back out into the street. The autumn air curled around them, crisp and cool, turning her breath into something she could almost see. Edward walked beside her in one of his thoughtful silences, the kind that suggested not emptiness but careful consideration.

"Do you regret it?" he asked at last.

The question was quietly spoken, without drama or accusation. It was, in fact, the very simplicity of it that struck her, halting something in her chest with all the neat accuracy of a pin finding the precise center of a cushion.

A face appeared in her mind, quite without her permission. Blue eyes that were too steady and too clear, and five damning words spoken with the particular calm of someone who believed them wholeheartedly.

Who believed in her.

Caroline looked at the middle distance and thought that she had spent a very long time being rather proud of her capacity to say cutting things with great accuracy, and that pride had been considered, until fairly recently, entirely untroubled.

Then came along Jane Bennet.

"Yes," she said and was surprised to discover the words were not so bitter on her tongue. "Some of it, yes."

Edward did not press her for clarification. Nor did he attempt the sort of gentle absolution that would have irritated her beyond measure. He simply nodded, thoughtful and unintrusive, and then said, in a tone that belonged to an entirely different conversation, "Why do we not head out of town? I noticed a path the other morning that looked rather promising, if you have no objection to walking."

"I have no objection to walking," Caroline replied, aware that this was, by her own standards, astonishingly gracious. She was grateful for Edward’s redirecting of the subject, and her fondness for the man grew.

The path proved to be precisely the sort she would have chosen had she possessed the foresight to know she was in need of such a thing. It was quiet and gently meandering, bordered by that distinctive English countryside, which managed to be lovely without making a spectacle of itself. The sort of beauty that rewarded attention without begging for it.

They walked at a pace that seemed to disregard the concept of destinations altogether. It was not about arriving but about existing, side by side, beneath the soft sweep of the afternoon sky. Somewhere in the first quarter mile the rhythm between them shifted. Their conversation drifted in and out as they enjoyed each other's company and the peace.

Caroline found herself speaking of things she had not intended to share and listening with a curiosity she had not expected to feel. The afternoon settled around them into something quietly companionable, something she could not have planned and would not, if asked, have known how to explain.