Chapter 8 #2
"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.
He told her about New York in the particular tones of a person describing something they were entirely convinced was better than anything you had yet seen.
Which she would have found entirely insufferable from anyone else and instead found herself wanting to ask further questions about him.
She told him about her life growing up in London.
Not of the horrid, dark times of her childhood, but the gentler days of her youth.
How she had actually had a fondness for her schoolgirl days even now.
The afternoon was well along by the time they turned back toward town, and the light had taken on the warm, slantwise quality of late summer beginning its slow retreat into something else.
Caroline became aware, walking beside him, that this morning had been considerably more eventful than she had initially anticipated.
"I shall be returning to London tomorrow," she said, as they came back within sight of the main road. "Charles and Jane have finished the business that brought them to Netherfield, and there is no particular reason to remain."
Edward was quiet for a moment. Then he said, with the easy decisiveness of a man who had not had to consider his decision for long, "In that case, I suppose I shall be returning to London as well."
Caroline looked up at him, startled. "Are you sure?"
"There is nothing for me left here," he said, which sounded a lot like he was saying there is nothing for me left here without you. But even she was not arrogant enough to make such an assumption.
Something in her chest loosened in relief. She did not understand it. Was she really so bothered by the idea of being parted with this man? To be this attached already?
"London in late August is rather dull," she said, because something had to be said, and this seemed safer than the alternatives.
"I expect," Edward replied, his voice carrying that warmth she was beginning to recognize as specifically his, "that it will be considerably less dull than it was before I made your acquaintance."
Caroline looked ahead at the road because she found it increasingly difficult to look at his face. She found that this diversion for her eyes did nothing to dissuade the flush crawling up her neck to her cheeks.