Chapter Eighteen #3
Thomas drew a breath. "An opportunity arose in Glasgow.
Dr Lawson had written on my behalf to a physician there whose work I had admired for years.
He agreed to let me study under him for several months and promised that, if I proved myself, he would help me secure a position in London sooner than I could have managed alone. "
Caroline looked up. "You never told me."
"I had no way of telling you. I had stopped writing by then.
Every letter I sent had been returned by your father long ago, and I knew your family would never allow anything addressed to you to reach your hands.
I feared that if I placed a letter inside one of the parcels, they would take the glass from you as well. "
"So you simply stopped."
"I believed I would reach you before the silence had time to wound you. I am so very sorry, my love."
The ache which had lived inside her for six months shifted painfully. She tightened her fingers around his. "You stopped because you were coming for me."
"Yes. I thought I would find you in London and explain everything myself."
"But you did not."
His expression changed, and she knew before he answered that something had gone wrong. "No. By the time I arrived, you were gone."
"What happened?"
"I completed my time in Glasgow and travelled south almost immediately.
I went to the house where your family had lived in London, but it was closed.
The servants would not tell me anything.
One person acquainted with your brother told me Scarborough, another believed your brother had taken a house somewhere in the country. "
"We did return to Scarborough," Caroline said.
"For the funeral and to settle Papa’s affairs, which took a long time.
Afterwards we went back to London, but Charles had already begun looking for an estate.
He took Netherfield so suddenly that I scarcely knew where I was going until the trunks were packed. "
"I followed you to Scarborough and arrived after you had left. Your father’s steward gave me the London direction I had already tried. By the time I returned south, you were here, though I did not know that Netherfield existed, much less that it was leased by your brother."
"We kept missing one another."
A sad smile touched his mouth. "Yes," he said simply.
She tightened her fingers around his. "And if Jane had not become ill?"
"I do not know." The honesty of the answer hurt, but he did not look away. "I would have continued searching. Dr Lawson knew I meant to find you, though he believed I ought to consider whether you wished to be found."
"Why would he think I did not? Did you think the same?"
Thomas' gaze moved over her face. "Because your father told him so, more than once before his death. I did not want to, but once I reached London, I began to hear what people said of Caroline Bingley."
The warmth of the room seemed suddenly overwhelming. Caroline looked towards the fire, watching one of the logs settle into the grate in a small shower of sparks. "What did they say?"
"Do you truly wish me to repeat it?"
"No." She swallowed. "I know well enough."
Thomas was silent for a moment. "I did not recognise the woman they described."
Caroline gave a small, humourless laugh. "Most days I scarcely recognised her myself."
She felt his attention upon her but kept her eyes fixed on the flames. The truth had seemed easier to confess when Thomas was only a memory. Now that he sat beside her, still carrying the image of the girl he had loved upon the beach, shame made every word difficult.
"I created her because Papa meant to see me married. I thought that if no gentleman could endure me, no gentleman would ask for my hand. At first it was merely a performance. Hideous gowns and vulgar remarks, a silly game."
"And later?"
"Later I became very good at it." Caroline twisted the edge of the blanket between her fingers. "Too good, perhaps. I told myself it did not matter whom I hurt because I was preserving the future we had promised each other. But there were people who had done nothing to deserve my contempt."
"I thought you might have seen me," she continued. "When the glass stopped, I imagined that you had returned to London and discovered what I had become. I thought perhaps you had watched me across a drawing room or heard me speak in a shop and decided the girl you remembered no longer existed."
"I did wonder whether she still existed," he admitted. Regret tightened his expression and his thumb moved slowly across her knuckles. "I am ashamed of it now, but I had heard so much and known so little. I allowed the words of strangers to weigh against everything I remembered of you."
Caroline closed her eyes briefly.
Thomas brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
"But then I saw you beside Miss Bennet’s bed.
You were exhausted and frightened and still trying to hold everyone else together.
I knew she was there. Not unchanged," he said.
"Neither of us is unchanged. But you were never only the girl upon the beach, and you are not only the woman London believes you to be. "
Her eyes began to burn again. "Then who am I?"
Thomas reached up and touched her cheek, his fingers warm now against her still chilled skin. "That is what I came to discover."