Chapter 8
It was a very beautiful Sunday morning. The air possessed that bright, uncertain quality particular to days that had not yet determined whether they wished to be glorious or merely tolerable.
Caroline thought this rather appropriate, since she herself occupied precisely the same state of indecision.
She had placed her hand in the crook of Edward Reinhart's elbow with what she considered to be impeccable composure, and together they stepped out of Netherfield's front door into the late summer sunshine. This, she informed herself quite firmly, was nothing at all deserving of speculation.
"So tell me, Mr. Reinhart," she began, pleased to hear not a single waver in her tone, "what exactly have you planned for this morning? I must warn you that I have very particular opinions about the proper–"
He laughed before she reached the end of the sentence, and she felt the sound hum through the arm she held.
It was entirely more intimate than she would have preferred.
"There is something that is going to trouble me a very great deal if I do not address it immediately," he said, with the unhurried calm of a man who had likely never been troubled by anything in his life. "You will have to call me Edward."
Caroline looked up at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"Edward," he repeated, all bright good humor.
"That is my name. I am quite attached to it.
If I hear nothing but Mr. Reinhart for the rest of the week I shall forget it entirely, and then think of the inconvenience.
I should have to ask someone, which would be mortifying for us all.
" He tipped his head to the side and regarded her with that expression she was, with a faint flutter of alarm, already beginning to recognize.
Half amusement, half something far more intentional.
"We barbarians from the Americas are not nearly so formal as you English. I am almost certain I have mentioned this before."
"You had," Caroline said. "I considered it a personal confession at the time, not a formal request."
"Then consider this the formal request."
"It would be wildly improper," she said somewhat flustered. It was true she had been calling him Edward to herself already, but she had not been prepared for the conversation to take such a turn. "I mean—people would talk."
"In the company of others," he agreed at once, as though she had proposed nothing more controversial than the weather, "you may call me whatever best suits your sense of propriety.
Edward, Mr. Reinhart, that horrible American.
I am quite at your mercy in such matters.
But when it is only the two of us." He turned to her then and wore an expression that could only be described as thoroughly and quite absurdly pleading.
He turned his eyes huge and imploring. It was a ridiculous look on a man of his height and bearing, and yet it proved disconcertingly effective all the same.
"Pray do not refuse me the small pleasure of hearing my name spoken in so exceptionally well-bred a voice as yours."
The words were outrageous. The expression was worse.
Caroline opened her mouth fully intending to inform him of both these truths in the clearest possible terms. Instead, to her own profound astonishment, she laughed.
It escaped before she could summon any defense against it, bright and unguarded and entirely unlike her usual composure.
She closed her lips at once, but it was far too late to pretend it had not happened.
"Very well," she said, adopting a tone of firm primness that she trusted might repair some portion of the damage to her dignity. "Edward. If it will truly distress you to such an alarming degree, I can hardly be expected to persist in cruelty without cause."
He smiled then, and Caroline had the distinct impression that she had just yielded something of greater consequence than the simple use of a name.
She declined to consider that possibility any further.
She discovered, over the course of the next hour, that Edward Reinhart approached the planning of an outing with a thoroughness that he somehow still managed to make appear entirely casual.
Only closer inspection revealed the considerable thought that must have gone into it.
The route he selected led them through the more scenic parts of the town, past shop fronts arranged with such charm that even Caroline found herself momentarily diverted.
He had, she realized, identified in advance the handful of establishments most likely to interest her, and he guided her among them with the easy confidence of a man who had done his research and felt no need to mention it.
It was the textile shop that proved the most eventful stop of the morning.
At first glance the establishment was perfectly pleasant.
The shelves were neat, the morning light generous, and Caroline was in the middle of evaluating several bolts of fabric with the careful attention they deserved when the disturbance began.
It was not dramatic by the usual standards of public disorder.
It was the far more irritating sort, the variety produced by someone who had elevated their personal inconvenience to the level of a moral tragedy and saw no reason to lower their voice to match the surroundings.
The woman responsible stood near the far end of the counter, delivering a loud and passionate critique of the shop assistant's professional competence, or rather, her lack of it.
She did so with all the relish of a person thoroughly convinced that volume conferred authority.
The assistant, a young woman of perhaps seventeen with the weary expression of one who had already suffered more than enough difficulty that morning, stood with her hands folded and her gaze lowered.
She said nothing, and Caroline could see at once that nothing she might have said would have made the slightest difference.
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. "