Page 24 of Caroline Bingley’s Last Chance At Love

“I want you to tell me what your intentions are."

The words came out crisp and controlled, which was rather impressive considering the rather undignified commotion occurring beneath her ribs. “I want you to tell me plainly what this has been, what you imagine it will become, and whether you have given any serious thought to either question.”

There was a pause. Not a dramatic one, not the sort of pause one might perform for effect, but a real one. The tearoom continued its quiet indifference around them, cups clinking, chairs scraping, someone at a distant table laughing over something entirely unrelated to heartbreak or difficult conversations. The elderly waitress moved with unhurried authority as she refilled a teapot, entirely unimpressed by the notion that anything of consequence might be occurring nearby.

Caroline sat very straight as she looked at Edward and waited for his answer.

“I have to go back,” he said at last, with a stony expression.

He spoke quietly, without hesitation, and, she noted with reluctant respect, without evasion. “My life is in New York, Caroline. My business, my family, my obligations. I was never going to stay indefinitely. You knew that.”

“I did,” she said, and managed, somehow, to keep her voice steady.

“Then I am not certain what answer you are looking for.”

“I am not looking for any particular answer,” Caroline said.

Which was, of course, a lie. A particularly transparent one. Still, she delivered it with such admirable conviction that she felt it ought to count for something. It was all she could do to comfort herself and save face in the wake of this devastating and humiliating answer.

“I simply want to be certain that we both understand the situation clearly. That is all.”

It was not all. It was not even remotely all. It was, in fact, the sort of statement one made when one had several very large, very inconvenient emotions and no socially acceptable place to put them.

But the alternative was saying things that could not be unsaid. Things about sudden realizations in art galleries and about the entirely unreasonable habit the human heart had of selecting precisely the wrong moment to become involved. Particularly when the object of said involvement was already, in every practical sense, halfway out the door.

Edward looked at her for a long moment.

His expression held something she had not seen before. Not his warmth, or his usual keen consideration, but something in between those two states that refused to settle into either. It left her feeling uneasy.

She did not ask what he was thinking.

She found she could not afford another emotional blow tonight.

“Of course,” he said quietly. “We both understand it.”

“Good,” said Caroline, clipped.

She lifted her teacup and drank, though the tea had long since lost any claim to warmth.

The carriage ride back to the Bingley villa proceeded in a silence that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the comfortable quiet they had achieved over the preceding two weeks. That silence had been companionable, even easy, the sort that suggested understanding without requiring proof.

This silence had had edges.

Edges that threatened to cut her fatally if she did not move through them carefully.

Caroline sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap and stared out of the window at the passing streets. She thought about nothing in particular with an intensity that required far more effort than thinking about something usually did, which she suspected was rather the point.

Edward said nothing. He looked out his own window as Caroline looked out hers, and the silence between them was the kind that had stopped being comfortable somewhere around the second cup of tea and had not recovered since.

When the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the villa, he was out before she had properly gathered herself, his hand extended to assist her down with the brisk, practiced efficiency of a man discharging an obligation. She took it. He released it the moment her feet met the pavement, before she had even straightened. She was instantly hurt by his coldness. He had never acted like this before. Usually always lingering by her side a second too long to be proper after helping her down.

"Thank you," she said, "for this afternoon."

"Of course." He said tightly as he looked at the carriage. At the horses. At the precise middle distance that constituted everything in the world except her face.

"The Academy was genuinely impressive," Caroline continued, because apparently she was going to do this, apparently some portion of her had decided that what the present situation required was more words from Caroline Bingley, a development that no one in the history of her life had ever once found helpful.

"I had not expected the collection to be so well-arranged. The lighting in the third room in particular was exceptional."