Page 28 of Caroline Bingley’s Last Chance At Love

“Not only for Netherfield last week,” Caroline continued, keeping her tone steady with considerable effort, “though certainly for that as well. Before you married Charles, I was very… unkind to you. I dismissed you before you had done anything to deserve it, and I said things on more than one occasion that I am not proud of.”

She fixed her gaze on a point somewhere beyond Jane’s shoulder, because looking directly at her while saying any of this would, she suspected, render her entirely incapable of continuing.

She went on. “During your courtship with Charles, I worked rather diligently against you both, and I told myself at the time that I was merely being honest in my assessments.”

A pause.

“I know better now. My eyes were blinded by…prejudice.”

Silence followed the declaration, as though the room itself required a moment to breathe after her words.

"I behaved badly," Caroline said, because sometimes the only appropriate thing to do with a truth was to state it without embellishment and let it stand on its own without the assistance of additional words. "I am sorry for it."

Jane sucked in a breath.

"Thank you, for saying all of this," Jane said gently. "But I have forgiven you for everything in the past."

Caroline turned to look at her then, startled enough that she quite forgot the usual care she took with her expression. Jane was watching her with that same unnervingly perceptive gaze, and there was not so much as a flicker of resentment in it anywhere. It was, Caroline thought, a rather extraordinary accomplishment for a woman she had once given every possible reason to resent her to manage so completely.

“You forgave me before I even apologized?” she asked, which was not, strictly speaking, gracious, but did at least have the merit of honesty.

“I had a year to do so,” Jane replied simply. “And in that time I have come to think you are… remarkably misunderstood.”

She tilted her head slightly, regarding Caroline with the same calm attentiveness she brought to everything from conversations to catastrophes. “You also did not need to apologize for last week. I was the one who spoke out of line. And I was not angry with you for telling me to leave your room after I made you so uncomfortable.”

The sitting room fell very quiet. Somewhere beyond the window, a horse passed over the cobblestones with a sharp clatter, and then the sound was gone, as though it had never been.

“What you said to me,” Caroline began, and rather annoyingly, her voice, which had been behaving itself with admirable discipline until this very moment, chose that precise instant to betray her.

She cleared her throat and tried again.

“When you left my room that morning,” she said. “What you said–”

Jane waited, unhurried and patient, as though she had all the time in the world and no intention of using it against her.

“No one had ever said that to me before,” Caroline said at last. “In my entire life. Not in any form.”

“Then it was long overdue,” Jane replied at once.

Caroline looked down at the biscuit in her hand as though it might offer her some sensible guidance, which, in her experience, biscuits rarely did.

The trouble with kindness, she had begun to suspect, was that it created a very particular sort of difficulty for women who had spent most of their adult lives preparing themselves for unkindness. A blow, after all, could be met with a counterblow. It had intent, direction, and a certain honesty about it. Caroline had always excelled at dealing with things that behaved honestly.

Gentleness, however, had no such courtesy. It came from all directions at once and refused to announce its intentions in advance. She had not yet decided how one was meant to defend oneself against it or whether defense was even the correct word.

“I am glad,” she said at last, “that my brother married you. I know now that I could have never hoped for a more good natured and accepting sister-in-law.”

Jane made a sound that was not, by any reasonable definition, composed.

Caroline’s head shot up immediately.

Jane’s eyes had gone entirely too bright, and her hand was pressed firmly to her mouth, though it did nothing to hide the fact that her shoulders were shaking. It was, Caroline thought with rising alarm, the unmistakable beginning of tears.

“Jane,” she said, a little urgently now. “Are you quite all right? I was attempting to be kind. I understand that I am not familiar with the practice, but surely this is an overreaction to a failed attempt?”

Jane gave a breathless laugh, entirely undermined by the way it caught on something rather fragile in her throat.

“I know,” she managed, still shaking from laughter through her tears. It was a rather disorienting sight. “I know. I am so sorry. It is not you. Your attempt at kindness was actually quite lovely, thank you—"