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“Have you come to mock my pain? Are my injuries not enough to satisfy you and the spawn of Lucifer you call a husband?” I can hear her voice in my memory still, a croaking sort of growl, weak and spiteful.
Her maid, the nurse, and the doctor would look on avidly, I noticed, no one doing anything to soothe their patient.
“I only wonder how you are feeling,” I would say calmly, “and whether we can do anything else for your comfort.”
“My comfort! As if you care for that! Let us have honesty between us at least! You were hoping to find me at death’s doorstep, were you not? But I shall live through this, simply to spite you both!”
It made me sad, truly, to see that she would blame us for her injuries. She would never recover if she could not accept that she had caused them herself.
But I continued to visit, refusing to allow her to set the terms of my calls, and keeping my eye upon her, if nothing else.
After one such visit, Mr Donavan followed me out. “She is very ill,” he said unnecessarily, standing too close while he spoke in his over-sympathetic, toadying sort of way. “It is likely best if you allow me to apprise you and Mr Darcy of her needs—I will certainly inform you when she is well enough for visitors again. But I encourage you not to take her words too much to heart.”
I raised a brow. “I promise, I would not readily accept the word of anyone so feeble of mind as to throw herself through a window,” I said acerbically. “I only hope you would not, either.”
But, as it turned out, he did not heed my advice. When a dead body was found buried in a shallow grave near where Thorncroft once stood, and when that body was identified as Miss Caroline Bingley, he repeated every poisonous word she’d uttered, and to anyone who would listen. And there were many, many words, and many, many listeners, indeed.
