Miss Bingley and the Baron

Miss Caroline Bingley is convinced that the surest way to establish herself with the upper classes is to marry a wealthy gentleman. After losing Mr. Darcy and his ten thousand a year to Elizabeth Bennet, Caroline is even more determined to find a match that will shake off the ‘stench of trade’ from her father’s occupation as a merchant.

She travels with her sister and brother-in-law to their estate in Scarborough, where she learns that their next-door neighbor is a baron with a fortune surpassing that of Mr. Darcy’s–and he is reportedly young and handsome, too!

Lord Theodore Connally has recently returned from his Grand Tour after his father’s death. As a single man in possession of a large fortune, he is especially leery of fortune hunters and social climbers. Having been warned by his friend that Miss Bingley is just such a lady, he is determined to avoid her at all costs. However, when he meets her by chance and she mistakes him for a gardener, Theo finds her intriguing.

Theo devises a plan to test whether Miss Bingley is truly a fortune hunter, by asking his best friend– the gardener’s son who is to become a clergyman– to switch places with him.

Caroline has no idea that the kind and funny man she has befriended is actually the baron, nor that the foppish baron whom she is in pursuit of is actually the gardener’s son in disguise. When the “baron” proposes to her, Caroline must decide what matters to her more: the fortune and title she seeks, or the man she never expected to fall in love with.

A Pride and Prejudice novella, companion to Not In Want of a Wife. Can be enjoyed as a standalone.>