Page 1 of Caroline Bingley’s Last Chance At Love

Chapter 1

August 1st

Caroline Bingley had attended something in the vicinity of three hundred and forty-two parties in her life, which was quite enough to render her an authority on the subject of social disasters, both anticipated and otherwise.

It was not that such catastrophes announced themselves in any reliable fashion. There was no particular expression, no telling gesture. Rather, it was a sensation. A most inconvenient awareness that crept along the back of her neck and settled, with unwelcome certainty, somewhere beneath her ribs. Experience, some of it regrettably mortifying, had taught her not to ignore it.

She felt it the instant Lord Gillsberry requested her attention.

“Miss Bingley,” he said, lowering his voice in a manner that suggested he believed himself exceedingly important. “Might I beg a private word?”

And there it was again. That dreadful certainty.

Still, Caroline had not navigated one and twenty years of London society by retreating at the first hint of discomfort. One did not survive such a world without a sharp smile and a sturdy constitution, carefully concealed until necessity demanded its use. And so she inclined her head with polite composure and permitted herself to be led away, through the brilliant throng in Lord and Lady Ashworth’s ballroom, past arrangements of flowers so extravagant they bordered on offensive, and out onto the balcony overlooking the darkened garden.

She had, she admitted, expected a proposal.

It was, in her estimation, a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Lord Gillsberry had called upon her with commendable frequency for the past three weeks. He had even sent flowers twice. He had danced with her at the Pemberton ball and regarded her over his champagne glass with what she had understood to be significant intent. Caroline was not in the habit of mistaking such things. She had been studying the language of society since she was fifteen, and she prided herself on her fluency.

Lord Gillsberry was also, most inconveniently, titled, moderately wealthy, in possession of all of his teeth, and a mere twenty-six years of age. He was not the most glittering prospect who had ever crossed Caroline’s path, but he was eminently suitable. More than suitable. He was precisely the sort of gentleman a woman in Caroline’s circumstances ought to greet with quiet satisfaction and perhaps a touch of strategic delight.

She had, she realized with a queasy twist deep in her middle, been rather disgusted with herself when acknowledging that she would have to accept him.

Which somehow made the next few moments all the more ruinous.

“You must know,” Lord Gillsberry began, sounding perilously close to conversational, as though he were commenting on the state of the hedgerows, “that I hold you in the highest regard.”

“Thank you,” Caroline replied. Her tone was smooth, perfectly measured. Maintaining it was one of her finer accomplishments.

“And it is because of that regard,” he continued, “that I wish to make you an offer.”

And then he did.

It was not, most unfortunately, an offer of marriage.

Caroline remained very still upon the balcony of Lord and Lady Ashworth’s home, the soft hum of the party spilling through the open doors behind her while the night air brushed cool fingers along her arms. She listened, without blinking, as Lord Gillsberry explained in a voice brimming with what he clearly believed to be generosity, that he would like her to become his mistress.

“I have always found you quite striking,” he said, as though bestowing a medal. “In your own peculiar way, of course.”

“Is that so,” Caroline murmured. Her voice felt as though it belonged to someone else entirely.

“And while I shall naturally be choosing a wife from among the more traditionally,” he paused, selecting a word with great care, “substantial candidates this season, I see no reason to deny a mutually advantageous understanding in the meantime.”

It should have been the word substantial that struck her the most, but it was not.

It was what followed.

"Come now," Lord Gillsberry said, smiling in the sort of self-satisfied way that suggested he believed his expression charming, "it is not as though someone as thin and lanky as you could do better than me. And you have just turned twenty and one, have you not? I am offering you something rather good, all things considered. Before you get much older."

For a moment Caroline simply looked at him, quite unable to summon anything resembling speech.

Twenty and one. He was calling twenty and one old. He had stood on this balcony in his perfectly pressed coat, with his perfectly ordinary face and his perfectly middling title, and he had implied that Caroline Bingley, who had turned twenty-one exactly eleven days ago, was somehow past her prime and should therefore be grateful for his thoroughly condescending attention.

She thought, in a distant and curiously steady way, that she ought to feel something far louder than what she felt. Fury, certainly. She did feel fury. But beneath the fury lay something softer and far more troublesome, something she was absolutely not prepared to peer at too closely while standing on a balcony at a party she still needed to escape without dramatic incident. That above all else would be too devastatingly humiliating.

She focused instead on Lord Gillsberry.

He was waiting, she realized, for gratitude. He was standing there with that insufferable smirk on his face, wearing the patient, indulgent look of a man who fully expected to be thanked for his transgressions.