Page 176 of Pride and Prejudice Resolutions

"He has a heart, Miss Bingley." Lindon's steps faltered slightly as he narrowly avoided her train. "Even if he hides it beneath agreat deal of scarlet and arrogance. I have known him for years. I have seen him in battle. I have seen him—"

"I have no interest in what you have seen, Colonel Lindon." Caroline executed a perfect turn, her feathers swaying like a cavalry charge. "I have seen enough for myself."

"Miss Bingley, every coin has two sides."

"Coins." Her tone was crystalline. "Yes, they have two sides. Both cold to the touch." She met Lindon's eyes with a gaze that had frozen harder men. "Tell your friend that I am not in the business of lending my capital to those who cannot afford the interest. My fortune is not for sale, and neither am I."

They turned again. The music swelled.

At the edge of the floor, Colonel Fitzwilliam had not moved.

Caroline caught his eye—accidentally, she told herself, purely accidentally—and ensured her smile was as cold and bright as the gold he so desperately required.

Let him watch. Let him suffer.

She was Caroline Bingley, and she was done being anyone's strategic asset.

The waltz ended. She curtsied to Lindon—shallow, perfunctory—and swept away before he could offer another word. She did not look back at the man in the red coat. She absolutely did not notice that his expression, as she walked away, looked less like calculation and more like a heart breaking in real time.

That was not her concern.

She had feathers to maintain and a reputation to rebuild.

And if her own heart was shattering beneath her stays, well.

That was what corsets were for.

Chapter Fourteen: The Siege of the Bingley Carriage

Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam had survived Talavera.

He had survived Badajoz, where the walls ran red and good men screamed for three days straight. He had survived a donkey in Coimbra with a personal vendetta, a French cavalry charge that should have killed him twice over, and one determined Spanish assassin who had taken violent exception to Richard's continued existence.

None of it—not the bullets, not the bayonets, not the donkey—had prepared him for watching Caroline Bingley walk away.

She moved across the ballroom floor like a flame through dry timber, her orange gown blazing a path through the sea of pale silks and exhausted neutrals. The ostrich plumes swayed with each step—a funeral procession, he realised. For his hopes. For whatever idiotic fantasy he had been nursing about a future that included sharp tongues and sharper wit and a woman who made him want to be better than he was.

She did not look back.

She did not hesitate.

She simply walked, her chin lifted at that specific angle he had come to recognise asI am fine and I will stomp on anyone who suggests otherwise, until she reached her brother.

Richard watched her speak to Bingley. He could not hear the words—the orchestra was playing a jig, and some fool was laughing too loudly—but he could read the set of her shoulders. The sharp gesture of her gloved hand. The way Bingley's face cycled through confusion, concern, and finally the resigned acceptance of a man who had learned, through years of painful experience, not to argue with his sister when she wore That Expression.

They were leaving.

Shewas leaving.

"Fitzwilliam." Lindon's voice came from approximately three miles away. "Fitzwilliam, you need to breathe. You have gone an alarming shade of purple, and I am not equipped to explain your death to your mother."

Richard was not listening. He was watching her collect her cloak from a footman, then sweep towards the entrance. Watching her disappear through the doors without a single backward glance.

His feet moved before his brain could lodge a formal objection.

"Fitzwilliam! Where are you—bloody hell."

Richard was already halfway across the ballroom, having lost all claim to sanity, weaving through dancers and dowagers. He knocked a champagne flute from a startled baron's hand. He nearly trampled a debutante in virginal white who squeaked like a distressed mouse.