Page 10 of Caroline Bingley’s Last Chance At Love

"I beg your pardon?" she said.

"The balcony at the Ashworth house," he said, straightening from the doorway and taking a few unhurried steps in her direction. "You told off a man who very much deserved what he received. And now, unless my ears deceived me, your latest adventures involve a cup of punch, a surprisingly oblivious ballroom full of witnesses, and two women who will likely require fresh gowns before the evening is out." His voice was low and warm and entirely too amused for her comfort. "You do seem to make an impression wherever you go."

Caroline opened her mouth, then closed it with a flush.

Then she said, with as much composure as a woman could muster while her pulse was doing something exceedingly unhelpful, "I was not aware that I had acquired an audience before."

"You are rather difficult to overlook." He stopped at a polite and appropriate distance from her, which was, she noted, a wholly different thing from a comfortable distance. The torchlight caught the planes of his face in a way that struck her as frankly unreasonable. He looked, she thought, exactly as she remembered him, which was to say that he looked the kind of handsome that one could not dismiss as merely pleasant. "Edward Reinhart," he introduced, and inclined his head with the ease of a man who had done so ten thousand times and never once found it awkward.

The name struck a chord in her. She had heard it recently, from Charles, in the context of a business acquaintance. Something about the owner of a manufacturing factory in New York and an invitation extended in that vague, well-intentioned way Charles had of collecting interesting people. She had not paid it much attention at the time. She rather wished, now, that she had.

"You are from the Americas," she said bluntly.

He looked a little surprised at her frankness. "What gave it away? Ah– it was the accent, wasn’t it?"

"No," said Caroline pleasantly. "Just the general air of superiority."

For one brief and startling instant, she thought she had gone too far. Reinhart’s eyes widened, and she braced herself for the angered, slightly incoherent response she had learned to expect from men who had been spoken to plainly. What she was entirely unprepared for was the laugh. It broke free from him with a warmth and complete lack of restraint that startled her into several seconds of pure speechlessness. It was too genuine, too unguarded, and too loud for an English party. It did something entirely inconvenient to the center of her chest.

Caroline had always been fascinated by overly emotional people that laughed with their whole bodies. She found them just as enviable as she did appalling.

"I am not laughing at you," he managed, though he seemed aware that this defense was somewhat undercut by the fact that he was, in fact, still laughing.

When he composed himself again, he just looked at her for a moment. His grin settled into something quieter and considerably more attentive, and she had the distinct and uncomfortable sensation of being seen quite clearly by someone. It was a strange feeling and rather bold of him. She could not decide whether she liked it. "How," he said, sounding genuinely puzzled in a way that suggested he was not pretending, "does a woman with such a character as yours manage such poor taste in men?"

The warmth in her chest went out like a candle. She turned back to the garden, because the garden at least did not ask uncomfortable questions, and kept her voice level. "I’ll have you know I have very good taste," she said. "It is the men around me that always live to disappoint."

"That," he said, after a pause, "is an exceptionally diplomatic way of describing what I heard overheard a week ago."

Caroline said nothing. She wished he would stop reminding her of the whole mortifying affair.

He came to stand beside her at the balustrade, not crowding her, simply present with the ease of a man entirely comfortable in his own company and, apparently, in hers. She was infuriatingly aware of it. "You are not going to tell me I am wrong," he observed.

"I see very little purpose in explaining myself to a man I do not know."

"Then allow me to resolve the difficulty." He turned to face the garden alongside her, as though they were two old friends contemplating nothing more significant than the shrubbery.

"You know my name now. Edward Reinhart, as established. Thirty-one years of age, originally from New York, currently renting a set of rooms in London while while touring that are very fine and also somehow insufferably dull. I have three horses, which I adore, and three brothers, whom I tolerate with some affection, and a business that occupies considerably more of my time than I find interesting to discuss at parties." He paused. "Your turn."

Caroline looked at him sidelong. She raised her chin imperiously, because if there is one thing she would not be outdone in, it was an introduction. "Caroline Bingley. Twenty-one years of age. Charles Bingley's sister," she added, with a small gesture toward the warm light blazing from the ballroom windows.

"And let me reassure you, you don’t have to spend any more of your precious vacation time worrying on my account. The events that you witnessed last week will never occur again, as I find I am quite thoroughly done with love."

He blinked, clearly taken aback. "I beg your pardon?"

"You asked about my taste in men," she said, with the tone of someone explaining an entirely sensible position to someone who has simply not yet considered it from the correct angle. "I am clarifying that it is no longer a matter requiring my attention. I have recently decided that I intend to be a spinster. A very comfortable, very independent, thoroughly content spinster. It is, I have concluded, an entirely rational choice. No more worrying about poor taste in men for either of us."

"Surely," he said, in the tone of a man choosing his next words with some care, "that cannot be your genuine intention. A woman like yourself, putting herself away on the shelf."

"Why ever not?" Caroline asked

"It is a waste of a perfectly extraordinary woman."

She had been prepared for any number of responses. Amusement. Skepticism. Mocking Perhaps a politely dismissive agreement. She had not been prepared for that. Especially not said in that sincere voice, with such a serious expression. Her mind simply declined to process what was happening for a moment, and so she did what she always did when faced with a conversational development she was not yet equipped to address properly. She pushed down all her confused, flustering emotions and ignored the things he had said that were inconvenient to her entirely.

"Love," she said, with brisk conviction, "is a deception, Mr. Reinhart. I am already in possession of sufficient wealth to fall for such a trick. And thus I fail to see what the institution of marriage as a whole could possibly offer me that I cannot acquire for myself."

He was quiet for a long moment, and she had the strangest sensation that he was deciding something incredibly impulsive in the privacy of his own mind. She doesn’t know why exactly this thought came to her, just that it seemed true.