Page 119 of Pride and Prejudice Resolutions

"Easter, Richard," the Earl interrupted. "Fix it. Or pack your trunks."

He turned on his heel and marched away, heading to the buffet table with the determination of a shark scenting blood.

Richard exhaled slowly. He turned back to the fire, draining his glass in one long swallow. The West Indies. The black vomit. Heat. Exile. It was a death sentence for his social life, and likely for his liver.

Robert and Darcy, who had politely stepped back during the parental dressing down, returned. Robert looked sympathetic, but his eyes held a calculating light.

"The West Indies," Robert mused. "The climate is terrible for the complexion. But excellent for rum. Though I imagine the uniforms are dreadfully heavy."

"Do not start," Richard warned, gripping the mantelpiece until his knuckles turned white. "I am a dead man. I cannot find a titled heiress by Easter. They are all either married, in the nursery, or look like horses. My father demands breeding and money. It is an impossible combination for a second son."

"There is one option," Robert said softly. He swirled his wine. "One woman currently in London. Unmarried. Desperate for a connection to the peerage. And in possession of twenty thousand pounds."

Richard looked at him. "Who?"

"You know who," Robert grinned. "The Banshee. The Lemon."

"Caroline Bingley?" Richard recoiled as if Robert had offered him a viper. "You cannot be serious. My father just said he wants a woman of breeding. She is trade. He will hate her."

"She is a woman of good breeding and she is rich trade. Hefty purse, brother. That is what he said," Robert countered. "And once the money is in the bank, he will learn to love her. Or at least, he will love her money. Twenty thousand pounds, Richard. It buys a lot of forgiveness. And a lot of breeches. It solves the West Indies problem instantly."

"She is unbearable," Richard hissed. "She is a monument to affectation. She treats the world as her mirror and finds it lacking. I will not be the man to polish her reflection."

"She is a very rich, handsome lemon," Robert insisted. "And you are a very poor, desperate soldier."

"I would rather," Richard announced, his voice rising, cutting through the chatter of the nearby guests, "eat a live frog than court Caroline Bingley."

A sudden hush fell over the immediate vicinity. Mrs Gardiner paused her walk, her foot hovering mid-air.

Robert blinked. "A living frog? That seems excessive. A cooked one, perchance, with a garlic sauce… the French eat them, I am told."

"Alive," Richard insisted, trembling with the force of his conviction. "Kicking. Slimy. Green. I would dredge it from the pond and swallow it whole before I bowed my head to that woman and asked for her hand. I would sooner marry a washerwoman. I would sooner take vows of celibacy and live in a cave in Yorkshire."

"Yorkshire is lovely this time of year," Darcy noted helpfully. "Plenty of caves near Pemberley."

"You jest." Richard pointed a finger at Robert's idiotic grinning face. "But I am in earnest. The woman is poison in silk. Sheoffered me a coin, Robert. A shilling. She thought to mark me as a servant. I will not give her the satisfaction of owning me."

He turned his back on the room, staring into the flames. "I will find another way. I will sell the horse. I will gamble better. But I will not eat the lemon."

Robert raised his glass to Richard's back. "Frog or lemon? What do you think? We should wager," he whispered to Darcy.

Darcy clinked his glass against the Viscount's. "Definitely," he agreed. "This should be entertaining to watch."

Chapter Three: The Fortress of Violet Velvet

Bond Street did not sell goods. It sold armour for the soul.

Caroline adjusted the strings of her reticule, enjoying the heavy, rhythmic collision of gold sovereigns against the silver clasp. The sound acted as a heartbeat, steadier and far more comforting than the one fluttering in her chest. If a lingering melancholy from previous humiliations wished to take root in her ribs, she would simply evict the sensation by filling the void with sarcenet, lace, and exorbitant trifles.

Schmidt, nearly buried beneath a mountain of striped hatboxes, trailed five paces behind, wheezing like a bellows with a puncture. Caroline paid her no mind. One did not remunerate servants to breathe with ease. One paid them to bear the physical weight of one's superior taste.

She paused before the bow window of a stationer's shop to inspect her reflection. The new walking dress of burnt sienna, worn beneath a pelisse of distinctively bright violet velvet, announced her presence with the subtlety of a coronation cannon. The bonnet, crowned with three towering ostrich feathers, added nearly a foot to her stature, and she was tall for a woman. It was a magnificent assemblage. It screamed consequence. It screamed validity.

A dowager in a carriage passing by, wearing drab, respectable grey, raised a lorgnette and inspected the violet velvet as one might inspect a suspicious rash.

Caroline lifted her chin, the feathers bobbing with aggressive pride.Let them stare.The peerage wore dull muslins and faded coats because they were crumbling into dust, their fortunes eaten by moths and mortgages. She was new masonry, freshly painted and fortified. She turned from the window, intent onacquiring a set of hot-pressed writing paper she did not require, when a figure emerged from the shop directly into her path.

The man halted, blinking against the weak afternoon light. He wore a coat of blue superfine cut by a master, Weston, undoubtedly, although the cuffs bore the tell-tale sheen of a garment brushed a dozen times too many. His buckskin breeches were immaculate and undeniably worn, and his Hessian boots, though polished to a black mirror, had seen better years.