Chapter Eight The Catastrophe at Rotten Row
Caroline Bingley had received many notes from gentlemen over the course of her four and twenty years.
Most contained flowery declarations of admiration.
Some included badly written poetry comparing her eyes to various celestial bodies.
One memorable specimen had likened her hair to a "radiant carrot", which she suspected was the result of either profound ignorance or a head injury.
Colonel Fitzwilliam's note contained none of these things.
It arrived with the morning post, delivered on plain paper with handwriting that looked as though it had been written by someone actively being shot at.
Miss Bingley,
Rotten Row. Ten o'clock. Bring your brother for propriety. Wear something that will not frighten the horses.
Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam
No pleasantries. No explanation. Just a command delivered with the warmth of a general ordering a flanking manoeuvre.
Caroline stared at the note, her teacup suspended halfway to her lips. Louisa, who was consuming her third helping of kippers whilst looking vaguely martyred, glanced up from her plate.
"What is it?" her sister asked, her mouth full. "Has someone died?"
"Colonel Fitzwilliam has invited me to ride in Hyde Park this very morning."
Louisa's fork clattered to her plate. "The penniless Colonel? Whatever for?"
"I have not the faintest idea."
"Well, you cannot go. It is improper. He is unmarried. You are unmarried. People will talk."
Caroline lifted the note, examining it as one might a suspicious fungus. "He has requested Charles accompany us, for propriety."
At the mention of his name, Charles looked up from the far end of the table where he had been constructing an elaborate tower out of toast points. His face brightened with the eagerness of a spaniel hearing the word "walk".
"A ride! Capital idea! I have not ridden in weeks. Not since that incident with the fence. And the ditch. And the vicar's hat."
"You rode over a vicar?" Caroline asked faintly.
"Not over. Past. Very quickly. He was most understanding, though his hat did suffer. I sent him a new one. With ribbons."
Louisa groaned, pressing a hand to her swollen abdomen. "This family is a source of perpetual humiliation."
"But the ribbons were tasteful," Charles protested.
Caroline re-read the note, searching for hidden meaning in the terse script. Wear something that will not frighten the horses. The audacity. As if she habitually dressed like a circus.
Though, to be fair, there had been the orange incident. And the violet pelisse. And that unfortunate bonnet with the stuffed magpie.
"I shall wear grey," she announced.
Louisa blinked. "Grey?"
"Subdued. Respectable. The sort of colour a woman wears when she is not attempting to set the world ablaze."
"You? In grey? Again?" Louisa set down her fork, her face shifting from annoyance to suspicion. "Caroline, are you unwell? You have been wearing muted colours for weeks. It is disturbing. You look like a governess."
"I look refined."
"You look dull."
Caroline folded the note in precise, sharp creases. "I am adapting my strategy. The Colonel believes—" She stopped, catching herself before revealing too much.
"The Colonel believes what?" Louisa leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. "Caroline Letitia Bingley, are you taking advice from that penniless second son? The man owns nothing but a horse and a sword. What could he possibly teach you about securing a husband?"
"Tactics," Caroline replied coolly.
"Tactics?"
"A strategy applied to the marriage mart. Very effective."
Louisa stared at her as though she had announced her intention to join the veil. "You have gone mad. Pregnancy has addled your wits, no, wait. I am the pregnant one. What is your excuse?"
Charles, who had been listening vaguely, suddenly clapped his hands together. "I shall accompany you! It will be marvellous! I shall wear my new riding coat. The one with the brass buttons. Miss Whitmore said they were very dashing."
"Miss Whitmore finds everything dashing," Caroline muttered. "She called a teapot dashing last week."
"It was a very fine teapot."
Caroline rushed to her chamber. She stood eyeing the riding habit Schmidt had laid out on her bed.
It was grey, as promised. Slate grey wool with black frogging across the bodice and a matching spencer jacket.
The skirt was cut for side saddle, long enough to drape elegantly but practical enough to avoid tangling in the stirrups.
A crisp white cravat at her throat and a small black hat with a single curling feather completed the ensemble.
She looked like a storm cloud. A very elegant, possibly dangerous storm cloud.
"Will this do, Miss?" Schmidt asked, adjusting the fall of the jacket.
"It will have to. The Colonel has strong opinions about my wardrobe. If I arrive in anything brighter than ash, he will likely commandeer my horse and send me home on foot."
Schmidt, who had been privy to three years of Caroline's sartorial warfare, merely grunted and fetched the riding gloves.
By ten minutes to ten, Caroline was standing in the entrance hall, tapping her riding crop against her boot with mounting irritation.
Charles had not yet emerged from his chambers.
This was unsurprising. Her brother operated on a timeline comprehensible only to very small children and men who had recently suffered head trauma.
She marched upstairs and pounded on his door.
"Charles! We are leaving in five minutes. If you are not dressed, I shall attend alone and let Society assume the worst."
The door flew open. Charles stood before her in shirt sleeves, one boot on, the other in his hand, and his cravat hanging around his neck like a noose awaiting deployment.
"I cannot find my other boot!"
"It is on your foot, Charles."
He looked down. "Oh! So it is! How marvellous!"
Fifteen minutes later, because nothing in the Bingley household ever occurred on schedule, they arrived at Hyde Park.
The morning was crisp, the sky a pale wash of grey and gold.
Rotten Row stretched before them, a wide dirt path flanked by trees still bare from winter but showing the first tentative hints of green.
And there, sitting astride a horse that looked as though it had been carved from granite and bad temper, was Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam.
He wore civilian riding clothes: a dark brown coat, buckskin breeches, and tall boots that had been polished to within an inch of their life. His horse, the infamous Black Thunder, stood seventeen hands high, black as coal, was calculating the quickest route to murder.
The Colonel looked equally forbidding.
"You are late, Miss Bingley."
Caroline urged her mount, a showy chestnut mare named Seraphina, hired at ruinous expense from the most fashionable stable in London, forward until she was level with him.
"We are twelve minutes late, Colonel. Hardly a capital offence."
"In the army, twelve minutes is the difference between victory and death."
"Fortunate, then, that we are in a park and not a battlefield."
Charles, who had somehow managed to mount his horse without falling off, trotted up beside them with a grin that could have lit the Thames. "Colonel! Good morning! Splendid weather! Is that your horse? He looks like he wants to eat me!"
"He does," the Colonel confirmed. "I advise you to keep your distance. Black Thunder dislikes men in shiny buttons. He finds them offensive."
Charles glanced down at his gleaming brass buttons, his face falling. "Oh. Should I take them off?"
"Unless you wish to ride naked, Mr Bingley, I suggest you simply avoid any sudden movements."
Caroline suppressed a smile. "Shall we proceed, Colonel? Or did you summon me here to discuss equine fashion preferences?"
His mouth curved. "We proceed. Stay close, Miss Bingley. Rotten Row can be treacherous for those unaccustomed to it."
"I am an excellent rider."
"I am sure you are. I have no doubt you handle your mare with all the grace and skill you apply to every other aspect of your life."
"Is that a compliment, Colonel?"
"It is an observation. Whether it is a compliment depends entirely on how well this ride concludes."
He nudged Black Thunder into a trot. Caroline followed, Seraphina moving beneath her with the high stepping precision of a horse that knew it was being admired.
Behind them, Charles called out cheerfully, "Wait for me! My boot is slipping!"
The disaster, Caroline would reflect later, began exactly four minutes into their ride.
It began, as most disasters do, with good intentions and a complete absence of common sense.
They had been trotting sedately along Rotten Row, nodding to the few other riders brave enough to face the morning chill, when Charles Bingley spotted a dog.
Not just any dog. A small, white, fluffy abomination, a mobile cloud with legs. It trotted across the path some thirty yards ahead, pursued by a flustered lady's maid who was clutching her bonnet and shrieking in a pitch that could shatter glass.
"Oh!" Charles cried, his voice bright with misguided heroism. "The poor creature is loose! I shall retrieve it!"
Before either Caroline or the Colonel could intervene, Charles kicked his horse into a gallop.
"Mr Bingley, no—" the Colonel began, but it was too late.
Charles thundered down the Row, his brass buttons glinting in the pale sunlight, his cravat streaming behind him like a pennant of doom. The dog, upon seeing a large horse bearing down on it, did what any sensible animal would do: it panicked.
It bolted directly towards Caroline.
Seraphina, who until this moment had been the picture of equine composure, took one look at the approaching ball of white fluff and decided that her life was in mortal danger.
The mare reared, her front hooves pawing the air, and released a whinny that sounded like a dramatic soprano discovering a spider in her dressing room.
Caroline's crop went flying. Her hat followed shortly after, the feather spinning through the air like a tiny, defeated flag.