The charming, sunny baron who is really just a sad clown. The grumpy, fire-breathing spinster who is really just afraid of getting hurt. Who will drop their mask first?

Miss Caroline Bingley is barely holding it together. Two years after her disastrous journey to Hertfordshire, after all her illusions were shattered, Miss Bingley is thoroughly convinced of three she is a repulsive spinster, she is broken, and she deserves it. When she meets a plump, short little dandy of a baron who seems to disagree with this, well, Caroline will have to decide one can she bear letting herself be known? Can she risk letting down her walls?

Lord James Maverleigh is one of the most well-connected men on the ton, a bon vivant, and thoroughly sick of his charming persona. And though he is more liable to be found with a sewing needle in hand than a fencing foil, and is much too short...and he's too plump...and his face is too boyish. Despite all that, Lord Maverleigh forged himself into someone respectable. But when he encounters an unmarried Miss who refuses to drop her sour expression in his presence, who refuses to even speak with him? Well, the bored baron is very intrigued.

The Baron & Miss Bingley is the second installment of The Austen Continuations, a series of interconnected, standalone JAFF novels and novellas. It is an introspective, slow-burn novella where two intelligent, damaged, and jagged people find the most unexpected thing of mutual recognition.

They cannot escape themselves, no matter how hard they try. But if they get out of their own way, they might just become each other's sanctuary.