bash read timeout only for the first character entered by the user

I have searched for a simple solution that will read user input with the following features:

timeout after 10 seconds, if there is no user input at all
the user has infinite time to finish his answer if the first character was typed within the first 10 sec.

I have found a solution to a similar request (timeout after each typed character) on Linux Read - Timeout after x seconds *idle*. Still, this is not exactly the feature, I was looking for, so I have developed a two line solution as follows:

read -N 1 -t 10 -p "What is your name? > " a
[ "$a" != "" ] && read b && echo "Your name is $a$b" || echo "(timeout)"

In case the user waits 10 sec before he enters the first character, the output will be:

What is your name? > (timeout)

If the user types the first character within 10 sec, he has unlimited time to finish this task. The output will look like follows:

What is your name? > Oliver
Your name is Oliver

However, there is following caveat: the first character is not editable, once it was typed, while all other characters can be edited (backspace and re-type).

Do you have any ideas for a resolution of the caveat or do you have another simple solution to the requested behavior?

Solution

Enable readline and add $a as the default value for the second read.

# read one letter, but don't show it
read -s -N 1 -t 10 -p "What is your name? > " a

if [ -n "$a" ]; then
  # Now supply the first letter and let the user type
  # the rest at their leisure.
  read -ei "$a" b && echo "Your name is $b"
else
  echo "(timeout)"
fi

This still displays a second prompt after the first letter is answered, but I don't think there's a better way to handle this; there's no way to "cancel" a timeout for read. The ideal solution would be to use some command other than read, but you would have to write that yourself (probably as a loadable built-in, in C).