Your comments still tickle me even though this is an older book. Together we will be revisiting Books 1-5 before I start posting Book 6… 🙂 And if you have any REQUESTS for Book 6 of this series, now is the time to put them in!
XOXO Elizabeth Ann West
Chapter 11 - A Winter Wrong, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
Giddy to receive an express from her brother Gardiner, Mrs. Bennet called for her sister Phillips to join her in the parlor.
“Oh, it’s finally arrived!” She waved the missive in the air as Mrs. Phillips wiped her hands on her apron. Her older sister refused to lift nary a finger to help around the home, and she and her husband had begun discussing ways to find other living arrangements for her sister and nieces, now that the militia was due to disembark in the spring for Brighton.
Taking a deep breath, Mrs. Bennet continued to just hold the letter close to her chest and started to become misty eyed. “I wonder if he bent down on one knee for my Jane in the parlor, or maybe, they took a stroll in Hyde Park. Or perhaps…”
“Perhaps you better open it so you may learn all of the details of Jane’s engagement.” Mrs. Phillips said with a smile. If Jane were to marry Bingley, her problems would be solved! The remaining Bennets could move to Netherfield Park when the happy couple returned!
Breaking open the seal, Mrs. Bennet slowly began to mouth the words as she read line after line. By the middle, she screamed and dropped the letter to the floor. “Oh, my cruel brother. Poor Lydia, she will be ruined!”
As Mrs. Bennet swooned her way to the nearest couch, Mrs. Phillips picked up the dropped missive from the floor. Her eye scanned it frantically until she read the part where her brother would deny a dowry to Lydia if her suitor didn’t come to London to see him.
“No reason to fret, it says here Mr. Wickham must only go to London to see Edward and all will be right as rain.” Mrs. Phillips tucked the letter into her apron to pass it along to her husband. Being a solicitor, perhaps he could pursue a legal avenue to ensure Lydia’s dowry if the worst should pass.
“You don’t understand!” Mrs. Bennet continued to cry on the sofa. “After that mean, wretched Mr. Darcy came to visit, I asked some of the shop owners. He was right.” Mrs. Bennet lowered her voice to a hush. “That Wickham is a cad! He owes nearly two hundred pounds in town, and his monthly salary cannot pay that!” Back to whining, Mrs. Bennet repeated over and over again how she and her daughters were ruined.
Angry, Mrs. Phillips left the parlor and hung her apron upon the peg in the kitchen. She would consult her husband about this and find a solution. There was no possibility she could accept that would allow her sister to remain in her household beyond spring.
* * *
Chapter 11 (cont'd) - A Winter Wrong, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
Walking around Meryton had become Kitty Bennet’s favorite pastime as she looped her arm with her best friend, Maria Lucas. Anything to get out of her cramped aunt’s house and away from her mother’s constant complaints!
“And last night, after dinner, your cousin retired to my father’s study. And after that, he came out with such a smug look on his face, and Charlotte blushed, that I bet, I just bet he’s going to propose to her today!”
Kitty and Maria shared a laugh at the latter’s eldest sister’s expense.
“How disgusting! Poor Charlotte had better make him use willow bark on his teeth! And be ready to do all of the housework!” Kitty laughed more but realized Maria wasn’t laughing so hard anymore.
“I’m sorry, Maria, how did my tongue run away with itself this time?”
Maria Lucas, just fifteen, bent down to pick up a pretty sort of rose-colored rock and tucked it into her pocket. “We don’t all have so many servants that we don’t have chores to do, Kitty.”
Thoroughly ashamed, Kitty apologized again, and then remembered that her own life was far from settled. Her journals at home were filled with her observations and witty rejoinders she wished she had given in polite company but instead resorted to simply giggling.
“La, let’s stop talking about this poor business of marriage. Let me tell you about the latest adventure I’ve written for the orphan Nell now that her house has burned to the ground with her family inside!”
Maria perked up as she dearly loved to hear Kitty’s stories, and the two would likely have continued to have a pleasant afternoon until a small turn down a less frequented alley brought them face-to-face with Lydia and Wickham in a most compromising position.
The sounds and behavior made both girls blush, and it was Maria who grabbed Kitty’s hand to pull her away before they were noticed. Panting, the girls ran to the far side of the street and found the one smallish park on the edge of the market street to sit on the nearest bench.
“I can’t, she can’t—”
Embarrassed, Maria didn’t know what to say to appease her friend, so she settled on alternatively swinging her legs back and forth.
“We must swear to not tell a soul. Please, it would ruin everything. Agreed?” Kitty implored her young friend to join in her accord.
Maria nodded most vigorously. After all, Lydia and Lieutenant Wickham were to marry next week.
* * *
WHAT A DEAL!
A kiss at the Netherfield Ball . . .
Three Dates with Mr. Darcy is a bundle of: An exclusive story, Much to Conceal, a novella that imagines what if Elizabeth confessed to Jane in London that Mr. Darcy proposed in Kent?
A Winter Wrong, the first novella in the Seasons of Serendipity series that imagines what if Mr. Bennet died at the very beginning of Pride and Prejudice?
By Consequence of Marriage, the first novel in the Moralities of Marriage series that wonders what if Mr. Darcy never saved his sister Georgiana from Wickham’s clutches?
Elizabeth Ann West’s Pride and Prejudice variations have enthralled more than 100,000 readers in over 90 countries! A proud member of the Jane Austen Fan Fiction community since the mid-2000s, she hopes you will join her in being happily Darcy addicted!
Chapter 11(cont'd) - A Winter Wrong, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
In a different park, Elizabeth Bennet strolled with Mr. Darcy and her sister Jane with Mr. Bingley. Officially, Elizabeth and Darcy were merely chaperones, but their most recent understanding at the excursion to the theater made them very poor ones.
“Did you know that the company intends to put on Hamlet this spring? I should dearly love to see it,” Elizabeth began their conversation.
Mr. Darcy smiled at how easily Elizabeth spoke with him now.
“My family box shall always be available to you, perhaps we might arrange to view it opening night?”
Elizabeth’s stomach fluttered with butterflies as she couldn’t help but smile. Her head spun with the social expectations she might anticipate with the Darcy siblings as her close intimates.
“That is so very kind of you, Mr. Darcy.” Elizabeth squeezed his arm slightly in appreciation, but when she looked up at him, he was not wearing an expression of happiness. Confused as to how she had offended him, perhaps she had been too forward to suggest another night at the theater and by association, using his family’s seats?
For a long while, the unofficial couple continued to walk behind Jane and Bingley who appeared to be enjoying their own form of stilted conversation. As Elizabeth observed Jane’s posture stiffen, she shivered.
“You are cold. We must return. Bingley!” Darcy called out, causing his friend to turn both he and Jane around. “Miss Elizabeth is chilled, we’d best start back.”
Bingley nodded, and the two couples reversed positions, with Jane and Bingley now following.
“I assure you I am not cold, Mr. Darcy.”
“Nonsense. Your lips are a most worrisome paler shade.”
“And do you often study the color of my lips, sir?” Elizabeth couldn’t help her ire. There was little more she chafed at than Mr. Darcy’s high-handed ways.
Stopping them in their tracks, Mr. Darcy looked down at Miss Elizabeth and wore that expression of disapproval she had seen so often before. “More than you would ever care to imagine, Elizabeth.”
Inhaling through her nose, she stiffened at hearing him call her by her Christian name, but still, a warmth spread throughout her body, and she couldn’t help but smile.
With the Gardiner house back in sight, Mr. Darcy politely inquired if Miss Elizabeth had a partner for the first set tomorrow night.
“I’m afraid I do. Your cousin has most graciously asked for my hand.”
“Richard?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I’ll wallop him, that sneaky bounder!”
“Mr. Darcy!” Elizabeth stomped her foot at such ungentlemanly conversation, and Mr. Darcy bowed his head and kissed her hand in apology.
“Forgive me, it’s an age old competition and this time, it appears Richard has won the point.”
As the men saw the ladies inside, it was with a heavy heart that they declined dinner as they both had other plans. Mr. Bingley held a previous engagement arranged by his sister. He would remind her once more not to reply in his stead to dinners and soirees the Bennets were not invited to attend. Mr. Darcy had declined the same invitation accepted by Mr. Bingley but explained that he had business to attend to as his steward at Pemberley expected his opinion on the spring plantings.
“Perhaps you would like an assistant in drawing up your plans?” Elizabeth said without thought and raised one eyebrow to Mr. Darcy.
“Miss Elizabeth, while I’m sure your skills are admirable, I think my steward and I can manage. This year.” He smiled at her, displaying his oft-hidden dimples, before resuming the mask of Mr. Darcy, Master of Pemberley.
As the men mounted their horses and began riding in the same direction, Elizabeth sighed and watched until she could no longer make out Mr. Darcy’s tall frame amongst the hustle and bustle. She found herself so bewildered by the reactions she felt to his lightest touch but also frustrated with his manners on occasion. One minute she was sure she might swoon, and the next she wanted to knock some sense into the man! It was only after she spent another quiet hour in reflection and reading another of her father’s books that reality dawned on Elizabeth Bennet. She was smitten with Mr. Darcy, just as her uncle had accused her to be two nights ago! Snapping her book shut, Elizabeth decided it was time for a long overdue discussion with her aunt.
You’ve been reading A Winter Wrong
A Winter Wrong, Book 1 of the Seasons of Serendipity
a Pride and Prejudice novella variation series
Release Date: July 17, 2014
33,000 words, ~177 pages in print.
When Jane Bennet’s illness at Netherfield ends up not being just a trifling cold, but an epidemic that sweeps through Hertfordshire, the lives at Longbourn are turned upside down. Elizabeth Bennet finds herself lost without a cherished loved one and the interferences of one Fitzwilliam Darcy most aggravating. Combating the bombastic behavior of Mr. Collins, Elizabeth runs to London for the protection of her aunt and uncle. But acquaintances and introductions bring Mr. Darcy back into her life and Elizabeth discovers he might just mend her broken heart.
A sweetheart romantic novella, A Winter Wrong is the first in a series of seasonal episodes following the Bennet family after the loss of their patriarch. Winter explores the feelings of grief and loss we all have experienced, while still retaining a silver lining for that dark cloud.
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I will admit that Elizabeth is a little moody in this book, but she JUST lost her father. And while mourning was observed in Regency, the girls in their situation would have not been looked too down upon for securing husbands. It wasn’t until the Victorian time period that the hard and fast rules of mourning were more ingrained. And in regards to Lydia, once a couple was engaged, time alone was less of a concern, and in Lydia’s case, not wise.
XOXO Elizabeth Ann West
A Jane-of-all-trades, mistress to none! Elizabeth Ann West is the author of 8 novels and 11 novellas, 18 of which are story variations of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.
Thank You and best wishes
Thank You and best wishes Thoroughly enjoyed your work .