An Offer of Marriage: A Pride and Prejudice Variation (The Engaged to Mr Darcy Series)

by Amy D'Orazio

Confused, Elizabeth asked, “Anne… Miss de Bourgh? But she is⁠—” “Sickly?” the colonel asked cheerfully. “Evidently not as much as we all believed. She has a right hook that would do them proud at Gentleman Jackson’s!”

Mr Darcy agreed, now with such a look of tenderness that Elizabeth hardly knew where to shift her eyes. In any case, it was surely not the time to announce that she despised him and had no intention of marrying him.

What is it about me that these men must endlessly remind me of how disappointing and inferior I am?

“Why she accepted Mr Collins,” Maria asserted matter-of-factly. Why she snatched up Mr Collins like a dog grabs at meat that falls from the table is more like it.

What has become of me? he thought with amusement. I would never have thought myself a moon-calf for love, but here we are.

“You did perfectly well, dearest. He who calls the tune must pay the piper, I fear.”

Mr Collins!” Fitzwilliam cried out delightedly. “Saye, you do not know him, but I shall tell you this: if Lady Catherine broke wind in that man’s face, he would proclaim it an honour and beg for another.”

She was once not the nervous sort, but had lately been forced to marry a man who treated her worse than the boot scraper he used to remove the horse manure from his shoes.

With a sigh, she told her reflection, “As Lydia would say, I look like Satan’s left foot.”

“Not at all. I tried to dab spirits off his trousers once, and he nearly threw himself off the balcony of the theatre to get away from me.”

She was owed nothing less than for him to make a cake of himself, to lick her boots, to bow like a debutante in the Queen’s salon. And he would do it all, if only they could again be set on a right path.

“And the fact that I have always liked Mrs Darcy,” Wickham said. “She and I were great friends at one time.” “And yet you were still willing to throw her into the Thames,” Darcy replied drily. “Ever a friend, that is you.”

I confess that I am rather…besotted with him, this Darcy I have found here at Pemberley.