Mr Darcy's Mail-Order Bride by J. Dawn King

Author:J. Dawn King [King, J. Dawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quiet Mountain Press
Published: 2016-11-24T05:00:00+00:00

“Georgiana, might I come in?” Elizabeth had tapped lightly on the door frame. She heard no sounds of activity from within the bedroom, and she wondered if her newest sister might have fled to an unknown location instead of the safety of her old bed chamber.

“Come in.” Her voice was so soft, Elizabeth barely heard.

Elizabeth opened the door to a pitiful sight. Georgiana had pulled her chair to the window. She was leaning against the glass, her hand pressed to the pane as if seeking help from outside.

Moving into the room to sit on the bed, Elizabeth quietly inquired, “Are you mad, sad, or hurt?”

Georgiana slowly turned towards her, though her eyes appeared to flit to and from every object in the room except for Elizabeth.

“Why do you ask?”

There were no tears, and Elizabeth thought she had never observed a person so alone.

“I have four sisters, three of them younger, two of them close to your age, and only one of us close to perfection, my eldest sister, Jane Bingley. If you were to ask any of them, including Jane, they would tell you that I am the nosiest, the busiest, and the bossiest of all five Bennet girls. I’ve learned there are only those three emotions which will cause a young lady of sense and good health to become despondent, so I will ask again. Are you mad, sad, or hurt?”

“All of them.” The words were blurted out as if they were vomit she had been unable to hold in. Georgiana immediately slapped her hand over her mouth, trying to keep from saying more.

“I imagined this to be so.” Elizabeth carefully rested her hands on the top of her legs with her palms up and her fingers extended. Modulating her breathing and smiling slightly, she sought to consider how she might have felt at sixteen to be in Georgiana’s tightly-laced boots. “If I’d had a brother who was severely injured, my heart would have broken into a million tiny pieces when he told me not to come to him. Even though almost two weeks have passed, my heart would still ache.” Georgiana’s eyes never wavered from focusing on the floor. “I’d be livid at the thought that it might have been his new wife who had encouraged me to stay away, a woman so unknown to you that you’d not even known of her existence prior to the horrible note telling of the accident. I would be despondent at wondering if I would ever have a place at Pemberley, the place I had just as much right to as this new person who had planted herself in my home.”

Without reply, Georgiana turned her head back to the window, a sigh weighing down her shoulders.

“Do you love my brother?”

“No.”

Another sigh.

“So you married him for Pemberley.” Rather than an accusation, it was a cold statement of fact—one that was highly offensive to Elizabeth. With each passing second, she realized how alike the siblings were—neither having boundaries for polite conversation.

“No. I knew nothing of this property or this home before we wed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.