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If the surprise I felt at hearing my voice registered at about a nine out of ten on the shock scale, the mention of Wickham blew it right off the charts.
“Wickham?” My voice was now a frightfully high squeak, like a church mouse that inhaled helium and then was stomped on. I cleared my throat. My hands clutched at my skirts, frantically, as if by finding purchase on them I could somehow grab onto reality. My spine felt unnaturally straight. I don’t think I’d ever sat up so straight in my life. My normal reaction would have been to jump up and pace about the room. I was kind of a fidgety person in general, but for some reason, other than the spastic movement of my hands, my body refused to move from its extremely still state.
I took a deep breath and tried again.
“Wickham? George Wickham?” I asked. My companion, clearly discomfited by my strange behavior, nodded vigorously. My brain, which had been feeling sluggish—maybe a byproduct of the strange rushing sounds that had been echoing inside my cranium—began to fit pieces together. “And...you’re Mrs. Younge?”
She nodded again. “Miss Darcy, are you feeling quite well?”
Miss Darcy. Georgiana Darcy. Mr. Darcy’s little sister. Which meant one of two things. I was dreaming or I was crazy. I closed my eyes briefly and ordered myself to wake up. Nothing happened. I peeled my eyelids open again to find Miss Darcy’s paid companion, Mrs. Younge, still watching me.
Well, that still left crazy as an option.
“I feel, um, a little bit disoriented,” I said truthfully. I was finally able to will myself to stand up. I was tiny! My eye line was completely different; it made everything look strange. I usually stood at 5’9, but I’d bet good money that I was now at least seven to eight inches shorter than that. I probably hadn’t been this short since I was ten years old. I took a few steps, Mrs. Younge watching me the entire time. I would have said she looked concerned, but I had a poor opinion of her to start with. I knew she was complicit in trying to foist Wickham on poor, unsuspecting Georgiana, so I trusted her about as much as I’d trust a viper.
I glanced around the room. There wasn’t a mirror, which was too bad because I was dying to find out what Georgiana Darcy looked like. I think that was the moment when it occurred to me that I might actually be in Pride and Prejudice. My brain had somehow accepted that I was a different person—a character that I was familiar enough with to be curious about.
Likely I was a total nut case and had already been committed to a mental institution by concerned friends and family. My choice of hallucination seemed to be the pages of Pride and Prejudice, though why my poor, addled brain would pick Georgiana, I honestly had no idea.
I walked over to the window and looked out. We were on the first floor, and the sitting room window overlooked a cobblestone street, lined on either side with stately looking homes.
“We are in Ramsgate,” I said out loud. I was mentally orienting myself in the novel’s storyline. The seaside town of Ramsgate is where Georgiana Darcy had been seduced by Mr. Wickham into agreeing to elope with him. We were discussing Wickham, but Mrs. Younge hadn’t acted as if he had already proposed to Georgiana—to me—I corrected myself.
“Yes, of course. Do you think you might need to retire? Mayhap if you lay down for a few moments. Mr. Wickham did promise to call today. We do not want him to see you in such a confused state.”
“Don’t we? I mean, do we not?” I tried to imitate Mrs. Younge’s speaking pattern as I turned my head to look back at her. “And my brother, Mr. Darcy, we do not expect him?”
Mrs. Younge actually started at that and I smiled to myself. Snake, I thought. It’d ruin all your plans if Darcy showed up right now. Although he manages to ruin them for you soon enough. I wondered how long it would be until he did show up, wrecking Wickham’s and Mrs. Younge’s nefarious plans and swooping me off to London. Would it be possible to stay crazy that long? Being crazy might be worth it if I got to see Mr. Darcy in the flesh. Although, I’d be his sister, which was kind of awkward and lame, but at least I’d get to see him.
I must be an incredibly sick cookie to be hoping to remain in a complete state of mental breakdown in order to see a hot fictional guy. I’m obviously not in a healthy place.
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Table of Contents
Other Works by J. W. Becton
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Epilogue
excerpt from Moral Hazard (Southern Fraud Thriller 4) by J. W. Becton.
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Connect with Jennifer Online
Please enjoy the following excerpt from Attempting Elizabeth by Jessica Grey