“And we shall need to get a quartet together to play for us so we can dance. This time Richard will not be there to keep me from dancing the night entire with you.”
“I thought you wished to go straight to matters.”
“Maybe we’ll just dance half the night.”
Arm in arm they walked back to Pemberley to make a new memory.
A Request from the Author
I hope you do not mind if I finish this book by suggesting you to donate to Doctors Without Borders. Let me explain why it is extremely important to me to interrupt your book, a book you paid for, with a fundraising appeal.
Last summer my brother graduated from college. For the ceremony they sat a thousand relatives of the happy escapees into the real world on folding chairs in the beating sun and made them wait. And wait. And wait. On hard plastic chairs.
While we waited for the long march of engineering students to their seats to begin, so we could listen to the speeches the college had arranged for the grads to be sent off with, a projector cycled through photos of the graduating class. Each photo had a sentence where the student said what they wanted to do now that they had graduated. Make money appeared once or twice. Make Mom and Dad proud was far more common. Find a job was occasional.
By far the most common response, however, what around a third of the students said, was some variant of, “I want to make the world a better place.”
Do you?
I do; I hope you do too.
I, like most of you, improve the world directly through my work. My best guess is that you collectively have spent at least a hundred times as many hours reading my first books as I spent writing them. I have changed literally years of lived human experience. That is a great reward for an author, but we all improve the world by being part of it. Someone’s life is certainly better because of what you do.
But I want to do more. We can do more.
Donations save lives. We can literally do what superheroes do. So help me make the world a better place by supporting Doctors Without Borders, and make yourself a little bit more like superman.
You are at least vaguely aware of the statistics about preventable death. You have heard touching stories that end with the child living because of a lifesaving donation. You don’t need to be told why you should donate to Doctors Without Borders or another organization that alleviates suffering. You already know.
So just do it.
Please, please, please. Be the change you want to see in the world. Do something which will make your children proud. Make the world a better place. Donate something: one percent of your income or ten dollars a month; something. Act to make a world where everyone has basic medical care.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
P.S.
I genuinely would prefer you donate than buy my other books. My first two books, The Return and Mr. Darcy and Mr. Collins’s Widow are available free on fanfiction.net. Donate to DWB and read them there without any guilt about not supporting the author. But please, leave a review if you do so.
About the Author
I am from California and my address and mother (Hi Mom!) are there, but I plan to take advantage of my (modest) location independent income to mix backpacking travel and writing for the next year or two. I first discovered Pride and Prejudice on a long day of travel out of Mexico as a teenager. I was very impressed with myself for getting the jokes. I read a lot of nineteenth century literature that year, of which Austen and Charlotte Bronte, of course, were my favorites. It was years later that I discovered and repeatedly binge read Pride and Prejudice fanfiction. Now I am providing material for others to binge read with.
If you liked this book you may enjoy my other books. The Return is another romantic comedy: What if Mr. Bingley ignored Darcy and married Jane immediately? Obviously Elizabeth and Darcy would argue at the wedding once Jane and Bingley left for the honeymoon. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Collins’s Widow: Will Elizabeth’s memories of her horrible first marriage to the man who inherited the estate from her father when she was fifteen keep her from finding happiness with Darcy? Mr. Darcy’s Vow: Darcy’s spendthrift father left Pemberley deeply in debt, so Darcy swore to never indulge himself in such matters as marrying a penniless girl. It got reviews such as ‘It was different but good,’ and ‘too much unhappiness for P&P fan fiction’ and ‘I had an indecisive boyfriend like this Darcy, and he was horrible.’ I see the point. It has more keep them apart to torture the characters for entertainment than I, in retrospect, personally like, and I had no idea it was so unusual until that was what the positive reviews said. I still think that if the novel catches you right, it will be an excellent read. Some people really liked it. You might be one of them.
If you liked this book, please leave a review. It is a way of telling other people whether you think this book should be read. So if you think it should, please help other readers find it.
I can be reached at [email protected]. Feel free to send me an email.
Excerpt from Mr. Darcy and Mr. Collins’s Widow
Elizabeth was only fifteen when Mr. Bennet died. His heir, Mr. Collins, was an awful, ugly man who mistreated the servants. Elizabeth would never let her dear Jane marry him. Never. Jane was beautiful, kind and good. She deserved to marry someone she loved…
The nightmare always went the same. She could never throw herself in front of her husband. Mr. Collins would strike Lydia. Elizabeth struggled to move as the sound of his blows echoed: knock, knock. Lydia's tear stained face and accusing eyes were vaguely deformed. Action and speech were impossible, and her screams would not come. Mr. Collins's fist rose. Fell. She hurt when the blow struck. That awful sound echoed.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Collins awoke, soaked in sweat with a racing heart. The person outside knocked on the bedroom door again. “I'll be up presently,” Elizabeth cried. The knocks ceased.
Elizabeth placed her hand on her stomach — she'd miscarried this afternoon. She mourned the child, but did not feel really unhappy that Providence had chosen to take him away. Motherhood terrified her: her husband would treat her child the way his brutish father treated him.
Mr. Collins became angry when he heard — very angry. Only once had Elizabeth seen him this enraged. He pushed his face inches from Elizabeth's, and exclaimed as she forced herself to not gag at the alcoholic odor of his breath, “I told you to give me a healthy son!”
His manner frightened Elizabeth, and tears began as she responded, “It is not my fault. I tried —”
“You disobeyed me. You may pretend otherwise, but it was disobedience. Disobedience. If you were a good wife this would not have happened. You owe me. Elizabeth, you owe me. You promised to never disobey. Remember?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Elizabeth frantically nodded. The memory of the day he extorted that promise made her sick with anxiety, “I did all I could.”
“You should have done better. You should not have destroyed my child. You - you have not behaved as a wife ought. You must be punished. I do not know how — I must think on it. What you have done demands great severity.” He looked down with a curled lip, “I cannot bear the sight of you. You are not sorry at all. You shall be.” He walked to the door. “When I return, I will have decided how to correct this insult.”
Mr. Collins left the house. Elizabeth nervously waited for his return so she could beg forgiveness again, but when he had not come home by midnight Elizabeth fell asleep in his bedroom while she waited.
Elizabeth stared at the door. He must have returned. It would be a servant sent to call her to the study so he could announce her fate. Elizabeth rehearsed a final time how she would grovel: He enjoyed it when she begged on her knees.
Elizabeth's pulse pounded as she walked to the door, her footsteps sounded eerily loud in her ears. Mrs. Hill stood there, her countenance grave. This was no mere summons to her husband. “What — what is it!” Elizabeth cried. Had he already hurt one of her s
isters?
Mrs. Hill searched Elizabeth's face for an eternity, then stated it baldly, “Mr. Collins is dead.”
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Excerpt from The Return
Miss Bingley had halfway descended into a mania.
“Cheapside!” She stabbed her fingers inches from Bingley’s nose. “His residence is in Cheapside. Do you understand what that means? He can see his warehouses from his own house. How dare you consider attaching me to such a man?”
Darcy knew he should stop her. The snarling, red faced anger she’d reached due to frustration would not convince Bingley to drop Miss Bennet. But — it was so very amusing. She’d not started this way; it had taken ten minutes of Bingley’s determined silence to bring her to it.
Miss Elizabeth would have laughed. She would have hid it while in the same room, but the instant she was alone, she would have turned her pert nose up and laughed.
Bingley hated confrontation and hunched behind a tall winged back chair. It was not enough to protect him from Miss Bingley. Her voice was now a banshee’s hysterical shriek, “Answer me. Cheapside. How dare you?”
Without looking at her, Bingley mumbled, “Not in Cheapside, near it. Gracechurch Street is outside of the district.”
“It makes no difference!”
Bingley jumped back at the savage rage in his sister’s voice. His terrified eyes darted around the richly decorated walls of his drawing room. Darcy smiled and shrugged at him.
He’d always hoped to be present when Miss Bingley made her bid to enter Bedlam. Miss Elizabeth’s eyes would have been so bright and delighted as she watched.
“Do you despise me?” Miss Bingley circled around the chair trying to get closer to Bingley who kept backing away to keep the chair between them.
Miss Bingley stopped and clapped her hands over her mouth. “You do! That is it. You hate me. There could be no other reason. Why do you hate me? Have I not always loved you? Have I not always cared for you? How can you hate me? Oh! Oh” — she moaned and turned her eyes towards the heavens — “What did I do to deserve such a hateful brother?”
“Enough! I will not give way. I will not.”
Darcy had never heard Bingley shout so.
Bingley’s eyes were wide. Clearly he had never heard himself shout so either. He reverted to form. “Please, can we not stop this useless dispute? You know I hate to argue. I have never cared for another creature as I do Jane, and I will not give her up. Caroline, I — I love her, does that matter nothing to you? Does my happiness mean nothing to you?”
The longing in Bingley’s eyes destroyed Darcy’s glee. The situation was not amusing. Why couldn’t Jane Bennet have loved his friend? Despite everything else, he could have supported Bingley if she loved him.
Still shocked by Bingley’s shout, Miss Bingley blinked at him for several seconds. Then she sneered. “I shall not cease. You flirt with so many angels — just find another. It is never hard for men like you to switch the object of their affections.”
Darcy almost winced. It was clear as day that Bingley’s feelings towards Jane Bennet were stronger than any before. And to insult a man so. It struck at his honor. He needed to stop Miss Bingley before she made Bingley immune to reason.
“Miss Bingley.” Darcy spoke coldly, “You have spoken. Your brother heard you. Give him an opportunity to consider your words.”
Miss Bingley startled. A struggle showed on her face. She clearly wished to use whatever argument was in her mind. She snarled at Bingley one last time, “If you marry Jane Bennet, I shall never speak to you again.” As Bingley blinked at that threat, Miss Bingley gave Darcy the sweetest smile. “Of course, Mr. Darcy, whatever you think best.”
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