Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites Read Online Free PDF Page A

telling of her sister Elizabeth’s engagement to Darcy. It was almost as much an astonishment to her as to her husband.
    “I cannot believe her good fortune, Wickham, for he is easily the richest man in England and I know she despised him not six months ago. What could have changed her mind so decidedly?”
    The question was asked more to herself than Wickham, so after barely an instance of reflection, she opined, “I can tell you why. A man of that rank need only offer his affection and Lizzy, for all her airs, cannot call herself above any other woman in wasting no time in accepting.”
    She snorted a short laugh and looked to her husband, who had glanced at her when he heard her announcement, but upon seeing her look in his direction he hastily returned his attention to his papers. That his wife’s conversation only seldom required response was one of the few advantages her husband still found in her company. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she turned back to her letter and allowed himself a sigh of relief.
    Wickham could always call upon himself to foster an outward mien of ingratiating, if somewhat smug, charm. But Lydia’s reminder of Darcy’s wealth tried even his countenance. That ominous, superciliary crevice deepened upon hearing that the verylovely Elizabeth Bennet was to marry his nemesis. Wickham’s invidious nature allowed jealousy to rear its ugly head, momentarily allowing the reason he had slighted her to slip his mind. But, in the vacuum that was his soul, the wherefore of not pursuing such a comely young woman soon wafted back to him.
    It was the sparseness of her dowry. What a lark! Darcy had chosen a bride that he, Wickham, had found unworthy. Gleefully, Wickham played with that notion. That conceit, however, did not last much longer than it took to think it. Almost instantly, he was brought to wonder just what particular charm Darcy had discovered in Elizabeth Bennet that he himself had overlooked. Of course dowry meant but little to a man of Darcy’s wealth, but then conversely, position and rank meant all.
    Why had Darcy, who could have his pick of any woman in England, chosen a wife with such questionable connexions? Wickham’s puzzlement over Darcy’s intervention with Lydia was displaced by his pondering of such an unusual match. It was only a temporary amusement to Wickham to think that the great Darcy’s wife held the same low connexions as his own. If he smiled, it was fleeting. As much as Wickham hated to admit it, he had married a wife with the same fifty pounds a year as her sister. And he certainly had not the resources to elevate their station as had Darcy. That was not a rewarding rumination. He strove to think of something else.
    But he could not.
    Perhaps Wickham was not the cleverest of men. However, when it came to plottings, his mind knew the region well. Rarely was he out-manoeuvred. It was only a few minutes before he bore the full brunt of just how thoroughly Darcy had outwitted him. Quite unbeknownst to Wickham, he had held in his hand the key to the Darcy fortune. Georgiana Darcy’s thirty thousand a year was paltry compared to the sum Wickham could have blackmailed Darcy for in exchange for saving the Bennet family name from ruin. As unlikely as it was for Darcy to marry beneath him, he most assuredly would not double the insult of position by connecting himself with a family disgraced. Realising he had held such a trump card over Darcy and not cashed in upon it was of significant vexation. In bargaining, knowledge is everything. If Wickham had held any notion of Darcy’s intentions for Elizabeth, he could have discovered, monetarily, just how very dearly Darcy wanted to marry her. In the acute vision of hindsight, no figure seemed too outrageous when it came to Darcy getting what he wanted.
    Not only had he botched the bargaining opportunity of a lifetime, he was marooned in Newcastle. Moreover, he was married to a young woman whose attention, which he had