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

once supposed lent itself in enquiry no more profound than the prettiness of her newest bonnet, had somehow birthed an uncanny knack for sniffing out his every infidelity. Lydia’s brittle temperament was accompanied by a compleat lack of trust in her husband’s faithfulness.
    And dogged she was. Wickham could not fathom how any one woman could be so simultaneously obtuse yet clever.
    Looking again to his wife, he then just as hastily looked away, not wanting to invite her conversation. She was licking the last residue of chocolate from her fingertips with no less noise than a cow sucking its foot from the mud. He prayed that her indecorous desire for bonbons was the source of her ever-increasing girth and she was not with child, for a wailing infant would be the last straw upon his ill-temper.
    Narrowing his eyes in reinvigorated concentration, Wickham thought of his situation again. There was only one promising possibility upon his horizon.
    Within the letter announcing the impending nuptials betwixt Darcy and Elizabeth was imbedded the merest beginnings of a scheme. Undoubtedly with the Darcy marriage, the true story of his banishment from Pemberley would be known, thus that avenue of misdirected sympathy had withered. But perhaps another benefit would take its place. For now that he and Darcy would be brothers-in-law, perhaps he would be readmitted to Pemberley, his unsuccessful and unfortunate (only by reason of its lack of success) seduction of Georgiana put in the past. For Pemberley was vast, reflecting the extent of the Darcy wealth. Might Darcy’s wife have sympathy for her sister and her sister’s husband? It was a notion worth pursuing.
    As a man with no occupation of the heart, Wickham could uncover no answer to the perplexing question as to why Darcy chose to marry a simple country lass with poor connexions and no fortune. But then Wickham was often troubled by Darcy’s motives. They seemed not to have reason, at least not one familiar to Wickham, for he believed Darcy was no better than any other man, he merely had better means of obtaining what he wanted. And, for whatever reason, Darcy wanted to marry Elizabeth Bennet.
    Exiled from London and all good society, an insipid cow for a wife, Wickham was in high dudgeon.
    Damn that Darcy!
    Money held all the nobility to be had, Wickham knew. And why it was all Darcy’s was a question that would dog him relentlessly.

P receded by Lydia (who seemed particularly satisfied with herself), Elizabeth returned that night to her sisters and mother in the parlour. It took a little longer for Jane to appear. Moreover, she had no sooner settled herself into a chair than the gentlemen rejoined them, quite unwitting of the temper of the room.
    For when Bingley took his usual seat next to Jane, she bore the exact expression one would have conjured a chicken to possess hearing a fox circling the hen-house.
    Poor bewildered Bingley attempted conversation with her, but Jane was so spooked, she could hardly respond to her baffled fiancé. Had she thought she could whisper it without losing her countenance to mirth, Elizabeth would have liked to reassure Jane. For she was certain that, regardless of what Lydia told them, Bingley’s privates were unlikely (especially in company in the parlour) to burst from his inexpressibles as if an enraged squirrel.
    Besides, Elizabeth was having her own difficulties of disconcertion.
    She may have found some amusement in Jane’s unease, however, she did not at all in her own. Notwithstanding how roundly overwrought she knew Lydia’s description of sexual congress must be, the very explicit picture she had detailed seized Elizabeth’s mind quite unreasonably. And this was not to abate, for Darcy claimed a seat upon the sofa next to her, undoubtedly bringing his easily agitated male instrument with him.
    Everyone else seemed quite unruffled.
    Mary poured tea, offering some to Mr. Darcy. He rose and walked to the tea table.
    Thereupon, with