Read Online A Wife for Mr. Darcy by Mary Lydon Simonsen - Free Book Online Page A

Pemberley and spent a good deal of time there. The present master’s father vastly expanded the gardens and supervised the changes himself. However, my father had moved the family to London to set up his own apothecary shop before the undertaking was finished—if a garden can ever truly be finished.”
    “What did they look like? Mr. Darcy and Lady Anne?” Jane asked on behalf of her sister.
    “Mr. Darcy was quite tall with black hair and very handsome. Lady Anne was petite and powdered her hair, as women did in those days, and wore those enormous hats with lots of feathers. But what I remember most about her is that she had green eyes. I had never met anyone up to that point who had green eyes.”
    “Her son has gray-green eyes,” Lizzy told her aunt.
    “Does he?”
    “Yes, and he is very tall with dark hair. He too is handsome when he does not furrow his brow, which is something he often did when he first came to Hertfordshire, but not so much of late.”
    “If that is the case, then he must be comfortable with his company. His neighbors have made a good impression on him.”
    There was nothing more to be said on the subject as Mrs. Bennet and the three younger girls had found their hiding place. Mama asked numerous questions about what warehouses Jane should visit when picking out her trousseau, but before she could answer, Lydia, who was bursting at the seams with good news, told her aunt that she was to go to Brighton as the most particular friend of Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel commanding the regiment. As pleased as Lydia was, Kitty was equally displeased because she felt that she should have been included in the invitation. Mary was quite vocal in her disapproval of the arrangements before being quieted by her mother. From the look on Jane’s and Lizzy’s faces, Mrs. Gardiner understood that neither was happy with Lydia’s visit to Brighton. Both considered their youngest sister to be immature and one who frequently acted without any thought about consequences. Mrs. Gardiner continued to listen attentively to what Kitty and Lydia had to say about some of the more attractive officers, including a detailed portrait of a very handsome Mr. George Wickham.

There was a clock in every public room at Netherfield, but the only one that kept accurate time was in the foyer. So if Darcy wanted to know just how late the Bennet family was in arriving at the ball, he would have to go out into the foyer where Bingley’s sisters were greeting their guests. Because his reservoir of goodwill for Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst had run dry, such an action was out of the question, and so he waited.
    Elizabeth had warned him that her family was always delayed, and so to pass the time, he had asked Miss Graves for a dance. But with the number of couples in attendance, every dance might last as long as thirty minutes, and he did not want to be dancing with another lady in case the Bennets did arrive. In order to avoid such a situation, he had turned to the gentlemen and ended up discussing crop yields with Mr. Patterson and the poor condition of the roads between Meryton and Watford with Mr. Everett.
    After fifteen minutes of debate as to where a carriage was most likely to encounter the worst stretch of road, Darcy decided he would find a dance partner, as dancing was less demanding than his attempts to avoid dancing were. He looked about the room, hoping to find Charlotte Lucas, who had made an excellent impression on him during his evening at Lucas Lodge, but when he had finally located her, she was talking to the parson. There was something in their manner that suggested intimacy, and he wondered if Charlotte and the reverend were engaged. But if that were the case, wouldn’t he have heard of it?
    And then he realized what he was doing. He actually had his ear to the ground in case any of the local news involved Elizabeth Bennet. But there was more to it than even that. As was the case with Lambton, he did care about