The Bewitchment of Mr. Darcy

Book excerpt: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy was in an awful carriage accident in the fall of 1811, and he never made it to see his friend Mr. Bingley’s rented house in Hertfordshire. He was laid up all through the spring of the following year, and so it’s not until August, as she’s touring Pemberley with her aunt and uncle, that Mr. Darcy first sets eyes on Miss Elizabeth Bennet. He’s sopping wet from a dip in the lake, and he should be mortified, but she manages to ease a dreadful pain in his hand—a malady that lingers from the carriage accident. Her fingers on his wet palm are some kind of sorcery, and she’s beautiful and witty, and he begins to feel his danger immediately. But then she is called home on urgent family business, and it’s some time until Mr. Darcy sees her again. When he does, he’s half-mad in his desire to be close to her. There is no barrier that will stop him—not her lack of connections, not her disgraced family owing to her sister Lydia’s indiscretion, not even propriety itself. Elizabeth Bennet has bewitched him, body and soul, and he must have her near him. Dear reader, this is a book you get when you cross the Colin Firth lake scene with the Matthew McFayden hand flex, toss in a bit of homage to The Crucible, and then somehow get buried in spicy scenes, including, er, a bit of size kink. Adventurous readers only, I’m afraid. You have been warned.