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

in reminder.
    Lydia saw the look and snapped, “Do not eye me so severely, Lizzy! If Mr. Darcy is half the man as Wickham, his flag will fly quite readily at the smallest provocation, I assure you.”
    “You do not mean, Lydia,” Jane interjected, “that a gentleman is quite without his own will in such a situation?”
    “I mean,” retorted Lydia, “that if you allow Mr. Bingley to kiss you too ardently, he will be aroused to such lust his loins will ache and his engorged lance will burst from his nether garments to ravish you! Wickham’s waggled at me more than once!”
    “Lydia!”
    Lydia replied self-righteously, “I have no say in the nature of men. I am merely the bearer of the information. If you do not choose to believe what is a verifiable truth, ’tis your folly, not mine,” and, with the timing of a true thespian, she then rose and quitted the room.
    Jane sat upon the bed in a befuddled stupor. Elizabeth knew her dear sister’s sensibilities had been abused far beyond immediate reclamation. Was she not so curious, her own might have found insult, too. But this time, the usual annoyance Lydia incited in Elizabeth was compounded by being at the mercy of her own ignorance.
    Even with no brothers to have enlightened them, Elizabeth was marginally informed upon nature’s intent. She had seen boys, of course, at least boy babies. Hence, she held some notion of the rather flagrant configuration of the male of the species. She was uncertain why she held Darcy’s…person in such interest, but until Lydia had importuned them, she had not taken the time to study the matter.
    Elizabeth endeavoured to think of something soothing to say to Jane. But with her own mouth agape as it was, Jane was rising to leave before she could. Jane patted her hair distractedly and murmured about something that needed her attention. However, she stopped at the door, her hand upon the knob, and stood a moment, deep in thought.
    Thereupon, she turned and bid Elizabeth, “Pray, Lizzy, there is something I do not understand.”
    “Yes, Jane?”
    “If it is so very painful to his wife for…a husband to…do his duty, why would she want him to be large?”
    A perfectly good question.

G eorge Wickham was not a happy major.
    “Spirits” the sign had read.
    In all the good humour of one who has yet to know himself disappointed, Wickham had run his glove reassuringly across the shine of the brass buttons that lined his uniform jacket, tossed his red cape back across one shoulder just so, and made his entrance into the anticipated merriment.
    But he took no more than a step or two inside the door that had borne the designation of a drinking establishment. For upon his intrusion the patrons stopped all discourse, abandoned their ale, and glared in baleful silence at the fancy soldier in his pretty uniform who had just barged into their refuge.
    If the sight they beheld was distasteful, Wickham was even more affronted.Indistinguishable from the gloom of the room only by reason of the startling whites of their eyes, twenty-odd black smudged eyeballs stared at him. The two score of orbs had widened, then narrowed just menacingly enough to tell Wickham he best take his leave post-haste. That was most probably the only common ground he thought he might find in accordance with this plebeian pack of humanity. He very nearly fled.
    Once at a safe distance he spat, “Bassimeçu,” over his shoulder, his arrogance reinstated with the assurance that no man in that odious excuse for a tavern would understand the insult.
    He picked up his step all the same.

    Although his scepticism had been on high alert, he had been assured by those who vehemently sought his egress from London that Newcastle was an ambitious but pretty coastal port surrounded by grouse moors.
    Wickham, who loved nothing better than to insinuate himself into good society, had not thought much of such a bucolic milieu. He should have held out for better. Bath, perhaps. However,