An Offer of Marriage is now available!

An Offer of Marriage is now available! Its a forced marriage, enemies to lovers romance and I hope you’ll check it out  🙂  The audiobook, narrated by Elizabeth Grace, will come soon!

Hope you enjoy and in the meantime here is a little excerpt to wet your whistle!

An Excerpt from An Offer of Marriage

The next day proved a trial for Anne. Firstly she had to bathe, and the water was not nearly warm enough to prevent her from taking a chill. Then she learnt that one of her favourite petticoats, a fine French linen trimmed in blonde lace, had been ruined in the laundry. And lastly, her toast was burnt. It vexed her greatly, and she made certain that those responsible knew all about it.

When at last she entered the parsonage, she found that the Collinses were not present. “Well, where are they?” she demanded of the useless girl who had answered the door.

“Visiting the sick,” said the girl, visibly trembling.

“What sick? No one is sick!”

“Yes, Miss de Bourgh, beg your pardon but the Smithson boy took a fever and his mother is only just recovering from—”

“I have been unwell, too,” Anne interrupted. What did she care about the illnesses of the farmers? “Mr and Mrs Collins did not come to see me!”

Now the poor girl was really shaking. “I-I do not know anything about that, I am just here to clean and cook.”

Anne gave a little stamp of her foot. Excessively vexatious, all of this nonsense. “Take me to Mrs Collins’s parlour, then,” she said. “And bring me some toast and tea.”

The terrified girl led her to the back parlour and then scurried off to get the toast and tea. Anne sat in what appeared to be the most comfortable seat and wished she had brought Mrs Jenkinson with her. The woman had been so very irritating that morning, fussing over her, that she could not bear to be a moment more in her presence. But now she would have to sit here in Mrs Collins’s parlour with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

The toast and tea were brought to her, and they were admittedly very good. If the little maid had been the one to toast the bread, she had done a fine job of it, and the tea was the same blend they had at Rosings. Her mother was good like that; she must have given some to the Collinses, and the little maid recognised it was a right thing to serve it to Anne.

It restored her spirits a bit to see that some things happened as they ought to. Some people still understood what was owed to Miss de Bourgh of Rosings Park.

She waited a little while longer but still the Collinses did not appear. Her overture of friendship could wait for another day, Anne decided. She could not linger about the parsonage indefinitely, but she would leave Mrs Collins a note, to let her know that she had called.

The escritoire where Mrs Collins no doubt wrote her letters was in the corner. Anne went to it, opening the drawer seeking paper…and finding much more.

A half-finished missive in Mrs Collins’s hand was in the drawer addressed to some person called dearest Jane. Anne had no notion of who dearest Jane was, nor did she much care. It was the phrase ‘Mr Darcy has proposed’ that drew her eye, but as she read on, she learnt it was a vast deal more.

The words Mrs Collins had written filled her with delight and hope, and at length, she went so far as to giggle. “Oh my, Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” she said to the empty room. “You have fashioned your own guillotine.”

She wondered if Mrs Collins would realise the letter was missing if she took it. The letter was dated from the tenth of April and had not been continued. Likely it was a draft of the one already sent. In any case, she would likely assume she had misplaced it, or thrown it away; she would never imagine that Anne had taken it.

“And so what if she does? Miss Elizabeth Bennet deserves to be exposed for what she is, and if it is the hand of her friend that does it? So be it.”

So elated was she, Anne almost had a skip in her step as she left the parsonage, the letter crinkling merrily from within her reticule.