Cover reveal! Cursing Mr Darcy is coming soon!

Cursing Mr Darcy is coming soon! Its a Pride & Prejudice variation with just a dash of witchy-magic tossed in just in time for spooky season (pumpkin spice, colored leaves and a break in this heat… who is with me?)

Here is the first excerpt I posted in case you missed it. Keep reading for a second excerpt and to see the cover, designed by the wonderful Josephine Blake from Covers and Cupcakes.

You can preorder Cursing Mr Darcy HERE.

As their carriage bumped and jostled its way down a poorly-kept, deeply rutted lane, Elizabeth wondered if they had all lost their minds. This excursion was proving far more arduous than anticipated, and thus far there was not much to see save for muddy fields and dried-out, brown grass. She looked over at her uncle’s face. He looked a bit appalled by all he saw before him and no doubt wondered at his own support of this scheme.

Elizabeth leant towards him, an apologetic smile on her lips. “Shall we reach the house itself before nightfall?”

Her aunt smiled ruefully while her uncle grimaced. “Let us hope so. I cannot like the notion of setting up camp in such fields as these. Of course we should be safe as babes in our beds if we did—even the highwaymen would not dare come to such a place as this.”

Elizabeth peered at her uncle. “Pray do not press on for my benefit. If you would wish it, let us turn back.”

“Turn back? Oh no, we have come this far,” said Mr Gardiner. “Let us at least see the house.”

Elizabeth turned to her aunt, who was gazing round in sorrowful horror. “Do you agree? I am beginning to be mightily sorry I insisted on coming. Perhaps Mr Wickham was correct and we would have done best to visit elsewhere.”

“I must say, it is a shock. To see a place, which I knew to be one of the finest in all of England, come to such a state! It is almost as if it has been cursed.”

Elizabeth looked around her, her interest renewed with this tug at her imagination. “A curse? Do you think so?”

“It has all the finest elements of a fairy-tale.” Mr Gardiner leant forwards, a teasing half-smile on his face. “A kingdom laid to ruin, a wicked villain who has set a spell upon it—”

“A spell?” Mrs Gardiner laughed. “What sort of spell might that be?”

“It could be a spell!” Elizabeth laughed. “After all, are not all the witches in this part of England? I suppose that Mr Darcy must await his true love to come and break the curse?”

Mrs Gardiner, warming to their game, replied, “Perhaps we will find him sleeping somewhere, awaiting a kiss from the lady who will then be made mistress of his estate.”

“Poor lady!” Elizabeth gave a slight shiver. “Of such a place, who would wish to be mistress! Not I, I assure you.”

“If he was asleep,” Mr Gardiner added, “it would certainly explain the disgraceful decline of his estate. No, I fear the only curse we see here is all this gambling they do these days! These young men are handed massive fortunes and profitable estates and not a one of them is of a mind to work for the increase. No doubt Mr Darcy has gambled away his inheritance, angered his former tenants, and whiles his days away fencing and drinking.”

“For as much as Mr Wickham said which was untrue,” Elizabeth offered, “in this it would seem he is proved correct. This Mr Darcy is a wretched fellow, with no heart and no mind for those beneath him. Such arrogance must be its own punishment.”

Their party fell silent then, for the manor house had come into view. The cutting gardens were the first to catch Elizabeth’s notice, all the plants brown and spindly, thrusting forth from the earth, and a multitude of vines climbing towards nothing. Despite the season, there was not the merest hint of colour among their spines, nor so much as a jot of pleasing fragrance.

A mud-filled culvert was all that remained of the stream, and the lawns were gone to seed and filled with large, sporadic patches of weeds. The willow trees looked haggard and tired, Haymarket mistresses who had given up on any attempt at respectability. As they made their way into the stable yard, they saw a diseased-looking horse wandering round, while a few skinny chickens pecked nearby.

Continuing towards the house, their carriage turned into a drive which was rutted and uneven, cobblestones broken and jutting in all directions. The appearance of the manor house made all of them gasp and the coachman brought them to a halt. From her vantage in the open-air landau, Elizabeth counted four broken windows, one which had a tattered curtain showing through it, and a hole in the roof over what must have been a bedchamber. Somewhere a door swung on a rusty hinge, or at least that is what she supposed made the horrid screeching noise she heard.

“Oh my.” Mrs Gardiner’s hands twisted against each other mercilessly as she beheld the devastation. “This is…why, this is just terrible!”

“Quite horrid, indeed, my dear,” Mr Gardiner agreed. “I for one have certainly satisfied my curiosity, so perhaps we ought to— Elizabeth! Where are you going?”

Elizabeth had leapt down from the carriage and stood facing the front entrance. “I want to see inside!”

Cursing Mr Darcy will be available August 12!

The complete and pure love of one soul, one person who cares to look past all that is mean and stingy about him—that will defeat the curse as surely and soundly as if it had never existed.

MISS JESSABELLE WICKHAM IS GEORGE WICKHAM’S OLDER SISTER, a beautiful child raised as part of the family in the steward’s cottage at Pemberley. A young lady of uncertain paternity she grew into adulthood believing that George Darcy was the natural father who spurned her as the product of an illicit liaison with her mother. However, even though the elder Mr Darcy did not recognise her as his own, she was welcome at Pemberley until one fateful day when young Master Fitzwilliam Darcy saw to her banishment for behaviour of which he could not approve.

WHEN FITZWILLIAM DARCY’S FATHER DIES, he inherits a number of things: the Darcy family fortune, Pemberley, and an unknown and certainly unwanted vendetta from Mrs Younge, the former Jessabelle Wickham. Having been educated in the cunning arts, Mrs Younge visits him and exacts her revenge against him, turning Pemberley into a decaying prison he cannot escape.

WHEN ELIZABETH BENNET TOURS PEMBERLEY six years later with her aunt and uncle, she sees the evidence of a once-beautiful house and lands wholly laid to waste. Yet within the wasteland she finds a portrait, the house as it once was and the handsome gentleman man within who was once its master. Finding herself drawn into the mystery of what befell Pemberley, Elizabeth agrees to unites forces with Darcy in hopes of lifting the curse, but will the love they find in the process be sufficient to set them free?