Cover Reveal for The Happiest Couple in the World

I’ve been a busy girl these past few months! In May I will be publishing a little novella that has been in the works for awhile. I hope you’ll all enjoy it–its definitely not as humorous as my recent books have been!

I’ll be giving away 3 ebooks chosen from the commenters below, so do give me a shout!

You can preorder it here:

https://geni.us/HappiestCouple

Special thanks to James Egan at Bookfly for my beautiful cover!

Chapter One

It was never easy to be at Rosings Park. Lady Catherine had never quite forgiven him for failing to marry Anne, who, now one-and-thirty years of age, remained unwed. Lady Catherine kept a watchful eye on Elizabeth, always seeking an error, a misstep of any sort which would confirm to herself that Darcy had erred in his choice of a wife.

And the fright of it all was that he was beginning to think he had. He had once believed that a marriage rooted in ardent love could only bring the greatest felicity; alas, he had learnt it could also result in the greatest pain.

Sitting in the drawing room after dinner, having played the requisite rubber of whist, Darcy considered his wife. She sat across from him on a small sofa next to Anne, murmuring to her about something. Whatever resentment Lady Catherine had about his marriage, it was not shared by Anne, who had become friends with Elizabeth. Indeed, for Anne alone, Elizabeth often said she anticipated their visits to Rosings. 

When the clock struck the hour, Elizabeth said something to Anne, and both ladies rose. “I believe I shall retire,” Elizabeth announced. “We are off at first light. Are we not, Darcy?” 

“Yes,” he said, and without looking at him, she quit the room. He knew better than to imagine he should join her in her bedchamber later. Lady Catherine had continued putting him up in bachelors’ quarters, a fact they had laughed about in the early years but which now seemed premonitory.

He had just risen to go up himself when Lady Catherine, unexpectedly, said, “Darcy, have a glass of Green Chartreuse with me.” 

There was a side of Lady Catherine that few knew, a side rarely shown to anyone. Long before she had become the grand lady of Rosings Park, Lady Catherine had been something of a scapegrace. She had enjoyed gambling and strong drink, and she would sometimes gallop through Hyde Park at a breakneck pace. The old earl, Darcy’s grandfather, had married her off to Sir Lewis de Bourgh, hoping Sir Lewis would settle her down, but then Sir Lewis had gone off and died instead. The young widow de Bourgh was left with an estate in arrears and a babe in the cradle. That along with Anne’s subsequent illnesses and difficulties had tamed Lady Catherine but had also soured her high animal spirits into ill humour. 

But she still enjoyed a good stiff drink now and then. 

“Where did you come upon Green Chartreuse?” Darcy asked her with a chuckle.

“Never you mind that,” she said, laying one finger alongside her nose. She summoned a footman to bring them their drinks and beckoned her nephew into a chair closer to the fire. For awhile, they merely watched the fire and chewed over matters of little consequence—the recent, difficult birth of a horse in Rosings’s stables and whether they thought the summer might bring drought. It was not until his eyes had begun to droop that she brought up the true object of her interest. 

“What shall you do about Pemberley?” 

He was suddenly wide awake, on his guard, though outwardly he remained impassive. “In the case of a drought? We shall do as we always do and—”

“Darcy.” She peered at him over the line of her long, aristocratic nose. “I am talking about your wife’s inability to give you an heir.” 

The usual denials rose to his mind—‘we are still young,’ ‘there is time’—but instead he found himself sighing heavily and admitting, “I do not know.” 

After a measured pause, Lady Catherine offered, “I know of an excellent midwife. She has been of use to Lady Metcalfe’s sister.” 

“We have seen a dozen midwives and physicians and apothecaries. Nothing has helped.” 

He might have expected Lady Catherine to begin one of her harangues, her well-intentioned but officious advice. If she had, it would have been easier to set his guard up; instead, she reached over, laid her hand on his arm, and squeezed with gentle reassurance. “I am sorry, my dear boy.” 

Such simple words, but they nearly laid him low. He was required to swallow and take another drink before he could admit, “Things have certainly not turned out how I had imagined.” 

“It puts a strain on a marriage,” Lady Catherine said. “Trust me, well do I know, and Rosings had no entail. Anne was just as good as a son from that angle.” 

“A daughter or a son would make my joy complete, but it seems neither is to be.” 

“The disappointment has made your wife grow quite dull, but at least her country-town indifference to decorum has been checked.” 

He ignored the last and said, “She is not dull; she is melancholic.”

“And you are resentful and angry at her for failing you.” 

“No, no,” he demurred. “Not that.” 

Her silence penetrated his defences, and he, after a glance at the door, said, “How could I resent her for it, when it is not her fault?”

“I suppose what they have always said about these country girls is not true after all.” 

“I daresay it is not—not in our case, at any rate.” 

“And Pemberley will then go to your cousins? Those Darcys up in Warwickshire, is it?” She sniffed. “Sorry lot they are. They are like to run it into the ground.” 

Darcy protested that assertion half-heartedly. “They are not bad folk, and in any case, it would be my uncle’s grandson to inherit—Cooper Darcy, presently aged fourteen and at school.” 

“Cooper?” Lady Catherine raised a brow. “What sort of name is Cooper?” 

“His mother’s people, I daresay, and you are looking at the wrong man if you think that is strange.” 

She chuckled. “One cannot deny that. Well, you should perhaps have the boy to Pemberley for some months. Perhaps this summer.” Lady Catherine set her glass down on the side table with a firm thump and rose. 

Darcy rose with her, agreeing with her action if not her words. Some foolish part of him, it seemed, yet had hope. Accursed, wretched hope.

An hour or so later, he lay awake in his bed. His bed, not theirs—it had not been their bed for some time. His mind was busy mulling over that which it had brushed against lightly before: Had marrying his beloved made him a happier husband? Or a more miserable one?

He could still remember, vividly, those walks in the groves of Rosings wherein he had decided that a staid marriage of practicality was not for him. He had been determined that he should have love. He would have felicity, companionship, passion, and romance for the remainder of his days, side by side with his beloved Elizabeth. With foolish naivety, he had believed it would be easy. Two hearts, two minds, two souls would become as one and live in harmony forever after.

It had not quite worked out that way. No, the Elizabeth he wanted, the woman he had yearned for so desperately in those days, was long gone. In her place was a woman he knew less and less with every passing day, and it pained him. He found himself in a marriage much like the one he had dreaded, the one he believed he had avoided—a marriage marked by strained dinner conversation, tiresome on-dits, and a far-too-frequent, desperate wish to simply be alone. Sometimes he thought it would have been easier to have loved her less; he never could have repined the loss of something that never was.

Worse yet, there was nothing for it. He had tried everything to fix it. God knew he had. He had tried spending more time with her, until it became clear she did not wish for it. He had tried spending less time with her, but that angered her, too, and made her accuse him of avoiding her. He had taken her to Italy, to the Lakes, to Scotland, even France—she met each with decreasing enthusiasm. He bought her jewellery that went unworn and books that remained unread. He tried to delve into the root of the problem with her, to speak openly of their sorrows, but doing so had had an opposite effect of the one intended. Nothing he had tried had ever improved her spirits, and by now, he was out of ideas. 

The worst part of it was that she made him doubt himself. He was sliding back into his old, comfortable hauteur because it was easier than the constant wrong-footedness he felt. He was always stepping too hard, or speaking too loudly or too softly. Everything he did seemed to injure her in some way, and he could not bear to see the pained expression on her face when he did. 

It was far easier to simply turn away.

* * *

The decline of a marriage rarely happened as a result of some singular catastrophe, Elizabeth found. Rather it was the day-by-day chafing, the little asides, the hidden insults, the small injuries, the seemingly inconsequential wounds that united to do so. 

Elizabeth sat in the carriage across from her husband—across, because the days when he would move to sit beside her were long gone by now—unable to stop herself from studying him. It seemed almost incomprehensible that this cold stranger was the same man who had once stood before her in Charlotte’s parlour and declared ardent love to her. She searched her mind, trying to remember his exact words that day, the tone he had used, the mode of his address, but she found she simply could not. 

He looked up from his book. “What is it, dear?” 

She blushed, embarrassed to be caught staring at him. “Um, nothing. Are you hungry? Lady Catherine’s cook made us a nice basket.” 

She bent over and reached for the basket at her feet then pulled it into her lap to begin a search. “There are some delicious-looking pastries and salted beef, and some sugared fruits and—”

“It is nice to see your appetite returned,” he said. “You ate so little while we were at Rosings, my aunt wondered if you were ill.” 

Resentment, always held just at bay, rose in an instant. “You and your aunt must consider that I am not as large a person as either of you,” Elizabeth replied with carefully held serenity. “I simply do not eat as much.” 

“Even so, there were days I wondered if you ate anything at all, save a mouthful of soup or two.” 

“It would be nice if I could offer you a muffin without exposing myself to censure.” 

He closed his book and accepted the muffin. “You should not comprehend the loving concern of your relations as censure.” 

With such a tone as he used, Elizabeth wondered that frost did not form on the carriage seats. “I am merely astonished to find myself so fascinating that drawing room conversation must centre on me and how much I eat. Surely there must be something in the world of greater interest than that Elizabeth Darcy takes a muffin?” 

“The fact that you do not take a muffin is more the issue.” Darcy made a careful study of his own muffin, breaking off each piece and depositing it into his mouth with deliberate movements. He masticated pensively, turning his head towards the window. When he had disposed of three such bites in like manner, he said, in a low tone, “Having lost my family as I have, is it any wonder that I worry?” 

“Georgiana did not starve to death,” she replied immediately. “And neither shall I.” 

Lady Champneads, née Miss Georgiana Darcy, had died a woman’s honourable death in the birthing chamber. The baby had died, and Georgiana had endured a dreadful, lingering death, occasioned by blood loss and fever that took her away over the course of three days. They were three of the darkest days Elizabeth could have ever imagined. She sat in an upstairs parlour at Henlow, watching her husband pace with impotent and suppressed rage before he eventually accepted his sister’s death with hollow-eyed stoicism. It had been above two years since her passing, but Elizabeth still knew not if Darcy would ever truly recover from the experience, dreadful as it was. 

Pity softened her. She reached for him across the divide, her hand landing on his knee. “The food at Rosings does not always agree with me.” 

“No, nor I,” he agreed at once, offering a half smile. “Lady Catherine is far too fond of rich sauces.” 

They locked gazes for a moment, and Elizabeth could only suppose that he saw some invitation in her look. Half arising, he moved across the carriage, took a seat next to her, and unfortunately stepped directly, and hard, onto her foot. Unable to stop herself, she cried out. In a trice, he was back where he began, muttering apologies. 

“No, no. It hardly signifies,” Elizabeth protested. “It was an accident, nothing more.” 

She reached down to rub her foot, which pulsed with pain within the confines of her boot. “Pray, join me.” 

“No, no.” He had picked up his book again. “I despise this carriage. It is too small and crowded. We cannot be comfortable in it.” 

Stung, Elizabeth released her foot and sat back into the plush squabs with a thud. This carriage was the one he had commissioned for her, shortly after their engagement. She still recalled the utter shock and delight she had felt on the day he presented it to her; she had never before imagined herself with her own carriage. 

Like Darcy, she had supposed that one day this carriage would be replaced with a larger one, some roomy landau suited for a growing family—but that need had not arisen, and so they continued on with this smaller one. Perhaps she despised it, too, symbol of her failures that it was. 

The remainder of the journey was passed in the tense silence that was, too often, the common mode.

It is settled between us already, that we are to be the happiest couple in the world.

When Elizabeth Bennet married Fitzwilliam Darcy in autumn of 1812, she believed that all unhappiness and strife between them had been laid to rest. Their misunderstandings resolved, she wished for nothing more than to enjoy their happily ever after.

Alas married life brings with it a new set of challenges. Having been wed five years, Elizabeth is yet unable to give her husband a child. Everyone around them—sisters, friends, and cousins alike—has begun to have a family; yet, she and Darcy continue in a fruitless pursuit to create an heir for Pemberley.

Darcy is disappointed that he and Elizabeth have not yet been blessed with a child but even more so, he despairs of what their difficulties have done to alter the woman he loves. The two have grown increasingly distant from one another, their resentments slowly and surely building a wall between them.

Something must be done to save their marriage and allow them to rekindle the ardent love between them. Each of them thinks they may have a solution, unconventional though it might be; for each, a sacrifice must be made and a risky deception undertaken. But will the result of it all justify the means they took to get there? Or will they have risked it all for nothing?

A spoiler…

Although it might seem like someone might be unfaithful to someone else, they WILL NOT! I promise! I’d never write that story line!

HEA is guaranteed and the Darcy’s will end the tale much in love and with all their dreams come true!