New novella coming soon! Wits & Wagers

Hey all, I have a new novella coming soon (well, it’s 45K words, so not sure if its a novella or a mini novel but you get the point, haha!). Wits & Wagers is currently available for preorder will be out at the end of November. In the meantime I hope you enjoy an excerpt from chapter 1.  I hope to see you back in October for the cover reveal!

Leave me a comment for a chance to win an ebook copy. The winner will be posted on the Quills & Quartos facebook page at the end of this month!

“I cannot stay long, Darcy, but I have some news that I simply could not wait to acquaint you with. And if you should feel inclined to offer any advice, or help along the way”—Fitzwilliam tipped an imaginary cap—“I should be much obliged. You will recall my mother’s aunt, Lady Peyton?”

“I cannot say I do,” Darcy replied.

“She was the widow of Sir Henry Peyton of Salt Hill in Middlesex. In February, she died,” Fitzwilliam continued.  “She died in full control of her faculties, fortune, and estate—and childless.”

“A wealthy, childless aunt?” Darcy raised his eyebrows. “No doubt an untold quantity of previously unknown heirs have presented themselves?”

“No entail. The lady could dispose of the property according to her own pleasures, and it seems my mother was the last person on earth who truly cared for the old dear. Visited her regularly and assisted where she could, which none of Mother’s other cousins ever did.”

“Dare I imagine that she is to be rewarded handsomely for this kindness?”

“Yes, she is. My mother is to receive Lady Peyton’s estate, and—” Fitzwilliam’s eyes twinkled above a broad smile, “—she is giving it to me. The house, the land—all of it.”

Pleasure ignited in Darcy’s chest. His cousin’s prospects had long weighed on him, particularly as Fitzwilliam had seemed increasingly intent on throwing himself in the line of French fire. Now, hopefully, he would stay in England, tend to his house, perhaps even marry. Unable to speak, he merely reached across the divide between them and clapped his cousin’s shoulder.

Rising from his chair, Darcy went to the sideboard to fill his glass. “We must toast your change of fortune. May your fields drain nicely, your crops flourish, and a lady of the house be found forthwith!”

Fitzwilliam drained his glass, chuckling at the last. “Ah yes, a lady of the house. Scarcely were the words ‘I am giving you Salt Hill’ away from my mother’s lips before she began urging me to take a wife.”

Darcy grinned. Lady Matlock’s desire to see both of her sons settled was not hidden. “I am sure you have any number of lovely young possibilities now. Miss Roberts seemed rather taken with you at the party at Warwick House.”

“A charming girl, but too young by half. I think she is just seventeen, and I should prefer a wife not counted among the ranks of Georgiana’s friends.”

“What of Lady Phyllida Holmes? She is two and twenty, and as clever as she is pretty.”

“Mm,” said Fitzwilliam dismissively. “I confess my eye has been drawn to another. I believed she was out of reach, but now…”

The first niggling of a suspicion entered Darcy’s mind but was summarily dismissed. “Who is she?”

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”

Darcy congratulated himself on the fact that, although it felt as if lightning had struck him, he did not respond as violently as he might have wished to. An ill-timed sip made him cough and sputter, but that was all. Removing his handkerchief from his breast pocket, he dabbed at his lips, allowing time for the recovery of his composure. Nevertheless, his voice sounded strained and anxious when he said, “Surely not?”

“I know what you are thinking.” Fitzwilliam held his hands up to ward off Darcy’s protest. “How could I wish to marry a woman who had spoken so cruelly to my own cousin? But I think with time, the two of you could easily lay down your arms.”

“Lay down our arms! H-how can you even consider—”

“I know, I know! There are other considerations, such as your own strictures against the lady. I have considered them, I assure you. The undistinguished family. No fortune of her own. Not a prudent match in any way altogether. But Darcy, I like her, and given the removal of my prior limitations, I daresay I could be in a fair way towards falling in love with her.”

Had Fitzwilliam gone mad? Yes, they had always competed against one another for things. Two men close in age, raised as brothers, would either be dearest friends or famous enemies; he and Fitzwilliam had taken their turns at both. But this was not some contest to see who could throw a rock the farthest, or anything so inconsequential. This was the woman he loved.

Feebly, not even knowing what he was saying, he blurted, “But…but she is…she has gone back to Longbourn. Hertfordshire. Her family, they do not come to town.” As if that was the greatest objection to this!

“That is why I hoped perhaps you might be a fine fellow and arrange something with Bingley at his place there. We shall go and rusticate on some flimsy excuse of fishing or shooting or such, and see what transpires. What say you?”

An image sprang to mind of Fitzwilliam strolling in the maze at Netherfield with Elizabeth smiling and laughing on his arm. A roaring sound filled Darcy’s ears and his head swam, and before he knew what he was doing, he shouted, “No. No! You cannot…Elizabeth… No! You will not do this.”

“Darcy, I knew you might not be wholly pleased by this, but pray consider my interests above your own for once.”

“It is not selfishness that—”

“What else could it be? You are off to Kent to propose to Anne, are you not? I say Miss Bennet is fair game.”

Panic thrust Darcy upwards out of his seat. “Fair game? How dare you speak of her so?”

“What do you call it then? You would not wish her to remain unmarried forever. Is that to be her punishment for refusing you, that no man could ever have her?”

Another man. It was not the first time Darcy had imagined her in the arms of another, but it was the first that he had imagined her in Fitzwilliam’s arms. Darcy leant against his vacated chair for several long moments, willing his gorge to settle, then walked towards the window, staring down at the street below.

Behind him, Fitzwilliam said, “I should hope you would wish us both well.”

“I shall not.” Darcy turned to his cousin and thrust a pointing finger in his direction. “She is not for you, and that is the material point.”

“Who says? You?” Fitzwilliam challenged him, arms crossed over his chest.

Darcy took a deep breath. “She is cousin to Lady Catherine’s parson!”

“Who, himself, will be a landowner one day,” Fitzwilliam observed.

“When her father dies.”

“Yes, Darcy, that is how most of us inherit land…because someone died. You included.”

“H-her family…her mother! You could never see her mother and yours in a room together.”

Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Then I shall not put them in a room together. I do not wish to marry her family.”

“She is…she is uneducated. They never had a governess, she and her four sisters.”

“What does it signify? Miss Bennet is clever and sweet, and I do not care two straws how she came to be that way.”

“She lacks…she lacks the birth, the…the…town bronze, if you will. You have seen all her finest gowns, you know! The ladies in town would never accept her as one of their own.”

Fitzwilliam shook his head. “I admit I had some reservations about coming to you with this, but everything you have just said verily proves what I believe.”

“Which is what, precisely?”

“That you think you love her more than you actually do.”

It was such a shocking thing to say that Darcy laughed. “What?”

“I think what you are really upset about is the injustice of it all. How dare she refuse the great Fitzwilliam Darcy something he wants!”

Never before had Darcy so wished to punch his cousin right in his smug face, but he restrained himself. “You are wrong.”

“Am I? You met her when? Last autumn?”

Darcy did not reply.

“If my memory serves me, it was October, nine months or so ago, at an assembly during which you refused to stand up with her and insulted her in front of her friends and relations.”

“I told you why I—”

“And you certainly have never had any good to speak of her since then. Even in this conversation, you have only disparaged her and insulted her family. Not much the look of love, from my angle.”

“My reservations with regard to her connexions and upbringing—”

“Have been detailed at length,” Fitzwilliam replied with a roll of his eyes. “Your inclination for the lady was rather easily conquered by your pretensions. Forgive me but that, sir, is not love.”

Uh-oh but don’t worry, its not as much cousin v cousin as it seems! Leave your comments below!