In the Eyes of Lord Lingley (Pride and Prejudice Continuation)

Prologue

Viscount Lingley entered Longbourne House with some trepidation.

His university friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy, was to marry a daughter of the house on the morrow, and he had heard much of the frankly appalling behaviors of the family.

Darcy’s composure had been torn nearly to pieces during the season last, as he fought his attraction to his Elizabeth.

He had seemed to be getting the better of it when he left for a fortnight to visit the family seat of his aunt in Kent.

It had taken several hours and a bottle of his best cognac to pry the story from his friend.

Apparently, Elizabeth Bennet had also been visiting family in Kent!

Who could have imagined such an unlikelihood?

The Fates truly were cruel, or had a sense of humor, as he had said at the time.

Darcy had borne his heart to the vixen and had it returned to him in tiny shards.

This Elizabeth could apparently flay a man alive with only her tongue, and she had lambasted his friend to a cinder.

Though if it were true that Darcy had separated her most beloved sister from that idiot Bingley, he could hardly blame her.

Darcy had retreated into business matters to attempt to patch together his bruised and bleeding soul.

By the summer he was much changed; softer somehow — kinder.

He had invited Lingley to Pemberley for the summer, which he had been tempted to accept, until he learned that that puppy Bingley and his entourage of harpies and that drunk Hurst were also to be part of the party, then he quickly found reasons to be unavailable at that time.

Caroline Bingley— her very name was the stuff of nightmares for a single gentleman of good-breeding and tolerable fortune.

A title? He would have been plucked, dressed, and made into soup before Darcy would have finished the title of viscount.

Lingley was surprised, but not shocked, when Darcy appeared suddenly, only a fortnight after he had left for Derbyshire.

He assumed that the poor man was on the run from Miss Bingley, but it seemed that there was an even greater threat to his future happiness.

That cad, Wickham, had run off with the youngest Bennet chit and was holding her ransom in London.

He had joined Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam in scouring the slums and rookeries of the East End until they tracked the slimy snake to his hovel of a room just outside of Seven Dials.

Darcy then did what he did best, though Langley doubted it would be any real help to throw more good money after bad, but nothing was to be done that the man did not do himself and within a sen’night, the child was wed to a scoundrel and Darcy was out at least ten thousand pounds, though he refused to acknowledge the true amount.

Idiot. He ought to have saved them all the trouble and let Fitz kill the reprobate.

He would have without even losing a wink of sleep, and as a soldier, it was not as if the Colonel was not well-trained in the art.

But it all turned out in the end. Bingley had his angel, Darcy his Elizabeth, and Lingley had avoided Caroline Bingley for another year, at least until the wedding.

Darcy had begged him to stand up with him, and much as he would have preferred to take a swim in the sewage ponds instead, he agreed with ill grace.

And now, here he was, entering the Lion’s Den; the home of five single women, though one was lately married, he supposed, and two to trade the name Bennet on the morrow, so really, he need only worry about two single daughters…

and Caroline Bingley. He groaned theatrically and knocked, sealing his fate.