Behind every polite smile is a carefully guarded secret. After the unexpected death of Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth Bennet concocts a delicate ruse to protect her family’s home and finances. She arrives in Meryton under a false identity—a distant cousin’s ward—determined to keep her secret buried. Yet the discerning Mr. Darcy, newly arrived in the neighborhood, grows suspicious of the poised young woman who seems too clever—and too captivated by him—to be what she claims. As Elizabeth and Darcy spar through social gatherings and subtle interrogations, the tension between them builds. ...

All of his efforts to forget her had failed, and he had accepted that some part of her would always be with him. In the winter of 1812, a fatal accident on a stormy night plunges the Bennet family into mourning and scandal. Shunned and isolated from nearly everyone they have ever known and loved each of the Bennet sisters hurries to marry, to provide themselves the respectability of married women. Miss Elizabeth Bennet settles into marriage of prudence with a man she respects but could never completely love.

Upon arriving in London from Kent, Miss Elizabeth Bennet assumes it was an error in her behaviour that made Mr. Darcy believe she would accept his proposal. Elizabeth decides she should act more like her sister Jane from this point forward. When the gentleman who wishes to invest in her uncle’s business makes advances, Elizabeth Bennet can do nothing but watch as the stranger who tries to rescue her is murdered. After the murderer threatens Elizabeth and her family, she escapes and goes into hiding. With no money and no way to get home, she accepts employment as a maid at a great estate. ...

To suffer my second is the doom of my first; And of all of my seconds, my whole is the worst. After two months of suffering the heartache of Elizabeth Bennet’s rejection of his marriage proposal, Fitzwilliam Darcy unexpectedly encounters the lady at Oakwood Manor the estate of the late Miss Phoebe Armstrong. The dearly departed Miss Armstrong has disposed of her worldly goods in an uncommon manner. She has called together five young people, including Darcy and Elizabeth, to vie for a legacy—the manor itself and a substantial fortune.

In this Pride & Prejudice variation, the story begins in 1808 when Mr. Darcy does not arrive at Ramsgate until two days after Georgiana’s elopement with George Wickham. The servants sell their story to the newspapers, the couple vanish, and when the gossip columns run rampant with the news, Darcy’s relatives demand that Darcy disown his sister. When Wickham learns he cannot gain his wife’s dowry until she is thirty years, he deserts Georgiana and Darcy takes her back into their London home. With society turned against them, Darcy takes his sister to Pemberley but she dies during the ...