Hi friends! Happy Friday! 

Friends…I don’t know how to tell you this…but can you believe Julie Cooper has released another book?! 🤯

I know! She just celebrated the release of her new book – Her Brother’s Keeper – last month.

And now she is here to celebrate the release of A Total Want of Propriety – a Pride and Prejudice variation where characters are tricked into a compromise!

Julie is here to share an excerpt from A Total Want of Propriety.

We hope you enjoy! 

~ Book Description ~

“Was sleeping…it happened in my sleep! This is all a mistake!”

Elizabeth Bennet has no intention of marrying the proud, disagreeable Mr Darcy—the man who declared her barely tolerable. But when she wakes to find him in her bed at Netherfield, her choices vanish. Within days, she’s married to a virtual stranger.

What Elizabeth does not know is that Darcy is just as much a victim of circumstance. Drugged and manipulated by a jealous rival, he stumbled into the wrong bedchamber and now finds himself bound to a lady who believes he thinks her beneath him, while he burns with feelings he can barely express.

Forced into intimacy neither chose, Elizabeth and Darcy must navigate a marriage neither planned. She is determined not to resent a husband who was trapped into proposing. He’s desperate to prove he would have chosen her anyway. Between meddling relatives, scandalous secrets, and their own stubborn pride, can two people who married as strangers discover they are perfect for one another?

A Total Want of Propriety is a Pride and Prejudice Variation and is novella length.

~ An Excerpt from A Total Want of Propriety ~

Darcy saw the moment she noticed his approach; her eyes, her lovely, expressive eyes widened. Then, as he watched, she straightened her spine, donning her self-possession like a shawl she wrapped around herself, hiding misery and pain beneath it.

He bowed. “May I sit?” he asked.

She nodded.

He wondered what he ought to do now…extend an apology? He certainly owed her one. It seemed that his offer of marriage had not compensated for much. But if she did not accept it, did it mean she would not go through with the wedding?

The sudden sense of grief, of loss, at the very thought, told him that he had utterly failed to consider something extremely important.

He wanted this marriage. It was why he had sent Havers to London. Somehow bumbling into her room that night had not affected him much, except to make his next steps clear. What if she did not want the same things as he? Horror of horrors, what if she is somehow infatuated with George Bloody Wickham?

He swallowed, sitting beside her and feeling somewhat helpless to know what to do. However, one thing was obvious—she must be told of his enemy.

“I saw you speaking with an old acquaintance of mine,” he began.

She looked at him sharply. “Not…not Mr Wickham?”

“Yes,” he agreed, waiting, hoping she would share what their exchange had been about. She remained silent.

He cleared his throat, and wished he had permission to take her hand in his; perhaps circumstance entitled him to the right, yet he knew he had not earned it. “Wickham is—was—my father’s godson. His own father acted as steward for all the Pemberley estates.”

“Your home in Derbyshire,” she murmured.

“Yes. His good father and mine were the best of friends, and as close as brothers. My father’s hope was that Wickham would take orders, and thus he supported him at school, and afterwards at Cambridge. His mother was of excellent birth, but her gambling habits prevented his father from saving for such things. It was not a happy marriage.” He recalled the arguments, the melancholy his father’s friend had suffered trying to cover the extravagant debts of his wife, who was known for playing deep with some of the area’s chief inhabitants.

“It sounds awful. My parents do not always see eye to eye, but there are no open hostilities. Poor Mr Wickham.”

Darcy had to use extreme control to avoid utterance of what he wanted to retort. Wickham had been given every chance for a successful life, and had ruined himself instead. Nevertheless, Elizabeth did not know him, and Darcy had once felt the same sympathy, back in the days of his youth when he and George had played across forest, fields, and hills of the estate, becoming soldiers and knights and Robin Hood and his merry men. Entering George’s house had always made him feel uncomfortable—not because it was much smaller than Pemberley, but because his parents had always been at odds with each other, and the boys often became pawns in their bickering, especially by Mrs Wickham.

Darcy took a deep breath, and forced himself to continue. “I tell you this so that you may understand how well I know him, although we have not been close in several years. And I ask you now, most sincerely, and with my only motive an altruistic one—are you…involved with him? Is there an attachment there?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “No!” she cried. “I have only just been introduced to him this very morning!”

He felt a relief of tension in his frame. “Are you willing to tell me what was your business with him?”

For several moments she remained silent, and he thought she might refuse. But then her chin lifted, and there was a definite defiance in her tone.

“I persuaded him to purchase a ticket on today’s post to London. I told him it was for my maid to join her man, that I could not buy it myself because of my father’s disapproval, but I lied. I intend to be on that post, to travel to my uncle’s home on Gracechurch Street, and beg him for refuge. I am not ready to be married to a man who thinks me barely tolerable, and I am not at all convinced of the wedding’s necessity. I believe that if I stay in town for a period of months, the gossip will die down and cease to affect me or my sisters.”

Darcy’s mouth opened in shock. Impossible that she planned to travel alone, via stage, to London! To escape…me!

I am in love with this premise! They are so trapped! But Mr. Darcy’s feelings are already engaged! 😯

I love how Elizabeth is trying to take care of herself, I am eager to see how her journey to understanding and forgiving Mr. Darcy. 📖

~~~

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

In conjunction with Julie’s lovely visit, Quills & Quartos is giving away  copies of A Total Want of Propriety to  lucky readers of this blog.

To enter this giveaway leave a comment, a question, or some love for Julie below!

• This giveaway is open worldwide.  Thank you, Quills and Quartos!
• This giveaway ends June 30th.