Hi friends! Happy Friday! I’m very excited to welcome back author Barry S. Richman to Austenesque Reviews today!

Just two days ago Barry celebrated the release of his seventh Pride and Prejudice inspired novel! 🥳

A Debt Inherited is a Pride and Prejudice variation that sounds like it is full of danger, drama, and Mr. Darcy being a hero! 🎩

Barry is here to share an enticing excerpt from A Debt Inherited and an exciting giveaway opportunity!

We hope you enjoy! 

 

~ Book Description ~

Hertfordshire, July 1812
Elizabeth Bennet has been kidnapped.
Fitzwilliam Darcy has one day left to find her.
He must save a woman he has never met.

Her captors demand £10,000 and give her father three days to pay. Two days are already gone. Mr Bennet possesses neither the money nor the influence to secure her return. His only hope lies in a letter written thirty years before—and in the nephew of the man who wrote it.

Fitzwilliam Darcy arrives at Longbourn expecting to settle an old debt of honour. Instead, he is drawn into a bargain with George Wickham and a second man whose grievance reaches far beyond money.

To save Elizabeth, Darcy must place himself in the hands of men who have every reason to despise him. Elizabeth, imprisoned and unable to see the stranger negotiating for her life, must decide whether his promises can be trusted.

As a buried scandal binds the Bennets, Darcys, and Fitzwilliams together, the ransom becomes something far more dangerous than an exchange of money.

Some debts pass through generations.

Men of honour do not leave them unpaid.

~ Excerpt from A Debt Inherited  ~

At The Stile

Oakham Mount, July 1812

Kerr waited below the crown of Oakham Mount, where the path narrowed between hedge and ditch. He had dressed for the hedge: brown coat, dark waistcoat, buckskin breeches dulled with earth at the knee, and boots rubbed free of shine. A strip of old leather bound each leg close below the knee, lest cloth catch upon thorn or bramble. He kept still beneath the ash boughs and watched the rise. From there he could see the stile, the bend in the lane, and the strip of open ground where a lady must slow before the ascent.

The morning had settled dry and close, the July heat already lifting the smell of grass, dust, and crushed leaf from the path. He did not move when a blackbird broke from the hedge, nor when a cart rattled faintly along the lower road. Movement drew the eye; stillness let the eye pass over him. The place would serve. Not at the crown, where wind and sky made witnesses of everything, but here, where hedge, ditch, and bough turned a man into another piece of the country. A lady must look to her feet at the stile. One step checked, one hand lifted, and the hedge would take her.

A breeze rattled the leaves above him. A thread of lavender and something else—sharp, perhaps lemon—hung in the air for a moment.

Then came voices. His mouth tightened.

She had not come alone. Yesterday, she had.

The first voice came quick and low, amusement tucked within it. He had heard it the day before. The other answered higher, more measured, answered as though every word had first been weighed.

Two heads rose beyond the hedge, one bonneted and one bare. The latter held her own bonnet by its ribbons as they approached the stile: fawn muslin beside serviceable brown, one lady proper for a morning call, the other dressed for distance.

The bare-headed lady turned towards the rise.

“Charlotte, must you truly leave tomorrow?”

Miss Charlotte Lucas. He recognised the name.

“I must, if I am to reach Hunsford before Mr Collins has rearranged every shelf in my absence.”

“With Jane in London, my younger sisters at Brighton, and Papa’s cane forbidding all ambitious exercise, you are the last person within walking distance who speaks sense.”

“Then Meryton is in graver condition than I had supposed.”

“I shall miss you.”

“And I you.”

Kerr watched them cross the stile and continue up the rise, their voices receding until the hedge kept only fragments. They reached the crest and passed beyond his sight.

He remained beneath the ash boughs until the last trace of lavender had gone from the air.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet would be alone tomorrow.

Poor Elizabeth…she doesn’t know what danger awaits her on the morrow! 🙈

And it sounds like the Bennets are in different situations than we normally see them – younger sisters in Brighton? Mr. Bennet using a cane? I wonder where these alterations will lead us…. 🤔

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~ Connect with Barry ~

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GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

Barry is generously giving away 1 paperback book of A Debt Inherited in conjunction with his visit to this blog!!  Woot woot! 

 

To enter this giveaway, please leave a comment, question, or some love for Barry!

• This giveaway is open worldwide  (international readers will receive a gift card in lieu of a paperback). Thank you, Barry!
• This giveaway ends September 30th!