Hi friends! Today I am thrilled to welcome back author, Lucy Marin, to Austenesque Reviews! 🤗

As you may have seen, Lucy just celebrated the release of her newest Pride and Prejudice variation – Her Father’s Eyes!✨

And in this variation Elizabeth is a ward of the Bennets! It will be so interesting to see how her relationships with each of the Bennet’s is changed by these circumstances.

Lucy is here to share an excerpt from  Her Father’s Eyes– we hope you enjoy! 🙌🏼

~ Book Description ~

By simply being who she was, she promised him more than he had dreamt was possible.

Elizabeth Bennet has always understood her place in the world: modest, borrowed, and entirely her own. Orphaned as a small child and raised with love at Longbourn, she has never questioned the life she was given. That is, until Mr Bennet finds a letter he had forgotten he kept, and the name Sterling changes everything. Her father is the younger brother of an earl. And his family, the warm, exuberant, altogether overwhelming Romsleys, have spent years grieving a man they loved, never knowing he had a daughter. Now they want to know her.

Swept into a glittering world of London drawing rooms and Twelfth Night balls, Elizabeth discovers that belonging to the Romsleys means something she had not dared to hope for: a family who claims her without reservation. What it also means unfortunately is that Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is brought back into her circle, appearing at every dinner table, watching her with unreadable eyes, and seeming determined to be nothing like the man she decided he was in Hertfordshire.

Fitzwilliam Darcy had dismissed Elizabeth Bennet as wholly unsuitable due to her irregular birth, her connexions, her impossible effect on his composure all made her someone he was determined to forget. But Elizabeth Sterling is another matter entirely. And the woman herself, magnificent and sharp-eyed and resolutely unimpressed with him, is exactly the same.

What does a man do when the woman he dismissed as beneath him turns out to be exactly where he belongs?

~~~

~ Excerpt from Her Father’s Eyes ~

One afternoon at the end of the first week of December, Mr Bennet called her into his book-room. His demeanour was a mixture of triumphant and hesitant. He clutched a file of papers in one hand.

“Sit down, Lizzy,” he said, indicating an armchair.

She did as he requested, trepidation causing a fluttering sensation in her stomach. To her surprise, instead of sitting at the other side of the oak desk as he usually did, he took the chair next to her. His unusual choice added to her curiosity and nervousness.

“I have found it. Quite by accident,” he said, giving the papers a single shake. “The letter from my sister. And more—all of it!”

For a moment, Elizabeth could not breathe. For as long as she could recall, Mr Bennet had spoken of a long letter her true mother had written shortly before her death. It had arrived, along with her father’s will and possibly other documents—whatever was needed to ensure she would become Mr Bennet’s ward. What most mattered to her was the letter and what it might tell her about her past.

Mr Bennet said, “You recall that I believed I had given all the information I had, including my sister’s letter, to old Mr Gardiner, my father-in-law, so that he might assist with settling everything. I remembered little of what she wrote, not even the name of her husband, your father, much to my regret. It, and soon after you, arrived at Longbourn at a particularly difficult moment.” He slowly shook his head, no doubt lost in his memories. At the time, Mrs Bennet had been extremely ill, as had Mary, who was still a baby; he had feared for them both. His distress at his sister’s news—that her husband was dead and she was showing symptoms of the same malady that killed him—had added to Mr Bennet’s anxiety. But before he could send help and write to urge her to come to Hertfordshire as soon as she was able, he had been informed she had also died, and young Elizabeth, confused and sorrowful, had become his responsibility.

Mr Bennet continued. “I was named your sole guardian in your father’s will, I assume because his family had rejected him, even after their marriage. My father-in-law helped with the various legal necessities, which was why he had, or I thought he had, the documents. I was certain they were lost in a fire at his office several years after you came here, as did my brother Philips, who was his clerk at the time. I was always relieved we did not need to prove I was your legal guardian for some reason.”

Elizabeth remembered the story well enough and encouraged him to tell her what she most wanted to know. “But the letter?” she asked. “What did my mother write?”

He nodded. “As I have told you, all I knew was that my sister had met a dashing young gentleman—your father—when she was in town, visiting friends. I suspected she was enamoured of him, but I knew nothing else until the two of them had run off together. Rather, whatever I did know is lost to time, pushed out of my memory by other concerns. Today, quite by accident, while searching an old lockbox, I found it! I must have retrieved the file from Mr Gardiner. I was looking for—well, it does not matter. Another old document whose importance is nothing compared to this.”

Elizabeth stared at him, her heart pounding against her ribs, and silently urged him to continue. What she wished to do was pull the stack of papers from his hands, find her mother’s letter, and read it.

“But what does it say?” she demanded.

He took one of her hands. “If you read it, it might well change your life, Lizzy, including your connexion to me and your family here at Longbourn. Especially if you decide to act on the information it contains. You are not yet one-and-twenty. You may even change who is your guardian, if you like. It is your right.”

She waved away the final point. Although she could have asked for another guardian as soon as she was fourteen years old, she had never wished to do so. It would have been complicated, given Mr Bennet’s inability to prove that he was her legal guardian. Besides which, Mr and Mrs Bennet had been wonderful to her, always embracing her as their own; even with Mrs Bennet’s recent behaviour, Elizabeth knew she thought of her no differently than she did her true daughters. Yet, Elizabeth had always known—and more importantly, felt—that she did not quite belong as perfectly as Jane and the younger girls did. To her mind, she was a cousin and niece who was as close as a sister and daughter without actually being one. Why would she wish to change that?

What she did long for was information about her past. Long-suppressed sensations flooded her. I have always believed that, if I only knew who my father was, why his family rejected him and my mother, I might not have this restlessness within me. “I must know,” she insisted.

He nodded and patted her hand. “I expected you would say as much. Shall I tell you the main parts of it first? I suspect you will have to read it many times to fully take in what my sister imparted, and you might wish to review the other papers. The language in legal documents is not always easy to—”

“I will,” she interjected. “I am not concerned about wills and guardianship, not now. Please,” she implored, eager for him to tell her about the letter.

“You recall that your mother and father eloped?”

She nodded.

“Your paternal grandfather disapproved of my sister because she was the daughter of a country gentleman, while he was wealthy and connected to nobility.”

“What was his name?” Tears burned the back of her eyes, and her nose tickled; she doubted she would make it through the conversation without crying.

“Sterling,” he said gently. “Your father’s name was Thomas Sterling. From what my sister wrote, he loved her as much as she did him. When his father refused to countenance a marriage, they eloped. His father and mine refused to acknowledge them afterwards. Eloping is…”

“Shameful,” she said reluctantly.

“But they did marry, and you were born fourteen months later. She mentions where they were living and where you were christened. An old friend had written to her of our father’s death but says she decided not to write or visit Longbourn, because she did not want to bring trouble to my door, so to speak. When your father died of a severe cold, she decided to write to me, because she had no one else and hoped you and she might be received at Longbourn. But before she could come, she, too, fell ill. This letter”—he held the paper aloft briefly—“was written the day she first suspected she would not survive.”

I wished you to know everything about my beloved Thomas and our wonderful little Elizabeth. We had a joyful few years together, but they are at an end. I am trusting you, my dear brother, to welcome my daughter and give her a good life. When she was an infant, Thomas and I agreed that you should be her guardian. His father would not welcome her, and he does not believe his brother or sister would, either, not while their father lives. There is no one else to whom we can make this request. Please tell her that she was very much loved by her mama and papa.

I am already transfixed! 😯

Such a great way to explore a new history and ancestry for Elizabeth. 📖

I am eager to see how her interactions with Mr. Darcy proceed after this revelation… ✨

~~~

GIVEAWAY TIME!

In conjunction with this lovely blog tour, Quills and Quartos will be giving away 3️⃣ ebook copies of Her Father’s Eyes to three lucky reader who comments on this post.

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

• This giveaway is open worldwide! Thank you, Quills and Quartos.
• This giveaway will end July 31st.

Her Father’s Eyes  is available in paperback and ebook!!