The Terms of the Bequest

There is one other bequest which will seem strange to you. It is for a lady—one by the name of Elizabeth Bennet.

At the age of fifteen, Elizabeth Bennet slips out of a warehouse door into an alley where she finds a terrified young woman in peril, abandoned by the scoundrel who had promised to marry her. She slips a handful of coins into the lady’s hands, hails a hackney cab for her, and sends her on her way never having learnt her name.

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For six years, Fitzwilliam Darcy has diligently searched for a woman he has never met, a stranger who once did his family a kindness that his dying father never forgot and would not leave unrepaid. It never occurs to him that the fine-eyed young lady he left in Hertfordshire—the one with the unsuitable, ill-behaved family—could be her.

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Elizabeth Bennet refuses Mr Darcy’s offensive proposal of marriage but what follows is astounding: her own house, an income to live on, and a future that does not rely on any man’s good opinion. Elizabeth finds herself fully independent and fully free to direct her own footsteps, to decide whether she wants to forgive Mr Darcy or to never think of him again.

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He has given her liberty and a home of her own but will he be able to give her a reason to love him? Will the terms of this bequest include a second chance?