Mr. Darcy’s Family Affairs

Book One · Beta edition

Mr. Darcy’s Brother

Marry within eight weeks, or lose Pemberley to George Wickham. The one woman he’d like to ask is still telling Meryton he called her tolerable.

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This is the first half of the book — and you’ll get to read the rest soon.

Chapters 1–4 free for everyone · 5–16 free for Correspondents · How the beta works

Three covers are in the running — vote on your favorite after Chapter Five.

Fitzwilliam Darcy has brought his sister to Netherfield for a quiet autumn after Ramsgate. Then a letter arrives from his late father’s solicitor, enclosing a provision Darcy has never seen: should he remain unmarried at eight-and-twenty, the estate passes to George Wickham. Beneath it, under his father’s seal, is the reason — and the reason has just been quartered in Meryton with the militia.

Elizabeth Bennet, meanwhile, is still making a very good story of being pronounced merely tolerable across a crowded assembly room — and a sympathetic friend of the charming Mr. Wickham. But when Jane falls ill at Netherfield and Elizabeth walks through the mud to nurse her, she finds a house keeping its own counsel: a shy sister Mr. Wickham believes is safely at Pemberley, a proud man who turns unexpectedly gentle whenever that sister is near, and a letter, handed to Elizabeth at the side gate by a stranger, that Mr. Darcy receives as though it were dangerous.

Before you begin

How the beta works

This is the beta edition: the first sixteen chapters (about 45,000 words), the first half of the book. I’m writing the second half now, with your feedback in mind — and it’s coming soon. Read this half the way you’d read anything else. If you’d like to tell me how it’s going, there are a few small ways to do that — and every one of them is optional.

  1. Read as you normally would. Nothing to set up and nothing to install.
  2. Chapters 1–4 are free for everyone. Chapters 5–16 are for my Correspondents — free to join with just your email, and a login link (no password) keeps you reading.
  3. Tap any paragraph to mark it “loved it,” “lost here,” or “skimming.” Mark as many or as few as you like.
  4. One optional tap at the end of each chapter.
  5. Two short checkpoints — after Chapter Five and after Chapter Sixteen — including a vote on three possible covers.

What's recorded

Which chapters you open and finish, how far you read, and reading time while the page is active — plus anything you choose to mark or answer, and where you first found the beta. It's tied to a random ID on your device, or to your membership if you're logged in. Your email address is never part of the reading data.

I use it only to make the book better — this half, and the one I’m writing next. Privacy details →

Skip anything — none of it stands between you and the next chapter. The second half is coming soon, shaped by what you tell me; when the finished book arrives, it takes this beta edition’s place.

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