Pride and Penniless
Author: Rachelle Ayala
Genre(s): Romance | Historical
Total pages: 102
Elizabeth inherits a fortune with one condition. She must marry Mr. Darcy. If she doesn’t, he gets her inheritance, and she gets nothing.
Uncle Henry Bennet, the black sheep who wrote Elizabeth the only letters that ever made her laugh, has left her this galling choice. Three weeks to become Mrs. Darcy, or watch the inheritance slip into his hands alone.
She would sooner refuse. But her family needs the money. Mr. Collins comes to propose, and marrying the scowling man with a great estate and a fine address begins to look, on paper, like the practical answer.
Elizabeth gives Darcy a list of terms, and he agrees to every clause. He even adds a few of his own, mostly about making her laugh or being allowed to look at her.
They marry in haste and quarrel at leisure. Then the carriage turns onto Pemberley’s drive, and the house is a beautiful shell. The hallways are cold, the furniture sold off. She’s given a housemaid who has never been a lady’s maid, a ledger that bleeds red, and a husband who owes more than he makes.
She calls him penniless. He calls her proud. And then, because he cannot help himself, he brings her flowers, plays checkers at her bedside, and shares his sister’s troubles with her as though she belonged there.
Every kindness feels suspect. Every kiss might be a payment. Darcy cannot afford to slight her, nor can he say he loves her without it sounding like a bargain.
Then Georgiana’s trouble arrives, and Colonel Fitzwilliam starts asking what Henry Bennet wanted with the Darcys. Elizabeth begins to wonder the same. Why him? And what, exactly, did her uncle know that she doesn’t?
When Elizabeth discovers the source of Pemberley’s debts, Darcy must prove his heart was never for sale, and she must stop pretending she hasn’t already given hers.
A marriage-of-convenience, enemies-to-lovers romance where the wedding is only the beginning, and the hardest thing about love is proving it when everything you give is worth eighty thousand pounds.
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Features: Marriage of convenience • Heiress and penniless hero • Enemies to lovers • Ticking clock • He loved her first • Role reversal • Pemberley stripped bare • Secret debts • Waltz without music • Found family • Slow burn inside the marriage • Forced proximity • No Wickham • Clean Regency • Guaranteed HEA
Clean Regency romance. 107,000 words
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