Gentleman Stranded at Longbourn

On a wet Friday in November, four days before the Netherfield ball, the bank of a swollen stream gives way under Mr. Darcy's horse. By dusk he is dripping on the Bennets' doorstep. By midnight he is burning with fever in their blue room, and Mr. Jones is firm: Mr. Darcy must not be moved.Elizabeth Bennet could not be more vexed. Only two days ago Mr. Wickham told her exactly what kind of man Mr. Darcy is, and now that man is lying upstairs in her father's house. Mrs. Bennet is delighted. Mr. Collins has found Lady Catherine's nephew under his own roof and means to read Fordyce to him. And the rain shows no sign of stopping.Four days in one house is a long time to keep up a quarrel. There is a flooded cottage to save, a sister to protect, a proposal from Mr. Collins that Mr. Darcy seems quite determined to prevent, and a name he says in his fever that Elizabeth was never meant to hear.Then the roads open, the ball arrives, and Meryton decides it knows exactly what happened at Longbourn. So, very soon, does Lady Catherine de Bourgh.A Gentleman Stranded at Longbourn is a clean Regency romance and a full-length Pride and Prejudice variation, told by Elizabeth and Darcy in turn, with the whole Bennet family, Jane and Bingley's own happy ending, and plenty of Austen's dry humour.