Read Attempting Elizabeth for Free Online Page A

didn’t like Mark.
    There’s really only one course of action after a sob fest of that magnitude. I changed into my rattiest and most comfortable sweatpants, pulled out Pride and Prejudice , poured myself a glass of wine, and stretched out on our living room couch for a date with some of my favorite characters.
    I fell asleep reading. I hadn’t started at the beginning of the book. I’d read it so many times that I knew the plot forward and backward. I could quote dialogue. I may or may not have read and written fan fiction. I admit nothing.
    I do admit, however, that I’m not-so-secretly in love with Mr. Darcy. What’s not to love about a handsome and rich man ( “ten thousand pounds a year!” ) that falls so desperately in love with a woman that he is willing to examine his own prejudices and overcome his pride to be with her? Actually, it’s even better than that, because Darcy changes not knowing if it will result in Lizzy falling in love with him. And he does, I think, a truly amazing and dashing thing, when he helps rescue her sister from certain ruin and wants no recognition for it. He saved her younger sister, Lydia, at great trouble and expense, just because he loved Elizabeth and didn’t want to see her hurt. Sigh.
    And yes, I know he is a fictional character; I’m still kind of in love with him. It’s a pity that my own attempts at finding my own Mr. Darcy had turned into such debacles.
    I had started reading at the first proposal scene. There is something so heartbreaking about Darcy’s awkward attempt at a proposal. He so desperately doesn’t want to love Elizabeth, and he makes it abundantly clear. The verbal smackdown she gives him is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature. I figured I’d read from first proposal, through Lizzy coming to love Darcy, and all the way to the happy ending.
    I didn’t make it to the end, though. I was so tired out from the ill-conceived hiking excursion and my crying jag that as soon as Darcy stormed out of Hunsford cottage after being soundly rejected, I felt my eyes getting heavier. I had barely made it through the letter Darcy gives Elizabeth the next day when I dropped off to sleep.
    As my eyelids drifted shut, I felt like I was being pushed and pulled from all sides. There was a loud rushing sound in my ears. I opened my eyes, but I seemed to have trouble focusing. I could bring the scene in front of me into focus, briefly; then it got blurry again. It was bright, much brighter than my softly lit living room. After a moment or so of fighting to focus, my vision cleared. The strange sounds remained in my ears, like the sounds of waves pulling in and out.
    I felt different. I looked down at my body. I was dressed in a pale muslin morning dress, holding a sampler as my hands—except they weren’t my hands; they were much smaller and more delicate than my hands—were busily setting a series of small precise stitches into the fabric. I have never sewn in my life.
    I looked around the room. It was lovely—filled with early afternoon sunlight from large multi-paned windows, decorated in a soft feminine style, and stocked with the most gorgeous antiques I had ever seen.
    I became aware that someone was talking to me. There was a woman sitting on a small couch to my left. She was dressed in a Regency era dress just like I seemed to be and had a small lace cap on her head. It appeared she’d been speaking to me for some time, but her voice was just beginning to filter through the rushing in my ears.
    The woman was dark-haired and petite and looked to be in her late thirties or early forties. She also sat with a sewing project in her lap, but unlike my hands, which were still busily working away, hers were gesturing in the air as she punctuated whatever point she was making. As her voice became clearer I became even more confused.
    “...and I must say, he was paying you particular attention yesterday during our stroll. Did you not notice it? Such charming