Read Attempting Elizabeth for Free Online Page B

manners, and so handsome. Georgiana, are you attending me? You have quite a blank look on your face.”
    Georgiana? Who was she talking to? I turned my head slightly to each side, but there was no one in the room but the two of us. The woman looked at me in exasperation, but then laughed.
    “I dare say you are daydreaming about a certain gentleman. You should do me the favor of attending when I am speaking of the very same gentleman,” she teased.
    I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are talking about.” For some completely inexplicable reason my voice came out significantly higher and softer than my usual alto. And in an extremely refined sounding upper British class accent. I was so shocked I dropped my sewing sampler and it fell to the floor with a soft whoosh .
    My companion looked surprised as well, but she recovered quickly with a patently fake-sounding laugh. “Oh my dear, what a dreadful tease you are turning into. Who else could we be speaking of? Do you have that many beaux that you are getting them confused?”
    I continued to stare at her. The look on my face—I had a brief dumbfounded moment of realization that I had no idea what my face looked like; judging from the difference in the appearance of my hands and the tenor of my voice, it might look extremely different from my own—must have given her another moment’s pause, because she furrowed her brow and said, “Why, Mr. Wickham of course.”
    If the surprise I felt at hearing my voice registered at about a nine out of ten on the shock scale, the mention of Wickham blew it right off the charts.
    “Wickham?” My voice was now a frightfully high squeak, like a church mouse that inhaled helium and then was stomped on. I cleared my throat. My hands clutched at my skirts, frantically, as if by finding purchase on them I could somehow grab onto reality. My spine felt unnaturally straight. I don’t think I’d ever sat up so straight in my life. My normal reaction would have been to jump up and pace about the room. I was kind of a fidgety person in general, but for some reason, other than the spastic movement of my hands, my body refused to move from its extremely still state.
    I took a deep breath and tried again.
    “Wickham? George Wickham?” I asked. My companion, clearly discomfited by my strange behavior, nodded vigorously. My brain, which had been feeling sluggish—maybe a byproduct of the strange rushing sounds that had been echoing inside my cranium—began to fit pieces together. “And...you’re Mrs. Younge?”
    She nodded again. “Miss Darcy, are you feeling quite well?”
    Miss Darcy. Georgiana Darcy. Mr. Darcy’s little sister. Which meant one of two things. I was dreaming or I was crazy. I closed my eyes briefly and ordered myself to wake up. Nothing happened. I peeled my eyelids open again to find Miss Darcy’s paid companion, Mrs. Younge, still watching me.
    Well, that still left crazy as an option.
    “I feel, um, a little bit disoriented,” I said truthfully. I was finally able to will myself to stand up. I was tiny! My eye line was completely different; it made everything look strange. I usually stood at 5’9, but I’d bet good money that I was now at least seven to eight inches shorter than that. I probably hadn’t been this short since I was ten years old. I took a few steps, Mrs. Younge watching me the entire time. I would have said she looked concerned, but I had a poor opinion of her to start with. I knew she was complicit in trying to foist Wickham on poor, unsuspecting Georgiana, so I trusted her about as much as I’d trust a viper.
    I glanced around the room. There wasn’t a mirror, which was too bad because I was dying to find out what Georgiana Darcy looked like. I think that was the moment when it occurred to me that I might actually be in Pride and Prejudice . My brain had somehow accepted that I was a different person—a character that I was familiar enough with to be curious