A Christmas Understanding

Name: A Christmas Understanding
Author: Melanie Rachel

by Melanie Rachel

Genre: Romance Historical

90 pages

Caroline Bingley takes a fall. Darcy and Elizabeth may follow.

Mr. Collins has been refused, Mr. Bingley has departed, and Lydia Bennet has a plan: send her elder sisters to London until Christmas. Then Miss Bingley slips on the ice outside the Gardiners’ door and Elizabeth is stuck with an unwelcome houseguest, answering a bell Miss Bingley is only too happy to ring. But Elizabeth will endure it, because the accident gives Mr. Bingley a reason to call at Gracechurch Street every single day.

Fitzwilliam Darcy separated Bingley from Jane for his friend’s own good. Now Bingley knows it, and Darcy’s penance is to provide his carriage and ride along to witness the developing courtship he tried to prevent. He did not expect the Gardiners to be genteel, a six-year-old to demand a game of chess, or Elizabeth Bennet to greet him with a smile meant for everyone but him.

Elizabeth has more than one reason to distrust Mr. Darcy. Yet with each call, the man in her aunt’s drawing room grows harder to reconcile with the man she thought she knew. And Darcy, who is resolved to admire her only from a distance, finds the Gardiners’ drawing room a poor place to maintain it.

A Christmas Understanding is an approximately 53,000 word sweet, closed-door Regency Pride and Prejudice variation. It’s Netherfield in reverse, with the Gardiners hosting Caroline Bingley who has an injury she’d rather endure than explain, a Darcy who falls first but fights it, and a little secret meddling. Add holly, mulled wine, and mistletoe kisses for a found-family Christmas.

Start Reading Page List Review