The Trouble With Horses: A Pride & Prejudice Novella Variation Read Free Page A

were lined with bookshelves but there was a gap where he had pulled all his medical journals down for today's catastrophe.
    "Elizabeth, do you know the man you saved?" Mr. Bennet sighed as he returned to his chair and then proceeded to place his spectacles on to examine another letter of correspondence.
    Confused, Elizabeth shook her head. "No, papa. I've never met him."
    "Hm, perhaps he has a sister named Elizabeth, then."
    Elizabeth's heart quickened and she took an audible breath and blushed. Was this man saying her name? It couldn't be, she had never met him before and this was not one of her novels lying in a pile next to the bed.
    "He said," she swallowed the nervousness pooling in her mouth, "he said my name?"
    Mr. Bennet leaned back and folded his glasses again and placed them on his desk. He took a long look at his daughter before answering. "Why don't you tell me again the story of you finding the poor chap?"
    Elizabeth pulled her knees up and tucked them under her dress, wrapping her arms around them. She recounted how she was just about to return home when the horse came running out of the woods, alone with no rider. She explained how once she started to think about it, she never should have started searching for the rider by herself and just when she was about to abandon her attempt, she heard the moan. On and on she went, telling her father all of her fears and how she nearly gave up many times.
    As Elizabeth continued her story to the point where she mounted the horse, her father stopped her.
    "Aha! There you go, you said it. You told him your name before you left him to find me."
    Elizabeth's mouth hung open in shock as she realized indeed she had told the man her name. She closed it again and burned with shame as she also remembered how she touched his cheek, but managed to leave that part of her story for herself.
    "It seemed natural at the time, Papa. In case he woke up." Elizabeth sat upright and let her legs dangle from the window seat again as her father began chuckling good-naturedly.
    "Well daughter, thanks to your efforts, your patient upstairs happened to utter your name while your mother was in the room and by now, the whole town has heard. You may very well have just become the richest woman in the neighborhood!"
    Elizabeth was aghast that her father would laugh at her, and worse that he would insinuate she would be forced to marry just because she happened to come upon a man after a horse riding accident! It was preposterous! With nothing more to tell, Elizabeth stood up and quit her father's study to return upstairs.
    She paused in the hallway before making her decision on whether to just go to bed when a polite knocking on the door surprised her. Well, polite in the tremor of the knock, but certainly not the hour. Deciding if the person on the other side could disobey the rules of propriety by visiting in the middle of the night, she could very well answer the door herself.
    After a polite bow, a smiling man of fair features greeted Elizabeth from the doorway.
    "I am your newest neighbor in town, Charles Bingley, at your service. I believe a guest and very good friend of mine is ill in your home. Fitzwilliam Darcy?"
    “How did you hear he was here?” She didn't intend on sounding so suspicious, but she didn't recognize the man and she wasn't going to put the stranger in anymore danger. Mr. Bennet, hearing the front door shake the wall shared with his study, appeared behind Elizabeth.
    “Mr. Bingley! I wondered if the man we found belonged to you!” Mr. Bennet shook Bingley's hand, having met him two days earlier while dealing with a tenant on the border of Netherfield and Longbourn.
    Blushing, Bingley entered the home and gripped his hat in his hands.
    “We searched all evening for him when he never returned from his afternoon ride. I attended the assembly to see if anyone had seen a sign of him or perhaps where he rode to. It's a bit like Darcy to take solitary rides in the countryside, but