Some things you need to know before you begin reading:
1. The original Pride and Prejudice and all of its characters are the creation of that immortal genius Jane Austen. The Ruin of Elizabeth Bennet, however, is my intellectual property and I would ask that you respect that. Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved.
2. As you might imagine given the title and summary, there will be scenes of a sensual nature in this story.
3. Though the story will be bleak at times, it will have a HEA.
Lydia Bennet had killed Mr. Rupert Nettle and all of London knew it. His children still spoke of her wickedness far and wide with such passion one would think she had done him in intentionally. Clearly they knew nothing of the girl they maligned.
Lydia Bennet never did anything with the slightest of intention.
She had never intended to ruin herself and her sisters when she had eloped with George Wickham. At fifteen she had been a silly little thing who believed in love and other such fairy tales. Eloping to Scotland will be ever so romantic, she had thought. Oh, what a joke it will be when I return home married before my all my sisters. Alas, the marriage did not take place to her sadness at first, but later to her joy. Why be a wife to a poor man when one might be a mistress to a rich man?
Her papa's death had never been her intention either, though she hardly felt responsible for it. Her mama however, had laid the blame at her door. According to Mrs. Bennet, she had half-killed her father with worry when she ran away and then finished the job when she refused to marry the man he had found to save her reputation. But how could her papa have believed she would marry an old farmer and take care of his six motherless brats?
And it had certainly never been her intention when she put on her new lingerie to make poor Mr. Nettle suffer an apoplexy. But, goodness, his children should be thanking her. They had inherited heaps and heaps of money and all of his soap factories, yet they could not accept the one little thing he had bequeathed her. It was true the townhouse on Oxford Street was ideally situated, but it hardly warranted such a fuss.
Not that their fuss had caused her any harm. Upon hearing the tale Viscount Bancroft had declared he must find out if he could survive tupping Lydia Bennet. And so her protectors had improved in prestige from a solider, to a cit, to a lord in the span of four years. At nineteen she was the most notorious courtesan in London.
Her life was dazzling.
The lives of the other Bennet ladies, however, were decidedly lacking in splendor.
Lydia had tried to help her sisters. She had visited them after their mother had died and told them they might come live with her. Kitty was the only one who had showed any enthusiasm—an enthusiasm that had been immediately quashed by a scolding glance from Lizzy. Mary had said not a word, simply pursed her lips and went back to reading her dreary sermons. Jane had sat very quietly and looked at her with such compassion it had made her angry. She did not want to be pitied. She pitied Jane.
Lydia had gotten up to leave in a huff. Lizzy, very pointedly, had shown her out and mentioned just as they had gotten to the door that might be better if she didn't come back.
The slight hit its mark; for a moment Lydia was fifteen and heartbroken again. "I never meant for Papa . . . Mama . . . any of it to happen."
Lizzy had replied, without malice but also without the absolution Lydia so desperately sought, "Of course you didn't."