Cousin Anne

Book excerpt: While her family and cousins are together in London, Anne de Bourgh is told that she will marry her cousin Fitzwilliam Darcy. It is her duty and expected by all the family. True, their engagement is of a peculiar kind, their marriage having been decided upon when she and Fitzwilliam were infants. Now that she is seventeen, Anne is deemed sufficiently mature to learn the truth about her future. But Anne has other ideas. She hopes to marry for love. Indeed, since arriving in London, her thoughts have been very agreeably occupied with daydreaming about a handsome young man she could well imagine marrying: George Wickham. Her growing affection for Mr. Wickham leads her into trouble and upsets everybody: her cousin Fitzwilliam, her mother, her aunt and uncle, and especially her dear Papa. She must ask herself a hard question: Who is most harmed by untamed passion--her relations or herself?