Mr. Darcy’s Promise

Mr. Darcy’s Promise was the book that made me love the forced marriage scenarios, and after reading it, I noticed this type of plot always gets my attention and usually leads to a purchase 🙂

In this book Mr. Whickam is a vile person, who plans a scheme to compromise Elizabeth and ruin Darcy’s happiness forever, but things don’t go as planned, and it is Mr. Darcy who ends up being caught in a compromising situation.

We all know Mr. Darcy is an honorable gentleman, so after being caught in a compromising situation with Elizabeth, he fulfills his duty and marries her. But of course, this early in the story, Elizabeth is not yet in love with Mr. Darcy, and seems so troubled and sad during the carriage ride from Longbourn to London that Mr. Darcy decides to make her a promise! It is a promise he will not break and that will haunt them both for a long time 🙂

In this variation we see Elizabeth slowly falling in love with Mr. Darcy and wanting him to love her back. I loved Elizabeth’s worry for Darcy when he went out to help the farmers with the fire, and most of all, I loved when she decided not to let him go alone to Longbourn in search of Whickam. For me, that was pure love and dedication.

We are also made aware of Darcy’s feelings and troubles in this book, and even if this one is not know for the “Let’s torture Darcy club”, it is, in my opinion, one of those where he suffers the most. First he hears Elizabeth saying he is a proud man, to Whickam above all people, then he learns that despite marrying him she does not love him, and after that, he has to spend every day with the woman he loves without being able to touch her or tell her how he really feels. When he discovers a certain letter, my heart ached for him and I could not imagine anything more torturous to happen to Darcy at that moment. Of course that Darcy’s torture is my joy, so that was also one of the best moments in the book for me 🙂

I loved that Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship evolved slowly, and that they actually had a courtship time. With his promise, Mr. Darcy gave Elizabeth a chance to be courted in a very special way. This special courtship allowed them to have private and romantic moments they would not be allowed if they were actually just engaged, so this book takes advantage of this situation, and we get the better of 2 worlds: a regency novel and some liberties taking place without being considered a breach of propriety.

I would describe this book as cozy if a book can ever be described as such. I say this because we feel very comfortable with the characters at Pemberley. Even if our favorite couple is still struggling to be happy, the majority of scenes take us into a stage of domestic bliss. I found the scenes with the chicks and the parallelism explained in the end of the book adorable. In fact, Mr. Darcy’s Promise is incredible because it appears to be slow paced; we all have our time to enjoy every single second of it, but when we look back it, so much happened! If I were to talk about all the scenes I liked I believe I would stay here until dawn. That being said, I really recommend this book 🙂

 

Mr. Darcy’s Promise is available at:

Amazon.com –  Mr. Darcy’s Promise

Amazon.co.uk – Mr. Darcy’s Promise, Second Edition

Amazon.fr – Mr. Darcy’s Promise, Second Edition