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SOME PEOPLE said Lou needed a life, and that books were not the object of fascination of proper girls.
They said that if she wanted a husband, eventually a troop of children, along with a nice suburban house, she should ditch the paper and grab a curling iron, but Lou didn't want all of that.
Well, she did want to get married, one day, but Lou would rather remain a spinster with two dozen cats for the rest of her life rather than give up her passion for a man. Lou would only down a veil and wear a ring for someone that loved her enough to understand her love for books.
And Lou did want children, but one, maybe two. She had her fair share of experience handling more than three children at the same time thanks to her family, and Lou was not eager to have that as her daily life, even if she did love her cousins.
The suburban house she wasn't sure about yet, but that was a question for another day, and Lou wasn't one to plan that far ahead.
So, no, Lou would not be getting rid of her precious books so she'd snag a husband. She was twenty, for Christ's sake! Sure, plenty of her classmates from high school had tied the knot with their sweethearts straight from graduation, but many had not, and Lou was one of them.
If all went to shit and no one wanted to marry her because she was a bibliophile, then Lou would be glad to get married to an Austen man. Not Mr. Darcy, he was a bit too surly and stiff for her, but she'd take Mr. Knightly, or Mr. Bingley, either was fine. She wouldn't touch Mr. Ferras with a ten feet pole though, Lou wasn't one to forgive a secret engagement to another woman.
Could she even get married to a fictional character? Lou wasn't sure, but who would stop her?
Certainly not Austen, and Lou had an inkling the woman would've supported her decision, given her own life choices.
Lou didn't voice these things out loud though, neither the not wanting to get married to a douche, nor the possible matrimony to someone that did not exist. The first one was known to those close to her, of course, because no one could know Lou and think the girl would ever give up a single copy of a book in order to appease someone else, but to acquaintances and the tittering old ladies at the diner? Lou smiled and nodded, all their words entering one ear and going out the other.
The second one was simply because people would look at her weird, but her family also knew that tidbit of information, if her declaration at ten years old that everyone was required to call her Mrs. Darcy was any indication.
She might not be as fond of Mr. Darcy nowadays, but when little Lou first heard the story told by her mother before bedtime, she'd been in love.
Lou had also seen firsthand that it was possible for a man to be in love with a woman that liked to read like she did, as exemplified by her own parents, and that knowledge made it impossible for her to settle for anything else.
Her father had always listened to her mother ramble on about a book, he'd heard all of her complaints, praises and laments about characters and stories, and read the things she herself wrote, even though he couldn't tell the difference between prose and poetry.
Lou might be called silly, or a fool for it, but she wanted something like that for herself.
She didn't need someone who loved books as much as her, in fact, it'd be preferable if they didn't, if only because the only men she'd ever seen share her level of interest were a bit insufferable.
All she wanted was someone that understood her, who maybe had the same desire as her to have someone that loved them quirks and all, who'd she listen to go on about whatever their heart desired no matter her own interest in it, just because it made them happy.
Lou would either have that or nothing at all.
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first chapter is almost done sz please let me know your thoughts so far and thank you for all the votes and lovely comments!
