A lesson in honour
The challenges of his first term away at school successfully behind him, Fitzwilliam Darcy anticipated nothing but fun and freedom for the Christmas holiday. Instead, those school-boy cares are left far behind when, upon his arrival home, he is met with the shocking news that his mother, Lady Anne, is deathly ill. Suddenly, boyhood must be left behind. What will now fall to him at only thirteen years of age? It is Christmas, 1797, and Fitzwilliam Darcy has arrived at the pivotal moment in his journey to becoming the man Elizabeth Bennet meets at the Meryton assembly fifteen years in the future. Complicating this is young George Wickham, devious already, who is also home from school. Soon, Darcy’s prank-loving cousins, Richard and D’Arcy Fitzwilliam, and their parents will arrive for the family’s traditional Christmas celebrations that Lady Anne insists they carry on. Especially difficult are the expectations of his beloved parents and the new and interesting temptations that have arisen unexpectedly to tease him away from events at home. A cadre of young men, all of them quite different--all of them reluctantly stretched toward adulthood in Lessons in Honour by Pamela Aidan. Lessons in Honour is a variation on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and was formerly published as Young Master Darcy: A Lesson in Honour