A Lesson in Honour

Book excerpt: It is Christmas, 1797, and thirteen year-old Master Fitzwilliam Darcy is returning from his first term at Eton in full anticipation of the holidays. Soon, he and his family will leave their fashionable London home for Pemberley, their Derbyshire estate, to prepare for the arrival of his irrepressible cousin Richard and the rest of his Matlock relations. But when Darcy arrives in London, he learns that his mother is ill. Her doctor's prognosis is dire--Lady Anne cannot survive another year! As Christmas approaches, Darcy is torn between his parents' struggles to carry on and the attraction of an unusual company of players in Lambton for the holidays. With the arrival of Richard and his family, he must try to satisfy the expectations of all and, in doing so, learn what it means to be a Darcy. Pamela Aidan has created a touching coming-of-age novella based on characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. A Lesson In Honour explores love, duty, and family honour--principles that a young Fitzwilliam Darcy learns from both of his parents as they confront a family crisis--as well as a lesson derived from youthful indiscretion and adolescent romance that helps defiine the man Elizabeth Bennet will encounter at the Meryton assembly many years later.