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 of his mother’s illness and impending death.

How does one suddenly leave boyhood behind? What obligations now fall to him at only thirteen years of age? Especially difficult are the new and interesting temptations that arise unexpectedly to tease him away from the fears and duties of life at home

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 moment, young George Wickham, devious already, is also home for the holidays as are Darcy’s prank-loving cousins, Richard and D’Arcy Fitzwilliam– 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 in 2010 as Young Master Darcy: A Lesson in Honour