This is the second volume of Pamela Aidan’s trilogy, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman; it begins shortly after Darcy takes Bingley off to London, safely away from Jane Bennett, and ends (so I guess) shortly before Darcy horrifies Elizabeth Bennett with his proposal of marriage. As Darcy has no contact with Elizabeth during this period of time, the entire book is off-stage, as it were; and frankly, it’s all the better for it.

In terms of Pride and Prejudice, the point of the novel is Darcy’s struggle to put Elizabeth behind him. He attends to his business interests, celebrates Christmas with his sister Georgianna and other family members, renews his acquaintance with old friends, and eventually tries to find a suitable wife of his own station (to no avail of course). Along the way we get to know a rich, delightful cast. Georgianna, no more than a plot contrivance in Austen, is here a vivid character with a neverending ability to surprise and astonish her older brother. Much of the growth we see in Darcy between the two ends of Austen’s book is here set down to Georgianna’s influence. There is the remarkable Lord Brougham, a college friend of Darcy’s, who is clearly More Than He Seems. There is Fletcher, Darcy’s valet, staunchly loyal but with definite (if carefully expressed) opinions as to where Darcy’s good lies.

There are a few places that are maybe a little over the top, where Aidan had, as my wife would say, “way too much fun”; Darcy’s encounters with Beau Brummel and Lord Byron come to mind, as does the new novel one of the characters reads–a story about a widow with three daughters who are cast out of their family home by the widow’s stepson and his nasty wife. And the final major sequence, during which Darcy meets a femme fatale named Lady Sayres, sidles well into the territory Austen mocked so gleefully in Northanger Abbey.

No matter; it was fun, and if the third volume were available I’d no doubt be well into it by now. I’m given to understand that it will be out in January, and I’m looking forward to it.