There’s something gloriously impractical about sending a lady to sea in the Regency era. The skirts! The cockroaches! The chamber pots that slid everywhere! Yet by 1813, Britain was bursting with people doing exactly that—soldiers, diplomats, merchants, and, occasionally, their wives—rattling around the globe in those sturdy little packet ships I’ve been describing lately.
My upcoming novel Muslin and Mystery begins on one of these packet ships in the spring of 1813, just as Napoleon’s grip on Europe begins to falter. The passengers are a mixed lot—two newlywed couples you may know (Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot of Persuasion and Colonel Fitzwilliam and Caroline Bingley of Pride and Prejudice), along with several strangers who all seem to have their secrets.
I wanted to explore the cozy mystery genre and also the closed mystery (like Murder on the Orient Express) so a packet ship was a perfect setting for me. I make no claims to Agatha Christie levels of mystery, however! I am one of those who never sees the ending coming, while my sister almost always does. (I’m having her beta read particularly for the mystery!)
Anyway, as I’ve said, these ships were fast, cramped, and perilous, but also astonishingly civilized. A lady might dine on roast beef one evening and brace herself against a gale the next.
By popular request, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth are two of the major characters in this story, so here is a nice fluffy scene with them! The journey has become their wedding trip, since they were married only a month before.
Captain Frederick Wentworth handed Anne aboard ship with a rueful smile. “I confess I am out of reason cross that your first voyage should not be on my own ship. Is that not petty? You would think I had outgrown such flights of boyish pride.”
“I would have enjoyed that greatly. And I daresay a captain never outgrows the wish to be captain. Will it chafe you terribly to act as passenger?”
He eyed the packet ship dubiously. The Lady Mary had a good reputation among the ships that sailed set routes out of Cornwall—he would not let Anne sail on any ship that did not!—but it was hardly a ship of the line. It was tiny, for one thing, and the deck was a riot of packages, barrels, crates, and animals.
Most of it would be packed below before they sailed. The master must be busy packing it in like a fitted puzzle even now. But even when the decks were semi-cleared, they would be far from the trim cleanliness of even the Laconia, which had not been Fred’s favorite ship. There was a military rigor adhered to by most captains of the British Royal Navy, which was lacking here.
He’d known it would be so, and he’d mentally resigned himself. “It will chafe, of course, but I shall bear it with a good will. It cannot be worse than the dreadful winter crossing I had in the year ‘09. That poor vessel nearly—”
He braced Anne against his side as a large pig barreled by, nearly bowling her over. She righted herself, only to stumble again as the deck tilted under them.
“Pardon! I cannot seem to keep my feet.”
Frederick wasn’t sorry to hold her close. He had his sea legs back in a trice, but she tottered unsteadily as the ship tilted ever so slightly. “Not to worry, you will grow accustomed to the movement of the deck. But I apologize! I am reminiscing when we ought to get below. It is just this way—do hold that handrail and watch your step, for the steps are slick. As they will always be.”
The dining room was dim to his eyes as they descended, but he was glad to see it was a decent-size. He had feared the extra passenger accommodation had been taken from this space, but the shipwrights had somehow squirreled two more doubles in without making a closet of the central space.
He could hardly believe that he was here with Anne, his wife. Six months ago he had returned home thinking to find some unexacting young woman to take to wife—and then he had been catapulted into Anne’s grievous affairs in Bath. He could only be thankful, for he feared that nothing less than dire peril would have shaken him out of his idiotic and stubborn prejudice against seeking her out again. It would have served him right if she had sent him on his way with a flea in his ear and a resentful adieu. But Anne, as intelligent and kind as he remembered, had somehow harbored no bitterness. When he thought of how much resentment he had held against her, he could only thank Providence for a wife so far above himself.
“This is us—No. 4,” he said.
Anne entered their tiny cabin in something like a dream state. The boat moved uncertainly under her feet, but Anne felt sure she would grow accustomed. Every day that she spent with Frederick was something of a miracle.
“It is dreadfully small,” he said, looking around the cabin. “I hate to ask you to bear this.”
“Nonsense, you haven’t asked me to bear anything.” She withdrew her hat pin to take it off. “There is a bed, and a settee, and those drawers for storage—we shall be fine. Besides, if you knew how often I imagined sailing with you… It is quite the realization of a dream.”
She sidestepped to put her hat on the small built-in cabinet and to tidy her hair. Fred shifted to stand just behind her, and she thought he merely moved with the slight roll of the ship, until he carefully took the hat pin from her hand and stuck it on the edge of the bolster. His arms came around her and he dropped his lips to her ear. “You cannot just say beautiful things like that and expect me to walk away.”
His lips were suddenly warm against her neck and Anne inhaled sharply against the delicious feeling. She wasn’t quite accustomed to this yet, but she turned around. “If you’re going to kiss me at such a moment, you may at least do it properly—”
He covered her mouth with his, silencing her (very) mild scold. They pressed into the tiny gap between the cabinet and the end of the bed, and he showed her how very glad he was that she had come.
“Fred,” Anne managed eventually. “We really must—the other passengers—”
“Would that I were captain again and could consign them to the devil.”
She smacked his shoulder.
“I know.” He grinned unrepentantly. “Shall we go meet our fellow inmates? I almost hope they are uniformly awful, and I shall have reason enough to keep you in here.”
Anne blushed, adding to the color that must already be in her cheeks from his kisses. “We already know that Caroline and the Colonel are not awful.”
“Hm. But you haven’t met Lady Marston. Gimlet-eyed and bracket-faced.”
“Shh, she might hear you!”
“The walls are not that thin.” He grinned again. “Thank heaven.”
“Fred!”
“What?” he said innocently. “We want a sturdy ship.” There was so much boyish joy to him that sometimes she felt like no years had passed at all since their fateful broken engagement. There had been years, however, and she shuddered to think of the close calls—the small things that might have prevented her from every having this moment.
“Now, what was that for?” he asked quizzically. “We can’t have you shuddering at this stage of the thing. Did I offend you—”
“No, no. But how easily I could have missed all this! If you hadn’t seen me in Bath, or if I had married Mr. Elliot sooner, or if I had accepted Mr. Musgrove…”
“What’s this? Musgrove? Isn’t he the one who’s taken in your sister Mary—the family in Uppercross, near Kellynch?”
“That is his mother, Mrs. Musgrove, who took in Mary. They have always been friends of the family, and she has several daughters to keep Mary company.”
“I didn’t know Musgrove had dangled after you, however.”
“He didn’t dangle.” Anne shook her head. “And I didn’t mean to taunt you; he is now happily married to a lady from Meryton—Charlotte Lucas. I only meant to marvel at how dangerously close I came to losing you again.”
“Nonsense. I mean, yes, if you had married one of those cads—”
“Mr. Musgrove is not a cad!”
“—I should’ve left you alone, of course. But if you had not, we still should have found our way toward one another. I cannot imagine being in your vicinity and not finding you again.”
“Now who is saying beautiful things?” Anne wiped her eyes resolutely. “We must go before I become a watering pot.”
Ahh, they are just too wonderful!! Thanks for reading! If you are interested in being part of my street team you can sign up here! The street team members will receive an early eBook copy of Muslin and Mystery–and ideally they’ll leave a review within the first few days of publication. Reviews really help others find the book!
Happy reading,
Corrie
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