Several people have asked if they could read my latest novel without reading the previous books in the series. “Is it self-contained, would it still make sense?” And the answer is yes! Er, sort of!
Here’s the main thing: If you’re willing to take it on faith that Caroline Bingley had a moment of clarity and revelation which has great changed her character–then you’re good to go.
If you have been following along in the Sweet Regency Saga, you might remember that Caroline Bingley (now Fitzwilliam) spent part of the season with the Elliots, and considered whether or not she might marry Sir Walter Elliot. In a moment of clarity with Anne Elliot, Caroline realized that her goals in life were making her neither happy nor good, and she began to change.
Now she is trying very hard to become a better person. Her problem in this book is that she isn’t quite sure what that means. She admires Anne Elliot’s poise, beauty, and compassion, but emulating Anne turns out to be far trickier than she expected.
But Caroline is determined to reform. She’s also determined not to appear as though she’s reforming because that would be humiliating. You can imagine how this complicates one’s moral growth! Colonel Fitzwilliam is both amused and confused by her zeal, and the other passengers—an eccentric baronet, his severe wife, a mysterious widow, and one too-charming young man—supply endless opportunities for both moral testing and eavesdropping.
There’s nothing like the confines of a ship to test one’s character—or one’s patience. I’m about to go on a road trip from West Virginia to Houston, TX, which is 40+ hours in the car, so I shall be testing that in my own family next!
Here’s an early excerpt from Muslin & Mystery highlighting Caroline!
When one is trying to be a very different sort of person, it is important to know one’s goal. Caroline Fitzwilliam, nee Bingley, had not yet realized that her goal was ill-defined.
That she wanted to be different, she knew. That she was capable of anything she put her mind to, she also knew. She was not full of false modesty or anything of that sort. She was intelligent, competitive, and capable of great persistence in pursuit of her own aims.
It was only that her powers were now directed at a destination that was not perfectly clear to her.
It had something to do with Anne Elliot, whom Caroline recognized to be genteel, accomplished, and lady-like, yet also something more. Something to do with virtue, compassion, and discernment. The former qualities—with all their attendant benefits—Caroline had already achieved through birth or effort. The latter, perhaps not.
But it was not just kindness and perspicacity that Caroline wanted to emulate. There were other things. She had a growing compulsion to ponder, when perplexed, what would Anne do next?
Often, she did not quite know, and this vexed her for it seemed to show some lack within herself that she did not know how to ameliorate.
On the occasion of this journey, however, she did not need to ask, for she knew what Anne would do. Captain Wentworth had been requested to join the Foreign Office and to go to Istanbul. Anne, far from kicking up a dust at her (very) new husband’s assignment, had immediately agreed to go with him. Caroline had also agreed to go with Richard. She was now, as of late April, Mrs. Caroline Fitzwilliam, and she had given eager assent to the journey at first. Istanbul conjured visions of domes and towers, minarets and the Orient. However, her second thoughts about the long, dirty, and dangerous voyage might have dissuaded her, if she had not had Anne’s clear example guiding her like a lighthouse.
Therefore at an early hour, before the sun was fully risen, Caroline disembarked from her carriage at Falmouth Harbor in Cornwall. Despite over a week of country driving, the Falmouth Harbor was distressingly similar to the Canary Wharf district of London. It was surrounded by dark, bedraggled buildings, crowded, poor, and malodorous.
Their packet ship loomed ahead, anchored in the misty dawn with several others whose masts rose like colossal pillars in the fog. Colonel Fitzwilliam took her hand. “No second thoughts, my dear?”
His smile—which Caroline had long admitted to be his most appealing feature—was questioning, perhaps even compassionate. He was not a classically handsome man, but his fair hair and intelligent eyes had long since snared her—along with his persistent delusion that she was a far more noble person than recent events had shown her to be. Having set her cap at Anne’s father, Sir Walter Elliot, it had been brought home to Caroline that in the pursuit of a brilliant match, she had become gross. Saved from the fate that might have been hers, she was cast into the uncertainty of questioning all of her presuppositions and intuitions. Her instinct, for instance, told her that to imprison herself in the rustic interior of a tiny cabin for forty days was a horrendous idea—but she was no longer trusting her instincts.
“I’m perfectly ready,” Caroline said. “Many women have crossed the Mediterranean; why should not I?” She gathered her skirts briskly to mount the steps to the wharf.
Thanks everybody,
Corrie Garrett
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