Fair Stands the Wind Blog Tour: Vignette + Giveaway

Welcome to the tenth pit stop of Catherine Lodge's two-week blog tour of her debut novel, Fair Stands the Wind. If you are not aware, the paperback edition is available to purchase but not the Kindle version due to a copyright dispute on Amazon. Meryton Press and Catherine is presently trying their best to solve this problem. In the meantime let's read a vignette below and have a guess as to who she is referring too. And don't forget to participate in the giveaway at the bottom of the post.

Vignette

I first met Captain Darcy when he came aboard the Lincoln in the year 2. He must have been about 15 or 16 then. He came as a master's mate — been at sea long enough by then to be a right useful lad too.

I was third mate for my sins. The captain was killing himself with drink and first was about as much use as fart in a windstorm; the ship was falling apart and we were almost forty below complement. We put in for a new Master, since ours was older than God and could barely get out of his cot, but all they sent us was a couple of mates and Mr Darcy, as he was then, was the only one worth his biscuit.

He was a tall lad even then and you could see he'd just come into his height, 'cause his uniform coat was three inches short at the wrist. Not that anybody was there to see who might care — everyone gets shabby on blockade duty. You sail up and down the coast, terrified the French are going to slip out one dark night, the weather is foul, supplies come about half as often as you want and letters less than that. You soon get sick of the sight of Cape Scie and there's bugger all else to look at.

Between us Mr Darcy, the second Mr Wallace and me we nursed that bloody ship for months. The Master died on an apoplexy, or that's what the surgeon said though I reckon he had no more idea that I did, so Mr Darcy had to step up for the best part of three months until they sent us as replacement. Beautiful hand with a sextant and the tables he was, after a couple of weeks other ships were asking for our position because he had it better than they did. I tried to get the captain to give him an acting order, but he wouldn't.

He never got any letters from home that I ever saw but once. Some uncle sent him a one full of complaints about the government along with a case of port. Damn good it was too but a bit full on for a lad. I think he traded most of it for food. I remember myself at that age, I could have eaten the anchor some days, so I let him have two pots of jam left over from what my mother had sent me off with.

In those days I still hoped to make captain myself, so me and Sissy were still writing. She wrote a lovely letter did Sissy. One you could really sit over and read back to yourself during the graveyard watch. I should have written more myself but I was doing the work of three men by that time, we all were until eventually the Lincoln hogged for the last time and we lost the mainmast in a storm — took the first overboard, always said he didn't have the sense he was born with. Wallace broke his pelvis and was laid up so me and Mr Darcy nursed her back to port where she was promptly condemned and the men whisked off to make up shortages elsewhere.

Mr Darcy soon got a new ship, Captain Hanning-Ward wanted him back so off he went. I got tarred with the same brush as the useless buggers on the Lincoln and ended up on the beach on half pay. I stayed in the Mediterranean, half pay goes further abroad. Eventually, I wrote and told Sissy that I couldn't afford to marry her and she got a job as a companion to some old biddy in Weymouth or Brighton or one of those places.

I picked up a couple of small postings after that, especially after Mr Darcy made lieutenant and then got his first small command — one of them little Bermuda sloops it was, I forget the name. Did well against a couple of French privateers and got a name as a coming man. I found out later he'd put in word for me with a Captain looking for a steady man to replace his third who'd died of the Yellow Jack, so I got a berth on Audacity and by the time I met him again I was first on the Liverpool.

He wrote when he got the Achilles — asked if I'd like to come, he had a spot for a first to balance out the two he had who were both still pretty young. Of course I said yes, Achilles was just about my last chance for action, instead of more blockading with no sniff of a prize.

I'm right glad I did. He'd turned into a damn good Captain, firm but not cruel: kindly but not weak. We were a crack ship in a couple of months and we filled our boots. He had a knack for knowing what the other captain was up to and we ran them down every chance we got. I soon had a very nice little nest egg in the Navy Consols at 6%, no dragging through my old age on half pay for me.

I asked him once why he'd asked for me. He said he knew I was a hard worker and a fair man — put a lot of store on fairness, did Captain Darcy. I don't mean he expected people of flash their money around or coddling folk when they needed a hard word, just that he didn't of meanness, in money or actions.

Of course, good things don't last forever. I picked up a splinter wound. It healed eventually but it left me weak down my left side, couldn't make my way around the ship whenever there was a blow on. So I retired. My brother Arthur was a vicar at some watering place on the coast and told me he'd seen my Sissy.

She'd never married and, when I looked her up, she didn't look happy. One old biddy after another, she said, until she was an old biddy herself. So asked her if she'd like to set up ship with me. We settled in Hatfield, she'd been born near there and I'd no one back in Yorkshire so it didn't matter to me.

We've got a little house, and enough money to be snug and I've got somewhere to put down roots. I was never more surprised when I met Captain Darcy in the King's Head. I told him about me and Sissy and he was right glad for us. Like I said to him, those two pots of jam were the best investment I ever made.

Book Blurb

We all know that, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is proud and prejudiced because he is a wealthy landowner who believes himself above his company and that Elizabeth Bennet can afford to be proud and prejudiced because she believes she has the freedom to make choices for herself.

But what if Mr. Darcy is the second son, sent to sea at a young age? What if Elizabeth is trapped by circumstances with an ill father on one side and an understandably desperate mother on the other?

Meet Captain Darcy of the Royal Navy, a successful frigate captain with ample prize money and a sister for whom he needs to provide while he is at sea. Meet also Elizabeth Bennet, who needs a husband and is trying to resign herself to Mr. Collins, the worst "least worst alternative" in the history of literature.

Book Links

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Author Bio

Catherine Lodge is a semi-retired lawyer and lecturer, living in Yorkshire – a part of the UK even more beautiful than Derbyshire. One of five daughters, although by birth order regrettably the Jane, she found 19th Century literature early in her teens and never looked back – even if that meant her school essays kept coming back with "archaic!" written in the margin next to some of her favourite words. She still thinks that "bruited" is a much nicer word than "rumoured".

After years of drafting leases and pleadings, she finally started to write for fun in her forties and has never stopped since. Much of this will never see the light of day, having been fed to the digital equivalent of a roaring bonfire, but Fair Stands the Wind is the first book she thinks worthy of public attention.

She spends her day fixing computer problems for friends and family, singing in her local choir and avoiding the ironing.

Author Links

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Giveaway

There are eight e-books of Fair Stands the Wind up for grabs in this worldwide competition but a winner may win only one e-book. So comment on the blog post listed here or/and tweet daily. Then fill in the Rafflecopter form to have the chance of winning.

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