Happy Wednesday, readers!! Today I am happy to welcome back author Don Jacobson to Austenesque Reviews! As you may have seen, Don has a new book out that he just recently published titled, The Sailor’s Rest. And guess what, it is a Pride and Prejudice/Persuasion crossover that features Anne, Wentworth, Elizabeth and Darcy encountering each other and experiencing some new adventures! 🙌🏼

Don is here to share an excerpt from The Sailor’s Rest. We hope you enjoy! 

Thank you, Meredith, for hosting the last stop on the blog tour for my Pride and Prejudice/Persuasion crossover The Sailor’s Rest. My goal in writing the book was to offer all four lead characters the opportunity to have their stories told with equal weight. While the two pairs of lovers are separated, their thoughts, conversations, and actions will bring readers to a deeper understanding of the betrothed couples.

I set the book on the Persuasion timeline (1815) after the Anne/Wentworth reunion. This, perforce, had me shifting Darcy and Elizabeth forward while keeping their ages the same.

The middle of the work is a naval adventure. That genre may inundate the unfamiliar with nautical terms. However, that is Frederick Wentworth’s world. The unfamiliarity experienced by the reader is intentional and would be identical to that known by Darcy and the landlocked women. The e-book has descriptive notes to remove bewilderment.

However, the book’s denouement moves into Darcy’s world of clubs and cards. There the environment is more familiar to regular Austen variation readers.

Please enjoy the following excerpt, where Anne and Elizabeth hearts are hurting and yearning, from The Sailor’s Rest ©2023 by Donald P. Jacobson.

~ Excerpt From Chapter 18 ~

Naiad, NW of Port Mahon, April 9, 1815

The evening beneath the snowy canvas sky was magical. Inky channels rippled between creamy billows, recalling the Abbey, albeit made from air, thread, and imagination. The restless tacking as the ship worked its way north through the Balearic Sea toward Toulon pushed the Milky Way’s starry belt first to one side and then the other of the bowsprit’s black finger scribing the moonless sky. The sirocco had diminished, although the wind blew warm and humid from the southwest. Clouds rose above the waters but fled before the ship, making Naiad’s passage smoother.

The women strolled arm-in-arm along a deck slightly heeled over in concert with the starboard tack. The crew that kept Naiad working toward their goal was invisible in the night’s gloom. Seen from above, the ladies floated, their light gowns blending seamlessly with the deck boards. They appeared like bergs calved from the alabaster peaks above and drifting along the moon-darkened surface. This image was only a figment for the waters through which Naiad drove had never seen ice in this age.

***

Retained heat radiated through her canvas slippers. The night air, its African shimmer cooled by the sea flowing alongside, demanded a shawl about Anne’s shoulders. Elizabeth, too, helped with healing warmth for a bruised heart. Instead of the pit left by Frederick’s taking—one that could be healed only by his recovery—Miss Bennet poured balm on the wound opened by the loneliness of more than ten years without a mother’s warm hug or sisterly amity beneath bedtime quilts. The two ladies had uncovered new depths of companionship through sharing secrets and worries, those which neither could confide to Sophie, Annie, or Sarah.

Her arm looped through Lizzy’s, Anne held her breath as they gingerly stepped past the starboard heads and into the forecastle. The ship’s pace through the waves created a rejuvenating breeze that swept away the stink. The hiss of the sea and the white mustaches curling away from Naiad’s bows left Anne feeling an otherworldly calm.

She called me ‘Janelike.’ Knowing the reverence with which Lizzy holds Jane Bennet, that is the highest possible praise. Would that I could be as close to Lizzy Bennet as she is with her elder sister! There has been nothing in my life like the comradeship Lizzy tells me she has with Jane.

How well I imagine the disdain of my sisters—colored by Elizabeth’s condemnation and Mary’s selfishness—if I filled their ears with my deepest thoughts.

The past month has shown me how much better a caring—loving—friend is than living unnoticed by those who should be your confidantes. We complement each other—Lizzy, the Impetuous and Anne, the Thoughtful.

“In my old life, such closeness was impossible to imagine. Now that I know its beauty, I cannot envisage the void if Elizabeth vanished from my life. My grief would demand at least a year’s wearing of weeds.

“Anne? Hello, Miss Elliot. Are you there?”

“Hmmm?”

“’Tis far too dark to see your face, so I cannot look into your eyes nor determine if you are smiling or frowning. The sigh I heard a moment ago tells me you are in a deep study.”

Anne sighed again. “Lizzy, I miss him so much. The poets speak of being heartsick, and I am. I ache everywhere, but right here,” she laid her hand on her chest, “is the worst.”

Elizabeth matched her earlier sigh and pulled Anne closer. “Dearest, I know the pain. Only when I first awaken, in those few moments between dark and light, do I forget that he is not here. Then daylight blows away those waking dreams, and the cold bare metal of the situation spreads itself before me.

“Tell me about your Frederick. Tell me something special, something only you would know. If you are anything like me, you will use one of Mr. Hooke’s microscopes to examine the man minutely, so greedy you are to discern his innermost workings.”

She whispered into Anne’s ear. “I know, for I have often desired to make off with one of my Papa’s magnifying glasses. Then I could subject William to an inspection that would put Gulliver’s trials in Lilliput to shame.”

Anne closed her eyes and cataloged her man. “He is a fidget which is contrary to how people see a frigate captain. Of course, he is not so obvious as to begin tapping his foot or bouncing his leg. Instead, Frederick spins his Laconia signet ring about his finger.

“To most, he is the picture of absolute calm, as if North Sea ice fills his veins. They assume he must be nearly emotionless, given that he is measured every time he brings the ship to within pistol shot of the enemy.

“Others imagine how they would feel if they stared into a fifteen cannon broadside from half a cable away. Because they would run and hide when he stands tall by the binnacle, they believe he must be without the fright factor that keeps the rest of humanity from placing their hand above an open flame.

“I know better. Frederick feels fear like any man but channels that inclination into action when fear paralyzes others.

“However, the fidgeting comes to the fore when he is away from his ship. I see he is a caged lion in a drawing room, but he is too gracious to pace about on the lookout for a tasty morsel. Thus, the longer he sits in polite company, the faster the ring is spun.”

Elizabeth’s giggle brought a smile to Anne’s face and a flood of warmth throughout her body. “Oh my, just as you and I are different, the men we love are likewise night and day, but, then again, so similar.”

Elizabeth’s outburst warmed Anne’s heart. Then she remembered happy scenes, recent ones, of Wentworth surrounded by Bath’s tabbies rather than frog corvettes, and a wave of despair swept over her. Here in a spring night’s darkness, Anne broke down.

***

A sniffle dragged Elizabeth away from memories of a broad-shouldered giant atop windswept Oakham Mount.

She dug into a pocket and pressed a handkerchief into Anne’s hand. “Anne, Anne: I know that remembering him hurts dreadfully. Reminiscences of the past that bring pleasure may also bring tristesse. That fact took me a great while to learn.

“Pleasure and pain are equal parts of life. We cannot appreciate happiness without sadness nor understand dark times without knowing bright ones.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and embraced her beloved’s image framed in brightness playing on the plane behind her lids. Her eyes flashed open to drink in the rolling terrain, starlight reflecting off the wave crests. “At the risk of sounding like the admiral, so fond he is of things nautical, Darcy is an example of still waters running deep.

“He, like your Frederick, fidgets. He, too, plays with his signet. However, Darcy’s actions come not from a surfeit of energy but from profound uneasiness. I learned this once I set aside my dislike of the superficial man and allowed him to show me the authentic Darcy underneath.

“My William is a man of few words. No, that is incorrect. He regulates his emotions beyond what is needed to protect himself. Darcy is uncomfortable when in unfamiliar company. The less he is acquainted with those in the room, the more taciturn and, some might say, unsociable he becomes.”

Anne stirred beside her. “Not your Mr. Darcy! I have heard you do nothing but sing his praises this past month.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “He is the best of men—now. I have known two Fitzwilliam Darcys. There is the Darcy of the past half year and the one from before. I pray that you will meet the most recent version, but I have no way of knowing how his time aboard that ship has shaped him.

“The earlier man had more than a few rough edges. In the situation I just described, he would stalk the chamber’s perimeter. His impenetrable mask appeared full of disdain and hauteur, and his eyes seemed determined to find fault wherever he looked. That was the man I first came to know, and he was intolerable!

“Once William had set a room against him—although of that sublime condition he was invariably and infuriatingly unaware—the Master of Pemberley would halt before a window and stare through it, back to the room, for the balance of the visit. He would stand with one hand clenched behind his back, the thumb polishing the forefinger. The greater his disquiet, the more furious the rubbing, and, I think, the greater the calming.

“’Tis challenging to imagine the master of a great estate becoming overwhelmed by strangers. I think it takes him longer than most to understand people. Once he does, he relaxes.

“Just as your captain feels fear but does not show it, so, too, does Fitzwilliam, but the way he hides it is…unfortunate.”

Anne’s soft reply was almost lost in the rush of noise as the ship’s bows dug deeply into a swell. “Frederick bears up so well under adversity. Me?” she continued after a sigh, “I grow morose and make miserable everyone around me.”

Turning toward Anne, Elizabeth gently gripped her shoulder. “You must be brave and patient. Captain Rochet says that if Persephone followed orders, she would have been up north against the Savoyard coast. With the Beast’s flight from Elba, so, too, did her reason to be there. We must hope is that she still is between us and France.

“We are closing in on both of them. I know that William lives. I would be aware if it were otherwise. We are tied by an invisible umbilical—heart to heart—that…”

“You feel it, too?” Anne asked. “I know that Frederick is alive in the same manner. I would feel his loss.”

“And here I have been missing Jane. She said the same about her tie to Bingley. I can see that you will have to become acquainted with my older, much more beautiful sister.

“It must be a condition common to those deeply and truly in love.” Elizabeth slid her hand into Anne’s. No further conversation passed between them. Both ladies lost themselves in appreciating the endless waves vanishing in the distance.

This  warms my heart – I love seeing a friendship like this between Elizabeth and Anne! Especially since poor Anne does not have any female companions her age as close confidants. 💗 

Sea-ship voyages, lovers’ separations and reunions, and blossoming friendships – sounds ike an action-packed adventure! ⚓️

~~~

~ Book Description ~

The Naval Adventure Jane Austen Could Have Written!

Part mystery, part adventure – and all heart – This has the feel of a Hornblower epic.
Alice McVeigh, author of Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel

Jane Austen’s greatest lovers come together to be tested in the crucible of war on the Mediterranean’s blue waters and in the smoky confines of a prestigious London gambling den.

The Sailor’s Rest is inspired by Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion and is set on the stage of Napoleon’s 100 Days. Discover how the two betrothed couples—Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, along with Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot—find their love tried by separation, battle, and deception.

The novel immerses readers first in a mystery, then a sea chase, and, finally, a satisfying comeuppance. From the tattered rooms of a waterfront inn to three frigates engaged in a deadly game of naval chess, readers will experience the yearning as four hearts come closer to one-another. Before the tale ends, the audience will step into the gilded confines of London’s preeminent card room.

The Sailor’s Rest uses the characters formed by Austen as a starting point in an Austenesque excursion that will leave readers both challenged and richer for the experience.

The Sailor’s Rest is set in the Persuasion timeline of 1815 but leaves in place the age and plot constructs established by Austen in Pride and Prejudice.

This is a full-length novel of 115,000 words.

~~~

Connect with Don

Website    ❧    Goodreads   ❧   Twitter

~~~

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

Don is generously giving away 🔟 ebook editions of The Sailor’s Rest in conjunction with this blog tour!!  Woot woot!  

Commenting on this post and entering through the rafflecopter widget on this blog enters you in a chance to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

• This giveaway is open worldwide.  Thank you, Don!
• This giveaway ends April 14th!