The Miss Musgroves walked with us to the end of the village. Their bright spirits formed a marked contrast to the scene we had just left, but even their butterfly minds could not lift me out of my dark thoughts. It was only after a morning’s strenuous exercise that I was able to feel myself again.

I parted from Charles at last, thanking him for the morning’s activity, and then I returned home and sat with Sophia. She told me about her morning, and about her plans to buy a one-horse chaise so that she and Benjamin could drive around the country. Then, after listening to my account of my morning, she asked me, ‘And what do you think of the Musgrove girls?’

‘They are pretty, lively creatures,’ I said.

‘And do you think that you could marry either of them? You ought to be thinking of settling down, you know.’

‘I dare say I have a heart for either of them, if they could catch it,’ I returned lightly. ‘I would have any pleasing young woman who came in my way.’

Except Anne Elliot, I thought.

She smiled at my levity, then said, ‘I think either of them would make an agreeable wife. Have you no preference?’

‘None at all. I am quite ready to make a foolish match. A little beauty, and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the Navy, and I am a lost man. Should not this be enough for a sailor, who has had no society among women to make him nice?’

She laughed at me, knowing I spoke in jest, and said I was the most fastidious man she had ever known.

‘Do you not have any virtues in mind?’ she asked. ‘Any tastes or desires that would help you choose one of the Miss Musgroves over the other?’

‘A strong mind, with sweetness of manner,’ I said. ‘That is all I ask. Something a little inferior I shall of course put up with, but it must not be much. If I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men.’

‘Then you have thought about it quite enough, and it is now time for action. I would like to see you settled, Frederick, and I am sure you will find your strong, but sweet, young lady soon. Who knows, but she may be residing at the Great House this very minute!’

We took luncheon together, then I set out for my afternoon ride.

A strong mind, I thought, that is my essential requirement. I will have no weak woman who will change her mind to please others. I will not marry until I find someone with strength of character and a mind of her own.

Thursday 20 October

Benjamin returned home today, and it was charming to see with what warmth my sister welcomed him. Theirs has been a happy marriage indeed.

Friday 21 October

Sophia, Benjamin and I dined with the Musgroves this evening, and we were quite a large party. Mr and Mrs Charles Musgrove were there. So, too, were some cousins of the Musgroves, the Hayters, who lived nearby. And, as little Charles was much recovered, Anne also dined with us.

As I walked into the room, I remembered that there was a time, long ago, when we had opened our hearts to each other, but, although we spoke once or twice this evening our remarks never went beyond the commonplace, indeed, she said very little altogether. I did not know what to make of her silence, whether it was a general thing with her to be silent; or whether she was embarrassed, remembering past times; or whether, indeed, she had grown as proud as her family, and thought me beneath her notice.

It was a relief, then, to find that the Miss Hayters were just as noisy as the Miss Musgroves, for their chatter hid any awkward pauses, and the girls entertained us all with their nonsense.

They were fascinated by my life at sea and, gradually their questions brought me out of my introspection and drew me into the present. Their ignorance of seafaring matters was profound, and Miss Musgrove was astonished to find that we had food on board ship.

‘But how did you suppose we lived, if we had no food?’ I asked her. ‘We would starve to death!’

‘I suppose I thought you ate when you reached land,’ she said.

‘And how often would that be?’

‘I do not know, I am sure,’ she remarked. ‘Once a week, perhaps?’

I laughed, and she continued, saying, ‘Then, if you have regular meals, you must have shops on board? How wonderful! I would dearly love to see them.’

‘The very idea! Shops on board, indeed! Where would we put them?’ Benjamin asked her.

‘On deck,’ she supplied.

‘What! On deck? Do you think there is room amongst the cannons? Our ships are spacious, I grant you, but they are not as large as London!’

‘Well, then, below deck,’ she said, laughing. ‘I am sure you must have room, for I cannot think what else you would put there. Besides, you must have shops, else how would you buy your food? You cannot have it delivered?’

Sophia and Benjamin smiled and I took pity on her, saying, ‘We take it with us.’

‘And how do you eat it?’ asked Miss Musgrove. ‘You cannot have a table and chairs, so I suppose you sit on deck and balance a plate on your knees?’

‘And I suppose you think we eat with our fingers?’ Benjamin asked, laughing even more.

‘You cannot mean you have cutlery?’

‘That is exactly what I mean.’

‘I should not like to eat at sea, all the same,’ said Miss Louisa. ‘I would hate my meat raw.’

‘Raw?’ demanded Benjamin.

‘I would not thank you for raw meat either,’ said Sophia. ‘We have a cook to dress the food, and a servant to wait on us.’

I saw Anne smiling, and I was taken back to the time when she had been as ignorant of the habits on board ship as the Musgrove girls now were. I remembered the delight I had taken in educating her, for I had felt the glow of her intelligence, and I had been heartened by the pleasure she had taken in learning about everything connected with me.

I resolutely turned my attention back to the Miss Musgroves. They would not be satisfied until I had explained to them everything about living on a ship: the food, the work, the hours, the daily routine.

Miss Musgrove then brought out the Navy List and the two sisters pored over it in an attempt to find out the ships I had commanded.

‘Your first was the Asp, I remember; we will look for the Asp,’ she said.

I remembered the Asp fondly, as every man remembers his first command. I thought of the happy times I had had with her but I would not admit it, teasing them by saying she had been a worn-out and broken-up old vessel.

‘The Admiralty entertain themselves now and then with sending a few hundred men to sea in a ship not fit to be employed,’ I said. ‘But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed.’

The two girls did not know what to make of this speech, but Benjamin laughed and said that never was there a better sloop than the Asp in her day.

‘You were a lucky fellow to get her!’ he said, turning to the ladies and saying, ‘He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more interest than his.’

‘I felt my luck, Admiral, I assure you,’ I replied. ‘It was a great object with me at that time: to be at sea, a very great object; I wanted to be doing something.’

I felt my mood darken again as I recalled the reasons for it. I had been eager to escape because I had been rejected, and I had wanted something to take my mind off my troubles, for I had not wanted to spend the rest of my life brooding about Anne.

Benjamin luckily knew nothing of this.

‘To be sure you did,’ he replied. ‘What should a young fellow like you do ashore for half a year together? If a man has not a wife, he soon wants to be afloat again.’

‘I am sure you should have been given a better ship, whatever you say,’ Miss Louisa remarked, ‘for I am sure you deserved it.’

‘Did you have any great adventures on the Asp?’’ asked Miss Musgrove.

‘Many,’ I said.

I regaled them with tales of my time with the Asp, the privateers I had taken, and the French frigate I had secured.

‘I brought her into Plymouth,’ I said, as they hung on my every word. ‘We had not been six hours in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights, and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time, our touch with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition. Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought about me.’

I thought I saw Anne shuddering, and I felt as though the years had rolled away, leaving us close once more. But then I saw her pull her shawl higher and I realized she had done nothing more than shiver with the cold.

My attention was soon drawn back to the Miss Musgroves, who were full of exclamations of pity and horror. Then, having dispensed with the Asp, the girls began to look for the Laconia, and I took the List out of their hands to save them the trouble. I read aloud the statement of her name and rate, and present noncommissioned class.

‘She, too, was one of the best friends man ever had,’ I said. ‘Ah! those were pleasant days! How fast I made money in the Laconia! A friend of mine and I had such a lovely cruise together off the Western Islands. Poor Harville, sister! You know how much he wanted money: worse than myself. He had a wife,’ I said, thinking of Harriet, and the day on which I had stood up with him at his wedding. ‘Excellent fellow! I shall never forget his happiness. He felt it all so much for her sake. I wished for him again the next summer, when I had still the same luck in the Mediterranean.’