Lucky's Lady (The Caversham Chronicles Book 4)

 

Copyright © 2015, Sandy Raven

 

ISBN: 978-1-939359-12-4

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and/or reviews.

 

Edited by Gail Shelton

 

Copy Edits by Proofreading by the Page

 

Cover design by The Killion Group, Inc.

 

Formatting by Natalie Somersall, Clear Skies Author Services

Dear Reader,

 

LUCKY'S LADY is the fourth book in my series, The Caversham Chronicles, and I really hope that you enjoy Lucky and Mary-Michael's story.

    

I fell in love with tall ships when I was growing up on the Gulf Coast. I was fortunate enough to watch the tall ship Elissa being restored for several years while working in the building right next to it. And almost from the time I could walk, I remember loving hot tea (even in summer, go figure!) As I grew into a voracious reader, I discovered this short period of time in the mid-1800's where they had tea races on tall ships from China to London, before the Suez Canal was built and steam engines made the era of sail obsolete. I fell in love with those stories and prints of famous paintings of tea clippers at full sail racing back to London with their hulls so full of tea they sat low in the water as they hurried home from China with the finest offerings for that year. Because I always knew I was a writer, even when I was forced to pass algebra, it was inevitable that I was going to write a tea clipper story one day.

    

LOVING SARAH and LUCKY'S LADY are the clipper stories I had to write. It's two books because I couldn't get the whole story of my two heroes in one book. The innovations made during that time to the design of the clipper hull happened in almost the blink of an eye, historically speaking. My heroine in this book, Mary-Michael, is loosely based on a woman from Nova Scotia, Albenia Boole. Thanks to her father, who recognized her talent early on, he saw to it that his daughter had a good education, something unusual for a woman of the day. Her father moved his small ship building business to New York City, where she drafted and designed ships "as well as any man." She married Donald McKay, a man from across the river in Nova Scotia, also from a shipbuilding family. They lived in a little house on East Broadway in New York City. Here she became Donald's mentor and teacher. Albenia was five years younger than Donald, but at night she schooled him in the mathematical principles necessary for McKay to compete in the packet building trade, where competition was strong and every ship owner wanted the fastest ships, which led to the biggest profits in the lucrative trade markets. Speed was in the design of those packets.

    

Anyway... because of the constraints of my story that began in Caversham's Bride, the timing is off by about ten to twelve years for it to be the "official" tea races. When I started that first book, I never knew Ian existed and Lia was not going to allow her brother to sail a ship. (I think she wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer.) So my fictitious set up to those historic races is in these two books, where Lucky and Ian race each other home. In one of the two books somewhere there is mention of the number of boats participating in the race increasing each year. And, in my fictitious world, before you know it, it will all become official and people will start writing about it in the papers of the day, thus making it history. Right?

    

This is Lucky's book. I loved the research that went into it, and the characters that developed as I wrote. Here, Lucky falls in love with an incredibly intelligent young woman who is a naval architect designing ships for her elderly mentor-husband who owns a shipyard that constructs the famous Baltimore clippers. Mary-Michael Watkins is a young woman who desperately wants to conceive a child before her husband dies. He wants her to have a child too, because through having a child she will experience life being renewed as he slowly loses his. The man even goes so far as to help her decide that Lucky is the perfect candidate for siring said child, and facilitates their time alone. Knowing she's running out of time because of her husband's failing health, and acknowledging there is more than just an ordinary attraction with the captain, Mary Michael accepts Lucky's flirtatious overtures knowing that once his business with her shipyard was over, he'd leave her—hopefully with a child to raise. She prayed for a son or daughter who would inherit her husband's fortune and carry on the legacy he began and she continued.

    

What she didn't count on was falling in love with a man to whom family, loyalty and love meant everything.

    

Quick fact: There are still laws in several states making adultery illegal. As of this writing, in Maryland, the fine for committing this misdemeanor crime is $10.

    

I would love to hear from you! So, if you have any questions or comments, I'm online at:

    

Facebook -
Facebook.com/SandyRavenAuthor

  

Sincerely,

  

Sandy Raven