I usually post new-to-me reads for TBR Challenge, but this month I just had to go for a reread because when I saw the theme of “road trip”, one book instantly leaped into my mind. I found The Cockermouth Mail by Dinah Dean at a library sale back in middle school, and absolutely loved it.  I’ve carried my battered used copy around over twenty years, and I just had to reread it to see if this trad Regency from the 1980s stands up on reread.  And yes, yes it did.

If you’ve heard of this book, you may have seen it mentioned as a holiday romance. Does it feature a pretty hellacious Christmas trip?  Why yes, it does. Did it bother me to be reading this during a June heat wave? Not in the slightest.

Now that we have that out of the way, here we go.  If you love Regency romance that feature non-aristocratic characters, you will probably adore this one. Dorcas Minster is a gently born young lady whose father died under what Society considered scandalous circumstances, and she was forced to become a governess. Her first charge recently came out, so she is now travelling to her latest post in a remote corner of the Lake District.

Along the way, she meets quite a cast of characters in the mail coach, including one Colonel, Richard Severall. Richard was seriously injured in the war, and he is travelling to the Lake District to see his sister for Christmas. While this is not love at first sight, he does early on appoint himself as a protector of sorts for Dorcas. While Dorcas is impoverished, she is clearly used to more genteel circumstances than the mail coach and as it turns out, Richard had been at least slightly acquainted with her late father.

While the story focuses on a road trip, things go awry partway through the book. The hazards of the road catch up to the travelling party, and after the coach is seriously damaged, Dorcas, Richard and their fellow travellers are obliged to hike through the snow to the nearest inn. Since Richard is hampered by his leg injury, Dorcas stays back to walk with him while the others go ahead to try to find help. This is something of a turning point in the story, as it is clear that the two begin to develop a regard for each other.

In some ways, this is a fairly quiet story. The travellers find their way to an inn, where they are warmly welcomed and much of the rest of the story focuses on all the small but unexpected interactions that make up a holiday spent together by folks from different stations in life who are all thrown together. There are Mr. Tupper, the somewhat fussy old lawyer, the mysterious Mr. Petts, Richard’s colorful valet/groom Jem, young Mr. Kirby who takes quite a shine to Dorcas and a few more.

Since some readers can’t stand it, I will mention that there are a few instances of thieves’ cant throughout this story. I’m generally not a fan, but Ms. Dean uses it well here. In this story, rather than simply throwing it in for laughs or to signal characters upon whom one may safely look down, it is used to flesh out the characters in believable ways. For instance, Dorcas tends to sound very proper and refined, while Jem is from working-class London and he sometimes lapses into expressions that someone in his old environs might use. Likewise, Richard, having served in the army, moves between speech patterns that would signal him as a member of the landed gentry and speech patterns that one would expect from a person serving in the military alongside men of a variety of social backgrounds. I enjoyed seeing the author deliberately use speech and manners as building blocks to flesh out her characters rather than simply tossing in old slang for comic effect.

In addition, the romance in this book is sweet and lovely. There’s a little bit of a love triangle, but rather a believable one. I actually enjoyed seeing how the characters interacted and eventually figured their feelings out. 

My only quibble with this book is a fairly small one. There is a villain who pops up at the end and I have to admit that his drama just felt unnecessary. In many ways, this is a quiet, character-driven story and it worked very well without the sudden criminal antics. However, even that incident wasn’t enough to mar the overall cosy feel of this novel and I enjoyed it very much as an adult just as I did as a tween. This novel has been rereleased as an eBook and used copies of the paperback are also very findable, so I’d highly recommend hunting it down.