Posted on 2009-03-10

Mary, due to being ill so frequently, owned quite a collection of medicines, tinctures and herbal feel-betters. In fact, she had so many that a whole pantry was dedicated to storing them. She had cough drops, mixtures against small sneezes, big sneezes and the tiny achoos that indicate an oncoming flu, tinctures against aching legs, arms and other body parts prone to aching, herbal teas for rainy days, sunny days and in-between days and something to cure any illness known to man. Somewhere in that pantry was probably a cure for consumption as well.

Unfortunately, there was not a single mixture that cured headaches brought on by ex-lovers/ex-fiancés who possibly hated you now and treated you like dirt - non-existent dirt – and flirted heavily with girls half his age in an in-your-face-even-though-I-don't-acknowledge-your-existence kind of way. Which was a grave oversight in Anne's eyes and she decided to tell Mary so at the earliest opportunity. Preferably after she got rid of her blinding headache.

She groped around the shelf that was given over to medicine for headaches.

"Soothing nerves, soothing nerves, soothing nerves. Not what I need. Soothing nerves again! My nerves are just fine, I'll have you know. I want something for the headache." She put the bottles back on the shelf with a frustrated groan. It seemed there wasn't anything against proper headaches. How annoying! She picked up another bottle. "Lover's Cure. Well, that might help. Not with the headache though. More's the pity."

Anne was wrong. The little pills helped amazingly with the headache. It was gone the next morning as if by magic.

But she should have read the whole text on the label. She really should have.

Frederick Wentworth was always a bit disoriented when he woke up on land. It usually took him a moment to realise that the lack of the gentle up-and-down motion wasn't due to the fact that his ship must have crashed on some shore overnight but due to the fact he was on firm land that didn't do up-and-downing.

So he stayed calm when he woke up that morning and felt disoriented. He grew mildly concerned when he was awake enough to realise that he was indeed not in his room at Kellynch but in some room that he had never seen before.

His disorientation and mild concern disappeared and was replaced with alarm when he noticed that he had grown breasts during the night.

"What the … ?" He stared at the two perfect mounds that rose under his nightgown.

Hold on. He didn't remember his nightgown being so frilly.

And then he noticed that while he had acquired two extra parts, certain other parts of him had gone missing. Frederick whimpered.

Anne's morning, while mercifully headache-free, went similarly well. She awoke to find herself suddenly flat-chested, yet rather engorged in other areas. When she looked into the mirror on the nightstand, the face of Frederick Wentworth wearing a look of stubbly surprise stared back at her.

Unaccustomed to male morning routines, she tried to shave and nicked herself a couple of times.

Then she found out that dressing with your eyes screwed shut is near impossible.

Afterwards, she learned that she disliked cravats. Exceedingly.

"What happened here?" Frederick stared at his own face peering at him over the windowsill.

"I don't know." Anne wrung Frederick's hands in a desperate gesture.

Frederick scowled. "Well, I hope this is just a dream and I'm going to wake up any moment in my bed and most importantly in my body at Kellynch."

"Your bed?" scoffed Anne. "That was my bed, I'd like to inform you. My bed in my room. And I'd like to know how you came to sleep in my bed in my room last night when I know very well that you have your own rooms in the guest quarters."

"I was drunk last night and Kellynch is very big. One gets easily lost. So there."

"Ah."

"Anne? Why does my face look as if it had a run-in with a particularly homicidal cat?"

They didn't tell anyone of their current inconvenience. Instead they tried to find out what had caused their swap and if the process was reversible. It didn't take long to narrow it down to two possible causes. It either must have been the medicine Anne had taken the previous night or whatever the Captain had drunk that evening; and though it was rumoured that the local apple brew could re-awake the dead, it had never yet made someone spontaneously change bodies.

"Not that we can be entirely certain," said Anne. "Who knows? All of Somerset could be full of people not in their right bodies."

"It would explain a lot about your sister."

"Which one?"

"Both of them."

Since they didn't know how to discreetly look into the body-swapping apple brew, they investigated the lucky-pills-theory first. Except they ran into difficulties.

"Mary, where's Lover's Cure? I left it here on the shelf last night, I'm quite sure."

"I beg your pardon, Captain? I don't remember giving you permission to address me with such familiarity. I'm an Elliot and I would thank you to keep that in mind."

Frederick had seen a lot during his travels around the globe. He had thought that nothing would ever unface him again. Obviously, he had never counted on having to explain the logistics of going to the toilet to Anne.

The attempt to show her what to do was a spectacular fail and they agreed to never mention the incident again.

Anne went around with a red face for days nevertheless. Whenever she saw him, her face grew redder still until he told her that she'd burst his head if she continued to go on like this and he'd like his body back unharmed, thank you very much.

Karma being what it is, payback came a couple of weeks later.

"Anne! Oh god, Anne, I'm dying. Well, you are dying but as I'm stuck in your body, I will do the actual dying."

"What have you done to my body?"

"I haven't done anything. It's all your body's fault. It won't stop bleeding."

Frederick later maintained that he didn't panic and certainly never sobbed hysterically. Anne always nodded and patted his head when he claimed thus.

When she had finished explaining, he looked at her in disgust and pronounced the whole thing unhygienic.

"Oh, just wait for tomorrow. Second day is usually the day the cramps set in for me," said Anne cheerfully.

"What?"

"Anne, I'm bored. What do you women do all day long?"

"Play the piano or do some needlework. Plan the meals." Anne shrugged. "All kinds of things."

"Why can't I go shooting with Charles?"

Anne merely looked at him. He was pouting. Poor man.

"You could go for a ride," she suggested.

Anne had never been overly fond of riding and thus her muscles were unused to the exertion. Frederick had never ridden in a side-saddle and was unused to falling off a horse. Repeatedly.

He complained to Anne for a week.

When they finally tracked down the bottle with Lover's Cure, the new problem distracted Frederick from his whining.

"Ah," said Anne when she had read the instructions on the bottle.

"Ah? What do you mean 'ah'? I don't like it when you say 'ah'."

"Well," said Anne.

"Don't tell me the effect is irreversible."

"Alright."

"Why aren't you saying anything?"

"You just told me not to tell you."

"Gngh." Frederick stared into the middle distance. After several minutes, his eyes focussed on Anne again. "You realise that we will have to marry now. There's no way that doesn't sound absolutely barmy that I can explain this to anyone else."

"It would mean that you're basically marrying yourself. I wonder what that says about you."

"Us, my dear. Us. You'd marry yourself, too."

"Maybe we will find some other way to turn back," said Anne with little hope.

"A letter for Captain Wentworth."

The footman was a bit surprised when Anne Elliot snatched it out of his hand but as the Captain didn't seem to mind, he shrugged and went back downstairs. Later he confided in the Musgrove's housekeeper though that Miss Elliot had behaved weirdly ever since the Captain had come into Somerset. And he was sorry to say so as she had been the only sane Elliot he'd ever known. The housekeeper agreed and tutted sadly.

Upstairs, the letter had found its way into the right (wrong) hands and Anne was skimming its contents.

Frederick was hovering over her shoulder. "What's he writing?"

"He wants me to visit."

"No way. I know these people. You're not going."

"You can't ignore the invitation. Here," she said and thrust the letter at him. "There's even a Captain Benwick there."

"Fine. But you're not going alone."

Before they set off for Lyme, Frederick briefed her on how to behave, what stories to tell, so that his friends would not think him ripe for bedlam the moment she opened her mouth.

"And when we turned right ..."

"Starboard," he hissed.

Despite these slight hitches, all went surprisingly well. One point, though, galled Frederick.

"Do you have to flirt so much with Louisa?" he asked Anne.

"I'm just behaving like you so nobody gets suspicious."

"I never let her hang on my arm like that."

"Pah."

In revenge, Frederick flirted outrageously with Benwick and enjoyed the murderous looks he got from Anne.

In the end, they married because Frederick never learnt how to be a lady and missed the sea too much. He also didn't want to marry William Elliot, much as everyone urged him to.

Anne agreed because she had never wanted to marry any other man – and now woman, it seemed – and was quite happy to sail the seven seas with him.

If the chain of command aboard the Laconia was occasionally a bit muddled, their crew was too polite to comment on it.