If you hate stories where the kids are adorable moppets who exist primarily to clarify the protag's romantic entanglements, you will probably like this story.

So the force that brings the two protags together is that Captain Phillip Dacre's kids are running wild in his absence, and Vicar Ben Sedgewick is the closest thing this century has to a social worker. Captain Dacre is grieving the lover who he never confessed his feelings to, and not sure how to relate to the children his deceased wife managed while he was at sea. Ben Sedgewick has always vaguely intended to marry his childhood best friend, a prospect that has become more urgent with her having suffered an illness that has left her disabled.

Obviously, they discover they are attracted to each other and have to decide what this means for their plans. This is a story primarily about struggling to find a place in a society that doesn't create places for queer people to live. A good deal of their struggle is not against their social programming, but with the necessity for living hidden, since the discovery of their relationship would at best make them social outcasts. This theme is somewhat undermined, to me, by the fact that Captain Dacre captains the ship Patroclus.