Beatriz Williams - The House on Cocoa Beach - A sweeping epic love story, perfect for fans of historical romance

“What a shame. They were both excellent liars.”

“Oh, you don’t need to tell me that! Simon was just—what’s the word? He was congenital. I don’t know about your father, but Simon was simply born that way. A liar. He was an expert, a natural. He knew exactly what to say to you, to make you believe him. He knew exactly what you wanted to hear.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Of course, it made him terribly charming. All the local girls used to go mad for him, whenever he came down from school at the end of term. You can only imagine what a clever seducer he was. He was no more than fifteen, I think, when he got started. Yes, fifteen at the oldest. I remember because I happened upon him with a girl one afternoon, the summer I turned ten. There was a pretty little secret garden on the grounds, you see, just perfect for that sort of thing, all walled and sunken and loads of benches and sweet-smelling roses. I used to play there all the time. I thought it was a fairy garden. Don’t laugh! Oh, the stories I used to make up, the darling little fairies of my youth. Anyway, that’s where I saw them together, although I was so young at the time, I had only the vaguest idea what was going on. Just that it seemed rather beastly, like a pair of naked white rabbits.”

We’re lying on our sides, spoon-fashion, because the bed is so narrow. Clara’s arms are secure around my chest, her breath sweet in my hair. I’ve drunk the champagne too quickly. The opposite wall floats before me. A pair of watercolor landscapes, framed in white, bob and merge along the sea-green wallpaper. I picture a ten-year-old Clara wandering across a wet Cornwall lawn. Turning the corner of a brick wall and finding Simon stretched on a bench or a blanket, atop some faceless, budding, writhing girl. In my imagination, she has blond hair and smells of peaches.

“How awful for you,” I whisper. “And for her. Poor girl.”

“She was lovely. An utter innocent, of course, just like you. I think he preferred them that way: virgins, or else someone’s naïve young wife. The purer the better. And she wasn’t a village girl, either, this one. She was a proper middle-class sort of girl, an attorney’s daughter, the kind of girl who’s supposed to preserve her virginity at all costs until marriage. Particularly in those days, you know, before the war. The poor darling! I don’t know how he convinced her. The usual way, I suppose. He didn’t give a damn for your feelings; that was his strength. You can do anything if you don’t care how other people feel.”

“I don’t understand that. How he could seem so sympathetic, if he didn’t really care.”

“Because he knew what you were feeling. Don’t you see? He knew, but he didn’t care. He was a tremendous actor. He acted his way through life, manipulating us all like puppets. Everyone else was taken in by him, but I knew. I knew how rotten he was inside. I could just smell it, the rottenness. I’ve always sensed things like that, as if I could just sort of see someone’s spirit, like the color in a rainbow.”

“A color ?”

“Yes! Everybody has a color. Oh, not visible, I mean, not exactly. I can’t explain it. Like a sort of halo, I suppose, or rather the impression of a halo. The color I think of, the color that floods me when I see you. I feel myself rather purple, for example, veering between a kind of lurid violet and a lavender, depending on my surroundings.”

I make an awkward laugh. “Really? And what color am I?”

“Oh, darling! You’re blue. Dear, true, pure, melancholy blue! And I adore you for it. My sweet new sister.”

I want to know what kind of color she saw in Simon, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to ask. I gaze at the wall instead, breathing quietly, thinking Blue. A dark blue or a light blue? Or, as with Clara, does my particular shade depend on my surroundings?

She speaks up suddenly. “That’s why he made such a good surgeon, you know. Simon. He wasn’t troubled by what he saw. He could operate on you as if you were an automobile engine. Quite without mercy, but of course it worked. I suppose you might say that human civilization needs people like that—people to do our dirty work, to do all the horrible necessary things we can’t bring ourselves to do. It’s just you don’t want to fall in love with them.”

I sit up. The pins in my hair have loosened, and a few locks drop free. I brace my hands on the edge of the mattress, concentrating my attention on the wall, until the merged watercolors separate once more into two distinct forms. Then I reach for the champagne glass on the nightstand.

Behind me, Clara lifts herself to a sitting position and slips her arms around my waist. Her head rests gently on my back. She’s forgotten about her cigarette. I watch the dying wisps of smoke drift from the white ceramic ashtray next to the champagne bottle. It’s shaped like a shell—the ashtray, of course, not the champagne bottle—and the delicate flutes make a perfect hollow for the cigarette’s round shape. How clever.

I lift the cigarette, rimmed in smudges of Clara’s lipstick, and stub it out. “Still. I can’t regret it.”

“Of course not. You have Evelyn.”

“She is worth everything to me. She’s worth anything.”

Clara reaches past me for the cigarette case. “And your sister? What was her name?”

“Sophie. Her name is Sophie.”

“She’s all right, too?”

“Yes. She’s engaged to be married. A nice, well-bred fellow. Harmless and simple, from a stately old family. He hasn’t got much money, but then he doesn’t need to, does he? I think they’ll be happy together.”

Clara lights the cigarette and leans back against the pillow, watching my profile. “And you? What about you, dearest?”

“What about me?”

“Have you thought of marrying again?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You might as well make a fresh start, mightn’t you? Simon’s dead. The trial’s over, and your father’s got what he deserved. Your sister’s got someone to watch over her. You have your daughter and all your lovely, lovely money. Why not find yourself a handsome, trustworthy lad to share it all with?”

“Because I can’t!”

She leans forward. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of all men now? I assure you, you’ve only been frightfully unlucky. Most of them are quite decent. Anyway, you’d better marry quickly, or you’ll attract all the rotten ones. The ones after your dosh.”

“I’m not afraid of that. I don’t have any intention of forming any—any—”

“Attachments?”

“Is that what you call them?”

“My poor love. Look at you, all frightened and trembling. And you are so blue, you know. You’re not the sort that can take up with one chap and another, flitting about like a bee sipping nectar, and yet you need love. You need love desperately.” She snatches a quick bite from her cigarette. “No. We’ve got to find you a husband. What about Samuel?”

I spring to my feet. “Samuel?”

“He’s handsome enough, isn’t he? And he’s a dear, loyal boy who won’t run about on you. You’re already terribly fond of him.”

“I hardly know him.”

She shakes the cigarette at me. “Now, don’t be coy. I know all about your embrace yesterday.”

“It wasn’t an embrace. Not that kind of embrace.”

“Perhaps on your side it wasn’t. But Samuel! He told me, you know. In his gruff little way. In fact, I suspect you quite overcame him. I shouldn’t wonder if he’s been in love with you all this time. Just like him, to form a passion for an impossible object. It’s illegal, you know, back home. To marry your brother’s widow.”