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

“Is it?”

“Yes. The Church thinks it’s a kind of incest, apparently. Ghastly archaic old men. Anyway, it all makes tremendous sense. He’s just enough like Simon to attract you, but not enough to put you in danger for your life. In fact, the opposite. Samuel will protect you from anything. Protect you with his own heart’s blood, I daresay, or whatever manner of nonsense you like. He’s a warrior, you know. That’s what they do.”

I walk to the mirror that hangs above the desk. The image appalls me. I suppose I’m not the sort of woman who looks enchanting in dishabille. My hair straggles gracelessly from its pins; my face is wan, protected from sunburn today by the brim of a sensible hat. My bones stick out everywhere. Over my shoulder, Clara’s dark head bobs and wavers. “I am not going to marry Samuel,” I tell the reflection in the mirror, in slow, forceful words. “I’m not going to marry anyone again.”

“Really?”

I turn to face her. “Really.”

She reaches out to crush the cigarette into the crustacean ashtray. “I have agitated you terribly.”

“I’m not agitated. I’m simply not going to marry again. I can’t. I will take a thousand lovers before I marry again. But not that. Not marriage.”

“Why? Because you’re afraid they all are only in it for the dosh? Because Samuel—”

“Actually, there isn’t any dosh. Not much, anyway.”

“I mean when your father’s dead, of course—”

“No. After he was arrested, he transferred everything, all he had, the patents and the money and the house, to Sophie and me, first thing. But I couldn’t keep my share.”

Clara’s still rolling the end of the cigarette in the ashtray. She stops now, holding the stub against the porcelain, eyebrows high and sweetly arched. “You gave it all away?”

“Not quite all. But I couldn’t take Father’s money, any more than I needed. I’ve put almost all of it, including the patent rights, into trust for Evelyn.”

Clara drops the cigarette at last. Rubs her thumb and forefinger together, as if to brush away the ash. “That’s awfully noble.”

I turn back to the mirror. “Not really. It isn’t as if money has ever given me what I really wanted. You might say it’s the opposite.”

“Oh, my darling.”

The bedsprings squeak, the rug rustles. Clara lays her small head against my back and wraps her arms around my waist.

“You poor thing,” she whispers against the thin fabric of my dress.

“I’m not poor. I’m rich. I have Evelyn, I have my sister.”

“What about Simon’s estate? Are you going to give that away, too?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Yes, probably. I guess I’ll likely sell it all and put the money in Evelyn’s trust. Once I’ve found out …”

“Found out what?”

“I don’t know. Once I’ve seen everything. Everything Simon left behind.”

“That may take a little time. He left behind a great many things.”

My hollow eyes regard me. A bit accusingly, maybe, as if I’m blaming myself for my current state. My current gloom. I should eat more, I think. I should eat more and drink more and go outside without my hat and generally enjoy myself. Why not? I should learn something about this world that Simon inhabited, until I discover what I’m looking for. Whatever that is. A sign or a clue or an elegant solution to the puzzle of Simon’s death. Until I discover whether or not I’m really free.

A foot or so to the left of the mirror, a window frames the western landscape, catching the glare of the dying sun. If I shade my eyes, I can see the smudge of buildings on the opposite shore of the bay. The striving blocks of Miami, where Simon occasionally made visits, to transact business with his bankers.

I say softly, “I’ve got nothing but time.”

France, February 1917

During the night before I left for France, I slept in Sophie’s room, in her bed, the way we used to do when she was small. After Mama died.

Slept. I don’t think we actually slept. We talked until our throats hurt, we laughed into our pillows, and Sophie cried a little. Sophie’s the sentimental one; she tears up at everything, Fourth of July parades and baskets of puppies. Maybe I’ve spoiled her; maybe I’ve been too protective. I held her while she wept, and the old flannel of her nightgown scratched my neck, and the honeysuckle smell of her hair filled my head, raising all kinds of memories. My chest ached. She asked me why I had to go, and I didn’t tell her the truth. I didn’t tell her that I was going to explode, I was going to go mad, I was a pot of salted water coming on to boil under the pressure of an eternal cast-iron lid, and someone was going to get scalded.

Instead, I stroked her honeysuckle hair and said, Because there’s a war on, Baby. There’s a terrible war going on overseas, and I have to help.

She said, I’m going to miss you so much, what am I going to do without you here, and I kept on stroking that hair, blinking my bee-stung eyes, and when I could speak I said, You’ll be fine, you’ll be safe, Father will take good care of you .

I said it over and over, until I believed it myself. Until it almost felt true.

But I couldn’t numb the anguish beneath my sternum. I couldn’t cure the absence of my sister, or the fear that sometimes roused me in those sooty moments before dawn, when the terrible new day smoldered at the horizon, streaked with unknown danger.

AS IT DID NOW, THE morning after I first met Captain Fitzwilliam. I lay on my back and stared at the crumbling ceiling, while my nerves stung and my temples burst. While the tension hurt the muscles of my jaw. Like I hadn’t slept at all, and maybe I hadn’t.

I rolled over and opened the drawer in the bedside table, where I kept a clumsily embroidered sachet that Sophie had given me for my birthday when she was ten. Before I left New York, I had removed the exhausted lavender and slipped inside a small cake of soap, the honeysuckle soap with which I always bathed her, until she was old enough to bathe herself. I held the sachet to my nose and thought, If I can still smell her, she must be all right, she must be safe. Father must be taking good care of her.

The light grew. Time to rise. Time for breakfast, time to wash and to dress and to drive out into the bitter February morning. The bitter February mud. I absorbed a last breath of honeysuckle and threw off the covers.

Mrs. DeForest was one of those women who believed in a sturdy, early breakfast, stocked with protein and vitamins. She worshipped vitamins, the entire alphabet of them. She’d brought her own hens from Long Island, and not one bird had dared to expire along the way. When I stepped downstairs into the refectory at six o’clock, she sat already at the head of the long wooden table, looking clean and practical. At her left sat Corporal Pritchard, shoveling food silently into his mouth, and at her right sat Captain Fitzwilliam, wearing his tunic (but not his belt) and drinking coffee. I saw that his hair was lighter than I had supposed. It was almost golden—or maybe that was only the effect of the vast electric chandelier overhead—and spiked all over in stiff, reflective gray. I was shocked at the familiarity of his face, how I already recognized each angle of bone and each line embedded around his eyes and mouth. How I could say to myself, His skin looks better this morning, less wan, full of color, plumper. He must have slept well, after all.

Mrs. DeForest was speaking. She nodded to me but she didn’t pause. She never paused. “It’s the result of so much planning, you know. No detail too small when it comes to people’s health. I’m a firm believer in clean sheets and fresh, abundant food. We’ve brought our own supplies, and there’s more on the way from our chapter back home. We have an awfully enthusiastic chapter. Nothing is too good for our patients, Captain Fitzwilliam.”