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

“Blimey,” said the corporal, “you ain’t half got a good mechanic.”

“Actually, I’m the mechanic.”

“You, miss?”

The air was bitter, and the engine would be cold. I went around front, released the choke, and turned the engine. “My father had a Model T for years, and my sister and I kept it running for him. He thought we should be self-reliant. Could you switch the ignition for me?”

When the engine was puttering at an easy, patient pace, the corporal slid from the seat and made room for me. “Your chariot, m’lady,” he said. Courtly bow.

“Where’s your captain?”

“Making his regards, I think.”

“His regards?”

He nodded at the steps. “To herself.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“Now, don’t you think anything of that, miss. It’s only what he does.”

“Think anything of what?”

The corporal nudged the brim of his hat and reached into his pocket. He lit a cheap, brown-wrapped cigarette and walked away, a few polite steps, smoking and staring into the dry fountain in the center of the driveway, where a suite of lichen-crusted cherubs stood frozen in frolic. A dark fog wrapped the trees beyond. I realized he wasn’t going to reply and climbed into my seat. The smell of exhaust. The steady vibration of the engine under my hands and my bottom. The things I knew.

After a minute or two, Captain Fitzwilliam emerged from the château, hat and belt in place, and swung into the seat beside me. He smelled of coffee and soap and just the faintest hint of cigarettes, and his cheeks were pink against the ecru of his shirt collar. “Off we go, then,” he said, striking the dash with his palm, like a signal, and he propped one boot against the frame, leaned back his head, and fell asleep.

SO I DROVE, BECAUSE I could do that well, and it steadied my nerves to do something well. Something practical. The fog persisted, and the damp, bitter wind blew on my temples. Behind me, the wooden truck rattled and groaned on its metal chassis. The engine ground faithfully, smelling of burnt oil and gasoline. The road was even more churned and muddy than yesterday, but this time I knew the way, and the morning light was still young and hopeful. I kept to the middle of the road, where the mud wasn’t so bad, though I had to give way to other vehicles: supply trucks and artillery wagons and even, as we drew closer, other ambulances. All crusted with mire. They were headed to the railway station at Albert, for the sanitary trains to the coast, where the base hospitals lay in a chain along the sea, from Étaples to Boulogne.

Beyond them, England. The source of all these vehicles. The quarry from which all this manhood was mined, was cut and honed and shipped here in its millions. To do what? To live and fight and die. To construct and occupy this vast, temporary civilization that existed for a single object.

I caught myself wondering, at that moment, where Captain Fitzwilliam lived, when he wasn’t patching up bodies in a casualty clearing station in northern France. When he wasn’t asleep beside me, heavy and silent, pressing his big left knee across my right. Where he was raised, who were his parents. The ambulance pitched and wallowed. The wet air had soaked through my woolen gloves, and my fingers, clenching the wheel, should have felt the cold. Instead they glowed. She is absolutely essential. I was not falling in love; I was certainly not falling in love. Love was a fiction, written by Nature to disguise her real purpose. This sick, breathless sensation in my belly was only biology. This heat on my nerves. Only the instinct to procreate.

Or something else, maybe. The recognition of imminent danger.

“YOU’RE DAMNED QUIET,” CAPTAIN FITZWILLIAM said an hour later, making me jump. “Are you always so quiet?”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Only resting my eyes. I rarely sleep.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Troubled conscience, perhaps.”

The ambulance lurched through a hollow. Fitzwilliam gripped the doorframe, while a series of thuds vibrated the wood behind us, and Pritchard swore.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” he said.

“Ask what?”

“Why my conscience is troubled.”

“Isn’t that your own business? I don’t even know you.”

“Miss Fortescue,” he said gravely, “this is a time of war, not a drawing room in peacetime.”

“I don’t understand. What difference does that make? People are people.”

“I mean that we’ve shared a most intimate space for several hours now. Can’t we dispense with the niceties and be friends?”

I said nothing.

“Look. I’ll start. My conscience, since you’re curious—”

“I’m not curious.”

“Yes, you are. You’re desperately curious. You like me, Miss Fortescue; admit it.”

“I do not —”

“My conscience, Miss Fortescue, coincidentally enough, is troubled because of you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Because a young lady of tremendous youth and merit, to say nothing of beauty, has traveled such a great distance to cover herself in mud and motor oil and to make conversation with an old bounder like me, and most especially to put herself under the command of a Mrs. DeForest—”

“Mrs. DeForest is an admirable woman.”

“Oh, most admirable. No doubt at all. But she’s rather a tyrant, isn’t she?”

I was still too rattled by the word beauty. “Of course not,” I lied.

“And I ask myself why. Why you should do such a thing, and why I should be so fortunate as to deserve you.”

“ Deserve me!”

“Deserve, I should say, your entrance into my particular butcher shop at a quarter past five on an otherwise ordinary February afternoon. Ordinary in the sense of this mad, atrocious war, I mean.”

Another vehicle approached us along the narrow road, a large truck painted in dull olive green, covered in canvas. I pointed Hunka Tin carefully to the right-hand side, and the truck thundered past, engine screaming, mire flying from the wheels.

“I don’t understand why you say these things. How you can be so flippant.”

He placed one hand on his woolen heart. “You wound me.”

“Nonsense.”

“I protest. In the first place, I’m not being flippant. I’m quite sincere. In the second place, you’ll find there are two ways to cope with the madness in this godforsaken Hades. The first is to pretend that it’s all a great—if rather unsporting—outdoor game. A match of cricket prolonged by inclement weather and unlucky batsmen.”

“And the second?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Another truck came by, identical to the first. A supply convoy, probably, returning from the lines. I rubbed my thumbs against the wheel. My back ached, my jaw ached. Every muscle strung tight.

“In any case,” Captain Fitzwilliam went on, when the clamor died away, “we have roamed far from the question at hand. What exactly are you running away from, Miss Fortescue? I find I should very much like to know.”

“Nothing at all.”

“Tyrant parents? Failed love affair? Creditors at your heels?”

“None of those things.”

“Nothing left behind? No heartache, no loved ones pining?”

I gripped the wheel and leaned forward. Stared through the windshield. The bleak, brown, lurching winter landscape. I remember I was considering how long to remain silent before starting another topic, and what kind of topic I could safely introduce. Weather or war news or staff incompetence. Something even more impersonal, like the quality of wartime coffee, and whether you could call it coffee at all. Then—

“I have a sister.”

“What’s that?”

“A sister!”