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The House on Cocoa Beach: A sweeping epic love story, perfect for fans of historical romance
Beatriz Williams
Lose yourself in a sweeping love story this summer - perfect for fans of Dinah Jeffries and Santa MontefioreNorthern France, 1917Virginia Fortescue has thrown convention and her respected upbringing to the wind to drive ambulances for the American Red Cross across northern France. Grinding through the mud and the trenches to bring injured and dying men back from the front, the last thing she expects to find is a handsome English doctor who won’t let her go – in spite of a wife waiting for him at home in Cornwall.Florida, 1922In the humid heat of Florida, Virginia Fitzwilliam must tackle the estate of her late estranged husband. After the plantation house burned to the ground with Simon Fitzwilliam inside, the shipping business he built from scratch has foundered and the mangroves have started to take back the land. The more Virginia learns about Simon and the secrets of his life, the more she fears that the dangers surrounding Simon now threaten her as well…
Copyright (#ufbc20d83-e682-5f82-9220-59f46d737b2c)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the UK by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Beatriz Williams
Cover design by Charlotte Abrams-Simpson © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photographs © Gordon Parks/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images (figure); Amy Weiss/Trevillon Images (veranda); Yolande de Kort/Trevillon Images (distant house); Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) (palm trees and aged paper texture)
Beatriz Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008132675
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008132682
Version: 2017-05-31
Dedication (#ufbc20d83-e682-5f82-9220-59f46d737b2c)
To the land of Florida—its dreamers, its builders, its mavericks, and its scoundrels. (Sometimes all four at once.)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u3a7413a1-bae2-54c2-87f3-5b821aa9ea31)
Title Page (#u01634f9f-066d-5480-a85d-a724fb7e1b27)
Copyright (#u691dc65c-3f4b-561a-9cbc-7abacf2967d8)
Dedication (#ue5cda70f-3fa2-55f2-be0e-119db47a213e)
Prologue (#u901ab412-4826-5887-8a72-96b5892490d9)
Chapter 1 (#ue1adb0ad-9825-5262-b6fe-230c9ffaaa52)
Chapter 2 (#u0c0bd811-81b7-54b7-90b4-6ecce0cf2c3b)
Chapter 3 (#u6ae969aa-0117-500d-afa3-a9a3b6b24b22)
Chapter 4 (#ua85682d1-410d-5fde-b1a8-f0218d03808b)
Chapter 5 (#u615abce1-ed2f-5021-8cef-1ffca0a3ef05)
Chapter 6 (#ub749e66f-bd0a-57cb-8713-b6d8e81d865c)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ufbc20d83-e682-5f82-9220-59f46d737b2c)
May 16, 1919
My dear wife,
Let me tell you about this pen.
Handsome object, made of black enamel, repeating fleur-de-lis motif in gold leaf. Casing somewhat scratched owing to years of hard use (rather like its owner). Knows you well enough, I expect, to write this letter without instruction. Anyway, I wish it would. I have been holding the damned thing for an hour at least. Turning it about between my fingers. Getting up and walking around the room. Sitting and staring and resolving.
The truth is, I’m afraid I don’t know what to say—I don’t know what to write to make you believe in me again. I stand accused and convicted of a despicable crime, and you never allowed me a word in my own defense. If I could, I’d whisper in your ear the entire truth, but I suspect you wouldn’t believe me, would you? God knows, as a practical matter, you shouldn’t believe me. Anyway, I can’t tell you the truth, at least not yet, so that’s that.
Instead of relying on your faith, then, I shall have to attempt the next best thing, the hardest thing. I am going to prove my—I was going to say innocence, but that’s not quite true enough, is it? I am not an innocent man, and I’ve never pretended to be, at least with you—the one person with whom I never pretended. But I can insist I’m innocent of this one crime at least—that I married you for yourself alone—and since I’m afraid, in the wake of my parents’ deaths, the house must now be sold for taxes and the estate broken up, I shall take up the last inheritance remaining to me and make something of myself at last: something, I hope, you will one day recognize as the man you thought you had married.
I shall write my next letter from the mosquito-bitten town of Cocoa, Florida, at the head of a once-grand shipping empire, which I intend to resurrect for your sake. And then—well, what? You will decide, my own dear phantom, my irreplaceable and inalienable wife, my own Virginia. If you’ll remember—if you’re honest in remembering me—I have always allowed you to choose for yourself.
In the meantime, may God watch over you.
Yours always,
S.F.
CHAPTER 1 (#ufbc20d83-e682-5f82-9220-59f46d737b2c)
Cocoa Beach, Florida, June 1922
Someone has cleared the ruins away, but you can still see that a house burned to the ground here, not long ago. The earth is black and charred, and the air smells faintly of soot.
In the center of what must once have been a courtyard, a modest stone fountain has toppled from its pedestal. Already the weeds have begun to sprout from the base, encouraged by the hot, damp sunshine and the fertile soil. Everything grows in Florida. Grows and grows, unchecked by any puny human efforts to control nature’s destiny. I sink to the edge of the pedestal and call to my daughter, who’s poking a stick through the long, sharp grasses that grow along the perimeter of the paving stones. She looks up in surprise, as if she’s forgotten I exist, and runs to me on her stubby bare legs. On her mouth is the same startling smile that used to light her father’s face, and there are moments—such as this one—when the resemblance strikes me so forcefully, I can’t breathe.
“Mama! Mama! There mouse!”
“A mouse? In the grass? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Mama! Mouse! He run away.”
“Of course he did, darling, if you poked him with your stick.”
Without another word she burrows her hot, wriggling body into my chest, and I’m not one to waste such an opportunity. Not me. Not now. I clasp Evelyn between my arms and bury my face in her sweet-smelling hair, and I breathe her in, great lungfuls of Evelyn, as if I could actually do that, if I inhaled with enough strength and will. Breathe my daughter’s spirit into mine.
I haven’t told her that her father died here four months ago, on this very patch of ground, or even that he built this house and lived in it while we—Evelyn and I—inhabited our comfortable brownstone on East Thirty-Second Street in New York City, together with Grandpapa and Aunt Sophie. For one thing, I don’t want to frighten her with the idea that a person could burn to death at two o’clock in the morning in his own house, just like that. For another, she’s not that curious about him, not yet. She’s not yet three years old, after all, and she doesn’t know any other little girls. Doesn’t know that most of them have both mothers and fathers, living at home together, sometimes with brothers and sisters, too. One day, of course, she’ll want to know more. She’ll ask me questions, and I’ll have to think of plausible answers.
And there is another reason, a final reason. The reason I’m here in Florida to begin with, examining this blackened ground with my jaded eyes. I suppose I’ll tell Evelyn about that, too, when the time comes, but for now I’m holding this reason inside my own head and nowhere else. I’ve learned, over the years, to keep my private thoughts strictly to myself.
Behind us, Mr. Burnside clears his throat in that slight, unnecessary way that lawyers have. I imagine they think it conveys discretion. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” he says.
“Yes, Mr. Burnside?”
“Have you seen enough? I hate to hurry you, but we do have a whole mess of appointments this morning.”
Mr. Burnside, you understand, likes to keep to a tight schedule, especially in the face of this shimmering June sun, which forces all business around here to conclude by lunchtime. After which Mr. Burnside will spend the rest of his day inside a high-ceilinged, north-facing room, sipping a cool, strong drink while an electric fan rotates above him. If he can spare the energy, he might turn over a paper or two on his desk.
On the other hand, he’s an extremely competent man of affairs, as I’ve had plenty of occasion to discover in the past two months, and the sound of his voice—practical, confident, somewhat impatient—is enough to stiffen my resolve. To blow away the dust of regret, or nostalgia, or grief, or whatever it is that’s stinging my eyes, that’s clogging my chest as I hold Simon’s daughter in my arms and try to imagine that Simon is dead. Dead. What a word. An impossible word, as unlike Simon as clay is to fire. I kiss the top of Evelyn’s head, detach her from my arms, and rise to my feet. The early sun catches my back. Not far away, the ocean beats against the yellow sand, and the sound makes me want to take off my shoes and socks and wander, aimless, into the surf.
Instead, I say: “Are you certain the remains belonged to my husband?”
“Yes, ma’am. His brother identified the body.”
“Samuel.”
“That’s the man. Big fella.”
“And this was Simon’s house, of course. There’s no mistake about that?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. No mistake about that. Had the pleasure of visiting here many times myself. Lovely place. Like one of those Italian villas. There were lemon trees in this courtyard, real pretty. A real shame, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Terrible, terrible shame that you never saw how lovely it was.”
I gaze at him coldly, and he coughs and turns away, as if to survey the empty, overgrown plot around us. The breeze touches the ends of his pale jacket. His straw hat glows in the sun. He inserts his fingers into his sweating collar and says, “Have you thought about what you’ll do with the place? You can get a good price for the land, if you don’t mind my saying so. Folks are paying top dollar these days for a plot of good Florida land, let alone one as nice and big as this, looking out on the ocean.”
Across the road, at the edge of the yellow beach, an especially large wave rises to the sky, gathering strength and power, until it can’t bear the strain any longer and dives for shore in a long, elegant undulation, from north to south. An instant later, the boom reaches us, like the firing of a seventy-five-millimeter artillery shell—a sound I know all too well. My nerves flinch obediently.
But I’m an old hand at disguising the flinch of my nerves. Instead of jumping at the sound of a crashing wave, I brush an imaginary patch of dirt from my dress and reach for Evelyn’s sticky hand.
“I think we should visit the docks next, don’t you think? So we don’t run late on our schedule.”
