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

“I’m grateful.”

“The least I could do,” says Samuel. “And I was happily able to set Mr. Burnside straight about your existence, and where you might be found, and in the meantime—well. Here we are.”

“Here we are.”

Mr. Burnside says, “In your absence, ma’am, and acting for the estate, I appointed Mr. Fitzwilliam temporary director of Phantom Shipping and its affiliate concerns. There was really nobody else. The citrus plantation, as you know, has been in the family for some time.”

“Our grandfather’s American wife,” says Samuel.

“Yes. I remember Simon once told me something about it. A wedding present from her father to the happy couple, wasn’t that right?”

“Something like that. Although really more in the nature of a bribe, the rich old devil. I believe he hoped the glorious sunshine of Maitland Plantation would tempt the two of them near, but they preferred the pile of soggy family stones in Cornwall, God knows why, and poor old Maitland’s been mostly left to the incompetence of estate managers ever since. Well, until Simon came along, after the war.”

“And now you. You’re in charge of everything.”

Samuel shrugs. “So it seems.”

Mr. Burnside breaks in. “Of course, if you don’t think Mr. Fitzwilliam’s the right man for the job, I’m happy to look about for a replacement.”

You know, there’s something about Mr. Burnside’s tone that brings out the streak of perversity in me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been such a very good girl the past few years, a model of respectability, absorbed in my child and my home, never once mentioning the thing that plagues me. Smiling serenely, while the world buckles and shifts around us, while women bob their hair and run out to smoke cigarettes and to vote, while fortunes are made by the illegal importation of liquor, while broad new highways are laid in their hundreds and I am not.

Or perhaps I’m just wondering—and surely you noticed it, too—why Mr. Burnside so artfully changed the subject when I mentioned those company accounts.

“Well, then. Maybe you should look around for a replacement, Mr. Burnside, just to be prepared. I think Samuel understands that he’s here on trial. I’ll be in a better position to make these decisions once I’m fully intimate with the details of the business.”

My exceptional height gives me a small advantage in making this pronouncement. Even as large as Samuel is—and I judge he’s a good four inches over six feet—I don’t have to turn up all that far to meet his gaze, and I can see that I’ve startled him. You know the look. His eyebrows shoot to the roof; his lips part.

But that’s nothing compared with Mr. Burnside, who gasps and mutters by my side, flapping his mouth and his eyelids, while Samuel and I lock eyes like a pair of rival giants.

“Come now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”

“She’s right, however,” says Samuel, not looking away. “It’s her business now, isn’t it? Once the estate clears probate.”

“But she’s just—”

“A woman?” Samuel breaks our little encounter at last and turns to the lawyer. “Mr. Burnside, I’m surprised a man your age doesn’t know better by now than to put those words together. Just a woman. Women rule the earth, don’t you know? A man doesn’t do a single thing that isn’t somehow inspired by a woman’s will. Sometimes all it takes is her mere existence. Anyway, you haven’t seen this particular woman drive a rattletrap Model T through the mud of a French battlefield, swearing like a sailor.”

“You’re wrong about that,” I say. “I never swore.”

“Didn’t you? Well, I suppose I never saw you in action, either. I only have it secondhand. Now, then. Would you like to see the rest of the offices, Virginia? All the accounts are in order and ready for your inspection.”

I glance at the clock on the wall, and the two other occupants of the room—the typist and the accountant—turn sharply back to their work. The steady undertone clatter of typewriter keys picks up again. The sound of business. Good, solid, American business, rushing on to meet the brash new age before us.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to defer that pleasure until later this afternoon, Mr. Fitzwilliam. My daughter needs her nap.”

WHEN I FIRST MADE ACQUAINTANCE with the name of Mr. Cornelius Burnside, I was sitting at the desk of my suite in the Pickwick Arms Hotel on the Boston Post Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, sifting my way through a thick collection of mail that had been forwarded from the house in New York City. It was the middle of May and I was exhausted, having sat through yet another court hearing in the days before Father’s trial, and at first I didn’t quite understand the neat, typewritten words before me. (Typewritten, quite possibly, by that silent young lady in the navy blue suit in the office of the Phantom Shipping Company.)

I still have the letter, packed in a separate valise, the one that contains all my important papers, though I hardly need to see it. I must know every word by now. It’s short, after all, and I have read it many times.

Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,

You will forgive my intrusion on your notice at such a busy time, but I have reason to believe that you may be the surviving relic of Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam, late of the city of Cocoa, Florida, who I regret to inform you passed away in a fire at his home in Cocoa Beach, in the early hours of February 19 of this year.

I must beg you to confirm your receipt of this letter, and your identity as the former Miss Virginia Fortescue of New York, married to Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam of Penderleath, England [Cornwall, I thought automatically] in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the 31st of March, 1919, at your earliest convenience, so that we may proceed with the proper settlement of Mr. Fitzwilliam’s estate.

Yours respectfully,

Mr. Cornelius S. Burnside, Jr., Esq.

On the first reading, I didn’t understand at all. Something about the sight of my husband’s name—Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam—all typewritten and impersonal, as if I were reading about him in a newspaper, simply froze my thoughts in place. My eyes skimmed over the rest of the words without absorbing a single one.

Only upon a second reading did I realize that something had happened to Simon, and only after the third did I perceive that Simon was dead. That he had burned to death in a house in Florida, a terrible accident, and left to me—Virginia Fitzwilliam, his legal wife—the entirety of his estate. His estate, whatever that was.

Because while houses burned down regularly, and people died all the time, I had never imagined that Simon could meet his end like that. You could not extinguish my husband in mere flame. It simply wasn’t possible.

And while I had never tried to forget Simon—how could I, when his daughter gazed up at me every morning, an incarnate reminder of our brief life together?—I had, over the course of the previous three years, sequestered his image into its own tidy corner of my head, rigid and unchanged, a two-dimensional portrait covered by a sheet against the dust. I had refused to allow any memories out of that corner, because those might bring him back to life, and where would I be if Simon became human to me again?

But the shock of seeing his name, understanding the bare facts of his death, had a catastrophic effect on that mental frame I had erected around Simon, confining him in two dimensions. Simon: dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. It simply didn’t make sense. I stared and stared at that letter, and I put it away in the desk, and then I woke up at midnight and pulled it out and read it again while my sister, Sophie, slept in her nearby bed.

A week passed before I found the composure to answer that letter, and when I did, my reply was just as slim and factual as the original, though I wrote it in pen on Pickwick Arms notepaper. I simply confirmed my identity as Simon’s widow, indicated that I would not be at liberty to attend Mr. Burnside in person for some weeks, but that I would be happy to answer any inquiries by letter in the meantime.

At the time, however, I made no mention of Evelyn. For one thing, I doubted Mr. Burnside—or Samuel Fitzwilliam, for that matter—would have any idea of her existence.

I’M CARRYING EVELYN IN MY arms this minute, as we cross the street to the Phantom Hotel and Simon’s private apartment on the fifth floor, overlooking the docks. I haven’t seen it yet. We spent a few brief moments in the hotel lobby this morning, Evelyn and I, depositing our luggage and waiting for Mr. Burnside to appear. I’m afraid I didn’t notice any details, other than a clean-lined, simple décor and the impression of light and mirrors.

Samuel offers to carry Evelyn, but I decline politely, even though my arms ache under her weight. Instead, he puts his hand on my elbow and makes sure there’s no traffic as we start across the pitted street. It’s the first time he’s touched me since we shook hands in the office, and his fingers are unexpectedly light against the sharp point of my humerus. As we reach the safety of the paved sidewalk, the hand drops away.

This time the hotel staff recognizes me, and the manager hurries over the instant I pass through the doorway and hoist Evelyn—already half-asleep—further up my hip. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” he cries in dismay. He turns and snaps his fingers to the lobby boy, who hurries to press the call button on the elevator at the other end of the room. By the time we reach the apartment and I’ve tucked Evelyn into her bed, a tray’s arrived, bearing sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. Samuel, who stands by the window looking at the river, offers to pour me a glass.

The humble question brings me up short in the middle of an enormous silk rug.

“Yes, thank you.”

He strikes out across the floor while I settle myself on the edge of a sleek leather armchair. The drawing room yawns around us, vast and spare, containing only a few necessary pieces of clean-edged furniture and no sentiment whatsoever. Even the curtains are pale and plain, a uniform gray-green that merges immaculately with the paint on the high, long walls. I can just glimpse the river over the edge of the nearest windowsill, and the dark mass of the mangrove on the opposite shore—the barrier that separates us from the Atlantic. A convenient, protected harbor. No wonder Cocoa’s a boomtown.

Samuel hands me a damp glass of lemonade. Our fingertips brush, and he doesn’t move away.

“I didn’t realize Simon’s taste was so modern,” I say.

“I didn’t either, when I first arrived. I suppose neither of us had the opportunity to know him particularly well.”

“I knew him well enough.”

“In hospitals and hotels. But you never set up a home together, did you?”

The question is rhetorical. Samuel knows the solution to this hypothesis as well as I do. Wasn’t he the very man who drove me away from Cornwall, in an ancient Daimler whose cracked leather seats released a particular smell that still hangs in my nostrils? Still: “That’s true,” I say, and I settle in my chair, back still rigid, away from his looming figure.

Samuel tilts his head and returns to his station by the window. “I am sorry about all this. It must have been the devil of a shock.”

“Yes, it was. I still can’t imagine him dead.”

“Neither can I. Of all of us, he was the one most alive.”

“But you saw him dead. You identified the body.”

“Only by the ring.” Samuel taps his finger on the window frame, and the action reminds me so much of Simon, I turn away to drink my lemonade. “The body itself was burned beyond recognition. Poor chap.”

“Poor chap? You can still say that, after everything?”

“Yes, I can. He was my brother, after all.”

I think of Sophie, and the invisible thread that connects my heart to hers, even when an ocean opens between us. How my sister could commit no possible evil—even if she were capable of evil, and Sophie is as pure as a child—that would snap that thread.

“I suppose so.”

“And we had a row, you know, not too long before he died. The last time we met, a god-awful almighty row. I think you should know that, before you hear it from someone else. It’s been a weight on my mind ever since. And he stormed back to Maitland, to the plantation, and that was the last I saw of him. Until I went to identify his body. What there was of it.”

My lips are numb from the ice. I set the glass on the round marble table next to the armchair, and as the two connect in a soft clink, something else occurs to me. “What ring?”

“Ring?”

“How you identified him. He had a ring, you said.”

Samuel turns. “Yes. It was your wedding ring. The one you gave back. He kept it on him. I’m not sure how, in a pocket or something. The fire got to it. But I could still make out the inscription. Your initials, and his.” He reaches into his pocket. “Here it is, if you want a look.”

I stare at his grim expression. At his outstretched hand. The sunlight catches a glint from somewhere within that dense landscape of palm and mangrove, and I think, It can’t be my ring; it’s too small. But of course it is. Dull and bent, no longer a ring but a piece of burnt scrap. It might be anyone’s old ring, but Samuel says it’s mine, Samuel says it’s the ring that Simon placed on my finger three years ago amid a litany of Christian vows, and unlike my late husband, and for all his faults, Samuel is a straightforward man who speaks only truth.

I realize I have stopped moving, stopped breathing, and before this paralysis becomes permanent I spring from the armchair and make for the opposite end of the room, where a broad, high window looks not eastward toward Europe but north, in the direction of New York City. I place my hands on the windowsill and breathe in large, shallow gasps, staring upriver at the ships coursing the tranquil blue water.

Behind me, Samuel swears and apologizes. I hear footsteps, and the click of wood, and the clink of glass, and a moment later, just as I’ve recovered the ordinary rhythms of respiration, my lemonade glass reappears at my elbow. I snatch it away and Samuel says, Careful!

But it’s too late. I’ve already gulped down the first few ounces, and my throat bursts into flame. The cavities of my head fill with smoke.

“My God! What did you put in it?”

“Gin.”

Another spasm. I set down the glass on the ledge. “Isn’t that against the law?”

“Not to drink. Only to buy.”

“You had to have bought it somewhere.”

Samuel shrugged. “The liquor cabinet was already full when I arrived. What’s a fellow to do but drink?”

I lift the glass again, and this time I sip more carefully, and the gin has its proper effect. Tamed by lemonade, in fact, it’s what you might call tranquilizing. My pulse settles, my nerves simmer down. The chasm between my ribs fills with something or other. The warmth on my shoulder, I realize, belongs to Samuel’s hand. I shrug it off and turn to face him, and that’s my second mistake, greater even than the reckless gulping of Samuel’s particular recipe for refreshment.

Maybe it’s his grim, unhappy expression. Maybe it’s the color of his eyes. His smell, or the gin, or the memory of my wedding night, or God knows. Maybe it’s the effect of a sleepless Pullman sleeper, clackety-clack all the way from New York. My eyes, which have remained dry for the past three years, dry and dignified throughout every last thing, start to liquefy at last. I bend my face to the side, but not soon enough.

“Stupid girl,” he says, “crying for him.”

But his voice isn’t without sympathy, and his chest—broad, covered with characteristic plainness in a white shirt and a light gray jacket, unbuttoned—possesses a strange power of gravity, like the earth itself. I find myself leaning toward him, or rather toppling, like a stone tower whose foundation has just turned to sand. An inch or two away from his collar, I catch myself, startling, but not before his right hand discovers the blade of my shoulder, and this gentle, masculine pressure finishes me. My forehead connects with the side of his neck, at the slope where it meets his clavicle, and my fingers rise to hang from the ridge of his shoulders. He goes on cradling my back with his one palm—the other hand, I believe, remains at his side—and says nothing, not even the traditional Hush, now or There, there. Thank God. I don’t think I could have survived any words. His skin and his collar turn wet, though I’m not really sobbing. Not crying as you ordinarily imagine the act of sorrow. Just a small heave every so often, and the streaming from my eyes, which continues for some time. I don’t know how long. I’ve lost the sense of passing minutes, here in the damp, warm hollow of my brother-in-law’s neck.

I WAKE UNSTEADILY, DISCOMBOBULATED BY the heat and the sunlight slanting through the window glass between a pair of pale, billowy curtains. By the unfamiliarity of the bed in which I lie. A white sheet covers me, and beneath that I’m wearing only a petticoat. A clock chimes from somewhere in the room, but by the time I remember to count the strokes, it’s too late. Several, at any rate. A soft knock sounds on the door, and I realize that’s the sound that roused me in the first place.

I straighten myself. Lift the sheet to my neck, and that’s when I remember Samuel, and our embrace, and going to bed for a nap. The rest is blurry. I glance fearfully to the side, and I’m relieved to discover I’m alone.

“Who is it?” I call.

“It’s me. It’s Clara.” A tiny pause. “Simon’s sister.”

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT SISTERS, ISN’T there? At the sound of Clara’s voice, I find myself struck by a gust of yearning for my Sophie, as fierce and destructive as one of those tropical hurricanes that are said to strike these shores from time to time. Sophie, all grown up now, whom I have left once more to bear the burden of our past on her own slim shoulders while I pursue some chimera of my own making, some delusion of salvation in a foreign land.

Clara. Another surprise. But why not? Of course she would accompany her brother Samuel to Florida, since she didn’t have any other family of her own. Parents dead, and all the marriageable men killed in France. That’s what you did, if you were a good maiden sister: help your brother carry his burden. I should have been expecting her, really.

“Come in,” I say.

The door cracks open. “Someone wants to see you,” says a woman’s sweet voice, and Evelyn races through the crack and bounds onto the bed.

“Mama! Mama! Aunt Clarrie cake!”

“Oh, my! Did Aunt Clara give you cake, sweetheart?”

“I hope you don’t mind. Samuel said you needed rest, and that’s what aunties are for, isn’t it? Giving sweets without permission!”

From the last time—the only time—I saw Clara Fitzwilliam, I retain only a vague recollection that her face was drawn and pale, and her voice was somber. But that was years ago, when her parents lay dying. Now she’s transformed. It must be the absence of grief, or maybe the Florida sun has touched some seam of gold inside her; who knows? Her skin is luminous, her dark hair bobbed and cheerful. She’s wearing a sundress of polka-dotted periwinkle blue, the hem of which flutters around the middle of her dainty calves. Beneath it, her stockings are white and extremely fine. She gazes on my bare shoulders without the slightest shred of embarrassment.

“Of course I don’t mind. How are you, Clara?”

A banal, inadequate question at such a moment, as if we’re the ordinary kind of sisters-in-law, meeting again after a month or two abroad. But if she finds me awkward, she doesn’t take any notice.

“Hot and sunburnt! I’ve spent the day at the beach. I can’t seem to soak it in enough, after all those years in the English rain.”

“But you’ve lived here for years, haven’t you? You and Samuel.”

“Years? Dear me, no. Samuel came over all by himself, the rotter, the year after Simon left England. Leaving me all alone and friendless in soggy old Blighty. I only arrived last winter, after Simon died. Samuel cabled me. Simply ghastly. Have you slept enough? Your daughter’s charming. What a delicious surprise. We had no idea. A real live niece! Like finding a shilling in the pocket of one’s winter coat.” She goes to the window, throws open the curtains to their farthest possible extent, and closes her eyes like a goddess summoning the sun. (Or maybe sending it over the horizon—the quality of the light suggests sunset.) She adds, without opening her eyes, “You look well, by the way. Quite stunning. Far better than I imagined you would, after all you’ve been through.”

Evelyn wriggles out of my arms and slides from the bed to join her aunt.

“Thank you. What time is it? I suppose I should be dressing for dinner.”

“Only seven o’clock. But—”

“Seven o’clock! But Evelyn goes to bed in half an hour!”

Clara turns and smiles. “I’ve already given her tea. That should suffice, shouldn’t it? But you needn’t wear anything particular. I’ll ring down and order us a supper. They do a frightfully nice supper, you know. And the best thing is, you don’t have to pay. Because it’s already yours!”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Of course, I expect you’re used to being rich. But it’s all been rather novel for Samuel and yours truly. I say, I do hope you don’t mind that we’ve been living here like parasites, waiting for you to arrive? Or rather, I’m the parasite. Samuel works like a bee. No, not like a bee. Like a beast! A beast in harness, poor dear. But I’m simply useless. Just lying about in the sun, trying to warm my poor English blood, and then coming home to all this”—she waves her hand—“and drinking all your champagne.”

I can’t help smiling. “You do know you’re not supposed to be drinking champagne in America?”

“It’s awfully bad of me. But I promise, not a penny’s changed hands. So we’re quite in the clear, legally speaking, at least according to Samuel.”

“Yes. Samuel.”

She steps forward to sit on the edge of the bed, and Evelyn, who has been peering out the window behind her, sidles up to grab her knees. Without looking down, Clara covers Evelyn’s tiny fingers with her own, a gesture of unconscious affection that ought to disturb me, I suppose, since I hardly know Clara at all. She’s Simon’s sister, she’s almost a stranger. Instead the touch of hands warms me. I don’t know why. A craving for Sophie, maybe, who is so different and yet so strangely like this newfound Clara—full of energy and enthusiasm and a boundless capacity for love. A never-ending faith in tomorrow’s joys.

“Samuel is such a rock,” she says. “I never knew what a rock he could be, until all this.”

“Do you mean what happened to Simon?”

She caresses Evelyn’s fingers, and her voice turns kind. “You say it so calmly. You’re not grieved at all?”

“I’ve already grieved.”

“Oh, you’re that sort, then.”

“What sort?”

“The practical sort, the kind who puts things behind them and moves on. How I envy you. I think about Simon every day. It consumes me. Wondering what I might have done differently, if I might have changed him somehow. How I might have saved things. If only I’d—” She glances at Evelyn. “Well, never mind. I suppose we’ll speak about it eventually. In the meantime, you must dress, and I’ll put our wee darling here in her bath.”

“Oh, but I should do that.”

“Dearest, it’s no bother. I adore children. And you must rest, you really must.”

“But she’s only two—”

“I promise, I shall keep my most beady of beadiest eyes on her well-being. You’re not to worry about a thing, do you understand? She’s my only niece, after all. I shall worship her idolatrously. My darling only niece.”

I lean back against the pillows. “Yes. Of course. She’s your niece.”

“There we are. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“No, thank you. I believe my trunks are already unpacked.”

“Yes, they are. I saw to it personally. Such fun, to be ordering maids about in your service. I do hope everything’s comfortable. I do so want you to be comfortable, after everything you’ve endured. Now that we’ve found you at last. Our sister.” She reaches forward and squeezes my hand.