The House on Cocoa Beach: A sweeping epic love story, perfect for fans of historical romance
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…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London, SE1 9GF
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 (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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008132675
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008132682
Version: 2017-05-31
To the land of Florida—its dreamers, its builders, its mavericks, and its scoundrels. (Sometimes all four at once.)
Table of Contents
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.
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.
