An Affair by the Sea, page 18
AN AFFAIR BY THE SEA
SIREN’S RETREAT #2
ERICA RIDLEY
CONTENTS
Copyright
Also by Erica Ridley
An Affair by the Sea
Acknowledgments
An Affair by the Sea
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Thank You
More Free Books
A Spinster by the Sea
Sneak Peek
Nobody’s Princess
Sneak Peek
Thank You For Reading
About the Author
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2021 Erica Ridley
Cover Design © Teresa Spreckelmeyer, The Midnight Muse
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
ALSO BY ERICA RIDLEY
The Dukes of War:
The Viscount’s Tempting Minx (FREE!)
The Earl’s Defiant Wallflower
The Captain’s Bluestocking Mistress
The Major’s Faux Fiancée
The Brigadier’s Runaway Bride
The Pirate's Tempting Stowaway
The Duke's Accidental Wife
A Match, Unmasked
* * *
The Wild Wynchesters:
The Governess Gambit (FREE!)
The Duke Heist
The Rake Mistake
The Perks of Loving a Wallflower
Nobody’s Princess
* * *
Rogues to Riches:
Lord of Chance (FREE!)
Lord of Pleasure
Lord of Night
Lord of Temptation
Lord of Secrets
Lord of Vice
Lord of the Masquerade
* * *
The 12 Dukes of Christmas:
Once Upon a Duke (FREE!)
Kiss of a Duke
Wish Upon a Duke
Never Say Duke
Dukes, Actually
The Duke’s Bride
The Duke’s Embrace
The Duke’s Desire
Dawn With a Duke
One Night With a Duke
Ten Days With a Duke
Forever Your Duke
* * *
Gothic Love Stories:
Too Wicked to Kiss (FREE!)
Too Sinful to Deny
Too Tempting to Resist
Too Wanton to Wed
Too Brazen to Bite
* * *
Magic & Mayhem:
Kissed by Magic (FREE!)
Must Love Magic
Smitten by Magic
* * *
The Siren’s Retreat Quartet
A Tryst by the Sea by Grace Burrowes
An Affair by the Sea by Erica Ridley
A Spinster by the Sea by Grace Burrowes
Love Letters by the Sea by Erica Ridley
* * *
The Wicked Dukes Club:
One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley
One Night of Surrender by Darcy Burke
One Night of Passion by Erica Ridley
One Night of Scandal by Darcy Burke
One Night to Remember by Erica Ridley
One Night of Temptation by Darcy Burke
AN AFFAIR BY THE SEA
SIREN’S RETREAT #2
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Grace Burrowes who jumped aboard the shared series idea without hesitation! Working with you has been a delight.
As always, I could not have written this book without the invaluable support of my editor and beta crew, with special thanks to Erica Monroe. You are the best!
I also want to thank my wonderful VIP readers, our Historical Romance Book Club on Facebook, and my fabulous early reader team. Your enthusiasm makes the romance happen.
Thank you so much!
AN AFFAIR BY THE SEA
(SIREN’S RETREAT #2)
Orphaned pianist Allegra Brown is a poor relation with nothing much to recommend her, save a minuscule dowry and a very big imagination. She has spent the past several years as governess to her younger cousins, who are now ready for their come out—and want Allegra to marry, too. Specifically, they eagerly await the return of Allegra’s dashing, handsome, swashbuckling, conveniently absent and secretly fictional fiancé, the dread pirate Captain L’Amour.
The only place Mr. John Sharp strikes fear is in the courtroom, where his neat, ordered mind is renowned for winning every case he presents. John loves predictability and longs to be a chef. Unfortunately, every time he puts on an apron, the entire kitchen catches fire. Much like passion burning between him and a certain wildly unpredictable spinster, who seems to have confused him for a dashing, exciting pirate. By fulfilling her fantasies, can his dreams come true…together?
CHAPTER 1
March 1818
Brighton, England
After removing every item from his valise and placing it in the perfect drawer or shelf in his well-appointed temporary lodgings overlooking the beach, Mr. John Sharp set out from Siren’s Retreat to explore the bustling seaside town.
To be honest, John was more than ready to explore any place on Earth that was not London.
He had lived in London all his life, the only exception being four years studying law at Cambridge, fifty miles away. Brighton was the same distance, but in the opposite direction—south, not north. As John breathed in the fresh, salty air, he could scarcely believe it had taken him three-and-thirty years to venture this far afield from his neat and familiar office in dirty, crowded London.
Instead of soot from coal clouding an oppressive sky, fluffy white clouds dotted the wide expanse of blue overhead. Instead of a cacophony of horses and carriages and street vendors, he could even hear crashing waves and the call of birds. Here, tourists like himself were more likely to stroll along the pretty streets than to barrel through in a coach-and-four, bellowing at the driver of the high-stepping phaeton before you to mind his ribbons.
It was peaceful. Or ought to be. Would have been, if his mind weren’t replaying over and over the disastrous events of the past fortnight, culminating in the worst night of his life and a public humiliation. Distracted, he attempted to dodge a pair of pedestrians on the same walking pavement.
“Good afternoon,” said a smiling young lady, only to receive an elbow in the ribs from her blushing companion for having the boldness to speak first. She fluttered her eyelashes unrepentantly.
“Good afternoon,” John answered politely, but without slowing his pace. He gave a brief nod, then returned his gaze straight ahead to the shops lining the street.
He was not here for a summer romance, and certainly not on the hunt for a bride. He’d tried that once, hadn’t he, and just look how that had gone.
Oh, John was used to admiring glances from women, but he had never been a rake or a flirt. Too much uncertainty in such endeavors. Too much left to chance. He preferred establishing an infallible plan for everything…and then have everything go according to plan.
Unlike the past fortnight.
For over a decade, he had enjoyed an illustrious career as a successful and respected private solicitor. Well, respected by his former employer, colleagues, and clients. John had no lofty title and no towering family seat, but he was known as the man who never lost a case, and was paid handsomely for his thorough command of the law.
John had done the very thing he had set out to do as a thirteen-year-old boy on his first day at Harrow. He was a solicitor. He was a success.
He was unfathomably, unbearably bored.
Being good at law did not mean he liked it. It meant it was safe and steady and lucrative and endless. It was not a source of passion.
Not like a good oven.
“Oh!” A young lady gasped as a shiny red apple rolled against the spotless black toe of John’s leather boot. “However did that fall from my basket? I am so sorry, sir. Would you be so kind…?”
However, indeed. The edge of her basket was five inches higher than the scant apples it carried, and John had glimpsed her toss the fruit his way himself.
Nonetheless, he gripped the handle of his walking stick tighter and bent to scoop up the apple and return it to its fresh-faced owner.
“Your apple, madam. Good day.”
“Oh! I’m—”
Brighton’s pretty young ladies would not be half so interested in a well-dressed stranger if they knew he’d run from London in disgrace.
Law was his career, but the kitchen was his calling. This was supposed to be the Year of John. He had more than enough money saved for a year’s sabbatical to pursue his passion. He had spent months courting a calm, sensible young woman who would make a practical and unobjectionable wife.
And then, the day he locked his office for the last time in order to take the helm of a popular pâtisserie whose chef was returning to France for a three-week holiday, everything had gone up in flames.
Literally.
His sensible, predictable intended Vivian jilted him. The serving girls failed to show up for their posts. The kitchen help was in too high spirits over a boxing match to pay attention to their batter. The milk bottles crashed on the kitchen floor. The girl minding the cash box slipped and broke her arm. They had all been far too busy dealing with that to remember the pastries in the oven, which not only caught fire themselves, but also set ablaze the oil-damp towels the kitchen boys used to remove the incinerated pastries. In a panic, the boys responded by slapping burning towels against other inopportune surfaces, setting them afire as well in the process…
In all, John’s inaugural debut as master chef lasted four hours and thirty-five minutes before dozens of buckets from a team of timely firemen extinguished the blaze—and John’s dreams—all in one go.
He had never realized he possessed such absurdly bad luck, because he had never before done anything that relied on luck. John was the best solicitor in the history of his firm precisely because he studied every second of that history and knew every word of the law.
Winning legal cases was like baking a gâteau de mille-feuilles au chocolat et vanille. Followed the recipe? Enjoy your dessert. Deviated from the plan? Disaster.
A shop caught his eye just on the opposite side of the clean and empty road. John walked eighty yards past to the intersection, where a crossing sweeper awaited, and looked both ways—twice—before striding across the street.
He knew precisely how many accidents occurred in London every year due to drivers and pedestrians alike failing to follow instructions. John even kept a little notebook atop his desk with hash marks indicating how many preventable injuries he had personally witnessed from the window of his second floor office.
Everything he had ever been or experienced in his entire life had indicated the wisest way forward from any position was with an exhaustive and practical plan.
He’d thought he had one.
He had not counted on the unpredictability of other people.
The trick, he determined, was simply to avoid them at all costs. Instead of taking over someone else’s chaotic pâtisserie, he would open his own tea room. Large enough to attract a respectable crowd, and small enough for him to handle the orders himself, in a cozy kitchen of his own design. Where everything was always ready and waiting for him in its place, clean and refilled and fresh and definitely not turning to cinders as flames shot into the sky.
Aha! Just as he suspected. This window was a china shop. The perfect sort of place from which to outfit his very-much-hypothetical tea room.
Perhaps Brighton was just the place.
John was not part of the beau monde, but the social whirl was not what had drawn him to this particular beach. Nor was it the clear skies and the invigorating air and the squawk of birds and the sweeping coastline, with its miles of velvety soft sand dotted with horse-drawn bathing machines and accentuated with a long promenade of Fashionable Company.
What had attracted him was the predictability. Everything happened on a schedule. Brighton was a recipe town, exactly as John liked it. Rise at dawn. Take a restorative dip in the sea. (Recommended timing: between dawn and ten.) Have breakfast, which was served at specific hours.
Assembly rooms held to an even stricter schedule. Cards on certain days, tea and coffee at established hours, balls one specific night per week.
And all of it by subscription! There were no riotous crowds in the bathing houses or the promenades or the circulating libraries or the music galleries or the billiard rooms.
If you wished to smoke a cigar whilst playing a rubber of whist, there was a specific time and place for you to do so. Arrive on time, wear the right clothes, pay your shillings, pass the butler’s inspection… That was how to keep things going to plan.
These were John’s people! Know the law. Follow the recipe. No making things up as you go along. It was impossible for things to go wrong when you knew exactly what to do and to expect.
The temporary pâtisserie takeover had failed because he had been forced to make unprecedented decisions without adequate preparation. His lists had not included “contingency plan for the cash-box girl breaking her arm after slipping on the milk the delivery boy spilled whilst the kitchen burst into an impromptu inferno.”
But he had learned many important lessons. When he opened his tea room, all would go according to plan, because this time, John would plan for everything.
If something wasn’t in his plan, he simply wouldn’t allow it in his life. Easy as that.
The scent of frying fish reached his nose. His stomach growled in response. He could not help but peer through the next window at a lively restaurant.
That was exactly the sort of reaction he wished his tea room to engender. He wanted to satiate thirst and fill hungry bellies. Most of all, John wanted to bring joy to others. To him, food was happiness.
He wanted to give people something delicious and nourishing. Something that was a part of their lives and their gatherings and their parties. Something that made life sweeter. Something that made life better, if only for one afternoon.
A gaggle of tittering young ladies passed on the street opposite. The boldest one wiggled her fingers in a subtle wave.
He pretended not to notice.
If he had returned the greeting, they might have crossed here where it was unsafe. More importantly, Brighton young ladies were on the hunt for husbands, and John was not on the market. Not now, after the disaster with Vivian. Perhaps not for many more years.
The young ladies watched him behind their ivory fans, their gazes coquettish. Despite the white scar on his face—or perhaps because of it—they thought he cut a romantic figure. He gripped his walking stick tighter.
Now that the war was over, strangers assumed John’s limp was due to him being a dashing soldier who barely survived a treacherous battle…not a fusty solicitor whose legs had grown at different rates due to a childhood infection that paralyzed his limbs. John supposed it was indeed an epic battle that he had barely survived, but as it did not involve cannons or military uniforms, it was best to leave his past to the imagination.
That was the other advantage of Brighton. Everyone John knew was in London. Here, he could be anonymous. Stroll down the Parade of shops in his favorite blue-and-green spangled waistcoat without fear of running into his harried colleagues with their piles of documents. Or innocent customers in search of a marzipan biscuit only to be hit in the face with billowing smoke instead.
He hadn’t told Vivian what happened.
First of all, she had already jilted him at that point, and second of all, she would have only looked down her nose and said I told you so. Or worse, offer to marry him after all, so long as he gave up his silly dreams.
