Page 5 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)
West Sussex coast present day
After a lot of frustration and raging against the fickleness of fate, Kip had finally acknowledged to himself that working as a reenactor for the summer season was a comedown but probably about the only chance he had to revitalize his career.
Rather than require him to hop on a train and make his way to the living history site, Malcolm had taken him there on the yacht he’d bought with his The Beau money.
It wasn’t a super yacht of the ultrawealthy, but it was his own boat and well taken care of and finer digs than Kip could boast of, especially as he’d had to sell his London flat after his television money had dried up.
They’d reached the coastal inlet where he would be passing the summer, and they were spending the morning walking along the beach while Kip waited out the time remaining until he was supposed to report to his self-inflicted humiliation.
A breeze off the sea tousled Malcolm’s hair and tugged flatteringly at his clothes but chose to do nothing for Kip except fling sprays of saltwater up his nose.
To Jen, Kip said in mock tones of umbrage, “I suspect if I didn’t like Malcolm, I’d hate him.” It was a common thing to toss at his friend and one that never failed to make Malcolm laugh.
Jen always did too. “Unfortunately, there are people who have decided they do hate him because things have gone well these past years. That hurts him more than he’s ever let on.”
Kip knew Malcolm well enough to have seen that firsthand. “He’s the sort who would always be happy for someone who’s had success, so I think it’s probably baffling when other people aren’t.”
“And it bothers him that he can’t keep in touch with everyone.
He’s having success, yes, but he’s also overwhelmed and stretched to his limit, and plenty of people are peeved with him for not being able to stay on top of everything.
” Jen shot Kip a grateful smile. “Thank you for being the sort of friend who gives him grace and is genuinely happy for the person he is rather than the name he is.”
“If the situation were reversed, he would be even better about it than I am.”
Jen looked fondly up ahead of them, where Malcolm was standing on the rocky beach, looking out over the bay at an island not terribly far distant.
He looked peaceful in a way Kip hadn’t seen in a while.
Kip hadn’t pieced it together until Jen had hinted at it, but he suspected Malcolm was lonely.
Once this summer was over, they needed to find time to just hang out.
They’d both enjoy that, and they both needed it.
Jen slipped her arms around her husband once she was at his side, and he held her in return. They were quite possibly the happiest couple Kip had ever known. Having been the one who had set them up, he figured he was the modern-day Merlin of Matchmakers. If only there were a career in that.
“I know I’m biased,” Malcolm said, “but I think this is my favorite part of the entire country.”
“How far from here did you grow up?” Kip asked.
“About twenty miles inland, but we came out this way regularly.”
“Big fans of the living history site?” Kip asked, dryly.
Malcolm tossed him one of his signature grins. “We came to the shore for the shore. The living history site was an occasional bonus.”
Kip could appreciate his attachment to the spot. It really was beautiful. Even with storm clouds gathering in the distance, it was peaceful. Kip twitched his chin out toward the island. “What’s that?”
“Guilford House, an old estate from, I think, the 1700s. It’s called the Little Sister of Mont-Saint-Michel, that commune in France that gets cut off from the mainland when the tide comes in.”
“Mont-Saint-Michel isn’t an island.” Kip knew that much about it.
“Neither is Guilford, technically. There’s a road on the other side that connects it to the mainland. But when there’s a storm surge or a particularly high tide, water covers the road until the sea recedes again.”
“Is it abandoned?”
Jen shot him a confused look that matched Malcolm’s.
“Ah, the return of your ‘Americans Are Stupid’ expressions,” Kip said.
“Not all Americans,” Malcolm said.
“Just this one.” Kip feigned offense.
“I didn’t say that.”
Kip shook his head. “Your judgmental British eyebrow said it, Malcolm. Screamed it in a very posh accent.”
Malcolm laughed. His character was often scripted as laughing because, again, publications had a lot to say about his devilishly alluring laugh.
But there hadn’t been nearly as much joking in the most recent Kip-free season, which Kip sincerely hoped the writers and producers were being torn to shreds for.
“Guilford House is part of the living history site,” Malcolm said. “Not the entirety of it but an important portion.”
He hadn’t realized that. “Can I call this a search engine failure? Because I did look the place up.”
“Did you actually read anything that came up in the search?” Malcolm asked doubtfully.
“Skimmed.”
Jen gave him the all-too-familiar you’re-an-idiot look. “You took a job you hardly knew anything about?”
“Let that serve as testament to my desperation,” he said, assuming the lordly British accent he had always used on The Beau .
That set them to smiling again. It was going to be a long summer without Malcom and Jen around.
“I’d invite you two to come spend a day living history,” he said, “but I suspect you would simply cause a stampede, and the whole place would fall to bits.”
“I’m not entirely certain your presence isn’t going to prove more of an issue than they’re expecting,” Jen said.
A hint of mischief entered Malcolm’s eyes, which Kip found incredibly intriguing.
“Why,” Kip asked, “do I suspect there’s something you aren’t telling me, oldest and dearest friend, who certainly wouldn’t keep an important secret from me?”
Malcolm’s much-praised smile broadened. “Osbourne will, without question, visit the site this summer, which will be incredibly helpful for you. But I have my suspicions that the first time someone realizes who you are and posts about it, there will be a, as you so Americanly put it, ‘stampede’ of fluttery tourists flocking here to get their picture taken with the ghost of Tennyson Lamont.”
“The ghost of a man who was half eaten by a shark,” Kip reminded him. “I don’t know that Mont-Saint-Michel’s Baby Sister has access to the special effects needed to pull that off.”
Malcolm just laughed. “I know this job isn’t ideal, and I can’t imagine you are at all excited about it, but if you look at it as doing something fun and enjoying a casual summer, you can lean into the fame you do have, impress Osbourne, and emerge in the autumn ready to conquer again.”
“You may be the only person in the entire world who thinks I’m even capable of that.
” Kip looked back out over the water, pushing his father’s voice out of his mind and pretending he’d never met Giselle or had the disastrous contract meeting six months earlier.
If he could lie to himself about how wrong things had gone, maybe he could believe they would soon go extremely right.
“I know you, Kipling Summerfield. You’re discouraged now, understandably so.
This industry is never fair, which only adds to the frustration.
But you’re not a quitter. You never have been.
” Malcolm’s eyes drifted back out over the ocean, the island, and the distant sky.
“Change is coming for you, I know it. And I hope it brings you everything this world owes you.”
There really were few people in the world as honestly good as Malcolm Winthrop. He was one of the few people who, upon hearing more of the details of Kip’s growing up years and home life, had reacted not with pity but with encouragement.
He’d become family to Kip, and that had helped more than Malcolm would ever know, mostly because Kip had no plans to ever tell him. There were some things a person didn’t tell even best friends who could probably qualify for sainthood but would be too ... saintly to accept the honorific.
“Before I make my way to my summer home”—Kip used the phrase with a heavy degree of arrogance and his assumed British accent—“what can you tell me about the history of this place? Might be fun to have a nugget to toss in here and there.”
All three of them began walking in the direction of a small pier, one far too small to have docked Malcolm’s relatively humble yacht. It likely couldn’t have accommodated much more than a dinghy.
“Guilford Island holds Guilford House,” Malcolm said.
“Right across the bay from it, connected by the sea road, is Guilford Village. It dates back to the Domesday Book and is also part of the history site. From the island, looking west, you can see glimpses of Loftstone Island, which is bigger than Guilford but a lot smaller than the Isle of Wight, which is west of Loftstone.”
Kip shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Say what you will about Americans’ grasp of the English language, but most of us know the difference between ‘history’ and ‘geography.’”
Jen thumped Malcolm with her hip, a variety of playful teasing that Kip had seen the two employ often enough to know what it was.
“History.” Malcolm nodded. “There’s a small lighthouse on Guilford that dates back even further than the house.
The lighthouse on Loftstone is a dual light.
The three made a triangle that sailing ships used to navigate this area.
The water here is legendary for how quickly it grows rough and difficult to navigate.
Historically, there have been more shipwrecks in this section of the southern coast than almost anywhere else.
Storms brew quickly and fiercely. A lot of the history of this little bay is centered around shipwrecks and hauntings and otherworldly explanations for why it’s so deadly. ”