Whiskey Beach.

by Nora Roberts.

The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea.

-JAMES ELROY FLECKER

CHAPTER One

THROUGH THE CHILLY CURTAIN OF SLEET, IN THE INTERMITTENT wash of the great light on the jutting cliff to the south, the ma.s.sive silhouette of Bluff House loomed over Whiskey Beach. It faced the cold, turbulent Atlantic like a challenge.

I will last as long as you.

Standing three st.u.r.dy and indulgent stories above the rough and rugged coast, it watched the roll and slap of waves through the dark eyes of windows, as it had-in one incarnation or another-for more than three centuries.

The little stone cottage now housing tools and garden supplies spoke to its humble beginnings, to those who'd braved the fierce and fickle Atlantic to forge a life on the stony ground of a new world. Dwarfing those beginnings, the spread and rise of golden sand walls and curving gables, the generous terraces of weathered local stone sang to its heyday.

It survived storm, neglect, careless indulgence, dubious taste, the booms and the busts, scandal and righteousness.

Within its walls, generations of Landons had lived and died, celebrated and mourned, schemed, thrived, triumphed and languished.

It had shone as bright as the great light that swept the water off Ma.s.sachusetts' rocky and glorious north sh.o.r.e. And it had huddled, shuttered in the dark.

It had stood long, so long now it simply was Bluff House, reigning above the sea, the sand, the village of Whiskey Beach.

For Eli Landon it was the only place left to go. Not a refuge as much as an escape from everything his life had become over the past eleven horrible months.

He barely recognized himself.

The two-and-a-half-hour drive up from Boston over slick roads left him exhausted. But then, he admitted, fatigue cozied up to him like a lover most days. So he sat outside the house, in the dark, sleet splatting off his windshield, his roof, while he debated the choices of gathering enough energy to go inside or just staying put, maybe sliding into sleep in the car.

Stupid, he thought. Of course he wouldn't just sit there and sleep in the car when the house, with perfectly good beds to choose from, stood only a few feet away.

But neither could he drum up the enthusiasm for hauling his suitcases out of the trunk. Instead he grabbed the two small bags on the seat beside him, ones holding his laptop and a few essentials.

Sleet slapped at him when he climbed out of the car, but the cold, that whistling Atlantic wind, cut through the outer layers of lethargy. Waves boomed against the rock, slapped against the sand, combining into a constant hissing roar. Eli dragged the house keys out of his jacket pocket, stepped onto the shelter of the wide stone portico to the ma.s.sive double entrance doors hewn more than a century before from teak imported from Burma.

Two years, he thought-closer to three-since he'd been here. Too busy with his life, with work, with the disaster of his marriage to drive up for a weekend, a short vacation, a holiday visit with his grandmother.

He'd spent time with her, of course, the indomitable Hester Hawkin Landon, whenever she'd come to Boston. He'd called her regularly, e-mailed, Facebooked and Skyped. Hester might have been cruising toward eighty but she'd always embraced technology and innovation with curiosity and enthusiasm.

He'd taken her to dinner, to drinks, remembered flowers and cards, gifts, gathered with her and his family for Christmas, important birthdays.

And that, he thought as he unlocked the door, was all just rationalization for not taking the time, making the time, to come to Whiskey Beach, to the place she loved most, and giving her real time, real attention.

He found the right key, unlocked the door. Stepping inside, he flicked on the lights.

She'd changed some things, he noted, but Gran embraced change even as she managed to embrace traditions-that suited her.

Some new art-seascapes, gardenscapes-splashing soft color against rich brown walls. He dumped his bags just inside the door, took a moment to just look around the glossy spill of the entrance hall.

He scanned the stairs-the grinning gargoyle newel posts some whimsical Landon had commissioned-and up where they curved gracefully right and left for the north and south wings.

Plenty of bedrooms, he thought. He just had to climb the stairs and pick one.

But not yet.

Instead he walked through to what they called the main parlor with its high, arching windows facing the front garden-or what would be once winter opened its claws.

His grandmother hadn't been home for over two months, but he didn't see a speck of dust. Logs lay in the hearth framed by the gleam of lapis and ready to light. Fresh flowers stood on the Hepplewhite table she prized. Pillows sat fluffed and welcoming on the three sofas ranged around the room, and the wide planked chestnut floor gleamed like a mirror.

She'd had someone come in, he decided, then rubbed his forehead where a headache threatened to bloom.

She'd told him, hadn't she? Told him she had someone looking out for the place. A neighbor, someone who did the heavy cleaning for her. He hadn't forgotten she'd told him, he'd just lost the information for a moment in the fog that too often crawled in to blur his mind.

Now looking out for Bluff House was his job. To tend to it, to, as his grandmother had asked, keep life in it. And maybe, she'd said, it would pump some life back into him.

He picked up his bags, looked at the stairs. Then just stood.

She'd been found there, there at the base of the steps. By a neighbor-the same neighbor? Wasn't it the same neighbor who cleaned for her? Someone, thank G.o.d, had come by to check on her, and found her lying there unconscious, bruised, bleeding, with a shattered elbow, a broken hip, cracked ribs, a concussion.

She might've died, he thought. The doctors expressed amazement that she'd stubbornly refused to. None of the family routinely checked on her daily, no one thought to call, and no one, including himself, would have worried if she hadn't answered for a day or two.

Hester Landon, independent, invincible, indestructible.

Who might have died after a terrible fall, if not for a neighbor-and her own indefatigable will.

Now she reigned in a suite of rooms in his parents' home while she recovered from her injuries. There she'd stay until deemed strong enough to come back to Bluff House-or if his parents had their way, there she would stay, period.

He wanted to think of her back here, in the house she loved, sitting out on the terrace with her evening martini, looking out at the ocean. Or puttering in her garden, maybe setting up her easel to paint.

He wanted to think of her vital and tough, not helpless and broken on the floor while he'd been pouring a second cup of morning coffee.

So he'd do his best until she came home. He'd keep life in her house, such as his was.

Eli picked up his bags, started upstairs. He'd take the room he'd always used on visits-or had before those visits stretched out fewer and farther between. Lindsay had hated Whiskey Beach, Bluff House, and had made trips there into a cold war with his grandmother rigidly polite on one side, his wife deliberately snide on the other. And he'd been squeezed in the middle.

So he'd taken the easy way, he thought now. He could be sorry about that, sorry he'd stopped coming, sorry he'd made excuses and had limited his time with his grandmother to her trips to Boston. But he couldn't turn back the clock.

He stepped into the bedroom. Flowers here, too, he noted, and the same soft green walls, two of his grandmother's watercolors he'd always particularly liked.

He put his bags on the bench at the foot of the sleigh bed, stripped off his coat.

Here, things had stayed the same. The little desk under the window, the wide atrium doors leading to the terrace, the wingback chair and the little footstool with the cover his grandmother's mother had needlepointed long ago.