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Shadow On The Sea
185 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 1992
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January 18, 2020
Heroine is a high-class housekeeper for hire who is very sought-after. Think of Martha Stewart dropping into your life for a few weeks to organize your household chaos and give smashing dinner parties that impress all your guests. In contrast to her professional success, her personal life is a mess. Her longtime fiancé has been stringing her along for a while without wanting to pinpoint a wedding date and relegating her to second-best due to his very demanding, globetrotting career. At the beginning of the story, the heroine is fed up that he once again left her in the lurch to fly to Munich and then forbid her from joining him there because she would be too distracting. The heroine writes him a letter breaking their engagement and returning the ring.
She takes a live-in job with a friend of a friend, the hero of this piece. His housekeeper is temporarily unavailable and he needs a lot of support especially because he has a broken leg from a recent ski accident.
The hero is horrible to her, treating her like a skivvy from the Victorian era rather than a human being. He harbors a lot of rage about the guy who caused the ski accident and fantasizes out loud about what he would like to do to him if he ever gets his hands on him. He is also in a dark depression because he has been dumped by an infamous London party girl who he hoped to marry. Then, suddenly, for no reason, he starts wining and dining the heroine and being all apologetic and nice.
The heroine is wishy-washy, with constant threats to leave his employ if he doesn’t start treating her better. She packs up her bags then unpacks them. She rejects hero’s apology and renewed job offer then humbly grovels for the job back. One minute, she is still brooding over her ex-fiancé, the next, she is in luuuurve with her new employer.
One day, the hero commands the heroine to drive him to his creepy mansion in Northumberland, a decrepit jumble of rocks and antiquated furniture, with fading wallpapers and shabby carpets, that he had initially bought for his girlfriend, with the hope that she would be excited at restoring it to its former glory instead of wasting her time going to London parties and flirting with handsome millionaires (lol).
Heroine loves the mansion and the hero. He and heroine both eventually declare their love for each other and are ready to make love when hero suddenly asks the heroine for the name of her ex-fiancé. The more he badgers her, the more the heroine stubbornly refuses. The hero then decides they can’t have love without trust. The affair is over before it began. The heroine decides for the 987th time to pack her bags and leave.
The next day, she randomly tells him the name of the fiancé. They go to bed immediately. Heroine is happy but now broods over whether this is just a temporary affair for the hero.
The ex-fiancé finally tracks heroine down at her new job to confront her about the break-up. This is when the hero reveals why he was so hung up on knowing the identity of the heroine's ex-fiance. The hero had recognized the ex-fiancé’s HANDWRITING (not his name, not his photo, just his handwriting on one single word he had written on the outside of a mail envelope addressed to the heroine) and immediately thought he recognized it. He thought this was the handwriting of the man who had supposedly wronged him TEN YEARS AGO when they both worked at the same company. That is why he started wining and dining the heroine. He wanted to settle a score with his nemesis.
The flabbergasted ex-fiance doesn’t even recognize the hero and suggests that hero’s unfounded accusations are more paranoid fiction than reality. I tend to believe the ex. He showed a lot more class than the hero and heroine combined. Hero and heroine were both batshit crazy.
Heroine leaves hero for the 988th time. The hero drives her to the train station (despite the broken leg) and tells her Bon Voyage. The heroine takes a job in Greece and goes into a decline.
Anyways, it all ends on a beach in Greece with avowals of love.
Good grief.
She takes a live-in job with a friend of a friend, the hero of this piece. His housekeeper is temporarily unavailable and he needs a lot of support especially because he has a broken leg from a recent ski accident.
The hero is horrible to her, treating her like a skivvy from the Victorian era rather than a human being. He harbors a lot of rage about the guy who caused the ski accident and fantasizes out loud about what he would like to do to him if he ever gets his hands on him. He is also in a dark depression because he has been dumped by an infamous London party girl who he hoped to marry. Then, suddenly, for no reason, he starts wining and dining the heroine and being all apologetic and nice.
The heroine is wishy-washy, with constant threats to leave his employ if he doesn’t start treating her better. She packs up her bags then unpacks them. She rejects hero’s apology and renewed job offer then humbly grovels for the job back. One minute, she is still brooding over her ex-fiancé, the next, she is in luuuurve with her new employer.
One day, the hero commands the heroine to drive him to his creepy mansion in Northumberland, a decrepit jumble of rocks and antiquated furniture, with fading wallpapers and shabby carpets, that he had initially bought for his girlfriend, with the hope that she would be excited at restoring it to its former glory instead of wasting her time going to London parties and flirting with handsome millionaires (lol).
Heroine loves the mansion and the hero. He and heroine both eventually declare their love for each other and are ready to make love when hero suddenly asks the heroine for the name of her ex-fiancé. The more he badgers her, the more the heroine stubbornly refuses. The hero then decides they can’t have love without trust. The affair is over before it began. The heroine decides for the 987th time to pack her bags and leave.
The next day, she randomly tells him the name of the fiancé. They go to bed immediately. Heroine is happy but now broods over whether this is just a temporary affair for the hero.
The ex-fiancé finally tracks heroine down at her new job to confront her about the break-up. This is when the hero reveals why he was so hung up on knowing the identity of the heroine's ex-fiance. The hero had recognized the ex-fiancé’s HANDWRITING (not his name, not his photo, just his handwriting on one single word he had written on the outside of a mail envelope addressed to the heroine) and immediately thought he recognized it. He thought this was the handwriting of the man who had supposedly wronged him TEN YEARS AGO when they both worked at the same company. That is why he started wining and dining the heroine. He wanted to settle a score with his nemesis.
The flabbergasted ex-fiance doesn’t even recognize the hero and suggests that hero’s unfounded accusations are more paranoid fiction than reality. I tend to believe the ex. He showed a lot more class than the hero and heroine combined. Hero and heroine were both batshit crazy.
Heroine leaves hero for the 988th time. The hero drives her to the train station (despite the broken leg) and tells her Bon Voyage. The heroine takes a job in Greece and goes into a decline.
Anyways, it all ends on a beach in Greece with avowals of love.
Good grief.
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