At the close of his first day's walk he encounters an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place among the sheep and gorse of Hergest Ridge. Robin Timariot has set out that morning on what he has planned as a six-day tramp along part of Offa's Dyke. It is a golden evening of high summer in July 1990. Who would imagine that these smooth operators would let their hearts rule their heads? Or that violent death would find its way into their neat little scheme? Or that they would stumble into something much darker and deeper than either had suspected? So confident are they of success, in fact, that they make a pact: whichever of them wins Diana Charnwood's love will share his fortune with the other. Charm the daughter into an engagement to marry, then get the father to buy you off.
It's a trick they've pulled before, with some success. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the United States.Ī chance meting on deck brings them a tempting new target in the shape of Miss Charnwood and her niece, the beautiful Diana, only child of the immensely wealthy Fabian Charnwood. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. And for Charlotte, something extraordinary is beginning to happen.Īs fifty years of secrets begin to unravel, shy, cautious Charlotte is coming alive in the shadow of a mystery-uncovering a shocking tale of wartime greed and treachery, and a vendetta of violence seemingly without end….
Now, amid shattering revelations about her family, and in the aftermath of a second savage crime, Charlotte finds herself at the center of a widening storm. But Charlotte has little time to mourn the loss of her beloved aunt and little patience when police quickly arrest a man Charlotte believes is innocent.įor Charlotte, a harrowing quest for answers begins-one that will take her into the shadows of the past…and into the life and secrets of the dead woman’s brother, famed poet and casualty of the Spanish Civil War, Tristram Abberley. The crime stuns the elderly spinster’s family-especially Beatrix’s niece, Charlotte Ladram. In her seaside cottage, Beatrix Abberley bravely confronts an intruder moments before her life is brutally taken.
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