The ancient stone mansion stood proudly on the steep cliffs of Cornwall, its back turned to the threatening yet enticing sea. It was an unlikely legacy for a young American school teacher; but it happened, it was hers. Carla Tegallas could hardly believe it.
Even more unbelievable was the other inheritance she discovered when she arrived in England to take possession of the house--it was a mystery unsolved for two hundred years. On that Midsummer's Eve so long ago, Lady Caroline Tregallas had disappeared, taken, it was said, into the sea in the arms of her demon lover from the sunken Land of Lyonesse. Her faded portrait hung in Carla's room as if it were a mirror. Her face was Carla's face. And, as the days lengthened, it seemed that her fate was Carla's fate.
She was warned, told to leave by the people of the village and by the inexplicable "accidents" that happened to her. And yet, she found that she could not. She was held fast by the irresistible fascinations of the mystery, the sea, the ancient diary she discovered and the powerful attraction she felt for the man whose shadowed birth kept him from being the heir to the manor. Caught in a web of passions she could not understand, Carla could only wait--for her lover to reveal himself and her destiny, whatever it might be.
About the Author
Elizabeth Peters (writing as Barbara Michaels) was born and brought up in Illinois and earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago's famed Oriental Institute. Peters is one of this country's best writers of romantic suspense novels. Peters was named Grandmaster at the inaugural Anthony Awards in 1986, Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America at the Edgar® Awards in 1998, and given The Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic in 2003. She lives in an historic farmhouse in western Maryland.
