After the tragic death of her father, Bryony Ashley returned from abroad to find that his estate would become the responsibility of her cousin Emory. Ashley Court with its load of debt was no longer her worry. But there was something odd about her father's sudden death...
Bryony had inherited the Ashley "Sight" and so, she knew, had one of the male Ashleys. Since childhood the two had communicated through thought patterns, though Bryony had no idea of his identity. Now she was determined to find him. But danger as well as romance waited for her in the old moated house, with its curious garden maze and its tragic memories...
Today this book would be classified as "paranormal romance" but back when it was written, they didn't have a name for it. This book plunges the reader into what is an alien world for most Americans, that of an ancient family in England who kept a manor house and the property it was on through multiple generations, and for whom marrying a cousin was not unusual. It is made clear that ruthlessness and self-serving was one of the constants in the family. In the past, that characteristic was credited with having kept the property with the moated manor in the family. In more modern times, the 70s, apparently the UK still has the same sexist laws which also affected Jane Austen's heroines, wherein the male descendents inherit all, leaving female heiresses in potential penury; in spite of both biological and legal advantages, the males of the family, ostensibly running a wine business, fail to make money, pile up debt, and come to consider the sale of the estate to real estate developers the solution to their financial woes. In order to sell the land, and to enable a developer to replace the grand estate with tract houses, they have to get their female cousin to consent to break the trust protecting the bulk of the property, and to allow a road to be built through the small strip of land with a cottage which she inherited, or sell it for that purpose. She wants to stop it for sentimental reasons, but is legally powerless, until a clue from a statement made by her father before he died gets figured out, and an unknown cousin who was formerly believed to have been descended from an illegitimate line and therefore disqualified from inheriting the estate turns out to be legitimate after all, his great-great-great grandparents having been secretly married, and the page from the parish register which documented that fact having been carefully concealed. A happy ending for all but the villains is achieved by the end of the book, the history of the family having played its part. (Foreshadowing, your mark of quality literature.) BTW, a Scottish wildcat, the animal on the family crest, is something closer to a Bobcat or Lynx than a leopard, but capable of breeding with domestic cats and producing hybrid offspring. It was common centuries ago, but is threatened today: http://www.coffeefilms.com/scottishwildcats/wildcats.html
The first book I have ever read by this author, it was a great book. I look forward to reading more by Mary Stewart.
"Mary Stewart has a gift for romance...a sensitive feel for place and atmosphere, an exquisite use of the English language, and a literacy not often found in present-day romantic novels...." --The Houston Post
Good mystery by a good author, with more than a touch of fantasy. My mom liked it so much she gifted it on to me.
Bryony Ashley knows that her family's grand estate is both hell and paradise -- once elegant and beautiful, yet mired in debt and shrouded in shadow. Devastated by her father;s sudden strange death abroad, she is nonetheless relieved to learn the responsibility of running Ashley Court has fallen to a cousin. Still, her father's final, dire warning about a terrible family curse haunts her days and her dreams.
I read this book back when I was 14.
It remains one of my favorites after years and years of reading.
Set my desire to read mystery and other suspenceful reads from then on.
I still have my orginal copy.
The first review is not about this book. This is a suspenseful romance. Mary Stewart is my all-time favorite author, and her books are well-written and suspenseful.
The book description omits the conflicts among family members about an estate that is draining the pockets of whoever tries to keep it afloat. The heroine loves her family but discovers that one or more of them may have been responsible for her father's death and try to drown her. She discovers her secret friend, too. It's a very good tale.
