by Hester Fox
I would descibe this as a Gothic Horror with of course a romantic twist.
A young, poor woman from London is contacted by a lawyer to tell her she is the last surviving member of the Hayworth clan and she has inherited the family estate. The only proviso is she must live there.
She is shocked but delighted and sets off to her new home. There is a small staff who treat her respectfully but the Housekeeper is reluctant to let her go into the huge library. She eventually gets her way and goes into the library to start cataloguing the contents. She is puzzled at times by strange feelings when she is in the library.
She is a bit lonely so when a young man, from the local gentry befriends her she is delighted, despite warnings about him from the staff at her house.
Eventually we find out the young man is part of of group of people who want to get control of the house and especially the library. Gradualy the young woman gets weaker and weaker. Her male friend asks her to marry him and she agrees. He locks her into a room, telling her it is for her own good, telling her they are married. She doesn't remember the wedding.
Eventually she sets a fire in her room and escapes, not before she and a young man who works on the estate find and destroy the tomb of a monk. It seems this monk's "apostles" were looking for a secret book and the spell which would bring the monk back to life.
It was an okay summer read.
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