When Lora marries Union soldier Wade Tyler she learns of his past, and as she moves closer to the heart of the mystery she finds herself on the edge of a shattering truth that someone will do anything to keep hidden forever.

    And yet it was to this isolated place on the rugged English seacoast that the exquisitely lovely young Deborah Chantrey had come--summoned by the master of Mullion Hall, Deborah's uncle and now her guardian. Why had he wanted her to come here, she whispered. Gentle and shy Deborah was out of place among her swashbuckling young cousins. With fear and foreboding she began to suspect the sinister nature of their activites at Mullion Hall.And then one wild and stormy night Deborah was forced to be their accomplice as she rode with them on a terror-filled journey. Now she too was deeply mired in the evil at Mullion Hall--an evil from which even a deepening love seemed only to increase the hopelessness of escape.

    But when she returns to her English heritage, Carey Reach, she experiences strange events that cannot be explained to a neighbor, crippled John Templeton. For Anne, raised in Tudor history by her learned father, is fascinated by the Octagon Room, a mysterious grave, and recurring glimpses of the drama between Althea and Edward Courtenay, who aspired to the throne of England. She does not share her secrets with John or her housekeeper, and her fancies become out of control as she identifies more and more with the other, past world that beckons her. When she becomes weirdly indivisible from the happenings of other times, finishing her father's book is a ready excuse for privacy to visit the Octagon Room and its visions.