Jane Austen and her family are looking forward to a peaceful late-summer
holiday in the seaside village of Lyme Regis. But on the road thither, a
fearful storm and an overturned carriage lead the shaken travelers to
seek refuge at High Down Grange. And there, in a dismal manor house
wrapt in an air of malevolent neglect, Jane meets the darkly forbidding
yet strangely attractive master of High Down Grange, Mr. Geoffrey
Sidmouth. What murky secrets does the brooding Mr. Sidmouth hope to
preserve behind his fierce glower? And who is the exceedingly lovely
young woman dressed in peasant garb who shares his home? Once settled in
town, Jane seeks to learn the answers. Yet common gossip is soon
forgotten when a man is found hanged from a makeshift gibbet by the sea.
Only the day before, Jane had observed this same man in a heated
exchange with Mr. Sidmouth. Still, the worthies of Lyme are certain the
labourer's death is the work of "the Reverend, " the notorious
ringleader of the midnight smuggling trade. The Reverend's identity is
the paramount mystery of Lyme Regis. And Jane, who can never resist a
puzzle, is determined to solve this one. But to her dismay, she must
soon admit that she harbours a strange sensibility for a man who could
very well be a murderer. And then a second mysterious death draws her
into a perilous scheme to entrap and expose Geoffrey Sidmouth. From the
drawing-rooms of the cultured and the devious to secret caverns and
coarse haunts, her mission will take her far from a lady's proper
venue...until even so canny a student of character and valiant
adventurer must ask herself: "Is the prize worth the risk - to my heart
as well as my person?"
