To Joanna, bruised by the death of her exuberant mother, shaken by the re-appearance of her long-lost father, The Great House amid the wild magnificence of the Lake District scenery, seemed like a fairy tale.

          It was an ordinary job to evaluate the fabled contents of that house, long the closely guarded seat of the eccentric Earls of Askew. But it became a fast-moving whirlpool of love and danger which revealed to Joanna the whole truth about her family and herself.