The Dancing Floor — Barbara Michaels

For years, Heather Tradescant had dreamed of the journey she and her father would take to England - a pilgrimage to the great gardens of history. But now that her father is dead, Heather is determined to fulfill his dreams, although the trip won't be the same without him. To Heather's annoyance, her request to see the fabled seventeenth-century garden of Troytan House is denied by the owner, a millionaire industrialist. Stubbornly, Heather is determined to infiltrate the manor's defenses, and she is shocked to discover part of Troytan's famous garden overgrown with a thicket of thorns that seems almost malevolent in its resistance to her intrusion. After she braves the wall of briars and reaches the Victorian manor house beyond, she senses a strange miasma of evil lurking, tainting its peaceful beauty. For reasons Heather cannot comprehend, the reclusive owner seems all too pleased to meet her, but his enthusiasm rings false. Heather begins to wonder whether it is only stories of long-vanished witchcraft that haunt Troytan House and the village beyond or whether there is some more modern evil nearer at hand and far, far more dangerous.