The Knock at Midnight — Charity Blackstock

A spellbinding novel of suspense, romance, jealousy, and betrayal in wartime Europe.

Attractive, spirited and far from ready to accept her spinster state, Maggie Ramsay resolves to escape the confines of her dreary life in London for one carefree and romantic holiday, a holiday that leads her from the lavish opulence of a Hungarian villa on the shores of the Balaton to the back streets of wartime Vienna -- and terror.

When thirty-five-year-old Maggie Ramsay is suddenly released from twelve years as her father's nurse and housekeeper by his death from an incurable disease, she decides to squander her small legacy on a long-postponed European holiday -- despite all the omens of imminent war. Her optimism seems confirmed when she runs into Rupert Cash, her Hungarian lover of years ago, on the Orient Express, and he invites her to follow two weeks in Budapest with a visit to his villa in Balaton.

Rupert turns out to be a peculiarly middle European menage, Margit, his sensual, sadistic cousin, is biding her time in an affair with Rupert until the rise of Nazism provides the moment when she can capitalize on her lush beauty to further her ambitions.