Sacred Ends — Lisa Appignanesi

Paris, 1990. Comte de Landois has ordered his wife Marguerite to travel from Paris, to join him in the Loire valley. Her journey into the pastoral quiet shattered by the appearance of a dead man on the railway tracks. Who is he, and why does Marguerite's young travelling companion pale when he sees him? When the Comte presents Marguerite with an adopted baby, and his sudden friendship with local clerics imposes new rules and regulations on her behaviour, things start to take a sinister and troubling turn.