Curse This House — Barbara Wood

She Came Home to Horror -- and Terrifying Temptation

London, 1857.

Beautiful Lydia Pemberton had not seen the great family mansion of Pemberton Hurst since she was a little girl, when she was scared into silence by a scene too dreadful to remember. She had been spirited away to the safety of London by her mother.

She should have stayed there, content to grow up a Victorian woman, happy to be the bride of a handsome, rising politician. She never should have heeded the summons that drew her back to Pemberton Hurst...back to a family caught in the coils of a monstrous menace -- and to a distant cousin whose brooding gaze was as seductive as it was dangerous. Desperately she tried to remember what she had seen that day so long ago. For only then could she discover the key that would release her from the murder and madness that was stalking them all....

As Leyla gazed up at the magnificent mansion, the veil of her memory lifted for a fleeting instant and she was a child again, playing on the vast stone steps. Then, the familiar darkness. As she climbed the steps where now no children played, she thought of Edward, and if there was no passion in her thoughts, there was gratitude. She would unlock the memory that imprisoned her and bring him her past, the only dowry she had.

How long ago that all seemed now. Now she knew she would never be his wife, nor any man's…

Suddenly there was a rustle in the bushes. She whirled around and opened her mouth to scream. But no scream came…