Dangerous Inheritance — Veronica Black

Jenny Hargreaves leaves her teaching post and travels to the remote coast of Wales, to work as a paid companion to Verity Morgan, entering a world of fear and suspicion. Why is it that no villager of Pentir will approach Crearty House after dusk? And who is it who waits on the cliffs below the pine forest? Six people, bound together in a strange code of silence, hold the answers, but which one knows the all important link between the heirloom ring and the bloodstained axe? When Jenny sets out to discover the truth she precipitates the final act of an ancient tragedy.

A sinister legend locked in the wandering mind of an eccentric old lady threatens the life of Jenny Hargreaves.

From the stranger on the train to the boy who is sent to meet her, everyone Jenny Hargreaves speaks to warns her not to go to Crearty House, where she is to be the paid companion to Verity Morgan.

But neither old Mrs. Morgan, who fancies herself Mary, Queen of Scots, nor er son, Gareth, a brooding man who thrives on the fear of the townspeople, frightens her. Gareth orders her to leave; Jenny insists upon staying. Nothing will make her go, she says, not even the screams in the night or the cat whose throat has been slit open.

Then Jenny finds a severed, bloody hand in her bed. . . .