The Treachery of Time — Anna Gilbert

Years after discovering an unknown young girl abandoned in a small English village, two idealistic young lovers, Daniel and Esther, who are planning to marry find themselves confronted by a mysterious woman seeking to destroy their relationship.

Esther Aumery, only child of the decaying manor house at Lady Green, was thirteen when she came face to face with evil for the very first time.

She was woken at dawn by the sound of a cart being driven furiously along the lane and when she looked out she saw a man driving like the devil with a face so terrifying she never forgot it.

Later that morning a young girl was discovered under a hedgerow in the village. She was filthy, clad in rags, and unable to speak.

Daniel Godwain, pupil teacher at Lady Green and the boy whom Esther loved with childish devotion, tenderly wrapped the traumatised creature in a blanket and arranged for her to be taken to the workhouse.

But on the makeshift journey, in a pedlar's cart, she vanished…

It was to be the beginning of a pastoral mystery that continued through and beyond the First World War and into the 1920s.

Who was the victimised girl?

Who was Clairy? â€" the maid in the village who tried to seduce and steal Daniel form the grown-up Esther.

Why did the old, old mystery of the missing baby daughter of Gervase Lincoln at Barbarrow Hall keep reviving itself in village folklore?

There were unsolved secrets that threatened the hard-won tranquillity of Esther and her family, mysteries that became deeper, more evil, more eerie.