Summoned home from her post as a lady's maid to attend her beloved mother's sickbed, Tamsin Hardy's homecoming is even more eventful than she had feared. Mammy is found bludgeoned almost to death, in her cottage on the Penrose estate. The brutal attack shocks all the inhabitants of the small Cornish mining community, and Tamsin determines to remain with her family. When Isobel Penrose, Tamsin's childhood playmate and now mistress of Trevarrah House, offers her a post as companion, Tamsin accepts - though reluctantly. The position will enable her to continue caring for her mother, but she feels instinctively uneasy about Trevarrah House and its inhabitants - even though she has known the Penrose brothers, Nicholas and Adam, since she was a child. There is bitter rivalry between the two men and, she senses, dark secrets. Yet she cannot deny her feelings of attraction towards Adam, recently returned from the war in America, and she fears her growing involvement with the Penrose family...