Jenny Graham at thirteen, leaves her home in Hull and applies for work as a kitchen maid at the home of the Ingram family in the East Yorkshire town of Beverley. Here, she meets and falls in love with Christy, the only son of the family, whose parents have high hopes of him marrying well in order to save their own impoverished livelihood.

Christy, a romantic, but irrational young man wants them to run away together, and hatches a secret, dangerous plan which goes tragically wrong and leaves Jenny on a charge of murder.

She is acquitted by the court but told to leave Beverley until such time as the townsfolk have pushed the memory of the tragedy away. She goes to live in the isolated Lavender Cott to help her dying aunt and well-bred husband, Stephen, who in their turn have suffered social condemnation because of an imprudent marriage.

Here Jenny finds the privacy and seclusion which she craves and where she gives birth to Christy’s child. She finds a new love but fate decrees that it is once more snatched away from her.

In Jenny’s private thoughts she is haunted by the spectre of Christy’s death, which she keeps hidden from her children and those who come to know her, and her diary is her only confidant. Her aim is to gain her children’s inheritance, which she believes is theirs by right. Of her own life she must wait until such time as she can, if she dares, return to the place where once she was happy and where she can at last make her peace.

'Beautifully told, this moving and compelling novel catches the essence of the time and place. This is a must-have for fans of romantic fiction.'