Showing results by author "Isabel Colegate" in All Categories

It is the autumn of 1913. Sir Randolph Nettleby has assembled a brilliant array of guests at his Oxfordshire estate for the biggest hunt of the season. An army of gamekeepers, beaters, and servants has rehearsed the intricate age–old ritual, the gentlemen are falling into the prescribed mode of fellowship and sporting rivalry, the ladies intrigued by the latest gossip and fashion. Everything about this splendid weekend would seem a perfect consummation of the pleasures afforded the privileged in Edwardian England.

1914. The old standards are going. There is bitterness in politics, talk of civil war in Ireland. But all this means little to Cynthia Weston, attractive wife of cabinet member Aylmer Weston and her nephew by marriage, Philip. They are caught up in the charmed, perilous toils of a mutual passion that will destroy all they hold most dear - while the shadow of war lengthens and darkens, ready to swallow their world whole.