Although she kept house for her father and sisters in a country village, Rachel Burney was far from being the ‘one who stayed at home’. Her doctor father was kind and appreciative, Rachel was on the best of terms with her sisters - although it was the younger, Carola, who was the glamour girl of the family - and life was always full and pleasant, and with marriage to her old friend Edward somewhere in the future. But everything changed with the arrival at the Hall of the new 'squire’, Daniel Elliot, to whom Rachel took an immediate and inexplicable dislike. However, liked or disliked, Daniel was not a man anyone could ignore, as Rachel soon found when he showed signs of becoming a disturbing influence on all their lives.