1905, Cairnfarn, Scotland.

Lady Emily Hargreaves and her husband Colin, with their three precocious sons (and one crocodile) in tow, descend upon the Highland estate of Emily’s childhood friend Jeremy, the Duke of Bainbridge. Expecting a relaxed family holiday to introduce the boys to Jeremy’s menagerie, the Hargreaves are instead thrown headlong into a murder investigation after their sons stumble upon the body of Cairnfarn Castle’s gamekeeper.

Emily and Colin soon learn the gamekeeper had secrets of his own to hide, and they set out to piece together the puzzle surrounding his death. Was it an affair of the heart motivating his killer, as more than one village girl was in love with him? Or was it driven by the past he fled in Edinburgh? The vicar and his young wife, the newly installed female doctor, Cairnfarn residents, and village herbalist — all paint different portraits of the victim, further muddying the waters.

Entwined in the modern narrative is a parallel story of Cairnfarn in the late 1600s, when the fervor of the witch hunt was rampant throughout Europe and the British Isles. Tasnim, dubbed Tansy, is a young Moorish woman kidnapped from her family and forced into a life of slavery and then servitude as a ‘free’ woman far from home in Scotland. Unable to leave her mistress Rossalyn after her complete reversal of fortune, Tasnim finds herself living in a tiny cottage in the village, learning to survive in yet another role in which she’s been cast. When the suspicion of witchcraft hits close to home, Tasnim worries she’ll be an easy target as a foreigner, yet things play out in an unexpected way.

I love this series. This entry was no exception. I did guess major aspects of the plot resolution, but that did not detract much from my enjoyment of the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.