The Stone Maiden — Alexandra Manners

Unexpectedly, Maggie Steart is forced by circumstance to go and live with her father's long estranged kin in the Highlands of Scotland. There, beneath the cold and austere gables of the ancestral home, Maggie finds herself drawn into the web of terror surrounding the dread and mysterious island known as The Stone Maiden

When orphan Maggie Stewart's maternal grandfather dies on her eighteenth birthday, she is forced by circumstances to go to live with her father's long-estranged kin in Scotland. She is met in Edinburgh by her uncle, Rob Drummond, and her beautiful cousin, Shiona. While there, and on the journey north to the ancestral home, the catches brief glimpses of a handsome stranger, Buck Graham, her uncle's next-door neighbor and the son of the woman her father once jilted at the altar.

Maggie soon discovers that ominous rumors surround Buck -- that he may have caused the childhood crippling of Shiona's sister, Fran, and may also have been responsible for the recent death by drowning of his best friend, Roddy, whom Shiona was supposed to have married. And danger seems even more close when, during the steamer trip north, Maggie is nearly shoved overboard by an unknown party.

Yet the Drummond household charms her, as does the nearby lock with its fabled Stone Maiden, and island resembling a reclining woman. It is around the Maiden that the local festivals stilled filled with pagan ritual and superstition, center, and it is there that Fran was crippled and Roddy killed. Caught up in the legends of the Maiden, aided by nothing but her wits and a strange physic power called Temps Perdu, Maggie finds herself suddenly fighting for her life while falling desperately, perhaps perilously in love with the mysterious Buck.


There was a gap in the wall beyond the sunken garden. As I stepped carefully over the broken stones I could smell the scent of the roses, half-drowned now in the strong, sad odor of pine and rotting leaves. A stick cracked under my foot. The blood rushed to my face. I was conscious of guilt, though I had only come out here to talk to Shiona. It was the first time I had given my action any real thought. I had stolen out of the house like a criminal. The night scents, the mingled moonlight and darkness pressed around me, curiously alive. No sign, nor sound of the figure that walked alone…

I turned to go back and froze where I stood. Something stood in the shadow of a yew, something tall and dark, that didn't move. Panic spilled over me in little icy spurts. Too tall for Shiona. Anyway, there was something masculine about the outline. Graveyards were haunted places. Only madwomen went into them at night. I gave a small shocked scream and began to run.

Half-buried stones laid traps for my feet. My outstretched hands thrust away dragging branches and propelled me around spongy tombs. I could hear stumbling footsteps not far away. And then I fell forward, my head striking the edge of something large and very hard. Far away, a voice called my name.