Raven's Brood — E.F. Benson

CURSE OF THE PENTREATHS

Lovely young Nell Robson had heard fearful stories about the old mansion of the Pentreaths ever since she was a little girl in the isolated English village of St. Columb's. Some said the very ground the house stood on was cursed. Others whispered of horrifying rites performed in the meadowland under the moon.

Now Nell had come to live within the mansion's walls, and still the rumors paled beside the truth. The master of the house called himself a man of God, but minister of Satan should have been a better name. The Pentreath women seemed puppets of the shameless sensuality and sinister evil that poisoned the air. And even Nell desperately sought to escape, she felt herself falling under the spell of handsome, powerful Dennis Pentreath, heir to the Pentreath curse, who spoke of love even as he drew Nell toward the abyss…