Snare of Serpents — Victoria Holt

`A sinister influence began to creep into the house-vaguely, insidiously at first until it culminated in the tragedy which threatened to ruin my life...:'

Davina Glentyre's happy young life in Edinburgh was shattered by her mother's death and made even more unbearable by her father's sudden marriage to her new governess. Davina's one joy was her friendship with a poor but charming young student, Jamie, whom her father forbade her to wed. And when her father suddenly died from arsenic poisoning, the means, motive, and opportunity all pointed damningly to Davina herself.

She protested her innocence in court but received only the ambiguous verdict of "Not Proven." It condemned seventeen-year-old Davina to a life of vicious rumor and innuendo. Alone, she escaped to the colonies in Africa and into a strange new world. But with the Boer War came danger and the return of dark secrets from the past that threatened her reputation and her very life ....