Julia Roseingrave
“I hear from Mrs Barlow, who is a good gossip, that your mother and your sister are both ill. You must, then, have very little company.” “Very little human company,” she replied.
On a moonlit night, a wearied traveller dressed as the Devil calls at the mossy gates of Holcot Grange. Fleeing some bloody misadventure in London, the stranger claims to be heir to the manor which for generations has remained lordless. But among its benighted tenants the enthralling beauty Julia Roseingrave has been waiting – and now her means of escape has arrived. As whispers of witchcraft echo through the grounds and the boundaries between lord and servant fray, a cursed romance begins to smoulder – and the spectre of death draws near.
First published in 1933, this historical novella of Gothic love returns to print alongside six deliciously dark short tales from the British Library vaults, bubbling with wickedness and the occult.
Robert Paye was one of several pennames used by the prolific English author Margaret Campbell de Vere Long (1885–1952), best known today as Marjorie Bowen. Her signature flair for macabre historical drama and the conte cruel form remains unsurpassed.