Isabelle — Anita Birt

Isabelle Linden's parents want her to wed a suitable man. The man they have in mind, Isaac Witherspoon, a curate in a nearby parish, is eager to marry. He lusts after Isabelle. Isabelle has a mind of her own and flaunts society's rules to meet secretly with Sir Harry Manderlin. The lovers vow to remain true to each other while Harry is on an extended business trip to America. He will speak to her father on his return and ask for her hand. Isabelle discovers she is pregnant, and Harry apparently ignores her letters pleading with him to marry her. Her father orders her out of the house. Abandoned, alone and penniless, she pens a farewell note to her mother and on a dark, rainy October morning, she makes her way into the hills above Llandrindod Wells. Isabelle's Diary On a sunny June morning in Llandrindod Wells, Sally Carter stops for coffee at the Celtic Café. She notices a beautiful young woman dressed in somber Victorian black sitting at a window table, weeping over the pages of a diary. When the girl disappears without a trace and the waitress insists the table had been vacant all morning, Sally is compelled to discover the girl's identity. Unraveling the mystery leads Sally on a wild goose chase with the assistance of Dr. Dan Conway, a handsome Welsh history professor, but it's not until she returns home to Toronto that the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Even then the question lingers. Why was Sally the only person to see the girl?