Secrets of the Highwayman

Melanie Jones came to Cornwall at the behest of the Law firm she works for, to put in order the estate of an old woman named Miss Pengorren. On the drive there, she meets and races a man on a horse, who abruptly disappears. The caretaker at the estate of Ravenswood tells her that the man was a ghost, and he was Nathaniel Raven, who lived nearly two centuries ago and who was shot in an act of Highway robbery. Melanie declines to believe that the man she saw was a ghost, but the painting of him she sees at the estate is impossible to ignore.

Nathaniel, meanwhile, is trying to solve the mystery of his murder, and he needs Melanie's help. He doesn't remember what happened to him, but he knows that his friend and commanding officer, Hew Pengorren, had something to do with it. When Melanie stumbles through a hole in a rock on St. Anne's Hill, she finds herself in the world between worlds, facing its queen. The Queen leads her back to Ravenswood, and tells her that Nathaniel needs her help, but it is the Ravenswood of 1813 that she is inhabiting, and Nathaniel introduces her to his family... she can see them, but they cannot see her. He shows her his mother, who is still in mourning, his father having died a mere eight weeks ago, yet that night, his mother announces that she is marrying Hew Pengorren!

Melanie feels a sense of evil radiating from Pengorren, and is afraid of him. She doesn't want to help Nathaniel, especially when he hitches a ride back to the present on her when she goes back through St. Anne's Hill. But she cannot deny the attraction she feels for him, as his trip through the hole in the stone has made him just as human and mortal as she is. But she feels something else as well... there is something in Ravenswood. Something evil that wants her. As she and Nathaniel dig into the mystery of his life in the past, Melanie is menaced by an evil that is very much alive, and wants her for a mysterious purpose that has to do with her own antecedents. As she and Nathaniel slowly fall in love, can she resist the evil that seems to be engulfing her life? And is there any future for a woman from the present and a man from the past?

This book was... okay. I sort of had a "Meh" reaction to it. The story was engaging and engrossing, but in the end, it just didn't do it for me. I do think that the author came up with an unusually twisty and convoluted plot, but even so she made it understandable. I just didn't get all that engaged in the story. There is a sort-of sequel called "Passions of the Ghost", but I'm not going to go out of my way to seek it out.