The Singing Swans

Meraud Pomeroy spent her first ten years with Louise, her beautiful but heartless mother, in nineteenth-century Paris. When her mother is brutally murdered, Meraud is whisked from the familiar environs of France to the cold and hauntingly beautiful Isle of Skye in Scotland. There Mcraud lives with the man she believes to be her natural father. Monsieur Loudon MacDonald Brooding and taciturn, his face fearfully scarred, he has three times been the first to find the corpses of people close to him—his own mother, a local girl whom he loved and, most recently, Meraud's mother. His housekeeper, Meg, is a dour old maid who, the gossipy townspeople say, is a witch with secret powers. Together, they inhabit a dank, joyless monster of a house, a dark stone building as forbidding as its inhabitants to the young Meraud. Surrounding the promontory on which the house stands is Swan's Bay, named for the swans that sing when death is in the air. Those swans signify to Meraud her doubts and fears—that Monsieur was involved in the three mysterious deaths—and her hopes and expectations—that she may one day cease to be an ugly duckling. Meraud's lone flicker of comfort comes from Madame Rohaise. Strikingly attractive and just widowed, she is hired as Meraud’s governess, helping her adapt to her new home and yet offering a link with her French upbringing. And there’s Nicol, a handsome and charming youth who diverts, and sometimes scares. Meraud with his tales of the local superstitions. Against this background of ancient myth and present danger. Meraud discovers the terrible secrets of the three deaths, while finding love and evil in her adopted land.