They both caught their breath.

Before them lay one of the irregular inlets where an ancient valley had been drowned by the sea. To their right lay the St. Mawes arm of the Roseland peninsula, solid protection from any cold north wind; to their left, the rougher heathland of the southern arm rose, cutting off any buffets from the south. The horses trotted on and the view shifted, a new vista opening as they descended yet further.

The lane led them down through sloping fields, then steeply pitched and gabled roofs appeared ahead, between them and the blue-green waters of the inlet. Swinging in a wide, descending arc, the lane went past the house that majestically rose into view, then curved back to end in a wide sweep of gravel before the front door.

Rounding the final curve, Gerrard slowed his horses; neither he nor Barnaby uttered a word as they descended the last stretch. The house was…eccentric, fabulous-wonderful. There were turrets too numerous to count, multiple balconies laced with wrought iron, odd-shaped buttresses aplenty, windows of all descriptions, and segments of rooms forming fanciful angles in the gray stone walls.

“You didn’t say anything about the house,” Barnaby said as the horses neared the forecourt and they were forced to stop staring.

“I didn’t know about the house,” Gerrard replied. “I’d only heard about the gardens.”

Arms of those gardens, the famous gardens of Hellebore Hall, reached out of the valley above which the house sat and embraced the fantastical creation, but the major part of the gardens lay hidden behind. Poised sentrylike at the upper end of the valley that ran down to the inlet’s rocky shore, the house blocked all view of the valley itself and the gardens it contained.