Gabrielle Clark is a young woman on vacation with her roommate Marty. They are vacationing at Lake Lacoma, staying in a rented cabin in the woods.
Gabrielle had planned on using her vacation time to finally take a trip to France. Her mother was French and she feels a very strong connection to her French ancestry especially due to her parents unfortunate passing when she was young. However when Marty's father comes back from a fishing trip at Lake Lacoma, and tells her about the quaint isolated cabins situated by a forest that conceals a castle inhabited by a mad professor, the girls decide to head there. Marty is content to spend her time relaxing amid the wilderness with a stack of mystery novels but hopeless romantic Gabrielle is eager to see the castle.
The cabins are owned by Mrs. Wilkins, a middle aged woman who clades herself in expensive jewelry but claims she's on such financially hard times she will soon sell the cabins and forest land to a developer. The girls, and an unseen fisherman, are to be the last customers she has.
While in the woods one day Gabrielle sees an unkempt, harsh looking man with a jagged scar across his face. She believes him to be the mad professor and is relieved when he passes by without noticing her presence. Later she comes across another man, this one handsome and friendly. And with him a large, sweet dog named King. The two chat for a short time but Gabrielle gets nervous around such a gorgeous man and quickly excuses herself.
When she sees the mad professor out in a boat on the lake she decides this would be the perfect opportunity to sneak a glimpse at the castle. Once upon the castle grounds she encounters the handsome man who she now finds out is the "mad professor" although he's not mad at all. He's a college professor, half French, and the two instantly fall in love and become engaged.
Gabrielle is invited to dinner so she briefly returns to her cabin to change into a dinner dress. She informs Marty of her new fiancé and Marty and Andre briefly meet when he comes to pick Gabrielle up.
After dinner at the castle Andre sits down with Gabrielle and tells her he needs to inform her of his, and his family's past. Long ago his grandfather, a circus performer from a poor farming family, had won the wooded land around Lake Lacoma in a game of cards. Some of this land was sold to the state when the Eerie canal was enlarged making him a wealthy man. He then invested this money into business and became even wealthier. Andre's father, Justin, was not business minded but big hearted and he diminished the family fortune by handing it out to those in need, creating a vast amount of friends in the process.
Justin married a French woman, had Andre, and then sadly became a widower. Him, Andre, and Andre's French speaking grandmother lived happily at the castle until one day a strange and rude woman named Agnes Wilkins came knocking on the door asking for a meal. When she announces she would like to stay at the castle Justin offers her a job as housekeeper. After several years she becomes frusterated at Justin not making any romantic advances at her and threatens to ruin his reputation about town if he does not marry her. He agrees to with the understanding that the marriage is in name only.
Once Andre is grown and away in college Justin suddenly dies. Agnes claims he fell from a boat into Lake Lacoma and drowned but Andre knows better. His father never would have gone out onto the lake as it is against the local indigenous tribes belief's and Justin believed he should respect that.
Justin's will leaves everything to Andre but says Agnes can live in the original, historic house by the lake and can have the money from renting the cottages out.
After his fathers death Andre began investigating Agnes' past and learns that she is the daughter of the man his grandfather beat in the card game. She also already had a husband, Dick Wilkins, when she first arrived at their door, he was in prison for murder and got out right before Justin's death.
Andre has not slept on this information but passed it on to Jim Colwell, the sheriff, and policemen have been maintaining watch of the castle. Although there's enough evidence to have Agnes arrested for bigamy Andre wants to wait. He knows she is plotting to murder him next and if he can catch her on it she will receive a longer prison term.
When Gabrielle informs him of Agnes plans to sell the land the cabins are on, and of the "fisherman" staying in a cabin, Andre realizes an attempt on his life is to happen sooner than he had anticipated.
Earlier in the day when giving Gabrielle a tour of the castle Andre had noted a trunk missing from one of the castle towers. The two now decided to go looking for it in Agnes house under cover of darkness. The house belongs to Andre and technically he has a right to enter it but with a killer stalking nearby the couple has to be stealthy.
They climb in through an attic window, tearing Gabrielle's dress and stocking along the way, and after searching the house they find the missing trunk concealed in the attic. Busting it open, inside they find the skeleton of Justin giving them evidence of Agnes crime.
As they're carrying the trunk out Agnes and Dick appear. Gabrielle and Andre are undetected as they hide in a room but overhear the couples sinister plot to murder Andre ASAP. Gabrielle and Andre escape from the house undetected as a huge storm erupts, drenching them as they run through the muddy forest floor with the trunk.
Once safely back at the castle they bath and sleep until morning. With her dress destroyed Gabrielle is stuck wearing Andre's oversized clothing, pairing them with her high heels from last night.
On her way to the kitchen a man appears from the cellar, he is from the power company and making rounds repairing power outages from last nights storm.
Jim Colwell soon appears and is brought up to speed on last nights events. He takes possesion of the trunk and his men are on the alert for Agnes and Dick, having enough to arrest them on.
Feeling safer now Gabrielle wants to go back to her cabin to change and to let Marty know she's safe after not coming home last night. They decide it's not safe for Andre to leave so it's arranged for Gabrielle to catch a ride with the man from the electric company. He drops her off down the road from her cabin and she makes it back safe. After changing her clothes she fills Marty in on everything and Marty informs her she ran into Mrs. Wilkins earlier and, while having a casual conversation, let it be known Gabrielle and Andre were engaged.
Realizing she's now in danger Gabrielle decides to take Marty's car to drive back to the castle. She wants Marty to come with her but she refuses, promising to keep herself safely locked inside the cabin.
As she driving back towards the main road Gabrielle sees the power company truck parked strange and a hand leaning out the window. Worried the repairman had an accident and needs help she leaves the safety of her car to check on him. What she finds is his dead body, his throat slashed. Racing back to her car she is met by Dick carrying a revolver. He gets in the backseat of the car and orders her to drive back to the castle and then honk the horn until Andre comes out. Once Andre is in the car he order Gabrielle to drive back towards the lake.
The couple uses the time driving to get in Dick's head, slowly and subtly dropping bits of information they know about him, and creating suspicion in Agnes over her plans to double-cross him.
As they drive down a wooded road by the lake, slick with mud from the storm, Gabrielle purposefully allows the car to slide off the road and violently crash into the woods. Dick is temporarily stunned letting Andre get control of his gun but soon he has Gabrielle at knife point, ordering Andre to drop the weapon. With the gun tossed aside Gabrielle gets loose and soon the two men are in a violent fight. Gabrielle searches for the gun in the overgrown forest floor but soon after she gets ahold of it Dick gets knocked onto his own knife and dies.
Emotional over escaping death Gabrielle rushes to embrace Andre, accidentally shooting him in the shoulder in the process. He falls backwards down an incline and hits his head on a rock, going unconscious.
Gabrielle starts to rush back towards the cabins to get Marty's help but she is soon met by Agnes in her car who, after a brief conversation, attempts to run her over. Missing her, Agnes turns around and makes another attempt but suddenly a loud crack is heard and her car swerves and flies over the embankment, going into the lake. Marty then appears with a shot gun, she had shot out Agnes tire.
The three return to the cabin and soon Jim, the police, and King show up. They go back to the spot of the car crash to make their reports, take photos, and collect evidence and Dicks body. Gabrielle waits nearby, not wanting to revisit the scene of her brush with death. She wanders closer to the lake and falls in but is recused by King pulling her to shore.
Later that day they go to the police station where they all relay their stories and it is revealed Marty had left the cabin after Gabrielle had headed back to the castle to snoop through Dick's cabin. There she had found guns, knives, and homemade bombs. She took his rifle for her own protection and hid out in the woods keeping an eye on Agnes who waited in her car for Dick. When Agnes took off Marty followed and arrived in time to save the day.
With all the lose ends tied up, peace is finally granted to Andre and him and Gabrielle soon head to France on their honeymoon.
- The quickness of Gabrielle and Andre "falling in love" was a little silly but I didn't mind it too much since this is a romance book and that's pretty normal for them.
- One thing I did kind of mind was the skeleton. It's endearing that Emily Cary didn't realize the horror that would be a dead body left to decompose in a trunk and thought it would simply become a clean skeleton but it took me out of the story a bit.
Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was so thrilling and it could best be described as a page-turner. I think the setting was ideal, from the castle to the cabins, the storm, the heavy fog, it was all magnifique as Gabrielle might say.
