Bryony knows the maze well, but does not guess the harrowing significance it will come to play in her life as well as that of her "phantom lover.
The garden pavilion is in the center of a complicated maze of hedges and shrubbery notoriously difficult to get out of. Like many of Stewarts novels, the story has a supernatural element. In the United States, Touch Not the Cat was the 9th highest selling book of 1976. Or does "cat" refer to a vivacious young American girl who is making a play for Emory? Touch Not the Cat was first published in 1976 and is one of Mary Stewarts best-known works. Bryony thinks it may refer to the cat on the family crest, which decorates the scandal-shrouded garden pavilion used in the nineteenth century by the Ashleys as an illicit trysting place. There is a "cat" in her father's warning. She also wants to learn the meaning of her dying father's last message to her. Left alone after her father's death, Bryony is more determined than ever to discover the identity of this person. Throughout the years this strange telepathic communication has led Bryony to think of this other Ashley as her "phantom lover." The intimate relationship with this lover is complete in every way but one: the physical. Is it Emory? Or perhaps James, Emory's identical twin brother? Or even perhaps Francis, another Ashley cousin? Today Bryony calls it the gift of telepathy, and she is also aware that at least one of the other Ashleys has this gift. She knows that she possesses the true Ashley legacy: the "gift." Three hundred years ago that gift was called "The Sight," and had caused an Ashley ancestor to be burned at the stake. However, when Bryony's father is killed in a mysterious automobile accident, ownership of the Court passes by legal trust to her cousin Emory.Īt first, Bryony feels relief that she has not inherited the responsibility of the Court. With its moated house and ruined gardens the Court has been the lifelong home of Bryony Ashley, a twenty-two-year-old Englishwoman of spirit and beauty. and inescapable peril.The Ashley family had lived at Ashley Court for generations.
But passion is not all that will greet Bryony upon her return - for the crumbling walls of the old mansion guard dark secrets, tragic memories. the lover-to-be who waits for her now at Ashley Court. Devastated, she believes, that the mysterious stranger is her destiny. Since childhood the two have communicated through thought patterns, though Bryony has no idea of his identity. And there is something odd about her father's sudden death.īryony has inherited the Ashley 'Sight' and so has one of the Ashleys.
Still, her father's final, dire warning about a terrible family curse haunts her days and her dreams. Her family's estate with its load of debt is no longer her worry. After the tragic death of her father, Bryony returns from abroad to find that his estate is to become the responsibility of her cousin Emory.
Bryony Ashley knows that Ashley Court, the grand estate, is both hell and paradise - once elegant and beautiful, yet shrouded in shadow.
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