The Judas Kiss

Pippa was determined to discover the truth when she learned that her beautiful sister Francine had been murdered and was the centre of a scandalous cause celebre in the far-off country to which she had eloped with her mysterious lover.
The sisters had been devoted to each other and had lived happily with their unconventional parents until the latter's death, when they had passed into the care of their puritanical grandfather whose tyranny they both found intolerable.
Francine escaped, only to meet her mysterious end, and it seemed to Pippa that she herself was doomed. Then she met the magnetic, inscrutable Conrad - another such as Francine's lover.
Desperate, suspected of murder, she found herself in acute danger and when an unexpected opportunity to escape came to her she took it and set out on her hazardous voyage of discovery to an unknown country.
Pippa's story passes from the conventional countryside of Victorian England toa mid-European state with its grey stone fairytale castles, redolent pine forests and dangerous intrigues; and it is there that she makes startling discoveries as she advances deeper and deeper into danger.