When Liza Durant is saved from drowning by Jeffrey Forrest, she little realizes how much this chance meeting will change her life. For Jeffrey is the heir both to a large business, and to the great estate that lies near it, dominated by the old manor house called La Deuxième—"The Second."

Within days he proposes to the beautiful young woman; she neither accepts nor declines, but says that she'll visit him at his country home. But Jeffrey's father is killed, Jeffrey's so-called accidental death soon follows, and Liza finds herself enmeshed in a web of intrigue over the inheritance of the great house.

Can she escape the clutches of a vicious killer? Or will the curse of The Second House claim yet another victim?