'Face up on the wet floor, in the narrow beam of the torch, inches from their feet, was a human skull. It was dull grey and porous with eye sockets and nasal chambers that twitched in the flickering light. It was asking for something. Harriet couldn't stop looking at it.'
In a secret chamber uncovered by a fire that nearly destroys the nineteenth-century chapel at Archangels University, architect Harriet Darling finds a skull. The police have a body and murderer in mind, and on campus, rumours are rife. But a blue rosary and a Black Madonna take Harriet back, to a girls' school, a powerful nun, and a time of innocence lost and found.
This is a murder mystery, a romance and an emotional journey that spans the twentieth century. Harriet must learn to trust herself and the world. If she fails, she loses not only the chapel but also the place in her own heart where something good can grow.
