Sweet tyranny

the long version

Unemployed and homeless, Ann Ashley applied for a resident job looking after a small girl in the West Country. She got the job and thankfully left London behind to settle into the big house on the moors, but so much was unexplained. Why was this girl, who should have been at boarding school, to be kept away from other children? Why was handsome, arrogant Howard Crayne so edgy about the child even going out? And why was there a requirement in the advertisement - which she had ignored - that the applicant must have been jilted?