Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

Mrs. Ogilvie sits in her drawing room reading the Court Journal, a woman of formidable wit and carefully controlled emotion. She has buried several children. Only Peter remains. The Ogilvies are wealthy, respected, quietly devastated. Colonel Ogilvie keeps his own counsel. Their son is the last heir, the last hope for a lineage that has known too much loss. Into this brittle world comes Jane Erskine, a neighbor whose warmth and simpler circumstances cast into relief the cold elegance of the Ogilvie household. What follows is a quiet exploration of grief masquerading as propriety, of love expressed through duty rather than tenderness, and of the particular cruelty that wealth and status can inflict on those trapped within them. The missing heir of the title proves to be less about inheritance documents than about something far more precious and far more easily lost.