A young widow travels to Scotland after the death of her husband in Cyprus. She becomes the housekeeper for a retired major. She meets a young engineer in the mist when lost hiking on a Scottish mountain, thereby unleashing local past clan tensions to a menacing pitch.

Sixteen-year-old Aillie Rannoch put a curse on the persecutor who drove her father to suicide, and then fled her Highland home - swearing never to return. Ten years later, driven by nightmare memories of the past, Aillie returns to Glenshael disguised as a dowdy secretary. How long could she maintain the masquerade? What would the townspeople do if the wild and passionate spirit of Aillie Rannoch should once more assert itself? And why was she irresistibly be drawn to the one man she must call her enemy?