Ferney

It was an accidental detour inspired by one of Gally's frequent panic attacks that sent her husband Mike down a twisting lane to the abandoned cottage. Yet from the moment she saw it, Gally felt a peace she hadn't known in years and the inexplicable sense that she had finally come home.
And so she had.
For as Mike worries and fusses over their new home's restoration, it is Gally who seems to know exactly how it should look. Indeed, Gally seems to flourish in the tiny village of Penselwood, deep in the Somerset countryside. But the greatest mystery of all is her growing and unexpectedly intimate relationship with an irascible eighty-three-year-old countryman named Ferney.
Not even Gally herself can explain the bond between themor how Ferney seems to know her better than she knows herself. Yet through Ferney's old stories Gally finds herself transported down hazy pathways to a past unrecorded in any history book: a magnificent sweep of time and events when the woods were alive with thundering hooves, peasants and soldiers, bloodshed and bravery, and two tragic young lovers who made a vow even death could not break.
And as this short, bittersweet rendezvous draws to a close, she must face a life-and-death dilemma that has followed them down the centuries to one moment of unbearable suspense. For Gally must make a decision that will forever change not only their lives, but the lives of all they touch.