Forced Offer

At the age of 13, when trespassing on woods adjacent to her family's land, Belinda Presleigh sees Richard Berrington, who has just come home from the war, swimming naked in a stream. From that moment on she can see no one but him and locks this painful love in her heart, knowing that exposure would only bring ridicule. She knows that she cannot compete with the beautiful girls to whom he is attracted.

Her mother, though, having lost her eldest daughter, Roselle, to pneumonia, has hopes of r...