Cherished Secret

Francesca Pembroke is a woman of ripe age, left a widow when her husband is killed in the Battle of Gettysburg. Arthur Robards, an aristocratic young man, is sent to the Civil War to fight for the his country, the Union. But, seeing the war's cost in human life, he flees to a distant mountain, where he is found by Francesca, who takes him into her home and tends his wounds. Love and passion are inevitable between these two, a forbidden love springs up…to become Francesca's most cherished secret. Years later, Francesca's daughter Madeleine Robards discovers a diary in her mother's old nightstand, together with a bunch of yellowed letters, which shed light on her own past, as well as her parents'.

Madeleine Robards discovers all her past, as she reads her mother Francis' diary, together with the letters between her mother and Arthur. Is it possible that there was a romance between these two? Madeleine finds it hard to believe everything that lies hidden in these pages, and she finally discovers she is the legitimate daughter of that youth who loved her mother so much, while her own husband Roger turns out to be her cousin. She doesn't know whether to feel melancholy or joyful at this upheaval of her life history, or whether to feel ashamed of the fact that her father was twenty years younger than her mother. Is it true that love has no age? Could this precious secret, which Francis kept hidden for over forty years, be revealed at last? "For true love, there is no age...for the pleasures of life there is no time. And to be a mother it is enough to have a heart capable of carrying a child for the rest of its life."