Friendship's bond - Meg Hutchinson

Thomas Thorpe hides his carnal desires under the mask of a pious lay preacher. When Ann Spencer rejects his advances, he evicts her from her home, claiming she is living in sin. But Alec is a ward, not a lover. Ann made a promise to her dead father that she would protect the Russian boy with her life. Taken in by kind hearted Leah Marshall , Ann and Alec become substitutes for the children Leah has lost. But Thomas Thorpe will not leave them in peace. Playing on the paranoia engendered by the Great War, he sows seeds of doubt about the foreigner in their midst.