He fell in love with the house the first time he saw it , a Georgian Dower House , overgrown with briars and hidden away in a tangle of old woods and orchards . He had no intention of buying it , but he thought of it as his. When Nemo and James Boyce moved in and began to restore it he felt - at first - a curious sense of intrusion and loss. But very quickly he was possessed by Nemo , by her strangeness , her beauty , and the compulsive spell that the house seemed to weave about them all. He watched as men became obsessed by her , drawn like moths to a candle , to lust , consummation , and death - and as he tried to unravel the eerie mystery of the old house , he found he too was drawn towards the flame that might destroy him.