The young and beautiful Linda Martin arrives from London at a chateau in the French countryside concealing her perfect, Paris-bred French from her new employers. In her role as "English" governess to ten-year-old Philippe, Comte de Valmy and an orphan like herself, Linda comes to suspect the older de Valmys may hide a secret far more dangerous than her own. Though Nine Coaches Waiting has the sweep and poetry of a romance, the tightly wound plot provides skin-prickling suspense until the final astonishing chapter.