Mistress of Mellyn; by Victoria Holt.

Young art expert on assignment to a house in remote village in Scotland - as she works assessing objets de art in the house, she finds the house and surrounding more than worth notice, with attraction and romance and mystery and puzzling references to past; is she going to find love, family, romance? Or merely lose even her job, having broken a valuable antique handling it without care on the job?

Mistress, incidentally, was in usage as equivalent of master until almost a century ago, and used for women of above certain social and economical status irrespective of marital status, while the latter discrimination between three or more words that all stemmed from this one word, discrimination depending on sexual status, is comparatively recent. Such little pointers lead one to believe that in many respects last two centuries went backwards even as in most others humanity leaped ahead.