Henry Esmond

Castlewood’s bells ring for its new lord, but twelve-year-old Henry Esmond hears only a warning: no one has remembered the orphan waiting alone in the book-room. Then Lady Castlewood finds him—and the portrait on the wall makes her kindness falter.

In 1691, at Castlewood Hall in Hampshire, Henry is a dependent with no sure place in the household and no certainty about how its new lord will treat him. Lady Rachel and her young daughter, Beatrix, offer the lonely boy a welcome he scarcely dares to hope for. But the old family portrait bears an undeniable likeness to Henry, and Lady Castlewood’s sudden blush hints that his place in the family may be more complicated than anyone has said. What does that likeness mean for the boy who has been left waiting?

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