The Captain's Ward — Russell James

Coming of age in Victorian England.In 1887, twelve-year-old orphan Lucy Richards is taken secretly into the care of a half-pay captain in an isolated farmhouse several miles from the small town of Croome. Lucy's mother founded hospitals in India and Natal, and when news of her death arrives in Britain the press tries to find the child. But they can't find her hidden away with Captain Hart â€" nor when she stays at Beauchamp Manor with the local squire, where she befriends the squire's horse-mad daughter. Maud has two older brothers, the Oxford student Clive and his raffish brother Riordan who has an eye for a pretty girl. But Lucy remains besotted with Captain Hart. In the next four years she grows into a wilful, hot-blooded girl, determined to defy the constraints of the Victorian world.The Captain's Ward is both a stand-alone novel and the prequel to 'After She Drowned'.