The Lily House Stoker

About this book

Hertfordshire, 1850. Tobias Fenn, a workhouse orphan who can barely spell his own name, keeps the night furnace of Ashcombe Park's lily house, where a giant Amazonian water lily is about to bloom for two nights only. Then the artist's daughter Hester Marsh arrives with a secret of her own, and over a drawing board and a coal shovel the two of them fall in love. On the second night, Tobias leaves his fire. By morning the flower is ruined, he has been thrown out without a character, and Hester has said nothing. Eight months later, among the roaring boilers of London's Great Exhibition, Tobias is shovelling coal for strangers when Hester walks through the door. She has come to make amends, but some debts are hard to pay. Can a girl who kept quiet once learn to speak, and can a boy who lost everything give her a second chance?