Lord of the Far Island

Lord of the Far Island is a gothic romance by Eleanor Burford, a pen name used by the prolific English novelist Eleanor Hibbert.

Ellen Kellaway is a poor relation in the classic sense. She was orphaned at five, taken in by rich cousins and raised as a companion to their daughter, and the charity she received was raised against her regularly enough that she learned deference as a habit. A proposal of marriage from the son of a prominent London family changes her prospects entirely and gives her access to wealth and social position she had only imagined.

The novel refuses to let the improvement be simple. Ellen has been troubled all her life by the same dream, an unfamiliar room, a door opening and something waiting behind it, and the presentiment returns more insistently as her situation improves, which turns the story into a suspense as much as a courtship. Burford's gothic romances place a young woman in a house that conceals a history, and this one keeps to that design. The dreams come as a warning the story refuses to explain early, and the improvement in her circumstances is what makes them harder to dismiss.