The Paid Companion Read Free

not.”
    “Had a trunk very similar to yours. He said it was quite useful. He told me that he always made certain he had a few essentials packed inside in the event that he was obliged to leave town in a hurry.”
    She swallowed. “My grandmother gave me the same bit of advice.”
    “I trust ye heeded it, Miss Lodge?”
    “Yes, Mr. Hitchins, I did.”
    “Ye’ll do all right, Miss Lodge. Ye’ve got spirit.” He winked, tipped his hat and walked back toward his employers.
    Elenora took a deep breath. Then, with a snap, she unfurled her parasol and held it aloft as though it were a bright battle banner. The cart lumbered into motion.
    She did not look back at the house where she had been born and had lived all of her life.
    Her stepfather’s death had not come as a great surprise, and she felt no grief. She had been sixteen years old when Samuel Jones had married her mother. He had spent very little time here in the country, preferring London and his never-ending investment schemes. After her mother had died three years before, he had rarely showed up at all.
    That state of affairs had suited Elenora quite well. She did not care for Jones and was quite content not to have him underfoot. But of course that was before she had discovered that his lawyer had managed to shift her inheritance from her grandmother, which had included the house and surrounding property, into Jones’s control.
    And now it was all gone.
    Well, not quite all, she thought with grim satisfaction. Samuel Jones’s creditors had not known about her grandmother’s pearl and gold brooch and the matching earrings hidden in the false bottom of the old costume trunk.
    Agatha Knight had given her the jewelry right after her mother had married Samuel Jones. Agatha had kept the gift a secret and had instructed Elenora to hide the brooch and the earrings in the trunk and not tell anyone about them, not even her mother.
    It was obvious that Agatha’s intuition about Jones had been quite sound.
    Neither were the two creditors aware of the twenty pounds in bank notes that were also inside the trunk. She had kept the money aside after the sale of the crops, and had tucked the notes in with the jewelry when she had realized that Jones was going to take every penny from the harvest to invest in his mining scheme.
    What was done was done, she thought. She must turn her attention to the future. Her fortunes had definitely taken a downward turn, but at least she was not entirely alone in the world. She was engaged to be married to a fine gentleman. When Jeremy Clyde received word of her dire predicament, she knew that he would race to her side. He would no doubt insist that they move the date of the wedding forward.
    Yes indeed, she thought, in a month or so this terrible incident would be behind her. She would be a married woman with a new household to organize and manage. The prospect cheered her greatly.
    If there was one skill at which she excelled, it was that of organizing and supervising the myriad tasks required to maintain an orderly household and a prosperous farm. She could handle everything from arranging for the profitable sale of crops to keeping the accounts, seeing to the repairs of the cottages, hiring servants and laborers, and concocting medicines in the stillroom.
    She would make Jeremy an excellent wife, if she did say so herself.
    ***
    Jeremy Clyde galloped into the inn yard later that evening, just as Elenora was instructing the innkeeper’s wife on the importance of making certain that the sheets on her bed were freshly laundered.
    When she glanced out the window and saw who had arrived, Elenora broke off the lecture and rushed downstairs.
    She went straight into Jeremy’s open arms.
    “Dearest.” Jeremy hugged her quickly and then put her gently away from him. His handsome face was set in lines of grave concern. “I came as soon as I heard the news. How dreadful for you. Your stepfather’s creditors took
everything?
The house? All of