The Paid Companion

by Amanda Quick

  She slammed the lid down and locked it quickly, a chill of relief shooting down her spine. The Runner had not shown the least bit of interest in her grandmother’s old theater trunk.

  “I am told that I look just like her when she was my age,” she said in conversational tones.

  “Who would that be, Miss Lodge?”

  “My grandmother, the actress.”

  “Is that a fact.” Hitchins shrugged. “Ready, are ye?”

  “Yes. I trust you will convey this downstairs for me?”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  Hitchins hoisted the trunk and carried it down to the front hall. Outside, he loaded it into the waiting farmer’s cart.

  One of the creditors stepped into Elenora’s path as she made to follow Hitchins.

  “That little gold ring on your hand, if you please, Miss Lodge,” he said sharply.

  “Indeed.”

  With a bit of precise timing, she managed to remove the ring and drop it just as the creditor reached out to take it from her. The circlet of gold bounced on the floor.

  “Damnation.” The annoying little man leaned down to retrieve the ring.

  While he was bent over in a parody of an awkward bow, Elenora swept past him and went down the steps. Agatha Knight had always emphasized the importance of a well-staged exit.

  Hitchins, showing an unexpected turn of manners, handed her up onto the hard, wooden bench of the farm cart.

  “Thank you, sir,” she murmured. She settled herself on the seat with all of the grace and aplomb she would have employed getting into a fine carriage.

  A gleam of admiration appeared in the Runner’s eyes.

  “Good luck to ye, Miss Lodge.” He glanced into the rear of the cart where the trunk loomed large. “Did I mention that my uncle traveled with a company of actors in his younger days?”

  She froze. “No, you did 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 the property?”

  She sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

  “This is a terrible blow for you, my dear. I do not know what to say.”

  But it transpired that Jeremy did, indeed, have something very important to say. It took him some time to get around to it, and he prefaced it with the assurance that it broke his heart to have to tell her, but he really had no choice.

  It all boiled down to a very simple matter: Due to the fact that she had been stripped of her inheritance, he was forced to terminate their engagement immediately.

  He rode away a short while later, leaving just as quickly as he had come.

  Elenora climbed the stairs to her tiny room and sent for a bottle of the innkeeper’s least-expensive wine. When it was delivered, she locked her door, lit a candle and poured herself a brimming glass of the tonic.

  She sat there for a long time, looking out into the night, drinking the bad wine and contemplating her future.

  She truly was all alone in the world now. It was a strange and disturbing thought. Her orderly, well-planned life had been turned upside down.

  Only a few hours before, her future had seemed so clear and bright. Jeremy had been planning to move into her house after the marriage. She’d had a comfortable vision of herself as his wife and lifetime partner; a vision in which she managed the household, raised their children and continued to supervise the farm’s business affairs. Now that shimmering bubble of a dream had burst.

  But very late that night, after most of the wine in the bottle was gone, it came to her that she was now free in a way she had never been before in her entire life. For the first time ever, she had no obligations to anyone. No tenants or servants depended upon her. No one needed her. She had no roots, no ties, no home.

  There was no one to care if she made herself notorious or dragged the Lodge name through the muck of a great scandal, just as her grandmother had done.

  She had a chance to plot a new course for herself.

  In the pale light of the new dawn she glimpsed a dazzling vision of the very different future she would craft.

  It would be a future in which she would be free of the narrow, rigid strictures that bound one so tightly when one lived in a small vi
llage; a future in which she controlled her own property and her own finances.

  In this grand, new future she would be able to do things that she could never have done in her old life. She might even allow herself to sample those uniquely stimulating pleasures that her grandmother had assured her were to be found in the arms of the right man.

  But she would not have to pay the price that most women of her station in life paid to know those pleasures, she promised herself. She would not have to marry. After all, there was no one left to care if she ruined her good name.

  Yes, this new future would be glorious indeed.

  All she had to do was find a way to pay for it.

  1

  The ghastly, corpse-pale face appeared suddenly, materializing out of the depths of the fathomless darkness like some demonic guardian set to protect forbidden secrets. The lantern light spilled a hellish glare across the stark, staring face.

  The man in the small boat screamed at the sight of the monster, but there was no one to hear him.

  His shriek of horror echoed endlessly off the ancient stone walls that enclosed him in a corridor of endless night. His shocked start of surprise affected his balance. He staggered, causing the small boat in which he traveled to bob dangerously on the current of the black waters.

  His heart pounded. He was abruptly drenched in a chilling sweat. He stopped breathing.

  Reflexively he gripped the long pole he had been using to propel the little craft up the sluggish stream, and fought to steady himself.

  Mercifully the end of the pole dug solidly into the riverbed, holding the boat steady as the last reverberations of his dreadful cry died away.

  The eerie silence descended once more. He managed to breathe again. He stared at the slightly-larger-than-human-sized head, his hands still shaking.

  It was merely another one of the ancient classical statues that lay like so many dismembered bodies here and there along the banks of the underground river. The helmet on this one identified it as a figure of Minerva.

  Although it was not the first such statue he had come across in the course of this strange journey, it was certainly the most unnerving. The thing resembled nothing so much as a severed head that had been tossed heedlessly into the mud beside the river.

  He shivered again, tightened his grip on the pole and shoved hard. He was annoyed at his reaction to the figure. What was the matter with him? He could not allow his nerves to be so easily unsettled. He had a destiny to fulfill.

  The little boat shot forward, slipping past the marble head.

  The craft rounded another bend in the river. The lantern light picked out one of the low, arched footbridges that spanned the stream at various points along the way. They were passages to nowhere, ending as they did at the walls of the tunnel that enclosed them. The man ducked slightly to avoid banging his head.

  As the last of his terror left him, the surging thrill of excitement returned. It was all just as his predecessor had described in his journal. The lost river truly did exist, twisting beneath the city, a secret waterway that had been covered over and forgotten centuries before.

  The author of the journal had concluded that the Romans, never the sort to pass up a potential engineering project, had been the first to enclose the river so that they could contain it and build upon it. One could see the evidence of their masonry work here and there in the lantern light. In other places, the underground tunnel through which the river passed was vaulted in the Medieval style.

  The enclosed waters no doubt functioned as an unknown sewer for the great city above it, carrying storm waters and the runoff from drains to the Thames. The smell was foul. It was so silent here in this place of eternal night that he could hear the skittering of rats and other vermin on the narrow banks.

  Not much farther now, he thought. If the directions in the journal were correct, he would soon come upon the stone crypt that marked the entrance to his predecessor’s secret underground laboratory. He hoped with all his might that he would find the strange machine there, where it had been left all those years before.

  The one who had come before him had been forced to abandon the glorious project because he had not been able to unravel the last great riddle in the ancient lapidary. But the man in the boat knew that he had succeeded where his predecessor had failed. He had managed to decode the old alchemist’s instructions. He was certain that he could complete the task.

  If he was fortunate enough to find the device, there were still many things to be done before it could be made to work. He had yet to locate the missing stones and get rid of the two old men who knew the secrets of the past. But he foresaw no great difficulties in that endeavor.

  Information was the key to success, and he knew how to obtain that commodity. He moved in Society, so he had some useful connections in that world. But he also made it a point to spend a great deal of time in the disreputable hells and brothels where the gentlemen of the ton went to seek more unwholesome pleasures. He had found such places to be veritable oceans of rumor and gossip.

  There was only one person who knew enough to be able to realize what he intended, but she would not be a problem. Her great weakness was her love for him. He had always been able to use her affection and trust to manipulate her.

  No, if he found the device tonight, nothing could stop him from fulfilling his destiny.

  They had labeled the one who had come before him a madman and refused to acknowledge his genius. But this time matters would unfold in a very different fashion.

  When he had finished constructing the deadly device and demonstrated its enormous destructive energy, all of England, indeed all of Europe would be forced to hail the second Newton in its midst.

  2

  She won’t do. Too timid. Too meek.” Arthur watched the door close behind the woman he had just finished interviewing. “I thought I made it clear, I need a lady with spirit and a certain presence. I am not looking for the typical sort of paid companion. Bring in another one.”

  Mrs. Goodhew exchanged a glance with her business partner, Mrs. Willis. Arthur sensed that they were both nearing the end of their patience. In the course of the past hour and a half he had spoken with seven applicants. None of the subdued, painfully dowdy women on the Goodhew & Willis Agency roster had come close to being a potential candidate for the post he was offering.

  He did not blame Mrs. Goodhew and Mrs. Willis for their growing exasperation. But he was beyond being exasperated. He was desperate.

  Mrs. Goodhew cleared her throat, folded her large, competent hands on top of her desk and regarded Arthur with a stern air. “My lord, I regret to say that we have exhausted our list of suitable applicants.”

  “Impossible. There must be someone else.” There had to be another candidate. His entire plan hinged on finding the right woman.

  Mrs. Goodhew and Mrs. Willis glowered at him from behind their matching desks. They were both formidable females. Mrs. Goodhew was tall and grandly proportioned with a face that could have been stamped on an ancient coin. Her associate was as thin and sharp as a pair of shears.

  Both were soberly but expensively attired. There was a judicious amount of gray in their hair and a considerable measure of experience in their eyes.

  The sign on the front door outside declared that the Goodhew & Willis Agency had supplied paid companions and governesses to persons of quality for over fifteen years. The fact that these two had established this agency and operated it at an obvious profit for that period of time was a testimony to their intelligence and sound business sense.

  Arthur studied their determined expressions and considered his options. Before coming here, he had gone to two other agencies that boasted a selection of ladies seeking work as paid companions. Each had produced a handful of insipid prospects. He had felt a distinct pang of pity for all of them. He understood that only the most dire conditions of genteel poverty could induce any female to seek such a post. But he was not in the market for a woman who aroused the emotion o
f pity in others.

  He clasped his hands behind his back, widened his stance and confronted Mrs. Goodhew and Mrs. Willis from the far side of the room.

  “If you have run through all of the suitable candidates,” he said, “then the answer is clear. Find me an unsuitable female.”

  The two stared at him as though he had taken leave of his senses.

  Mrs. Willis recovered first. “This is a respectable agency, sir. We do not have any unsuitable females in our files,” she said in her razor-edged voice. “Our ladies are all guaranteed to possess reputations that are entirely above reproach. Their references are impeccable.”

  “Perhaps you would do well to try another agency,” Mrs. Goodhew suggested in quelling tones.

  “I don’t have time to go to another agency.” He could not believe that his carefully calculated scheme was about to fall apart simply because he could not find the right female. He had assumed that this would be the simplest, most straightforward part of the plan. Instead, it was proving to be astonishingly complicated. “I told you, I must fill this post immediately—”

  The door slammed open behind him with resounding force, effectively putting an end to his sentence.

  Together with Mrs. Goodhew and Mrs. Willis, he turned to look at the woman who blew into the office with the force of a small storm off the sea.

  He saw at once that she had, possibly by accident although he suspected more likely by design, tried to distract attention from her striking features. A pair of gold-framed spectacles partially veiled her vivid amber-gold eyes. Her glossy, midnight-dark hair was pulled back in a remarkably severe style that would have looked more appropriate on a housekeeper or maid.

  She wore a serviceable gown of some heavy, dull material in a peculiarly unattractive shade of gray. The garment looked as though it had been deliberately fashioned to make its wearer appear shorter and heavier than she actually was.

  The connoisseurs of the ton and the obnoxious dandies who loitered about on Bond Street ogling the ladies would no doubt have dismissed this woman out of hand. But they were fools who did not know how to look beneath the surface, Arthur thought.