The Companion She Trusted

Miss Prudence Farrar has spent nine years as a paid companion, which is long enough to know that nobody sees her and everybody talks in front of her. When she helps her employer's niece post a letter the family has forbidden, the letter is intercepted and Prudence is thrown out without a character, no wages and nowhere to go. Charles Blake, retired naval purser and the only member of the family with a conscience, believes her — and hires her as his housekeeper, which sets every tongue in Bath wagging. Together they follow the intercepted letter back through the family's private business and find a cousin who has been bleeding them dry for years. A sharply observed Regency romance about a woman who has spent her life being overlooked, and the very ordinary man who finally looked.