Her Lady’s Companion

A love that history was never meant to record.

About the story

A position she cannot afford to lose. A woman she cannot stop noticing.

Eleanor Hartley arrives at Ashcombe Hall with a single trunk, six months without a position behind her, and a younger sister whose education depends on the wage she earns. Lady Ashcombe’s brief letter promises generous pay in return for good character and quiet habits. Eleanor intends to be useful, discreet, and grateful. Nothing more.

Lady Georgiana Ashcombe has made a discipline of composure. Since her husband’s death, she has filled her hours with accounts, correspondence, and the business of avoiding whatever an idle moment might bring. A companion should make that carefully arranged life easier to manage.

Instead, Eleanor’s arrival makes both women uncomfortably aware of one another. In the library, along the corridors, and beneath the rules that govern employer and companion, a different kind of attention begins to take hold. Eleanor needs the security of her position. Georgiana is accustomed to controlling the distance between herself and everyone else. Neither is prepared for how difficult that distance becomes to keep.

Her Lady’s Companion is a forbidden Victorian sapphic romance of quiet longing, guarded hearts, and a connection that unsettles the order of a great house.

Your kind of romance?

• A lady and her hired companion
• Victorian atmosphere and a country-house setting
• Sapphic romance across differences of rank
• Alternating perspectives from Eleanor and Georgiana

Read a short excerpt

Chapter one · Eleanor

I resolved, somewhere between Reading and the branch line, that I did not care what sort of woman she was, so long as she paid on time and did not require me to be anything more than useful. Six months without a situation had taught me the precise weight of that word—useful—and how much easier it was to carry than pride.

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