The Paid Companion Read Free Page A

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 village; 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