Read Online Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) by Denise Domning - Free Book Online Page A

as he sought to steer her in the direction he wanted her to go.
    "She is. Was," Amelyn corrected herself sadly. "Nor was she my child by choice."
    After she said that, she gave a quiet cry and covered her face with her free hand as if trying to hide from what she'd just revealed. Her distress stirred a worried sound from Johnnie. As the youth patted his half-sister's arm, seeking to comfort, Edmund shifted nervously behind Faucon, his movement so sharp that his habit rustled. Faucon tensed, ready to chide should his clerk again seek to offer commentary, but the monk said nothing.
    Drawing a bracing breath, Amelyn continued. "A dozen years and more have passed since the night of Jessimond's conception and I've only told the whole tale once, the day Martha recognized I was with child. She deserved to know, for I was living in her house, dependent on her charity for a place to lay my head at night. But just now the words fight me, as if they don't wish to be spoken," she offered in soft explanation, her voice barely audible.
    After a moment, she cleared her throat and began. "It happened deep in the night of our Autumn Ale, about two months after my Tom's death. Here in Wike, we always celebrate once the harvest is in. By long tradition, we do so at our lady's expense," she added, her hooded head moving briefly in Faucon's direction.
    Her explanation was unnecessary. Although someone who had lived all her life in a place as isolated as Wike might not know it, such events were common across the land, not only in communities as small as this but on the larger estates, like the lands owned by his family.
    Now that Amelyn had opened the floodgates on her tale, the words were flowing more easily. "Like everyone else, I was eating, drinking, and dancing to my heart's content. It felt so wonderful to be happy again, if only for that one evening. In my determination to celebrate, I drank more than I intended, so much so that I exhausted myself long before the night was done.
    "Thinking to rest for just a while, I found a quiet corner, but the ale took me. When I awoke, I was still befuddled. The world spun around me and my stomach was no better. I lifted my head and found the barn as dark as pitch, and silent. That stunned me. I couldn't believe everyone had departed and left me behind, especially Martha. How could she not have roused me as she prepared to leave?"
    Then Amelyn shrugged. The gesture suggested that if she'd ever placed blame on her stepmother over this she did so no longer. "Martha told me later that she'd been as befuddled as I. She thought I'd already returned home, but by the time she was barring our door, she'd forgotten me and didn't check to see if I was inside," she explained, then continued.
    "Already trembling at the thought of having to make my way home alone in the Devil's darkness, I started to roll onto my side. Then he was there, forcing me face-down onto the hard dirt floor. He was on me faster than I could blink and I was helpless to stop him. He was heavy, and much stronger than I. Indeed, I could barely breathe, so forcefully did he hold me in place. He said not a word and made no sound except to breathe as he had his way with me. When he was done, I lay where I was, stunned beyond all movement as I listened to him running from the lady's barn."
    Amelyn fell silent at that, her gaze aimed at her daughter's corpse in her lap.
    "Was it Odger?" Faucon prodded.
    That brought her head up with a snap. "Of course it was! Who else among the men in Wike would have done such a cowardly and cruel thing to me, save the one who'd already tried once and been rebuffed?" she cried in painful retort.
    Faucon cocked his head, the bits and pieces of information he'd collected thus far shifting with her tale. "Yet, you saw no face and heard no voice. I think you cannot say for certain it was he," he replied quietly.
    Amelyn caught her breath at that. For a long instant, she sat as if frozen. From the cast of her shoulders to