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

She saw you day and night. What could we think when she stood silently at your side, offering no word of support? She was the one who would have known if you were trysting. She should have told us how she'd witnessed Odger trying to take you against your will. Instead, in your shared silence you both left us to think what Odger said was true, that you'd taken a lover after Tom's death and that Martha had abetted you in your sin." This last was almost a plea.
    Amelyn rocked back in astonishment at that. "You were waiting for Martha to challenge Odger?! You all knew how deeply he resented her for not discarding Johnnie as he had commanded! How could you believe for an instant she could confront him? It's easy to protest now that she or I could have swayed you by telling our tale, but that's a fool's defense, Hew. If she had dared to raise her voice to him in public, he'd have turned on her. He'd have taken Johnnie from her, then and there, punishing her just as he was punishing me for defying him.
    "And every one of you would have let him do it," she cried out, her voice rising, "even though you knew Martha wanted her child just as much as I wanted mine!"
    A frustrated sound escaped her. "Hew, you and the others said nothing as our bailiff instructed you to deny me, but not my child, shelter and support unless I paid for it in coins earned by whoring. Has that happened to any other woman before me?" she demanded.
    The old man's arms dropped to his sides. His head bowed. "We didn't know, Amelyn," he pleaded again. "In that instant, you looked like what he told us you were, a whore."
    "That's what you let him make me!" she cried again, then bowed her head as if battling her emotions.
    When she looked up again, it was to address Faucon. "On that day, Odger told the folk of Wike that I would remain bound to the manor even though I now had permission to travel to Alcester as often as I needed to ply my new trade. I was not allowed to take my baby with me as I came and went. He assured the others, and me, that he would hunt me down if I did so, or if I tried to go any farther than Alcester."
    "You should have tried to run," Hew muttered. "It would have served Odger's pride rightly if you, a mere woman, escaped him after so many men have tried and failed to stay free of his grasp for the full year and a day."
    "Go without my precious child?" Amelyn retorted, her tone incredulous. Then she sighed. "Do you know what I wished at that moment, Hew? I wished that I hadn't fought Odger when he came to use me after Tom's death, that I had let him take me," she said, sounding beaten.
    "Nay, you do not." The old man shook his head. "I think me the outcome would have been no different. Martha still had Johnnie to protect. Without hearing your tale, none of us would have been any the wiser, would we have been? You should have told us. You should have come to us in private. You should have trusted us."
    "I couldn't," she protested. "Martha couldn't."
    "I suppose not," the old man agreed in resignation. "And you're right. We should have protested his sentence. No woman before you has suffered so for producing a bastard, even one with an unnamed father. Given your tale, I doubt any woman who follows you will receive that burden either."
    Then Hew looked at his Crowner. There was naught to see in his expression now save shame. "We didn't know," he protested to Faucon. "Would that she could have found a way to tell us."
    Edmund cleared his throat, the sound suggesting he struggled to swallow words. Faucon made the old man no reply. There was nothing to be said. Even if Amelyn hadn't willingly committed the sin of fornication, being driven from home and family to earn a living by whoring was a fate often faced by fallen women, no matter how innocent they might have been in the event that precipitated their fall.
    Amelyn freed her hand from Johnnie's, then wound her arms around Jessimond's cold body. She pulled her dead child closer to her. Once again,