Face Down under the Wych Elm by Kathy Lynn Emerson Read Free Book Online

slipped out of Nick's embrace. She heartily wished she'd had the foresight to restore the bar to the door after she'd returned from her visit to the privy.
    "This had better be important,” Nick muttered.
    "What is it, Jennet?"
    Jennet danced from foot to foot in excitement. “Two of the accused witches, madam. They are gentlewomen!"
    Witches again! Susanna bit back a groan. Some two years back, Jennet had become convinced that a witch had put a curse on her. And then, in April, she had purchased a pamphlet from a chapman, an account of the previous year's trial of three witches in the neighboring county of Essex. Ever since, Jennet had displayed what seemed to Susanna to be an unhealthy fascination with the subject.
    "What witches?” Nick asked.
    "The witches in Maidstone gaol. They are to be tried at the Assizes. And two of them are most unusual. So say folk in the marketplace. All those who have been tried for witchcraft ere now were common folk."
    The poor and the friendless, Susanna thought. Those with none to speak for them. “And these women?"
    "They are kin to the lord of Mill Hall, near Hythe. Mistress Lucy Milborne and Mistress Constance Crane."
    The second name provoked a sharp, unpleasant memory. “Is it possible?” she murmured.
    "Are you acquainted with them?” Nick's quiet voice and the feel of his hand on her elbow steadied Susanna.
    "I may know the second. There was a Constance Crane who served as a waiting gentlewoman to the late marchioness of Northampton."
    Jennet's sharp intake of breath caught Nick's attention and had him narrowing his eyes. “This Constance—is she a friend?"
    "Scarce that.” The one time Susanna had talked to her, they'd parted on an acrimonious note. “She was one of Robert's mistresses."
    Nick's expression turned thunderous. He had never cared for Susanna's husband alive and thought even less of Sir Robert Appleton since the revelation of certain dishonorable acts he had committed just before his death. “You've no obligation to her."
    At his tone of voice, Susanna's brows lifted. She balked at being told what was best to do, as if she were a child incapable of making decisions for herself. One of Nick's most endearing qualities had always been his tolerance of her independent ways.
    "You have gained no new rights where I am concerned,” she said in a quiet but implacable voice. “If I wish to inquire further into this matter, I shall do so."
    "Whether this is the same woman or not, you'd be wise to have naught to do with her."
    "A gentlewoman has been accused of a terrible crime for which she may be executed if she is found guilty. It was not so long ago that I was in a similar situation. I can still remember how helpless I felt, locked away in a cell, accused of a crime I did not commit. I would not wish that fate on my worst enemy."
    Constance, if it was she, was scarce that. Indeed, Susanna had felt a deep sympathy for the other woman once they'd met and talked. Constance had truly loved Robert. She'd hoped to marry him ... before he'd wed Susanna.
    "I cannot approve of this."
    "I do not need your approval, Nick. This is a matter of simple justice.” And, no doubt, a case of murder.
    Susanna assumed that someone had died. The authorities would not have troubled themselves to make an arrest for less. But had the death been caused by sorcery? That she questioned. In her study of herbs, she had learned that most effects had a natural rather than a supernatural cause.
    It did no good to try and convert others to her peculiar way of thinking. Superstitions were too deeply ingrained in most people to be rooted out by mere logic. Generation after generation had frightened themselves and their offspring with tales of evil forces abroad in the night. Susanna had long since realized she had no hope of dispelling Jennet's belief in witchcraft. Even Nick, for all his practical nature, was convinced such beings existed and could do harm.
    Resigned, she turned to Jennet. “Where