An Unexpected Sin by Sarah Ballance Page A

breasts tighter to his chest. His heart ached for her—for the terrible blow of another senseless loss—but he also experienced a sense of fulfillment with Anne he knew would never come from anyone else. His years numbered twenty-two to her twenty, and with the opportunity to attend college he had experienced more from life than most. But for all of his travels, the contentment that had long eluded him found purchase right here in her arms. For the first time in his life, he worried not for the past, but for the future they would share.
    “It is so unfair,” she murmured against his chest. “Elizabeth was innocent.”
    Josiah said nothing. He simply held Anne, allowing her to grieve in the only way he knew how.
    After a long while, she shifted in his arms and he saw her face. Her bottom lip disappeared momentarily behind her teeth before she asked, “How could anyone believe such a thing of her?”
    “Why was she accused?”
    “She was said to have caught the attention of a wealthy landowner. He pursued her, but she would have nothing of him. His wife said she knew of his affairs. She claimed she had proof and blamed Elizabeth. She was beautiful, and with these stories other wives began to fear she would similarly lead their husbands to sin.”
    The news left him slightly astounded. “How could they have proof of her wrongdoings when she is an innocent woman?”
    “The wife dreamed her there. They say a witch’s spirit can go to a man, even when her body remains elsewhere.”
    “Spectral evidence.” He had heard of it. It stunned him that someone could become victim of someone else’s dreams, and he was not the only one to react incredulously. From his time in Cambridge, he had learned of a Boston minister who had in recent months publicly challenged use of spectral evidence. He had been made to pay a sum of two hundred pounds or face immediate arrest for his so-called scandalous contest. Josiah knew not the fate of the minister, but the admission of spectral evidence had clearly not altered.
    But it was his understanding that spectral evidence alone was not enough. “There was more.”
    Less of a question than a statement of fact.
    “Yes.” Anne sighed. “Her lineage. She is said to be of a witch’s blood, for her grandmother was hanged three decades ago in Hartford.”
    He stiffened. “She was hanged? As a witch?”
    Anne nodded. “One of the wives learned of it, and shortly the whole village knew.”
    Josiah fought for the control that suddenly seemed to spiral wildly from his hands. “But it makes no sense. Elizabeth was not even born three decades ago.”
    “It matters not,” Anne said, seemingly unaware of the panic running its course through him. “Her lineage was proof enough. And none of us who knew her could protest without being accused ourselves. Such is the way. Who would defend a witch but another witch?”
    The admission brought a new round of sorrow to her eyes and shook her frame, but not so thoroughly as it shook him. The people of Salem worried so greatly for the fabricated sins of others that they cared not for their own. How else could one so callously bring another to death? Josiah had heard of the arrests in Salem, but—as evidenced by George Scudder’s mention of Bridget Bishop—the names had eluded him. There had been no faces to these crimes. They had simply become fodder for taverns and goodwives, and Josiah kept company with neither.
    But that someone should die for their lineage? That changed something. That changed everything.
    “This…day,” she said, “has made me realize how fleeting our time is.”
    She still trembled, so he turned her so she stood closer to the fire. “We can never be promised more than what we have, Anne. Not more than we have in this very moment.”
    A faint grin broke through the sorrow to trace her lips. “Is that your way of evading my hand?”
    He gently brushed from her face the strand of hair that seemed always to fall errant. “Be