Season of the Raven (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 1) by Denise Domning Page A

wanted one, even when my mother was alive. He's always had Greta. Keeps her well enough, he does. Did. Well, he and half these men here today keep her." The sweep of Stephen's hand indicated the inquest jury, while his words set a good number of the listening men to laughing under their breaths.
    As their amusement died away, Stephen shook his head. "Nay, I cannot accept that sating his desires is why he married Agnes," he said, using his stepmother's name for the first time in Faucon's hearing. "I don't think he even liked her, not from the very first. If I were to count nights after her first week here, I think she spent more of them sleeping at Susanna's than in my father's bed."
    Stephen's gaze shifted to the mill door. "Now he's gone, and he's left me with no idea what sort of dower he promised her."
    That took Faucon aback. "There was no contract between them?"
    Only two sorts of marital unions didn't have witnessed contracts stating dowry and dower: those handfasts made between paupers with no wealth to their names, and the secret unions sealed under the stars with only the Lord God to witness. If Halbert was too wealthy for the first sort of union, the second sort was always a bond of the heart, hardly a fitting description for the miller's marriage to Agnes.
    Stephen shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. My father never showed me a contract. Or rather he refused to show it to me," he continued, correcting himself with considerable bitterness.
    "When I asked to see it, wanting to know what piece of my inheritance he'd promised her, my father accused me of prying into what was none of my business. Then he told me that the mill was his to do with as he pleased, and he'd disown me if I ever spoke to him of it again. Until that moment, I thought he considered me his partner and equal in running the mill, not some greedy heir, waiting to gobble up another man's lifetime of hard work. I cannot bear that he might have given someone else, a strange woman no less, a piece of what is mine without even speaking to me of his plans."
    "An odd marriage, indeed," Faucon agreed. "Was your father given to impetuous acts such as marrying Agnes?"
    Stephen gave a sharp shake of his head. "Never. Until he married her, I'd never seen my father do anything that cost him more than he gained from it. And their marriage cost him dearly, stripping him of his peace of mind. The moment Agnes walked through our door was the moment my father lost all patience with the world, or what little patience he'd ever had. From then on, nothing Alf and I did, even if we did exactly what he asked, could please him. I vow he woke in the morning screaming and went to bed at night still shouting at me.
    "At least Alf didn't have to listen to him after our workday was done. Every evening, there I was, trapped in the house," he pointed to what Faucon could see of the large and well-kept cottage that stood outside the mill wall, "unable to stop my father as he drained cup after cup of ale, watching him grow ever more resentful as each drop slid down his throat, his rage and voice rising steadily as he recounted my many faults.
    "Meanwhile, here Alf was," this time the lift of Stephen's hand indicated the mill, "enjoying the peace of his quiet bed."
    Faucon nodded at that. "The fuller mentioned earlier that you weren't home last night."
    "I was not," Stephen agreed. "My wife's mother passed three nights ago. Yestermorn, my wife, my daughter and I left Priors Holston to bide for a sennight at her family's farmstead. I didn't want to be away for a full week. But 'Wina insisted, even though I cannot see why she needs me at her side to settle matters with her sisters. Theirs is a close and agreeable family."
    "You know that isn't her real reason for wanting you with her for the whole while," Simon Fuller interjected, his voice gentle.
    Stephen shifted on the barrel to send a frowning look at his neighbor. "What other reason could there be? When her father passed, we stayed