Page 90 of The Forsaken (Echoes from the Past #4)

Joan was the last to leave the chapel after Kate’s burial.

She was about to return to the kitchen—she had supper to serve—when her hand closed around the smooth glass of the vial she’d taken from Kate’s bedside.

Joan trudged up the stairs to the top floor and walked to the end of the silent corridor, where she entered what had been Marie de Rosel’s solar.

No one went in there anymore—no one save Joan.

A heavy wooden cabinet stood in the corner, a brass key protruding from the lock on its ornate door.

Joan turned the key and took out a small polished chest. Inside were several vials, carefully labeled in Marie’s elegant hand.

Joan didn’t know her letters, but she could identify the medicines by their smell.

It’d taken her no more than three sniffs to locate the oil of rue.

Marie had used the rue to treat a multitude of conditions, such as her frequent headaches, the occasional toothache, and even bouts of anxiety, but she’d never taken it during pregnancy; she’d known the risks.

Joan replaced the vial in the chest and shut the lid.

She closed the cabinet and sat down on the window seat to rest, hands folded in her lap.

This spot had been Marie’s favorite place to sit during the day since she could enjoy the breathtaking view from the tower while she sewed or read, or just dreamed.

She’d been a dreamer, Marie, just like Guy.

Joan wasn’t a dreamer; she was a realist. She knew she’d committed an unforgivable sin and was more than ready to accept her punishment when the time came.

She’d given the rue to Kate, and then placed the vial by her bed just before she began to scream, having pretended to discover Kate’s body.

She’d killed Kate and the child, and she felt no remorse.

Furthermore, she’d thrown the child’s remains into the fire.

It didn’t deserve to be buried in consecrated ground.

It’d never been born, and never been baptized.

That child was a product of sin, an abomination in the eyes of God, and it had no right to be buried with the same respect Joan’s own children had gotten when she lost them .

She was guilty, but she couldn’t stand idly by as that harlot tore her boys apart and destroyed the good name of the family Joan had served since she was a child.

Oh, Marie had given birth to those boys, and not an easy labor among the three, but it was Joan who’d nursed them and loved them, and sat with them when their teeth came in or when they were ill.

It was Joan who had held them to her breast and whispered soothing words when they fell and scraped their knees, and Joan who had comforted them when their parents died.

It was also Joan who’d enveloped Guy in her love after Margaret died, and helped him become whole again.

There was nothing she could have done to save William—he’d died bravely on the battlefield—but she’d be damned if she allowed that sinful woman to come between her remaining children.

Hugh and Guy would grieve for Kate, each in his own way, but then they would move on, the way men did.

They would find other women to love, and have children to call their own, but most of all, they would still have each other, and there was no greater bond after that of mother and child than the bond between brothers.

They were de Rosels, and they would survive.

Joan finally rose to her feet, ready to return to the kitchen. She had to clean out what remained of the child’s bones before anyone noticed them in the ash bed and suspected they weren’t the bones of a pheasant.

“I did it for our boys, Marie,” she said to the ghost of the woman she’d once loved. “I did it for our children.”

*

Quinn’s psychic journey continues across continents and centuries. A mysterious Fabergé necklace and a hidden chamber in London hold deadly secrets in The Unseen.

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