An Unexpected Sin by Sarah Ballance Page A

had a chance to see he was a good man. Perhaps only a few more days were needed, for he worked steadily and had in his short time accomplished a number of tasks that had previously languished. If her mother saw how hard Josiah worked—of how loyal he had remained all these years—she would surely feel differently.
    Anne straightened. Had she gone about this all wrong? Rather than keeping quiet about Josiah’s past, should she tell her mother? Or would doing so stir up too many memories? There was no clear answer, but the question followed her mercilessly.
    Until she overheard her parents talking late that night. She did not intend to listen, but her mother’s urgent tone caught Anne’s attention as she passed by their bedroom door. Once Anne realized they spoke of her, she stopped and listened in earnest.
    “She is of age,” came her mother’s voice through the door. “Her eye wanders. We need a good match to ensure she stays on the right path.”
    “Worry not,” said her father, sounding at ease. “She will marry well. We will see to her welfare.”
    “We cannot hope for such,” Susannah said. Anne could practically see her mother’s arms flung skyward with the proclamation. “She is a rogue child. She wanders the roads and pays no mind to her role. What respectable man would want for a wife who so callously runs about?”
    Anne bristled. No mind to her role . She tended her role just fine and did her chores without dispute. Just because she had an independent nature…
    “We will have little trouble finding her a suitable husband,” her father said.
    “The way she carries on?”
    “Worry not. There is a fine young man who has expressed interest in her just as she is.”
    Her father’s reassuring tone did little to ease Anne’s growing angst. With the help he needed around the inn, she did not expect he would rush to send her away. And she was barely old enough to marry. Yet her mother spoke as if she was in danger of leading a spinster’s life.
    If only they knew.
    “Who is he?” asked her mother. “What do you know of him? What are his lines?”
    Anne strained to hear the answer through the door.
    “Susannah,” her father said. “Do not worry yourself. Anne will be well taken care of. Have faith.”
    Anne stood a moment more, but no further sounds escaped to the corridor. From elsewhere in the inn, muffled snores cracked the silence, but her parents’ conversation had ceased. She wondered briefly if Josiah made such a racket in his sleep. She smiled, curious enough to consider a walk downstairs to where he slept.
    Dare she? She listened briefly at her parents’ closed door, but it revealed nothing but silence, hinting they had retired for the evening. Her heart raced. Josiah’s room was located just off the kitchen—a space she had visited often enough in the night. This should be no different.
    But it was—a fact she reveled in as she descended the stairs. Her heart beat unevenly, spreading warmth deep into her belly. Uneven sensations left her deliciously off balance, but her direction remained true.
    Josiah.
    Ever since he had returned to her life, Anne held an entirely new appreciation for Prudence’s ceaseless talk of the opposite sex. Her friend was always thick in the gossip, and as such, she served as a veritable catalog of who had been seen sneaking out to the barn with whom…and thusly made Anne privy to every detail. Salem Village’s population was small in number—a few hundred, perhaps—but even founded in Puritan faith it remained ripe with sin. Before Josiah had come back, Anne had not understood what would bring an unmarried couple to fornicate, though verily they did, for a surprising number were known to be with child before their weddings.
    She wondered no more.
    Now she craved the forbidden taste of his kisses. His work-roughened hands had merely grazed her skin, but the tenderness of his touch left her weak with want. New sensations lit fire to pieces of her now