You're the Earl That I Want by Kelly Bowen

Author:Kelly Bowen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Heath and Joss finally extricated themselves from the warmth of Alina’s tiny home, finding themselves once again in the narrow streets. The clouds had thickened, threatening more snow or sleet, and the wind had picked up, whistling eerily. Joss hurried ahead of Heath, anxious in equal measure to be out of the wind and to be out of the lane.

And anxious to avoid any other questions that no longer seemed to have simple answers. When it came to matters of the heart, Heath had this horrible habit of making the careful logic she had constructed over the years utterly illogical.

“When did you live in Moldavia?” His inquiry came from behind her, muffled by the collar of his coat and more than a little resigned.

“I didn’t,” Joss told him, tucking her chin into her scarf, relieved to be able to provide an easy answer to an easy question. “But one of the Marquess of Hastings’s servants was from there. I asked her to teach me her language. She was only too happy to comply. Like Alina, she missed home terribly, and being able to communicate easily with someone helped. She told me a great deal about her home and its customs and its people.”

A gust of wind nearly tore the last words away and set a battered sign dancing on its chains above a doorway. Joss watched as it twisted in the wind, the words Four Crows Apothecary faded and barely legible. Someone had, more recently, painted four birds on the bottom of the sign, but they looked more like four chickens than four crows. Joss smiled inwardly. Her mother would have found that amusing. And Joss could only imagine what type of medicines might be found in the Four Crows Apothecary. She was quite certain each elixir would be comprised of four parts gin—

She stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. Heath, who had been hunched into his coat, walked squarely into the back of her, catching her at the last minute and managing to right the both of them.

“Bloody hell, Joss,” he complained. “What are you doing?”

“Four,” she whispered, her mind racing frantically.

“I beg your pardon?” Heath was looking at her with concern.

“There were four of them,” she breathed. “Four.”

That was it. The missing piece. She’d missed it because, in the last set of letters, there had been only three. One each to Smythe, Villeneuve, and Adam. There hadn’t been one addressed to Arthur Williamson.

Heath was watching her warily. “That look on your face scares the wits out of me. Four of what?”

“The letters were sent in groups of four. To four different men. Even the very early ones. That is the key. They can only be decoded if all four letters are present. I treated each document as an individual entity.” She was aware she was talking too fast and pressed her hands to her cheeks as if that could slow the tumult of babble. “Four very different men who found themselves arrested, all on the same day, all under questionable circumstances.

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