Page 38 of Bound By her Earl

Ever since her sudden plunge into scandal and subsequent engagement, Emily had been avoiding her friends just thetiniestbit. If they had enjoyed teasing her back when she’d just been arguing with the Earl, how would they react now that she’d been caught kissing the man?

Emily was not prepared to find out.

With the letters, however, she held the power to distract them from a matter even as dramatic as Emily’s incipient marriage.

“I don’t…” Frances began, trailing off as she read through one of the documents again. “It doesn’t makesense.”

Emily rubbed the back of her neck tiredly. They’d been too long hunched over the pile of documents, trying to puzzle out their meaning. Only a few were dated, meaning that they’d had to sift through them like ancient Romans panning for gold.

“Well,” she offered, knowing it would not help the confused furrow of Frances’ brow, “it does make asortof sense. The letters do on their own, I mean. It’s just the other things—” She waved her hands to show the expansive, messy nature of these ‘other things.’ “—that make it all more confounding.”

Frances frowned ferociously.

“I abhor this,” she said.

Which, honestly, did a fine job of summing up what they had learned.

The letters between the Dowager Countess of Moore and Theodore Dowling had not been tender love notes exchanged between paramours. Instead, viewed together, they revealed two indisputable truths.

One, the Dowager Countess had been blackmailing Dowling.

Two, Grace had not been the first person Dowling had killed.

There were other questions left unanswered. They did not know how many people Dowling had killed, nor why he’d done so. Though the mentions of money suggested that he hadn’t killed on his own behalf but because others had paid him.

Frances was clearly performing some quick mental calculations. Because she was so shy, Frances hid her intelligence from most of the world. In front of her close friends, however, she was whip-smart and often sharp-tongued.

“I’m not sure the lettersdomake sense on their own,” she said slowly. “I mean—yes, in a way they do. Dowling was a killer. An established one. But a man who could commit a crime like murder multiple times without getting caught… Why would a man like that turn to a crime of passion?”

Emily frowned. She didn’t follow. “Because he was a killer,” she said. “He’d killed before, and so he killed again.” The words came out like a question.

Frances shook her head sharply. “No, it’s different. Killing for someone else—that’s cold. Mercenary. He didn’t love or hate his other victims—he did it for the money. But Grace…” She looked at Diana, who was gazing off to one side. “He did that because he was obsessed with her.”

Diana didn’t respond.

Frances turned back to Emily, a somber expression on her face.

“Or maybe he wasn’t,” she said.

Emily worried that shewasstarting to understand now. She didn’t want to understand.

“What would that mean?” she asked quietly.

Frances sucked in a slow breath then let it out.

“It would mean,” she said decisively, “that someone paid him to kill Grace, too.”

“But why?” Emily asked, her voice cracking on the last word. Frances merely shook her head, her eyes looking wet.

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t. There wasno reasonfor anyone to want to harm Grace. She’d been a bit of a flirt, it was true, but she’d never led suitors on nor been cruel to any of them, not enough for them to want tomurder her. Emily had understood in an oblique, horrible way, the idea of a crime of passion. Grace had been beautiful, desirable, wonderful—and who could predict the mind of a madman? Who knew why a lunatic like Dowling had behaved as he had?

Except perhaps Dowling wasn’t a lunatic at all. Perhaps he had killed Grace because someone else had coldly and knowinglypaidhim to do so.

But who? Why?

It didn’t make any sense.

Emily looked over at Diana, who had been uncharacteristically quiet during the last several minutes. Her friend was pale, her jaw clenched hard enough that it had to hurt.

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