The Girl with the Windup Heart

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There was a most villainous killer on the loose. For weeks the nobility of Great Britain had been terrified—particularly the gentlemen. More than usual had fled to the country to their family homes, and those who hadn’t family seats had gone with those who had to hunt and have lavish parties. They thought they were safe away from London, but they weren’t. There’d been three murders outside of the city over the past month—two in Derbyshire, and one in Leicestershire. All three had happened at house parties where the guest lists contained almost exactly the same names. Two more deaths had happened in London, also at parties.

The victims were all men and they had all been burned to death. From the inside. That fact made the murders odd enough that Her Majesty Queen Victoria had requested that Griffin King, Duke of Greythorne, investigate. The only clue Griffin had to go on were two loose pearls found at the scene of one of the Derbyshire murders. Based on that scant evidence, the press had decided the killer was a woman, and dubbed her “Lady Ash” because ash was exactly that to which her victims were reduced.

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