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  PRAISE FOR THE INNKEEPER’S DAUGHTER

  “More than a breathless romance, The Innkeeper’s Daughter is an intriguing mystery that will keep you riveted until the very end. Well-written and well-researched, the plot had more twists and turns than a mouse’s maze, but it was the cast of fascinating characters that drew me in, along with a romance that made me sigh and left me wanting more. I can’t say enough good things about this book. Read it. You won’t be disappointed.”

  –MaryLu Tyndall, award-winning author of the Legacy of the King’s Pirates series

  “Griep creates characters that haunt my dreams, even my waking moments. She is a master craftsman, creating characters that feel like living, breathing beings who deserve a happy ending.”

  –Elizabeth Ludwig, author of Tide and Tempest

  “A beautiful tale of God’s provision and grace in the middle of dire circumstances, woven through with a ribbon of romance. With the usual Griep mix of quirky characters, lyrical turns of phrase, heart-stopping adventure, and soul-gripping insight, this story will not disappoint!”

  –Shannon McNear, author of RITA® nominee Defending Truth, a novella from A Pioneer Christmas Collection

  “Michelle Griep populates her books with enticing characters, and The Innkeeper’s Daughter has some of her best. Johanna, beleaguered by debts and deadbeat lodgers like Nutbrown. Alex, an undercover Bow Street Runner, who is hunky and swoon-worthy. Throw them together with smugglers and you have the perfect read that should come with a warning: Will keep you up turning pages!”

  –Ane Mulligan, award-winning author of the Chapel Springs series

  “Once again Michelle Griep brings us a stirring Regency novel with just the right blend of suspense, romance, and redemption. Johanna’s desperate situation captured me from the opening scene, and I was equally intrigued by Alex’s mission to go undercover and capture a traitor to the Crown. Readers who are looking for an English historical romance with page-turning intrigue will enjoy The Innkeeper’s Daughter.”

  –Carrie Turansky, award-winning author of Across the Blue and Shine Like the Dawn

  “Every character in this romantic Regency suspense comes alive immediately upon introduction, drawing us into nineteenth-century England from the very first page. The well-crafted writing is a repast for the mind and spirit with sweet and savory turns of plot and phrases. The Innkeeper’s Daughter confirms what other history-loving readers and I already knew: Michelle Griep is a master of the ensemble cast.”

  –Sandra Byrd, author of A Lady in Disguise

  “The Innkeeper’s Daughter is a meticulously researched, can’t-turn-the-pages-fast-enough tale of well-written intrigue—and the love story … ah, the love story! You won’t want to miss Johanna and Alex’s complicated road to happiness, and revisiting the wonderful characters of Brentwood’s Ward is a delightful bonus. Michelle Griep is a gifted force in the world of cloak-and-dagger Regency romance.”

  –Erica Vetsch, award-winning author of My Heart Belongs in Fort Bliss, Texas

  “Full of intrigue and romance, The Innkeeper’s Daughter is a fresh and captivating Regency novel. With witty dialogue, colorful characters, and pulse-hammering suspense, Michelle Griep keeps the reader guessing until the very end.”

  –Sarah E. Ladd, bestselling author of A Stranger at Fellsworth

  © 2018 by Michelle Griep

  Print ISBN 978-1-68322-435-8

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-68322-437-2

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-68322-436-5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Kirk DouPonce, DogEared Design

  Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., 1810 Barbour Drive, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.shilohrunpress.com

  Our mission is to inspire the world with the life-changing message of the Bible.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  DEDICATION

  Jennifer Pérez Díaz, a beautiful friend and aspiring writer, and to all the other hopeful novelists out there yearning to be published.

  Keep writing—your day will come.

  And as always, to the Keeper of my soul.

  I shall keep believing—for my day will come, as it will for us all.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dover, England, 1808

  Numbers would be the death of Johanna Langley.

  Three hours of sleep after a night of endless—or more like hopeless—bookkeeping. Two days to pay the miller before he cut off their flour supply. And only one week remained until the Blue Hedge Inn would be forced to close its doors forever.

  Numbers, indeed. Horrid little things.

  A frown etched deep into Johanna’s face as she descended the last stair into the taproom. Stifling a yawn, she scanned the inn’s public room, counting on collaring their lone boarder, Lucius Nutbrown. His payment would at least stave off the miller. Six empty tables and twelve unoccupied benches stared back. Must all the odds be stacked against her?

  To her right, through the kitchen door, an ear-shattering crash assaulted the silence, followed by a mournful “Oh no!”

  Johanna dashed toward the sound, heart pounding. Dear God, not another accident!

  She sailed through the door and skidded to a stop just before her skirt hem swished into a pool of navy beans and water. Across from her, Mam eyed the flagstone floor, one hand pressed against her mouth, the other holding the table edge.

  Johanna sidestepped the mess. “You all right, Mam?”

  Smoothing her palms along her apron, her mother nodded. “Aye. That crock were a mite heavier than I credited.”

  “As long as you’re not hurt. You’re not, are you?” She studied her mother’s face for a giveaway twitch in her poor eye. Unlike her father—God rest his soul—her mother would make a lacking card shark.

  “I’m fine. Truly.” A weak smile lifted the right side of Mam’s mouth.

  With no accompanying twitch.

  Johanna let out a breath and grabbed a broom from the corner. First, she’d tackle scooping up the beans and earthenware shards, then mop the water.

  “Where is Cook?” Johanna asked while she worked. “Why did you not let her carry such a load?”

  “Ana’s gone, child. I let her go this morning.
”

  The words were as vexing a sound as the bits of stoneware scraping across the floor. Though her mother’s declaration was not a surprise, that didn’t make it any easier to accept. A sigh welled in her throat. She swept it down with as much force as she wielded on the broom. Sighing, wishing, hoping … none of it would bring Ana back.

  She reached for the dustpan. “I suppose we’ll have to forego the plum pudding this year then, too, eh?”

  “Pish! Oak Apple Day without plum pudding?” Mam snatched the dustpan from her hands, then bent in front of the crockery pile. “You might as well hang a CLOSED shingle on the front door right now. What’s next … leaving off the garland and missing the prayer service as well?”

  “Of course not.” Setting the broom aside, Johanna grabbed Mam’s hands in both of hers and pulled her to her feet. “God’s seen us through worse, has He not?”

  “Aye, child. That He has.” For an instant, the lines on her mother’s face softened, then just as quickly, reknit themselves into knots. “Still—”

  “No still about it. If we fail to trust in His provision, what kind of faith is that?”

  “Aah, my sweet girl … you are a rare one, you are.”

  The look of love shining in Mam’s good eye squeezed Jo’s heart. She’d smile, if she could remember how, but she didn’t have to. Boyish laughter from outside the kitchen window cut into the tender moment.

  Thomas!

  Johanna flew out the back door and raced around the corner of the inn. Boys scattered like startled chickens, leaving only one to face her in the settling dust.

  Folding her arms, she tried to remember that Thomas’s wide eyes and spray of freckles made him appear more innocent than he really was.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “You should’ve been down to the docks long ago. If Mr. Baggett or the Peacock’s Inn boy beat you to it, and we miss out on new guests—”

  “Aww, Jo.” His toe scuffed a circle in the dirt. “You know I’m faster ’an them. ’Sides, the ferry’s not due in for at least another hour.”

  “Even so, if you’re not the first to persuade those arrivals to stay at our inn, I fear we won’t …” She paused and craned her neck one way then another to see behind the boy’s back. Her brother shifted with her movement—a crazy dance, and a guilty one at that. “What are you hiding? Let’s see those hands.”

  His shoulders stiffened. Times like this broke her heart afresh with longing for her father. As much as she needed him, how much more did the young boy in front of her?

  She popped her hands onto her hips and stared him down. “Now, young man.”

  A sigh lifted his chest. Slowly—any slower and she’d wonder if it physically pained him—one arm stretched out, then the other. When his fingers unfolded, crude wooden dice and several coins sat atop his palms.

  “Thomas Elliot Langley!”

  “Well I won, din’t I?” He cocked his head at a rakish angle, his freckles riding the crest of a wicked smirk. “And against Wiley Hawk and his band, no less. Pretty good, eh Sis?”

  “You were gambling?” The word filled her mouth like a rancid bit of meat. Sickened, she pressed a hand to her stomach. “Oh, Thomas, how could you? You, of all people, know the evils of such a pastime.”

  “We were just playing. That’s not gambling.” A scowl darkened his face, matching the low-lying blanket of grey clouds overhead. “It’s fun. Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

  “What I know is that gamblers are never to be trusted. And worse, you lied about it. Is that the sort of reputation you want spread from one end of Dover to the other? Thomas Langley, the liar? What will Mam say? What do you think this will do to her?”

  His toe scrubbed the dirt once again. What had been a scowl morphed into a grimace. “Don’t tell Mam, Jo. Please don’t.”

  Was that glistening in his eyes authentic? Hard to say—and even harder to remain cross with his quivering lip and thin shoulders slumping like an old man’s.

  “Very well.” She stretched out her palm. “Hand over that ill-gotten gain, and we’ll keep this between ourselves.”

  With a sly grin, he sprinted off, bits of gravel spraying up from his feet. As he raced, he yelled over his shoulder, “Sorry, Jo! I’ve a ferry to meet.”

  Picking up her skirts, she dashed after him, then lessened her pace as she neared the main road. What would people think of her, chasing her scamp of a brother? She’d never catch him anyway. Oh, what a day this was turning out to be.

  She slowed, then stopped, her eyes narrowing. Was that a flash of yellow-stockinged legs dangling over the inn’s front-door awning? She flattened against the wall and watched.

  A loosened shingle smacked onto the ground ahead of her, followed by the thunk of two feet. So that’s how Lucius Nutbrown snuck in and out without her knowing.

  Girding herself mentally for a conversation that was sure to be ridiculous, Johanna pushed from the wall. “Mr. Nutbrown, a word, if you please.”

  For an instant, his body stiffened into a ramrod. Then he turned, the creases around his mouth settling into a smug line. For a man so lean, how he managed to gather such extra skin on his face was a wonder. When he reached into an inner pocket of his dress coat, Johanna rolled her eyes. Indeed. This would be ridiculous.

  Nutbrown’s hand emerged, covered with a raggedy court-jester puppet, which he promptly held out front and center. “Sorry, Miss Langley.” The puppet’s head bobbed side to side, the man’s falsetto voice as crazed as the movement. “Mr. Nutbrown is late to an appointment. He shall attend you later this evening. Good day.”

  Nutbrown pivoted, the tails of his coat swinging wide. Did he seriously think she’d let him off that easily?

  Heedless of who might be watching, she darted ahead and stopped directly in his path. “I’m afraid not, sir. This cannot wait.”

  His brows pulled together, drawing a dark streak above his eyes, yet he shoved the jester forward. “Very well, miss. But make it quick.”

  “Please, put away your puppet, sir. It gains you nothing.” She extended her hand. “Pay up your room and board for the past fortnight, and I shall have nothing more to say.”

  The jester’s head plummeted, his plaster nose pecking her palm.

  She yanked back her hand. “Mr. Nutbrown! Really! I should hate to bring the magistrate in on this, but if I must—”

  “No.” Nutbrown’s hands shot up as if she’d aimed a Brown Bess at his chest, the crazy puppet waving like a banner overhead. In three long-legged strides, he sidestepped her, lowering the puppet out at arm’s length. “By week’s end, Miss Langley, you shall be paid in full. You have Mr. Nutbrown’s word on it.”

  The puppet disappeared into his coat, and Nutbrown scurried down the street.

  Wonderful. The word of a jester made of cloth and papier-mâché, and the clown who wore it upon his hand. Yet he was their sole source of income unless she could pry those coins from Thomas’s fingers, which wasn’t likely. Bending, she gathered up the dry-rotted chunks of broken shingle and frowned. Her world was falling apart as tangibly as the inn—the place she loved most. The home she and Thomas and Mam must leave if they didn’t come up with the rent payment by the end of next month.

  Holding tightly to the shingle remnant, she closed her eyes. At the moment, her faith felt as crumbly as the wood—which was always the best time to pray.

  “Please God, provide a way. Fill the inn … and soon.”

  London

  Knuckles hovering to strike, Officer Alexander Moore slid his gaze once more to the left. It paid to think before pounding away, be it in a street brawl or—as in this case—on a door. A tarnished brass relief of the number seven hung at an angle, as if no one had given the slightest thought before nailing up the house number. Considering the man who supposedly lived here, the haphazard detail stayed his hand a second more. Had he written down the magistrate’s address incorrectly?

  Only one way to find out.

  He pou
nded thrice, then stepped back, ready for anything. Behind him, hackney wheels ground over cobbles, grating a layer off his already thin nerves. Magistrate Ford never—ever—invited guests over for dinner. So why him? Why now?

  Hinges screeched an angry welcome as the door opened. Lantern light spilled over the pinched face of a tall man shrouded in a dark dress coat, dark waistcoat, and darker pants. Rounding out the theme was a single-looped cravat, black as a crypt, choking the fellow’s neck. A ghoul could not have been garbed more effectively. The man didn’t say a thing, but even without words, Alex got the distinct impression he read, condensed, and filed away every possible facet of him in a glance—from shoe size to propensity for warmed sherry.

  And Alex didn’t like it one bit. That kind of intelligence gathering was supposed to be his specialty.

  “My apologies. I must have the wrong address.” Alex nodded a valediction, careful to keep a wary eye on the figure from the dead. “Good evening.”

  “Step this way, Officer Moore.” The fellow set off without looking to see that Alex complied, nor even that the door was shut or locked. The magistrate would never abide such ineptitude down at Bow Street. Surely this was a ploy, or perhaps some kind of test of his wit.

  Aah. A test? A slow smile lifted half his mouth.

  With a grip on the hilt of his dagger, he unsheathed the blade and withdrew it from inside his great coat. Crossing the threshold, he left the door wide should a quick escape become necessary and trailed the disappearing lantern down a hall as lean as the man he followed.

  At the end of the corridor, the grim reaper tapped twice on a closed door, then pushed it open without waiting for a response. The brilliance of the room reached out and pulled Alex forward. He entered a grand dining hall, incongruous in size and opulence with the street view of the ramshackle building. Crystal wall sconces and an overhead chandelier glittered light from one mirrored panel to another. A thick Turkish rug sank beneath his steps. The place was fit to house a peer of the realm, not a law keeper who served out gritty justice to the malefactors of London.