**THE BRAZEN SERIES is part of the GOLDEN UNIVERSE**
♦YOU MUST HAVE READ BOOK ONE, A BRAZEN MAIDEN, TO READ THIS SEQUEL!♦
♦♦It is ALSO recommended that you read THE GOLDEN GIRL/DUCHESS/PRINCESS & QUEEN to better understand events in this novel, as...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
♪ I'll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies Yeah, awesome right? ♪ {Lorde—Homemade Dynamite} EXPLICIT WARNING—for the song
How she kept her eyelids sealed for more than an hour, Harriet didn't know. And how her nightmares didn't consume her whole, she'd never understand.
When she woke, the sun didn't soothe her in its embrace; it hurt her. It brought back the horrid memory of what she'd discovered the night before, blinding and flashing before her like lightning.
Sir Eugene Thatcher employed slaves in his basement.
It was enough to inherit a corrupt business that traded in overpriced goods and extorted money from innocent inhabitants; but slavery was another matter altogether. Though not abolished in Europe, Totresia had banned slavery during King Edouard's rule. And King Antoine was firmly opposed to it, too.
If only Harriet had waited to send the laundry list of misdeeds to the King. Something like this would have had the jailers chopping Eugene's head off in a matter of minutes, and everyone would pay to see that spectacle.
More so when word gets out he smuggled these slaves from the colonies.
Those children's faces were engraved in Harriet's mind. Their sad eyes, their sullen, scarred skin, their tiny, malnourished frames, the rags their employer dared call clothing. What had Mrs. Banks done with them? What would Harriet do with them?
After dressing and dragging herself to her office, she sank in her chair and fought to stay awake. Every time she closed her eyes, those kids' innocent expressions plagued her. The vision of them hard at work, without a clue their captor had been arrested, twisted her stomach into tight knots. Their shock and awe at seeing her, the new lady of the house, completely unaware of their existence.
A knock on the door made her realize she'd been crying, so she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. "Come in," she said, spinning the chair around to face the window, to let the sun dry her tears.
"Miss?" Sir Fletcher's familiar friendly tone almost tugged her mouth into a smile. She flipped back to the desk as he entered, garbed in gray breeches and coat, with a lavender undershirt that brought out the hazel in his eyes. "Are we disturbing you?"
The correct answer was yes, and yet the sight of Jacob always seemed to warm her insides. Even now, depressed and despaired as she was. "No, of course not."
The second person to enter the room stirred and drowned the slow fire burning in her core. "We apologize for not making an appointment," said Sir Newton, reds and blues adorning his figure.
Harriet had spent little time looking at him, but noticed now that he had the airs of a French general, like those she'd seen in portraits and drawings at the Academy. A tricorn hat in his hand, a silk sash slashed across his chest, covered in brooches and medals. A stiff posture and lips so thin they nearly molded into his face. As Eugene's chief advisor, why did he have so many decorations, and who accorded them to him?
