"I want the truth. "The truth is, you already know. You've known since the moment you agreed to let Harrison purchase me. You understood this would end badly. But you let it happen anyway because you thought maybe, just maybe, my presence would distract from your own secrets, that people would be so focused on the mysterious, beautiful enslaved man that they wouldn't notice what you've been hiding.
Catherine's face went pale. "What are you talking about? "The letters, Mrs. Whitmore, the ones you've been burning in your bedroom fireplace, the correspondence with a certain gentleman in Charleston. Your husband thinks you burn old receipts and meaningless papers. He doesn't realize you've been conducting an affair for the past two years, an affair that's produced consequences you're desperately trying to conceal.
Catherine stepped backward as if struck. "How could you possibly know that? "I know many things. That's my purpose. Not to be owned, but to reveal, to bring hidden truths into light.
Your husband destroyed himself financially to possess me. But what he actually purchased was exposure for himself, for you, for everyone in this house who's been living behind carefully maintained lies. "You're saying you're here to destroy us deliberately. "I'm saying I'm here because your family needed destroying. You've built everything on foundations of theft and violence and lies.
The enslaved people who work this plantation, do you know how they were acquired? Your husband's father bought most of them from a trader who specialized in kidnapping free black people from northern cities. Twenty-seven of the 32 enslaved people on this property were born free, stolen from their families, falsely documented, sold into bondage that has no legal legitimacy. "That's not possible. My father-in-law was a respectable man.
"Respectability and monstrosity aren't mutually exclusive, Mrs. Whitmore. Many of history's greatest evils have been committed by respectable people who convinced themselves their actions were justified. Your family's respectability is built on bones. And now those bones are going to speak. Catherine fled from the garden, her heart hammering.
She found Harrison in his study already drinking, though it was barely noon. She tried to tell him what Josiah had said, but her husband dismissed it as the slave trying to manipulate her emotions. "He's property, Catherine. Property doesn't make threats or predictions. It serves, and he'll serve us beautifully once society sees what we've acquired.
But society was already seeing. Word of the $20,000 purchase had spread through Richmond like fire through dry grass, and the reaction was not admiration, but horror and mockery. Cartoons appeared in newspapers showing Harrison as a fool. Editorials questioned his sanity. Business associates who'd once courted Whitmore favor now avoided the family entirely.
The acquisition that was supposed to restore their reputation was destroying it far more effectively than bankruptcy alone could have managed. Three days after Josiah's arrival, the first death occurred. One of the enslaved field workers, a young man named Isaac, was found dead in his cabin with a severe wound to his neck. The injury suggested deliberate violence. But Isaac's cabin door had been locked from the inside.
The windows were too small for anyone to enter, and no weapon was found anywhere near the body. The local sheriff investigated perfunctorily. The death of a slave rarely warranted serious attention. He ruled it suicide despite the locked-room circumstances and the fact that no weapon was found. The other enslaved people knew better.
They whispered that Isaac had been talking about Josiah. Had been saying things about the beautiful newcomer that suggested he knew something dangerous. Now Isaac was dead and the message was clear. Some secrets demanded silence. Thomas tried to convince Harrison to sell Josiah immediately, cut their losses, accept whatever price they could get, and remove this cursed presence from their home.
But Harrison refused. He'd invested everything in this acquisition. Admitting it was a mistake would mean admitting he'd destroyed his family for nothing. His pride wouldn't allow that admission. Meanwhile, Daniel Preston was having his own crisis.
He'd returned home after losing the auction to find his wife Elizabeth waiting with bank statements and trust documents spread across their dining table. She knew what he'd tried to do. Knew he'd attempted to spend her inheritance on a slave without her permission. Her fury was incandescent. "You disgust me," she said, her voice shaking.
"I knew you participated in this evil system. I knew you owned human beings, but I thought you at least had limits. I thought there was some line you wouldn't cross. Apparently, I was wrong. "It would have been a gift," Daniel stammered.
"Something beautiful for our home. "A gift would be freeing the people you already own. A gift would be using my money to help people escape bondage rather than purchasing them deeper into it. This—what you tried to do—" "This is just evil justified by aesthetic appreciation. You wanted to own a human being because he was beautiful.
Do you understand how depraved that is? "Everyone here owns slaves, Elizabeth. It's the foundation of our economy. "Then your economy is built on hell, and I won't finance it another day. I'm leaving, Daniel.
I'm returning to Philadelphia and I'm taking every penny of my money with me. You can tell your family that their access to the Philadelphia capital is terminated permanently. She left that night taking documents that would effectively bankrupt the Preston family's Richmond operations. Daniel, desperate and humiliated, blamed Harrison Whitmore for creating the auction that had exposed his moral bankruptcy to his wife. He blamed Josiah for being so valuable that he'd been willing to betray his own principles to acquire him, and he began planning revenge against both.
But Daniel Preston wasn't the only person in Richmond planning violence, the quiet man from the auction, the one who'd called himself Graves, had not left the city. He'd taken rooms at a modest hotel, and begun conducting his own investigation into Josiah's origins and purpose. What he discovered troubled him deeply. Graves was not his real name. He was actually Thomas Crawford, a former slave catcher who'd retired after witnessing something in Mississippi that had broken his faith in his profession.
He'd seen a slave revolt put down with such savagery that even he, a man who'd made his living hunting human beings, couldn't stomach it. He'd walked away from the trade and spent the past 3 years trying to atone for his crimes through quiet work, helping runaways reach freedom in the north. But he'd heard about Josiah through his network of contacts. And something about the description had seemed familiar, too familiar. He'd come to Richmond, not to purchase the slave, but to confirm a suspicion that had been gnawing at him for weeks.
And the moment he saw Josiah in person, his suspicion was confirmed. Five years earlier, Crawford had been hired to track a runaway slave in South Carolina, a young woman who'd escaped from a Charleston plantation. He'd found her after three weeks of searching, cornered her in a barn outside Columbia. But before he could restrain her, she'd turned to him with eyes that held a peculiar color, a deep violet blue that seemed to glow in the dim light. And she'd spoken to him.
"You've destroyed families," she'd said calmly. "Separated mothers from children, returned human beings to torture and death. You've built your life on suffering. How do you sleep at night, Mr. Crawford? How do you live with what you've done?