From Barbara Russell, a delightfully witty, slow-burn, spicy paranormal romance-slash mystery set in Victorian London…
While other twenty-seven-year-old, middle-class women think about babies and attending dinner parties, Hazel finds herself unmarried and unemployed. The stuffy barons of the Royal Archaeological Society don’t believe a woman can be an archaeologist, so they gave her the sack.
Well, so having slapped the head of the society when he groped her breasts might have something to do with losing her job. But now, Hazel has bills to pay, so she accepts a position as a dealer in ancient artefacts. It’d be her dream job except… her new employer, Tyon Sancerre, has more secrets than an Egyptian tomb and is probably involved with the Whitechapel mob. When he says he needs her to find his long-lost fellow crusader knights, she thinks he’s mad—rich and handsome, but still mad.
Tyon is a sin-eater—a human turned into an immortal to clean people’s souls of their sins. After he and the other sin-eaters—the knights of the White Blade—are cursed, they are separated and scattered around the world. Alone, the sin-eaters don’t hold much power, and with their enemies—the sin-breathers—multiplying and causing wars and famine, the only way Tyon has to find his brothers is through a relic Hazel worked with at the museum.
It’s all poppycock, that’s what Hazel says.
But when sin-breathers attack, a ghost appears to her, and Hazel witnesses wounds healing themselves, and wonders if her beliefs need to be reconsidered.
The worst thing? She’s falling in love with an immortal, cranky, too-many-centuries-year-old white knight.
