Still, I knew what the stack of sheets meant. “The Pellinghams must have people spying for them all over the city, the state, the South.” All of them reporting back, I figured. And, if all of them were working for powerful people like my Granny, the information they had was way valuable. Enough to get you elected and keep you elected. And who cared if a butler or a maid tattled? Especially when they had a record. In other words, they had all those poor people over a barrel.
But that didn’t explain my parent’s death. It didn’t explain Beau’s animosity. It didn’t explain why I was kept away for so long. All it told me was that we were up against a great pile of power.
Which, of course, made me want to topple that pile all the more.
Time was up, however. I returned the papers just as I’d f
