“Then why did you come here?” I asked.

It was the question the cold part of me most needed answered.

In my world, no one does anything without a reason, and the reasons are almost always money or power or revenge.

A secret daughter walking into the home of the legitimate family, taking a servant’s job under the agency’s referral rather than announcing herself — that was the behavior of someone running a long and patient game, and I had survived a long time by assuming the worst of patient people.

“I didn’t come for his money,” Juliet said, and she said it without heat, as though she had expected the question and forgiven me for it in advance.