It never occurred to her that a man might have vastly more than he displayed, might value substance over show, might be quietly powerful precisely because he felt no need to perform his power for the Victorias of the world.

That possibility lay entirely outside her way of seeing.

And so the surface fooled her, as it always fools those who look at nothing else, and she mocked a titan believing him a nobody, and threw wine on the wife of the one man in the city most able to answer it.

The Caldwells could see.

It had simply never taught them to look.

That was the difference between them and Grace, and it was the difference that undid them.