Peggy Stewart at School

Peggy Stewart is fifteen, daughter of a naval officer, and she's spent her life at Severndale, her family's ancestral estate in Maryland, surrounded by servants who have known her since birth and old traditions that feel as permanent as the oaks. Then her aunt arrives. Mrs. Peyton Stewart comes with expectations and authority, and suddenly the serene household feels smaller, the old ways suddenly contested. Peggy watches the comfortable rhythms of her life grow strained - her relationships with family, with the servants who raised her, with her own sense of belonging. She begins to feel the weight of responsibilities she never asked for, the uncomfortable burden of being mistress of a house that no longer feels entirely hers. This is a story about the small, private griefs of growing up: the moment you realize the world you knew is shifting beneath your feet, and you're expected to adapt without complaint.