“Let her rot in there!” thundered Mr. Hawthorne, his voice echoing through the grand but joyless hall. “She’ll get no mercy from me! How dare she bring shame beneath my roof—opening her filthy legs to a house-servant like some gutter wench! You will not go to her, do you hear me? Let the bastard die with her!”

Mrs. Hawthorne stumbled back at his fury, tears streaking her pale cheeks. “But she is your daughter!” she cried, the words breaking from her like glass shattering.

Mr. Hawthorne turned upon her with a look of pure disdain. A moment later, the sound of his palm struck her face—a hard, controlled blow that sent her staggering into the edge of a table.

“I said, let her rot,” he hissed, and though his voice lowered, it carried more menace than before.

He loomed there, broad-shouldered and severe, a man carved from iron and principle. Jonathan Hawthorne had built his wealth upon shipping and trade, yet wealth had turned to poison in his soul. He believed in order, reputation, and obedience—in that order precisely. To him, women were creatures of emotion and folly, incapable of reason; men were the architects of destiny. You—the boy he had adopted at twelve—had become his experiment in perfect obedience.

He never struck you. He seldom even raised his tone at you.

You said nothing as he turned his wrath upon your adoptive mother. You only kept filling the sack with bread and fruit, your hands deft but trembling.

Mrs. Hawthorne, poor thing—once Caroline Fairmont—had been the daughter of a scholar, married off for her beauty rather than her will. She remained the quiet spirit of the house, fluttering between her husband’s storms. Yet tonight, she would become your accomplice.

For in the room above, poor Beatrice—her eldest—lay alone in disgrace.

Beatrice had inherited her father’s pride but none of his control. Once the belle of the household, admired for her wit and beauty, she had fallen in love with a stable boy—Jacob, a gentle, taciturn creature with rough hands and a tender tongue. When her father discovered her condition, he dismissed the boy and locked her away, denying her doctor

“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Hawthorne had whispered to you the night before, when she found you standing in the moonlight outside your chamber, “I will provoke him. He cannot abide disrespect—so I shall give him cause to rage at me. While he’s occupied, you bring food and medicine to Beatrice. Do you understand?”

You had wanted to object. You had seen what one of his tempers could cost her—a bruise, a broken rib, a sleepless night staring at her reflection in silence—but she only smiled faintly and touched your cheek.

So now you moved like a shadow through the dim corridors,

As you rounded the corner near the servants’ stairs, a figure emerged from the gloom—Margaret.

Margaret Hawthorne was seventeen, and of all the daughters, she was the one most like her mother in kindness but like her father in hunger. She longed for approval—any approval—and would twist herself into terrible shapes to earn it.

“You promised you’d talk with me,” she said now, her tone quivering with something too desperate for her age.

You froze. The hidden bundle was pressed beneath your coat. If she saw it, she would assume the worst—or worse still, tell Father.

“We shall speak tonight, Margaret,” you said softly, forcing calm into your voice. It was a lie, and both of you knew it, but she chose to believe it. She stepped closer and hugged you—a fleeting, fragile thing that smelled of rosewater and fear. When she let go, you saw the bruises beneath her sleeve.

When she disappeared into the darkness, you ascended the stairs to the west wing, where Beatrice’s door waited behind lock.

The room smelled of sickness and sweat. The curtains were drawn tight, the air heavy. She lay upon the bed, hair matted, skin ashen, her lips cracked from fever. For a long moment, she did not recognize you. Then her eyes flickered.

“You,” she rasped, her voice weak but edged with scorn. “Father’s precious son. His perfect heir.”