Chapter 4 - THE PRICE OF SILK
The flame of the center candle sputtered, drowning in a pool of hot wax.
Theodore Hawthorne’s fork clattered onto his porcelain plate, the sharp sound echoing like a pistol shot in the grand dining room. He looked from the dark curl resting on the table to his daughter’s pale, frozen face, and then to Lucas Vance.
"Lucas," Theodore began, his voice strained, adopting the soothing tone he used with difficult bank creditors. "Surely there has been an exaggeration. Clarissa is high-spirited. She has high standards for the household, particularly with my mother arriving from Boston this weekend. Perhaps her discipline was... unconventional, but she is the mistress of this house."
"She is not the mistress of anything," Lucas said.
He leaned back in his chair, folding his scarred hands over his lap.
"Clarissa believes this house belongs to you, Theodore. She believes your name on the gate protects her from the law. But you and I both know the real state of Hawthorne Maritime."
Clarissa found her voice, shrill and trembling with aristocratic venom. "How dare you speak to my father that way in his own home! You are an outsider, Lucas Vance! A waterfront upstart who made his money on scrap iron and coal barges! My grandfather founded this city's shipping board while your people were digging ditches!"
"Your grandfather was a smuggler who died in debt to the Dutch-American syndicate," Lucas said, his tone conversational, devoid of anger, which made it infinitely more devastating. "And your father has spent the last eight years keeping this estate afloat by mortgaging his berths to my holding company."
Theodore’s breath caught. He reached for his water goblet, his hand shaking so violently that the crystal chimed against the marble coaster. "Lucas... we agreed to keep business out of the private quarters."
"We had an agreement, Theodore. It was predicated on your ability to maintain order." Lucas’s eyes flicked to Nadia, who remained standing beside the sideboard, holding the heavy silver tureen, her hands steady despite the storm raging across the table. "You told me you ran an honorable house. You told me the people under your roof were treated with dignity."
"She is a maid!" Clarissa shrieked, standing up so violently that her chair tipped backward, crashing onto the hardwood floor. "She is a servant who earns eight dollars a week! You are humiliating me—in front of my father, in front of the help—over a handful of dead hair!"
"Pick up the chair," Lucas said.
Clarissa blinked, stunned. "What?"
"Pick up the chair, Clarissa."
"I will do no such thing!"
"Then I will call the note on Berth Nine," Lucas replied softly. "Tonight. Before the midnight tide."
Theodore vaulted out of his seat, his face turning the color of an overripe plum. "Lucas, no! Berth Nine holds the entire transatlantic cargo from Liverpool! If you seize that terminal, the insurance underwriters will pull our credit by morning! We’ll be wiped out!"
"Then tell your daughter to pick up the chair," Lucas repeated.
The silence returned, thick and suffocating.
Clarissa looked at her father, her eyes wide, begging for intervention. But Theodore Hawthorne would not meet her gaze. The proud titan of High Street stood hunched beside his plate, staring at his napkin like a beaten cur.
Tears of pure, humiliated rage spilled down Clarissa’s cheeks, cutting black tracks through her powder. With trembling hands, her silk skirts rustling against the table, she walked around the overturned mahogany chair, knelt onto the rug, and hauled it upright.
The thud of the chair legs hitting the floor sounded like a tomb closing.
"Now," Lucas said, standing up and buttoning his jacket. "Clear the table, Nadia."
Nadia stepped forward. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her movements were smooth and practiced. She set the tureen down, lifted Theodore’s untouched plate, and reached for the linen handkerchief containing her hair.
Lucas’s hand covered hers.
His skin was rough, warm, and broad against her knuckles. He did not pull the handkerchief away. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around hers, lifting her hand—and the severed curl—away from the table.
"Leave the silver," Lucas told her, his voice softening by a fraction. "You are done serving this family."
"Lucas, please," Theodore begged, stepping around the table with his hands outstretched. "We can settle this. I will dismiss the other two maids. I will give Nadia a financial settlement—ten thousand dollars! Twenty thousand! Just sign the extension on Berth Nine!"
Lucas turned toward the elder Hawthorne, his slate-gray eyes flat and lifeless.
"Twenty years ago, Theodore, a fire broke out in the Pell Street garment lofts. Forty-two women died behind locked fire doors because the landlord refused to install an exterior iron escape. Do you remember what the court settlement was for those families?"
Theodore’s face went completely slack. The color did not just drain from his skin; it vanished entirely, leaving him the color of tallow.
"That was... that was twenty years ago," Theodore whispered. "An industrial accident. The insurance covered—"
"The court awarded forty dollars per family," Lucas interrupted. "And the landlord who pocketed the insurance payout and transferred the property to a shell company in Delaware was a young councilman named Theodore Hawthorne."
Nadia gasped, her head snapping toward Theodore.
The room seemed to tilt. For seven years, she had polished the silver in this house, dusted the ancestral portraits, ironed the lace curtains, believing she was merely an unlucky orphan of the industrial slums. She had watched Theodore Hawthorne sip brandy by the hearth, listening to him complain about the lower classes, never dreaming that the roof over her head was built with the ashes of her mother’s workshop.
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Lucas turned to Nadia, his grip on her hand firm and steady.
"Your mother was Roseanna Vance," Lucas said, his eyes holding hers with unyielding truth. "My father’s sister. You are not a servant in this house, Nadia. You are the rightful owner of every timber, every brick, and every silver spoon on this table."
