Chapter Four
Later that summer…
Maisie was late.
Again.
Silk hissed at her sleeves, louder than it should have been and clashing with the muted rise and fall of voices drifting up from her father’s practice below.
She lingered at the looking glass, one hand pressing against her chest as if she might steady the thrum inside her.
It wasn’t the silly flutter she’d known earlier this year but deeper now, heavier and the kind that left no air between one pulse and the next.
Faivish’s kiss still burned at her mouth: the one from last night, after Father and Deena had gone to sleep. His promise had lingered there too—I’ll marry you as soon as your father allows. And they’d based everything on this hope.
But father dismissed them every time they’d broached the issue. Had something shifted in that low exchange with the Marquess—the conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear? Did Faivish even know what secrets her father kept folded away like dangerous letters?
The clock struck, brisk and cold. She closed the clasp of the pearls at her ears with fingers that wouldn’t stay steady. The mirror gave back a tidy girl, cheeks faintly flushed, hair smoothed into place. But that reflection told none of the story thrumming under her ribs.
Another chime. Now she was later than late.
Her palms prickled with damp as she reached for her shawl.
If only her mind would line itself in order like Father’s neat rows of labeled ledgers.
Instead, it circled back, again and again, to those words overheard in the kitchen—Hofst?tter.
Jewish trouble. Eleanor Spencer is dead.
What about Deena? The words that felt like stones she’d hidden in her bodice.
Something about that conversation, she suspected, was why Father didn’t give Faivish official permission to ask for her hand.
And yet, he treated Faivish like a son, as if he were family already.
She ran downstairs, slippers whispering on polished boards. The air shifted, sharp with antiseptic. And there it was—the sight she both longed for and dreaded.
The waiting room brimmed with young women. Ribbons at their sleeves, silk reticules clenched in pale hands, eyes bright and watchful.
He’s here.
Whispers fluttered like wings, handkerchiefs twisted, and fans tapped against gloved palms. All of them are waiting for the same person.
Maisie didn’t need to ask who.
Doctor in spe Faivish Blattner. Almost a doctor, already Father’s pride. Her love.
As always, the women followed him. They didn’t know the taste of him in the dark, or the way his breath had broken across her skin when he swore tomorrow would be theirs.
They hadn’t felt his hand steady her waist or the promise in his gaze.
Yet every hour that tomorrow slipped further away, Maisie feared Father had other plans—plans that might send him out of her reach.
Through the half-open door, she caught his profile: tall, shoulders squared from habit, his voice a quiet balm to some nervous patient. His hair caught the sun slanting through the window, casting a glow she resented the others seeing.
But then his eyes found hers. And in that look, there was nothing of a doctor, nothing of Father’s apprentice. It was the look of a man holding a secret. Their secret.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, the practice swelled like this—queues spilling into the street, chatter buzzing through the waiting room.
And still, amid all that noise, Faivish always found a way.
A glance that lingered too long. Fingers brushing hers when no one noticed.
Sparks she carried away like contraband.
Maisie twisted the fringe of her shawl tight around her fingers, watching as he coaxed a frightened boy with some quiet jest, calmed a man twice his size with nothing more than a hand at the shoulder.
She knew those hands in another way—the silent reassurance pressed into her skin when no one was watching.
Then suddenly his head turned. His gaze caught hers full on, direct as a struck match. His mouth quirked—just a sliver, enough to set warmth racing down her spine—before he vanished back through the door.
Too late for them, she thought with a glance at the women waiting. He is mine. And she was the only one who knew his laugh when it spilled out unguarded, bright and boyish, as if the world were kinder than it seemed.
The truth pressed at her ribs. Women could not be doctors.
Discovery meant marriage at once—something she wanted with an ache that left her breathless, but not if it cost him the future he’d worked for.
So she stayed at Father’s side, a nurse with her tray, her secrets tucked between teacups and polished mirrors.
Tea. That was her excuse to go back to him.
A few minutes later, she steadied the tray with both hands, jasmine scent curling upward.
The waiting women’s shawls brushed against her as she passed, eyes flicking with envy at her effortless entrance.
They didn’t know he had already chosen her.
That every time she set tea in his hand, she was not only serving, but claiming her place beside him.
The treatment room was bright with the smell of eucalyptus and lavender. Father glanced up, silver hair glinting under the lamplight, while a patient dabbed delicately at her lips.
Maisie set the tray aside. But her gaze went to Faivish, as it always did.
He dried his hands with calm care, the faint tug at his mouth betraying a warmth meant only for her.
The patient lingered, reluctant to leave. “And Dr. Blattner.”
Her father’s eyes flicked—Faivish, then her, then back again. The heft of it made her breath falter.
He knows. Or suspects.
I have to tell him—
Not now.
The patient lingered in the doorway, a woman of thirty or so, her smile just a little too eager. “And Dr. Blattner.”
Faivish inclined his head, that faint curl at his mouth betraying no more than polite acknowledgment. “Only in spe,” he said—soon to be. The title rolled easily from him now. His diploma was only ink and parchment away.
The woman’s gloved fingers reached for his. “Vienna is fortunate to have you. Such skilled hands.” Her gaze clung to him longer than courtesy allowed.
He touched her hand only briefly, bowing away like contact meant little. “You are kind, madam.” He used the same measured tone he usually did with everyone but her.
Maisie knew the difference. Knew it in the way his eyes, after that small exchange, lifted across the room until they caught hers.
Heat shot up her throat. That glance was not for the woman in the chair. It was for her alone. And in it lay everything unspoken—the brush of his lips in the alley, the promise of tomorrow, the secret that tied them together so tightly she could hardly breathe.
Her pulse stumbled. She willed her hands steady as she adjusted the tray on the side table. Steady, steady. She could not let the tremor show. Not here, not in front of Father.
“My dear.”
The sound of her father’s voice sliced the moment. She startled, turning toward him. He held out his empty teacup, his eyes gentler than his tone.
“Would you?”
The porcelain was harmless enough, but Maisie’s breath snagged when she saw the way Father’s gaze shifted. First to Faivish. Then back to her. A flicker of something unreadable passed across his face. Not anger, not yet. But knowing. Or suspecting.
She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. He knows. He must know.
Her fingers closed around the cup, her knuckles white against the handle. Words pressed at the back of her throat—I must tell him. I have to tell him about us so he hears it from me.
But not now. Time never seemed right.
Not with the patient still in the room. Not with Faivish standing close enough that she could feel the ponderousness of his silence.
So she lowered her head, took the cup, and busied herself with the simplicity of pouring tea—while the truth she longed to speak lodged like a stone inside.
Returning to her task, she poured the steaming brew into the waiting porcelain.
The air between the three of them felt almost too tight, as if every word, every glance, carried a second meaning.
The tension didn’t ease, though she felt Faivish’s presence behind her—close enough that the warmth of him brushed her back—as he moved to take the emptied tray.
Father smiled fondly at him, a rare light in his proud eyes. “The most talented student I’ve had in thirty years, and using porcelain for dental crowns instead of just teacups,” he declared, a touch of reverence slipping into his tone.
Soon, Maisie thought, Faivish would be even busier at the practice when he could restore a tooth with white porcelain instead of gold.
Patients were fond of the idea that their oral repairs would be undetectable.
It would be a medical marvel—her Faivish performing miracles in plain sight, as if it were nothing at all.
If only the university allowed Jewish students the same access to advanced techniques as their peers, instead of keeping such methods reserved for nobility—a truth everyone pretended not to notice, yet no one dared name aloud.
Maisie glanced at her father, reading the genuine pride etched into his expression.
Then, almost against her will, she looked at Faivish again.
His face betrayed no reaction to the compliment other than the polite inclination of his head.
But in that brief flick of his gaze toward her, she felt it—the quiet vow, the unspoken “I’m doing this for us. ”
Her heartbeat quickened.
The door clicked shut behind the departing patient, sealing them in an almost palpable silence.
Maisie smoothed the creases of her apron as if the gesture could settle the rising unease within her.
“The waiting room is crowded,” she said, looking at her father as she poured his tea.
“I don’t know if they’re here for their teeth—”