Chapter Eight
Father had been at the university in the morning but he hadn’t told Maisie what the committee had decided. Nor what they’d done. He didn’t need to, she could see how bad it was in his expression.
Later in the afternoon, after the last patient left with a stiff bow, the practice sagged into quiet. The air still carried its mix of sharp clove oil and the faint bitterness of antiseptic, but without voices to cut through, the silence felt suspiciously as if walls were listening.
Maisie latched the door and turned back to the treatment chair.
Her cloth moved in practiced, even strokes across the leather, but every swish of damp linen seemed to echo.
No Faivish to murmur instructions. No steady rhythm of his hands setting instruments to order.
The room felt emptier for it—emptier than she could bear.
He hadn’t come. Not once.
And her father had not spoken his name.
She rinsed the cloth and worked faster, as though brisk movements alone might scrub away the dread rising in her chest. She wanted Faivish near, more than she’d ever dared put into words.
Not as her father’s pupil but as her husband and partner in life.
She wanted to assist him and care for him.
Her pulse jumped at the thought of mornings that might follow nights full of his kisses—perhaps more.
Heat rushed under her collar, and she pressed her palm to her brow, trying to smother the thought before it carried her away.
At the desk, her father sat too still. His eyes moved to the clock again, and again, and again. Normally he timed everything precisely—patients never waiting more than a heartbeat past the hour. But this was different. This was waiting. And his hands trembled worse than she had seen in weeks.
She noticed the rest too: the unnerving clarity of the desk. No stack of patient records, no half-finished sketch of a tooth, no pencil left to roll. Just the pen, perfectly aligned with the inkwell, as though the desk had been prepared for some solemn ritual.
“Father?” Her voice was careful, almost hushed. She dried her hands on her apron. “Are you expecting someone?”
His swallow was sharp, the line of his throat jerking. “Yes.”
The answer had barely settled when a knock rapped through the silence.
Maisie’s palm dampened on the knob. She opened the door and there he was—Faivish. Solemn, composed, his dark coat brushed clean of snow. His eyes caught hers, and she knew at once this wasn’t a visit for pleasantries or tea.
“Come in, Faivish,” Father said.
He stepped inside, ungloved, hat in hand. His boots left faint wet marks across the mat. Her father remained behind the desk, hands clasped tight as if they alone kept him steady.
“The university has decided.” His voice was taut, like wire about to snap. “You will graduate. But you may not walk in the ceremony. And you are to leave Vienna.”
The words hit her chest like a mallet striking stone.
If Faivish did not take his place on the dais, the Bruderschaft boys—Hofst?tter’s son among them—would rise instead. They would seize the honors he had earned. They would win.
“Vile opportunists,” she muttered, the words slipping past before she could stop them.
Both men looked at her. And in their eyes—for one fleeting moment—she saw not correction, not reprimand, but softness.
“Yes,” her father said quietly. “But that is the world we live in. And it is the world I would spare you—and Deena—because I cannot change what I will soon leave behind. The future belongs to you.”
The words landed in her chest like stones, heavy and final. She tried to breathe but could not seem to let the air out.
Faivish’s jaw tightened. His nod was slight, but resolute. “I understand.”
Her father’s gaze flicked briefly to her, then back to Faivish. “I believe you care for my daughter.”
Faivish did not hesitate. “I do.”
“Then here is my condition.” The professor’s voice softened, though the tonnage of it filled the room. “Go to India. Take the apprenticeship. Work. Learn. A year from now, if your feelings remain—and hers do as well—you may return and claim her hand. If your love is true, a year will prove it.”
Maisie swallowed hard, the cry rising in her throat. A year? A year was an ocean. She lifted her chin, tried to let her eyes thank him, tried to show gratitude, but inside she was screaming.
Faivish’s gaze met hers and held it. And in that look, she knew he heard her scream as if she had spoken aloud.
“I will go,” he said. His voice carried the solemnity of an oath. “And I will come back.”
Her father inclined his head, as if the matter had been sealed. “Then I expect to be here when you return.”
Maisie kept her face still, but her fists tightened against her skirts until her nails bit half-moons into her palms.
When Faivish bowed his head in thanks, it was not only to her father. It was to her.
*
From the dormitory window, Vienna’s night crept in on scraps of sound: carriage wheels grinding over cobblestones, the faint jangle of a harness bell, a burst of laughter from the beer hall, rough and sudden. Somewhere below, a cat yowled, then was shooed into silence.
Inside, the noises were smaller, lonelier—the groan of the water pipes, the steady tick of the wall clock that had marked out every day of his studies.
Faivish knelt beside his open trunk, folding shirts with deliberate care, smoothing each crease as though neatness might steady what felt dangerously close to unraveling.
Across the room, Alfie sprawled in the only chair, his bruised cheekbone catching the lamplight like a dark bloom.
“So it’s real then,” Alfie said at last. “We’re leaving on the morning carriage to the port? Before graduation.” His tone wasn’t surprised, only worn down, the ring of someone who’d braced for the blow. “Bloody unfair. I thought we had more time.”
Faivish’s hands didn’t pause, but his jaw tightened.
I thought so too.
“It’s the world,” he said, the words flat on his tongue. He could almost feel Maisie’s hand on his sleeve again, hear her whisper asking him not to go. But memory pressed back harder—his mother’s last warning: Keep your head low. Don’t waste yourself for justice. The bad men always prevail.
He’d believed she was wrong, once. Tonight, with Hofst?tter’s verdict still ringing in his ears, with Morgenschein’s trembling voice laying out conditions for Maisie’s hand, he feared she’d always been right.
Alfie leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, his bruised face lit sharp by the lamp.
“If they’re forcing you out, we make it count.
I’ve got the fare. Dawn, we take the coach to Trieste.
Ship across the Mediterranean, past Sicily, through the Red Sea.
Camels over Egypt. Then the Arabian Sea toward Calcutta. ”
Faivish let out a short huff—half laugh, half disbelief. “You’ve planned every mile.”
“Of course I have.” Alfie’s mouth tilted, but his gaze stayed earnest. “It’s the road to my apothecary. And to you coming back with more than a diploma. You’ll come back for her.”
Her.
Maisie.
Her name thrummed through him like a low chord.
He saw her as she’d been the night before—hair tumbling from its pins, eyes lit with stubborn faith in him.
He wanted her laughter in his home, her hand steadying his instruments, her breath warm in the quiet between one heartbeat and the next. He wanted her, everywhere, always.
Alfie’s voice cut in. “Why don’t you ask her to come with us?”
“Come with us?” Faivish blinked hard. “You know her father’s ill. And there’s Deena.” The thought twisted sharp inside him. Does Maisie even know how close he is to failing? How much is waiting to fall on her shoulders?
“Poor little thing,” Alfie said, his voice rough. “She needs someone.”
And Maisie… I thought that someone would be me.
Alfie sat back, a half-smile shadowing his bruises. “Then that’s the plan, just like the professor said. We go. We learn. We come back stronger. And next time…” His tone hardened. “Next time, we don’t just survive. We win.”
Faivish shut the trunk. The latch clicked with a finality that made his chest tighten. His palm rested there longer than it should have, as if holding the lid shut might keep him from losing the vision inside his head—Maisie, standing in a doorway, smiling at him as though he already belonged.
But instead of reaching for her, he dragged out the second trunk from beneath his bed and snapped it open.
I’m preparing for a journey I never wanted. And leaving behind the only one I do.