Chapter Thirteen
On an ordinary afternoon on Harley Street, Felix was sick of the hopelessness of finding Maisie.
Plus, the practice was loud today. Voices echoed through the hallway, muffled behind closed doors.
Someone coughed down the corridor; someone else fake-laughed too loudly.
His next patient wasn’t scheduled for another half hour, so Felix slipped into the back kitchen downstairs and shut the door behind him with the soft finality of someone not wanting to be followed.
It was a plain little room—sturdy oak table, a row of barely chipped mugs, a half-tin of tea that rattled when he picked it up.
He filled the kettle and lit the flame.
One scoop.
And another.
Still not enough. Nothing was enough anymore. I miss her so much.
He paused, the tin in his hand.
She used to bring tea to the practice in Vienna—always careful not to spill when she balanced the teapot and cups on the tray as she pushed the door from the waiting area to Professor Morgenschein’s treatment room open with her back.
Once, she’d set the tray down beside him, and he’d said—without quite thinking—that she’d looked perfectly pretty that day.
She’d gone still, just for a second and then smiled.
He added a fourth scoop.
Then a fifth.
The leaves hit the pot with a soft hiss, like something breaking.
He missed how her braid came loose by the end of the morning.
And that one night, when her braid had come apart under his touch and she’d given herself…
if he had known he wouldn’t see her again, he would have never let her go.
That stupid promise to be back after a year…
five now. He’d left her and didn’t even know where she was.
But sometimes, it was as if he could sense her sadness.
Or was it his own broken heart? Either way, every second without Maisie felt too long.
The leaves had clumped in the bottom of the pot like dirt.
That’s fine, he thought. Let it brew bitter. The flame hissed low. He didn’t move.
Behind him, the door opened.
“Oh—you’re here?” Andre sounded surprised. “Thought you were upstairs.”
Felix kept his back to him, still holding the spoon.
Andre stepped closer. “Felix. What is that, tea concentrate? You’ll kill someone with that.”
“I just want a biscuit,” Felix said. He opened the cupboard. Empty. Bent down. Nothing but crumbs in the jar. “Isn’t there anything useful in this kitchen?”
“I dare say, we’re pretty useful,” Andre said.
Before Felix could answer, the door opened again. “Who’s talking about useful?” Wendy walked in, tugging off her gloves. “Oh, tea.”
She poured herself a cup, took one sip, and gagged. “Ugh. Who made this?”
“It’s too strong,” Felix muttered.
“Too dark,” Andre added.
“Too intense,” Felix said, quiet now. He picked up the mug.
He didn’t sweeten the tea. Sugar ruined teeth—and masked the bitterness that gave the leaves their strength.
This was black tea, from the foot of the Himalaya, the kind he’d drunk in India, meant to be steeped slowly, touched with clove or cardamom.
Instead, he’d prepared it without thought about the richness of the brew and it was just like everything these days: rushed, bland, or bitter.
It tasted like something he knew too well.
Something broken at the start, but swallowed anyway.
He took a sip. It burned his mouth. He drank again. “I’ll clean the kettle tonight,” he said. “Buy better tea tomorrow.”
He moved for the door, but Wendy stepped in his path and nodded in Andre’s direction.
Andre’s voice was gentler now. “We know you’re alone here at night.”
“I’ve always been alone,” Felix said. “You’ve just noticed now because you’re not.
” Felix loathed himself for how that came out.
He was happy Andre had his princess, Thea, and Wendy had her Prince Stan, and yet, that made him no less lonely without his Maisie.
She wasn’t a princess but the queen of his heart, mind, and soul, no less.
Wendy frowned. “That’s not true, we always noticed.”
He laughed under his breath. It didn’t sound amused. “There’s nothing you can do, Wendy,” he said, unable to mask his sadness.
“I’ve asked Thea for help,” Andre said. “She’s trying to help find your Maisie. Nobility have their ways.”
“But Maisie isn’t nobility,” he went on, barely pausing. “That’s the problem. No paper trail, no titles, nothing to search. She’s unfindable.”
“People don’t disappear like ghosts, this is not a story in a book,” Andre said.
Felix looked down at the tea, swirled what was left in the cup.
“I saw her yesterday,” he said softly. “Outside a bakery. It wasn’t her, but I followed the woman with a parcel of lemon tarts half a block before I could stop myself.
Then again in my sleep.” Silence. But sleep didn’t come easily on the days he wished he could hold her, which was every day, admittedly.
“I don’t even know what I’d say if I did find her,” he admitted.
“Except maybe I’m sorry for ever leaving her in the first place. ”
He swallowed the last of the tea, the heat cutting sharply.
“I wish I could stop needing her,” he said, not quite looking at either of them.
“I really do, but that’s impossible. She’s a part of me.
She has my heart, and it feels like the muscle inside me isn’t even pumping without her love nearby.
I just can’t…” I can’t bear the pain of missing her thus.
He didn’t say it. Not again lest Wendy and Andre pity him, and he hated pity.
No one moved.
Wendy took his empty cup and poured him a fresh one. This time, she stirred in a spoonful of honey without asking.
“Then let’s start there,” she said. “You’re not alone.”
He didn’t answer.
But he stayed.
“Perhaps there’s still hope to find her again.” Andre gave a smile of the sort he’d give for a fatal diagnosis and yet didn’t have the heart to take the patient’s will to fight.
*
Across town in a different house but the same evening…
“Don’t you want honey in your tea?” Deena’s voice broke the quiet, gentle but persistent, like a thread tugging loose.
Maisie didn’t answer right away. She sat at the long kitchen table, stirring her tea in slow, idle circles. The spoon clinked against the porcelain.
“Nothing will save it,” she said at last, nose wrinkling at the bitter, over-steeped brew. “It’s all wrong.”
Deena, undeterred, dipped the spoon into the honey pot anyway. “You used to like it sweet.”
Maisie didn’t look up. “The tea I liked wasn’t this kind.”
She traced a finger along the edge of the cup.
“Back in Vienna, I brought tea to the practice in the mornings. Always something light—rose petal, sometimes jasmine. Rachel’s father used to send parcels to us, wrapped in muslin with yellow bows.
The scent would fill the kitchen before I even opened them. ”
“Was that for Father?”
Maisie nodded. “And for Faivish.”
Deena smiled faintly. “He liked rose and jasmine?”
“He liked whatever I brought him.” Maisie’s voice dipped lower, as if the words were too old to speak aloud.
There’d been a day—one ordinary morning—when she’d tripped slightly as she set the tray down, nearly spilling the cups. Faivish had caught her wrist to steady her and said, “You’re perfect.” Then he cleared his throat and said, “perfectly pretty today, Maisie.”
She hadn’t known what to do with the words. She’d just stood there, blushing like a fool, until he looked away. What a fool she was to let him go all those years ago.
She stirred the tea again, slower now.
The memory slid against her ribs.
“What’s wrong with it?” Deena asked, watching her.
Maisie hesitated. “Nothing.”
Everything.
“You probably don’t remember,” she said instead. “But in Vienna, we never had tea after dinner. It was a mid-morning habit—just before the sun got too high.”
Deena shook her head. “I was little. I remember… playing outside. Not tea.”
Maisie smiled faintly. “You used to come back in just before dusk. Always with dirt on your knees and bits of grass in your hair.”
Deena tilted her head. “Was that when you started helping Father? With his patients?”
“Yes. He didn’t teach me per se. I just learned—watched him, listened. I knew which tools he needed before he asked. How he liked his instruments laid out. I learned to see when he was thinking, and when he needed silence.”
Deena studied her. “And were you Faivish’s nurse, too?”
The question dropped so softly it shouldn’t have hurt. But it did.
Maisie’s breath caught—not sharply, but as though the air had thickened. She looked down into her cup. The tea had gone darker than her thoughts.
“Yes,” she said. “I brought him tea. And towels. He was always working. Always focused. I’d bring the tray while you were outside, and he’d give me that quiet smile like he hadn’t known he was thirsty until I appeared.”
She didn’t say what else she’d brought him. Or how many times she’d waited until the house quieted and slipped out again.
She could still feel the rough plaster of the courtyard wall beneath her palms. The sharp scent of the rose bush leaning over the rain barrel. And Faivish always waiting for her.
She’d asked him once to teach her how to kiss. He’d laughed softly, then did.
And every time after had felt like the world narrowed to that one stolen kiss between them.
There were moments they hadn’t spoken at all. Just the warmth of his fingers lacing through hers in the dark.
“I remember the night we left Vienna,” Deena said, her voice a little smaller. “Father wouldn’t let me outside. He said there was danger in the streets before you came home.”
Maisie nodded, her hand tightening around the cup. “There was.”
What she remembered wasn’t the violence—not as the first memory of that dreadful night. It was Faivish’s face, lit by candlelight in the practice cellar, the fear buried under calm. She remembered how he held her that last time—too tightly, as if letting go would make the world collapse.
And then it had. So terribly even that Father’s heart stopped as if he couldn’t bear a world so cruel anymore.
She blinked down at her tea. The color was wrong. Flat. Like ink left too long in water.
“You loved him,” Deena said.
Maisie didn’t look up. “Yes.”
“And do you still?”
There was a long pause.
“I don’t think love works like that,” Maisie said finally.
“You don’t put it away in a drawer when the war ends or the papers stop printing a name.
It doesn’t end just because the world moved on.
” She touched the rim of the cup again. Her fingers were icy.
“It stays. Even when it’s not allowed to.
Even when it doesn’t make sense anymore. ”
Deena reached for the teapot, but Maisie shook her head.
“It won’t taste right. Not tonight.”
They sat there, the clock ticking softly, the house creaking as it settled into sleep.
“I hope he’s alive,” Deena said, not looking at her.
Maisie closed her eyes. I hope so too. But she’d learned not to say that part aloud. Hope had a way of unraveling when spoken too often.
“I dream about him sometimes,” she admitted. “He’s older. Changed. But he looks at me the same. Like I’m still the girl who brought him rose tea in a chipped cup and flushed when he smiled at me.”
The fire crackled low.
“I wish you’d gotten to say goodbye,” Deena whispered.
Maisie’s throat tightened. “I did.” But I didn’t expect it to be a farewell.
But the worst part was that she hadn’t known that the last kiss would be the last. That the next morning, everything would break.
She pressed her hand flat to the table, grounding herself. “I miss her,” she said softly. “The girl I was with him. She was brave.”
“You still are.”
Maisie looked up. Deena was watching her—not as a child, not as the girl she used to tuck in—but as a young woman.
“I don’t feel brave,” Maisie said.
Deena poured her own cup and drank. “Then let me be brave for you, just for tonight.” Then she reached out and held Maisie’s hand.
The firelight flickered across the walls. Outside, the fog pressed thick against the windows. Somewhere in the street, a carriage rattled past, fading quickly into silence.
Maisie looked down at her tea one last time.
She didn’t drink it.
“After we left Vienna and came to England so soon after Father’s death, I didn’t even know where to start.
” Her fingers tightened around the spoon.
“But here… I’ve started to look for Faivish again.
” Deena gave a small nod. “The executor of the Marquess’s estate has been thorough,” Maisie said.
“He traced Faivish to Calcutta. That’s where the records stop.
No notice of his return to Vienna. No ship manifests with his name.
Nothing in any hospital rolls, no obituary, no letters. ”
“And Rachel?” Deena asked softly. “Do you think she might be able to help?”
Maisie investigated her cup, as if the tea might offer an answer. “She might. But without a name, without something more than a memory… I’m not sure she could find anything we haven’t already tried.” She drew a slow breath. “It’s like chasing fog.”