Chapter Seventeen
When the clerk appeared at once with a folded uniform, he ushered John onto a low wooden platform in front of a looking glass. Maisie smoothed his lapel, coaxing his scowl into something closer to patience as the stiff collar dug at his throat.
“This itches,” John muttered.
“It will soften. Hold still,” she said, tugging gently at the sleeve. “Your first day at Eton, you’ll want it to sit just so.”
Behind her, Deena perched on the windowsill, chin propped in her hand as she watched carriages splash past. “You sound as if you’ve been to Eton yourself.”
Maisie gave a low laugh. “No. But I’ve known many men who went to similar establishments if not the one. Their mothers always said the collar looked worse than it was.”
John tilted his head. “Where did you learn all this—tailoring, posture, the way you tell me not to itch?”
Her hands stilled at the buttons. The question was innocent, but the edge of truth in it pricked sharp. She pressed the fabric smooth before answering lightly: “Oh, here and there. One learns when one must.”
Maisie fastened the last button and brushed a speck of lint from his sleeve. “There,” she murmured. “Much better. Stand tall. See?”
John looked down at the crisp line of the jacket, then back up at her. His small brow furrowed, as if he were studying more than the fit of his coat.
“You always fix things for me,” he said, quiet but certain. “Like my collar. Like when I stumble.” His gaze lingered on her face. “You look after me as if you were… more than just an aunt.”
Maisie’s breath caught, but she only smiled, smoothing his lapel one more time.
“But you’re not married, are you?” John asked suddenly, his voice a little louder, braver now. “Do you even want to be? Married—or in love?”
Her lips parted, but before she could speak, the tailor swept in with a throat-clearing flourish, stepping between them as though she were nothing more than an attendant.
“Stand straighter, my lord,” he intoned. “Yes, fine shoulders—you’ll cut a figure at Eton.”
John puffed his chest, but his eyes darted to Maisie. She smiled for him, a steadying one, though resentment prickled like effervescent water from the springs in the Alps. Invisible again.
On a side table, a newspaper lay folded. The tailor, catching John’s glance, picked it up as though it were a scepter. “Have you read the morning’s report, my lord? Most edifying. A noble man has come to London with the purest intention: to preserve order in the kingdom.”
John tilted his head. “Preserve it from what?”
“From chaos,” the tailor replied briskly. “From the flood of foreign influence. A Prussian baron, no less, with the courage to address Parliament itself.”
Deena’s voice cut in, sly with curiosity. “Is he to clean the Thames, then? Or sweep the muck from the streets?”
The tailor didn’t so much as glance her way. His eyes stayed fixed on John. “Not the streets, miss. The spirit of England itself. Baron Wolfgang von List. A man determined to prevent dangerous reform.”
Maisie’s stomach tightened. The name was a match struck inside her—Rachel’s whispered warnings from Vienna flared at once.
John’s brows knitted. “Dangerous? What reform?”
The tailor pricked his sleeve with a needle. John yelped.
“Hold still,” the man chided. “Why, Jewish emancipation, of course. The Crown grants them more rights here than anywhere else already. They keep shops, earn money. What next? To let them study at university? To open the professions? After that”—he sniffed—“why not women, too?”
John rubbed his arm where the needle had stabbed. “Why not? They’d have to earn it first. Show good grades, I suppose.”
The next prick was deliberate—sharp enough to make him flinch again. Maisie darted forward, steadying him with both hands. Her voice was even, but her grip lingered longer than was proper, a shield between boy and man.
“Careful,” she said. But her gaze had already fallen to the newspaper.
The black letters leapt at her:
The Jew is not of our stock, nor of our soil. He is other. To elevate him is to abase the Englishman. Better a mongrel hound at one’s hearth than a Hebrew in the halls of Parliament.
Maisie’s face stayed serene, her practiced mask. Inside, her skin burned.
Her eyes dropped again.
Woman, at least, is fashioned to nurture. But why do we need the Jew? To admit him to our universities is to sully the minds of England’s sons. To tolerate difference is weakness; to honor plurality, treason.
The words blurred. She swallowed hard. She could not let her hand tremble, not here, not with John watching.
John wrinkled his brow. “That sounds… cruel.”
Maisie gently squeezed his arm again, her tone airy, calm, the voice of a lady who must not disagree.
“It is not for us to dispute Parliament, nephew.” She let the word hang but she hid behind John as much as he hid behind her.
They were family and responsible for one another, regardless of whether they were related by blood or not.
The tailor gave a grunt of approval, tugging John’s collar into place, pleased with her supposed agreement—oblivious to the fire smoldering in her chest.
But Maisie’s thoughts were elsewhere—on Rachel’s warning, on Faivish, on the tide that seemed to rise higher with every passing day, threatening to wash them all away.
And on the vow she had whispered into her own silence more times than she could count: she would never abandon John.
The tailor bowed himself out, muttering about delivery dates, leaving them briefly alone. John tugged irritably at his collar, cheeks flushed from the pinpricks of the needle.
Maisie exhaled slowly, smoothing her skirts as though pressing calm back into her bones. The words from the newspaper still echoed, sharp as vinegar, but she would not let them show. Not here.
Deena slid down from the windowsill, eyes blazing. “He spoke as though you weren’t even in the room,” she whispered in Yiddish, too soft for John to catch. “As though women and—” She bit the rest off, her teeth closing around the danger.
Maisie’s glance cut quick and warning, but her smile to John was gentle, as if none of it had touched her. “Your collar sits perfectly now. You’ll look quite the young gentleman.”
John studied her, suspicion clouding his young face. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
She blinked. “Answer you?”
“When I asked if you wanted to marry. Or to be in love.”
The words landed like a splinter under skin—small, piercing, impossible to ignore. Maisie bent low, fingertips brushing the lapel of his jacket, her voice lowered into a half-whisper meant for him alone.
“Love in marriage,” she said softly, “is like smoothing the planks of a table. It makes the surface easier to live with. But it doesn’t make the table stronger.”
Deena tilted her head. “So what does?”
Maisie’s gaze lingered on her sister, then returned to John. Her voice gentled further.
“Trust,” she said. “That’s the nails. It keeps everything together when the weather turns. When the wood begins to warp, without trust, even the finest timber will break apart.”
John’s brow furrowed as though he were engraving the thought into memory. After a long pause, he asked quietly, “Do we have that? The nails?”
Her throat ached. How could she tell him about the hollow carved inside her—the name she had buried, the man she had promised to wait for? And yet, what did any of that matter? This boy was hers to protect. Whatever the law said. Whatever the tailor or Parliament whispered.
Maisie laid her palm gently on his shoulder, steady as a vow. “We do,” she said. “We are family now. We hold.”
Deena’s lashes lowered quickly, but not before Maisie saw the glimmer in her eyes. She turned her head, pretending sudden interest in the bolts of fabric stacked neatly against the wall.
The bell above the door jingled. The tailor returned, bowing stiffly as he offered the parcel wrapped in brown paper.
“Your nephew will be a credit to Eton, madam,” he said.
Nephew. The word pierced her, another hidden needle. Maisie accepted the parcel with serene grace, thanking him with the practiced voice of a lady who had never been anything but. Inside, her chest burned.
Stepping into the street again, the city rushed back—carriage wheels clattering, hawkers calling through the drizzle, the air thick with coal smoke. Across the way, a jeweler’s sign swung faintly in the damp breeze.
Maisie tightened her hand on John’s shoulder. He would not see the venom she had read. He would not know that Parliament debated whether he was even worthy of belonging. Let the Baron sneer in Westminster. Let the tailor nod in smug agreement. John would never doubt. Not while she lived.
He had trust. He had nails. And he had her.
*
Felix wiped his hands on a towel as he came down the narrow staircase, the smell of cloves still clinging to his sleeves. The front door thudded shut, the last trace of a purple silk coat vanishing into the street. Pale knuckles had drawn it closed—Baron von List.
Felix’s stomach twisted. The Baron left nothing behind but the sour echo of his voice, clipped and polished to civility, yet steeped in scorn.
He came often enough that passersby might mistake them for acquaintances, perhaps even allies.
Felix knew better. To deny him treatment would be to hand him the very scandal he wanted: proof that Harley Street’s doctors turned away nobles.
Their hard-won reputation could shatter in a week.
So they endured his charade of ailments, holding their dignity while he hunted for ways to ruin them.
Down the hall, Alfie emerged from the apothecary, rolling his sleeves, his apron blotched from tinctures.
Nick stepped from his surgery room with Wendy close behind, tucking her nurse’s cap into place.
Andre appeared from the far end, coat buttoned, eyes sharp.
They were all drawn by the same thing—the aftertaste of List’s visit.
“What did he want this time?” Nick asked, though the answer was obvious.