Chapter Seventeen #2
“Valerian for his nerves,” Alfie muttered, his lip curling.
Andre crossed his arms. “He’s staking us out. Like a rat with a monocle.”
“Says he has unfinished business and will get to the bottom of it soon,” Alfie said as he narrowed his eyes.
Felix leaned back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest. “Not a rat,” he said. “A fox. Watching its prey before the strike.”
“So you remember Vienna, too?” Alfie asked.
“What happened in Vienna that I don’t know about?” Andre asked, since he and Nick had been at the same university, and Wendy had already started to learn alongside Nick. They all took a step toward Felix. “Tell us!”
“I didn’t connect it at first, forgot for a while…” Felix looked at Alfie, whose mien had gone dark, which confirmed Felix’s worst suspicion. “There was an afternoon when Alfie tended to the horse at the Spanish Riding School, and one of those horses belonged to the nephew of Rector Hofst?tter.”
“Baron Wolfgang von List,” Nick more groaned than spoke the words.
“He has unfinished business?” Wendy asked. “But why?”
“His son attacked Felix that night and got me instead,” Alfie explained.
“Alfie defended me,” Felix added.
“They would have killed you!” Alfie said. “They didn’t want Felix to graduate at the top of our class.”
“Altenburg and Hofst?tter, titled and well-connected students were vying for the top spot, and I took the spot even though the exams were anonymous,” Felix explained. Scoundrels from the Burschenschaft.
“So a Jew outranked the titled students. Meritocracy. Everything List stands against.” Nick cast one of those protective glances at Wendy, like he usually did when he felt the need to protect his younger sister, even though she was all grown up.
Yet, they were all List’s targets for one reason or another. And thus, they were all in danger.
“It’s List’s cause and he’s brought it with him all the way from Konigsberg in Prussia to London via Vienna,” Alfie said with a tone that could have announced the end of the world.
His words settled, heavy. Then he added, quieter: “Raphi Klonimus says he’s gathering more names. Old officers from the campaigns, men of rank and purse. They’re printing his words in the papers now, calling themselves defenders of order.”
Nick’s jaw tightened. “So that’s the cause. To tear down the Crown Jewelers—strip trade from the Klonimus family, choke the gold coming out of Transylvania. Weaken the suppliers, and anyone who dares stand beside them. Which means us.”
Wendy’s brow furrowed. “And because the Klonimus name is tied to the Crown, List counts their allies as fair game.” She glanced at Felix, her voice low but certain. “It isn’t only hatred of Jews. It’s power. He wants the estates, the routes, everything—until his name eclipses the rest.”
Andre’s arms folded tighter. “I can’t believe he’s still skating along the edge of legality.”
Felix’s reply came measured, though his throat felt tight. “You may be assured he’ll press further. Men like him always do.”
Nick turned, studying him. “Are you well, Felix?”
Felix didn’t answer immediately. His eyes stayed fixed on the door where List had vanished, as if some part of him still tracked the man’s shadow.
Wendy crossed her arms, her tone decisive. “We shouldn’t leave him here alone at night.”
Alfie cut in, softer now. “You’re the only one who stays—because you’ve no wife to pull you home.”
Felix gave a dry laugh, though it thinned before it reached his eyes. “I don’t mind being here.” What he wanted to say was: It’s Maisie I miss. She’s my wife in every way that matters. What if she comes looking—and I’m not here to be found?
“That’s not what I meant,” Alfie said, his voice edged with memory. “He won’t kill us. We’re tied to aristocracy—it doesn’t serve him. But you…”
Felix caught the weight beneath the words. He was the easiest target. The one left alone under the roof of Harley Street. He forced his jaw to stay firm.
Wendy tilted her head. “Any closer to finding her?”
Of course, it was Wendy—always seeing into the heart of her friends. It wasn’t a secret among them: Felix missed Maisie more than breath itself. His jaw worked, but no words came. At last, he was alone.
They all knew how he’d searched. Letters to synagogues across Europe.
Notices in every newspaper that would print them.
Inquiries to clerks who might know if she’d married under another name.
Each silence cut deeper than the last. If she were married, she lived under another man’s roof—an agony too sharp to dwell on.
If she is dead… he couldn’t let the thought take shape.
Nick laid a hand briefly on his shoulder. “You don’t have to leave to prove anything. But we see it, Felix. What you carry.”
Felix gave a faint, bitter smile. “I didn’t lose her. I let her go, believing she’d wait. I built a life she could come back to—just not in Vienna. And now… I can’t find her.”
The silence that followed was not heavy but whole, the kind that comes when brotherhood doesn’t need words.
Andre moved toward the back door. “I’ll lock up. If you need anything, send word—I’ll come back from Cloverdale House.”
Felix knew they would. They always did—stand with him, guard him as if he were breakable. But he didn’t want their pity. He didn’t want to be the brokenhearted stray tucked under the roof of 87 Harley Street.
He wanted Maisie. To carry her name beneath a canopy, to give their children the names his parents had borne, to prove that his vow had been more than a boy’s desperate promise.
He had earned money—more than most of them—but what was gold without a family to guard it for?
Without Maisie, he was hibernating, wings folded tight against his ribs.
To find her would mean breathing again, experiencing the full span of life once more.
Alfie’s voice cut into the quiet. “I’ll leave the valerian in the top drawer under the counter. If List comes sniffing, it’ll keep the charade alive.”
The others drifted out one by one, their boots echoing hollowly down the hall.
Felix stayed.
The lamp above him flickered, then steadied, casting a weak circle of light that trembled around his still form. The corridor smelled of mint from Alfie’s tinctures and smoke from the candle stubs, but beneath it all was the ache he couldn’t air aloud.
He stood alone, ringed by silence and the ghosts of words he had never spoken. Every unspoken vow clung in the air—sharp, sweet, unbearable—like the lingering perfume of something beautiful already burned.
And in the quiet, the only thought that came was the cruelest one of all:
Even if he found her now, after all these years, would she still be his?
*
“What you said about love and holding together… did you mean me, too?” John sat at the dining table with one leg swinging under the bench. He had a pencil in his hand but wasn’t drawing anymore. His gaze kept flicking toward her.
Maisie looked up, surprised.
In her mind, before she could answer, the question turned itself over like a stone in a river.
What if I found him? What if I saw Faivish again, tomorrow, or the next day? What would I do?
She didn’t have to imagine long because she knew.
First, she would throw herself into his arms. Then, she’d kiss him, long and fierce, until the world disappeared.
Until Vienna didn’t feel so far behind them, and London wasn’t so cold.
They’d speak the old words. Maybe even sing again.
There would be a chuppah to wed under—some simple white cloth.
They’d find two chairs. Two witnesses. Her hands in his.
Her father, if he were still alive, would bless them.
But the warmth that bloomed in her chest didn’t spread. It stayed tight and hollow. A dream she could picture in exquisite detail—but one she didn’t trust to stay.
She blinked, clearing it. “What do you mean?” she asked John.
John didn’t look at her. He resumed tracing circles with his pencil on the edge of the paper. “I mean if you married him, he’d be here, wouldn’t he? Like… like a father for me?”
Maisie’s mouth went dry.
She hadn’t thought of it like that. Not in words. But of course—if Faivish came back, if she found him, if love could stretch across everything and reach again—they would be a family. What would Faivish say to her changed circumstances?
“I suppose we would,” she said softly. “Yes.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, watching him. She didn’t know what he’d say. Whether it would be too much. Whether the idea of a father would push him away.
A moment passed.
Then John spoke, very softly. “I’ve never had a father who was here.” His fingers stopped drawing. “I’d like to have one.”
Maisie didn’t trust herself to answer. She just reached across the table and let her fingers rest lightly on the edge of his paper, close enough to be felt, but not so close as to press.
One day, she thought. If love can find its way back. If Faivish is out there… I’ll bring him home.
Behind her, Deena came in with the wind still clinging to her shawl. She carried a few scraps of paper and a dusting of flour down one sleeve. “I took the letters to the post.”
Maisie turned, her thread still looped through the needle. “Which letters?”
Deena was already at the hearth, dusting her hands. “The ones on your escritoire. You sealed them, so I assumed they were ready.”
Maisie’s heart thudded once. “Even the one with no address?”
Deena gave a small shrug. “It said something about a missing person. Just capital letters, I think?” She paused.
“Initials.” Maisie spoke without taking a new breath. “I hadn’t meant to send that one.”
“I thought you did,” Deena said, more gently now. “It was sealed.”
“I sealed it so I wouldn’t keep reading it,” Maisie said, setting the shirt aside. Her voice was too even. “It was for Faivish.”
Deena stilled. “You didn’t write his name. You don’t know where he is.”
“No. I wouldn’t.” Maisie walked to the edge of the table and placed her palms flat. The air between them shifted. “That’s why I never ask anyone. Never write to anyone official. I don’t even use his name when I speak.”
Deena said nothing, but her face sobered.
“You know what they are doing,” Maisie continued quietly. “Clerks copying synagogue records. Sifting through shipping manifests. Keeping books on where Jews live, what they own.”
“List is in London now, Rachel said,” Deena added. “Buying off printers. Paying boys to sit in Jewish shops and report who comes and goes.”
Maisie nodded. “If I put Faivish’s name on a letter and it lands in the wrong hands…” She trailed off. “He could be in danger.”
“But you don’t know where he is.” Deena said and Maisie knew what that meant. I don’t even know if he’s alive and has returned from India.
Maisie looked down at the table, her fingers brushing a thread someone had missed.
The silence thickened. The fire cracked low. Outside, the same rough voice called again, some street name twisted into an order, half-sung, half-cursed.
Maisie turned back to John with a pained smile. I’d like to be a real family with Faivish here, too.
“You didn’t mean to send it,” Deena said, as if mourning the deed.
“No,” Maisie murmured. “But it’s gone now.”
Love meant not shouting his name to the world, even if it ached to keep it hidden. Love meant staying quiet, staying careful.
Because even far apart, she would not be the one who endangered him. Not her Faivish.
Hope could ache. But it could not betray.