Chapter Twenty-Four
Later that afternoon, summer light slanted through the glass-paned windows of the Pearlers’ parlor, casting dappled warmth across the room. Maisie clutched her teacup with both hands—less for the drink, more for the heat it gave her.
“I tried,” she murmured, the words brittle as old silver. “I wrote to every person I could remember in Vienna. I asked the East India Company. They said no Faivish Blattner ever returned to England. No one knows where he is.”
Rachel paused mid-stir—her spoon tinkling in the cup—her voice soft as gauze and bright as diamonds. “Maisie… might something dreadful have happened? Could he not have reached India—or something gone wrong on the voyage home?”
The words landed with cold weight. Maisie blinked once, swallowing hard against the knot tightening inside her.
Don’t imagine it. Don’t name it. Oh, please be alive.
“I’ve thought of it,” she confessed, voice so low it felt tangled in the tablecloth. “Then I tried not to. There were storms that year… I remember a merchant ship lost off Bombay.”
Rachel didn’t answer with words. Instead, she pressed a fresh cup into Maisie’s trembling hands. The rings on her fingers glinted when the porcelain moved between them.
Maisie stared down. The surface of the tea quivered. Fear didn’t roar—it just waited, like a weight gathering in her bones. What if he’s gone? Buried under foreign earth, buried from all memory?
Her fingers shook. The liquid rippled. She set the cup down to stop the tremors from showing.
“What if,” she said eventually, voice rough and slow, “he doesn’t want to be found anymore? What if he’s married now—has a wife, a child?”
Rachel blinked, eyes gathering something more profound than her surprise.
“Would he be able to?” she asked, carefully, as if her words might shatter something.
Maisie didn’t answer. Instead, she saw him again in her mind: the mischief in his dark eyes, the way light kissed his skin, his laugh pulling her in like gravity itself. They had a bond—but that did nothing to stop him from falling into another’s arms if given the chance.
Fear trickled up behind her ribs. She could see the child: inquisitive eyes like his, a silent mother watching, wise and soft with settled strength, orchestrating a household. The sketch formed so clearly it made her whole being spin—before it ghosted away like a nightmare.
“He was mine,” she whispered. Not possessed, simply…
loved me. Whole. Her voice caught there.
“He’d touch my sleeve. Not my hand—just the cloth.
Something in him needed that. I’d feel it…
He’d pretend surprise, then that crooked smile…
I—” She laughed, breathless. “I’d forget the rest of the world.
” She exhaled. “He adored me. Every look. Every breath.”
And later that night… he showed her.
Her lips shook; the next breath was sharp. “If he smiles that way at another woman… if he whispers her name like he spoke mine—” Her gaze dropped to the cooling tea. Words nearly escaped.
“Then maybe it was all a dream.” But her heart recoiled from the silence beyond waking. A life touched by his love—even if dreamed—is better than one without it.
Rachel didn’t speak. Just set her spoon down with a soft click. “You didn’t dream it.”
Maisie shook her head. It didn’t steady anything.
Rachel leaned forward. “Would you want to know? Even if he had married another?” The question settled between them like fog.
Maisie didn’t answer. If I saw him—just once—I’d know without asking.
Finally, she spoke. “I think… I’d want to know everything. Even if it breaks me.”
Rachel’s eyes softened, but then she reached for the folded Bristol Gazette on the side table. “Then you must also know this.” She smoothed the paper, voice tightening. “Read.”
Maisie bent closer. The words spilled like acid across the page:
Summary Punishment.—At Bristol, two Jews, much reduced in appearance, were discovered in the stables of the White Hart Inn, seeking scraps where honest labour could not be had.
Their conduct was judged a trespass upon the property of the house, and they were chastised with severity by those present.
Their hands were bound together, and the correction proved so sharp that the unfortunate fellows did not long survive.
The spectacle, while deemed a just warning to others inclined to dishonesty, left the townspeople with the disagreeable duty of restoring order to the yard.
The words made Maisie’s skin prickle. She pressed a hand to her chest. “They write it as though it were a joke.”
Rachel’s jaw tightened. “That’s the point.
The law does not always defend us, Maisie.
The law sometimes joins the mob—or hides behind laughter.
And Baron von List—he applauds these humiliations, encourages them.
He is already celebrated on the continent for showing the world how—what was the phrase? —‘deplorable’ Jews are.”
Maisie drew from her reticule a few folded slips, ink smudged from travel.
“I’ve looked, too. German papers, Prussian ones.
They mention him as if he were a reformer, a champion of purity.
But every paragraph is stained. Every ‘reform’ means another way to make us small.
I cannot put a notice for Faivish in such places.
If he hides, it may be from men like List.”
Rachel’s gaze softened, though her eyes gleamed with something fierce. “You’ve done more than most. You’ve read. You’ve searched. You’ve carried the risk yourself. But you see now—it’s not just whether Faivish is lost. It’s whether he hides from danger that would devour him if he were found.”
Maisie folded the scraps tight in her palm, as if ink itself might shield him. “Then I must walk the knife’s edge. To search, but not too loudly. To hope, but not too openly.”
The parlor seemed to hush around them, the summer air suddenly heavy. The world beyond them had teeth, and Baron von List was sharpening them.
Rachel leaned closer, her voice dropping.
“We know what men like Baron von List can do behind closed doors. He has power, paper, and coin. He can strip a doctor of patients, denounce his remedies as poison, whisper in the ears of parliamentarians eager to believe him. He can ruin a man without ever dirtying his hands. And all the while, the press will cheer, or—worse—turn it into entertainment.”
Silence pressed in, heavy as an anvil.
Maisie clutched her teacup tighter, willing its heat to seep into her bones.
This wasn’t just about storms at sea or marriage vows broken by time.
It was about enemies who never rested—enemies with ink and law and resources at their disposal.
Enemies who could erase a man like Faivish as easily as scratching his name from a ledger.
And she wondered if her hope of finding him was already too fragile to survive, or if she was truly more useful as Eleanor Spencer than as Maisie Morgenschein.
*
It was well past dusk when Felix and Raphi turned the corner toward Green Park, the cobbles crunching beneath their boots.
The evening air held a damp chill—not sharp, but enough to find its way under the collar of Felix’s coat and curl in his lungs. He shifted his satchel higher on his shoulder, trying to ignore the ache in his chest.
“So, listen,” Raphi said, light but focused, “I’ll deliver these diamonds to Fave Pearler. While we’re there, we can ask Rachel a few quiet questions. She may know someone who can help us find Maisie.”
“She still has those kinds of connections?” Felix asked.
“Through her father’s business, yes,” Raphi said. “Docks, shipping ledgers, foreign correspondents. Every name that passes through. If I found no Maisie Morgenschein in England, perhaps her contacts can.”
Felix’s throat tightened. He kept his eyes ahead, on the soft glow spilling from the tall windows of the Pearler home.
They passed through the curve at Green Park’s edge, the city softened by lamplight. The Pearler house rose before them—tall, elegant, lit with the golden shimmer of Shabbat candles.
Felix stopped. “I’m not invited,” he said quietly.
Raphi was already bounding up the steps. “You’re family.”
“No,” Felix said. “Not tonight. It’s Shabbos. I can’t… I won’t intrude.”
Raphi turned, sighed. “Come. You know them.”
Felix took a step back. “If I ever find her again,” he murmured, “I won’t miss a single Shabbos. Not one. I’d hold on to every second.”
Raphi hesitated, nodded. “Alright.”
He knocked once, confidently. A moment later, warmth and laughter spilled out from the open door, and Felix caught the smoke of burned candles and freshly-baked challah before it all closed again.
He turned away.
The street behind the Pearlers’ home curved softly into the dark edges of Green Park. The house glowed behind him, the light beautiful but distant. Untouchable.
He passed beneath one window, glancing up.
She might have stood at a window like that once. In Vienna. In Paris. Or just down the street.
Maisie.
Even now, just her name stirred him. After all this time, after all the silence. It still ached.
He walked slowly, boots scuffing over the gravel. The truth pressed in with each step—he didn’t want to be seen. Not with the streaks of silver in his hair. Not with a name he hardly used anymore.
Faivish had belonged to her. Felix was what remained. But he’d always be hers with all his heart.
And if she had forgotten him—or worse, if someone had told her he wasn’t worth remembering—then maybe that was best.
But even so, he couldn’t stop the quiet, impossible hope that somewhere, somehow, she hadn’t.