Chapter Twenty-Five
Inside the Pearlers’ house, Shabbat candles flickered along the damask walls, their flames casting soft, restless shadows across the dining room.
Maisie followed Rachel through the double doors into the study, her gloved hands clasped tightly at her waist. Deena was somewhere else in the house, gently distracted.
The table in the dining room lay waiting—silver catching the candlelight, wine glowing like garnet in its glass.
At the far end of the study, Fave Pearler stood near the desk, his fingers idly brushing the velvet rim of a jeweler’s tray. Another man stood beside him—taller, broad across the shoulders, his dark hair polished to a sheen under the chandelier. Both had their backs to the door.
“These are remarkable,” Fave said, lifting a stone between thumb and forefinger, turning it until it flashed.
“Each is one carat exactly,” the man beside him replied, his voice measured, precise. “All twelve delivered, ready for you to set.”
Rachel stepped forward, her smile quick and warm. “Good evening, Raphi. Git Shabbos.” She kissed him on each cheek with the ease of someone long familiar. “How are you tonight?”
“Well, Rachel. Git Shabbos. And you are radiant, as always.”
Rachel laughed, slipping her arm through Fave’s. “You flatter me just like your brothers do.” She turned, her gaze landing on Maisie. “Have you met my dear friend?”
Maisie stepped forward, curtsying with the poise she had practiced so many times—elegant, correct, entirely automatic.
And in that movement, she felt it—the slip into Lady Spencer. The cool, deliberate courtesy of a role she had worn like armor before. Not the girl from Vienna. Not Faivish’s Maisie. A woman several years older, an aunt at the edge of aristocracy.
Rachel’s eyes flicked. A brief furrow crossed her brow, gone almost as quickly as it came. Her voice rose smoothly: “Allow me to introduce Mr. Raphael Klonimus to Lady Eleanor Spencer, aunt to the Marquess of Stonefield. Raphi is a dear friend, and his brother married Fave’s sister.”
The lie slid into the room without resistance.
Raphi turned, bowing low. When he took her hand and brushed her knuckles with his lips, Maisie felt it—a pause, subtle but sharp. As if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have, or recognized more than he meant to admit. His eyes lingered, just long enough to catch her breath.
“From Oxfordshire,” she said evenly, the words falling into place like pieces of a part she had long rehearsed.
Raphi straightened. “Lovely countryside. A pleasure.”
Behind him, Fave and Rachel shared a glance—fleeting, sad, and not lost on her.
Yes. She was playing a role. And no one could know otherwise.
If Faivish truly was in danger, her real name helped no one. Better to stay hidden. To become Eleanor Spencer when she must. Someone who could pass unnoticed. Someone who might watch, protect, and perhaps—even if it tore her apart—help him, if only she could find him.
Maisie’s throat tightened. The ache returned beneath her ribs—the same old ache that surfaced whenever the woman she pretended to be brushed against the woman she truly was.
I’m not here as a Jew, she reminded herself, lifting her chin. I’m here for a reason.
It had been indulgent, sitting with Deena and Rachel, letting the mask slip, laughing as if she were safe among her own.
But that was an illusion too easily shattered.
Jews endured by silence, by caution. A careless word could be overheard, repeated, twisted—and a whisper was all it took to unravel a life.
Even here, in London, even in the houses of those who claimed friendship, trust was a ration to be measured, never freely given.
The gentile shell she wore felt closer than it ever had—what once shielded her now pressed like a hand against her throat. She crossed to the table, setting her palms lightly on its edge, and tried to find a steady breath.
“Would you like me to ask Mr. Klonimus about his connections?” Rachel’s voice was soft, pitched for Maisie’s ears alone.
Maisie’s head snapped up. “No.” The word came too sharp, too quick.
Rachel’s expression smoothed as if Maisie had merely declined another helping of soup. “He’s family,” she murmured, gentle but insistent. “One of the most trusted.”
Maisie folded her arms across her bodice. It wasn’t defiance—it was armor. “No risks,” she said, eyes locked on the tidy stitches of the tablecloth. “Nobody can know.”
Rachel let out a slow breath and turned to her husband, her expression unreadable.
“Is there anything I might do for you?” Raphi Klonimus asked.
His voice carried warmth, measured and calm, the voice of a man long accustomed to standing beside the Pearlers, never beneath them.
His coat was bottle-green, the color catching the lamplight, though Maisie hardly noticed.
It was his bearing that struck her—at ease, as if there was nothing in him that needed to be hidden.
But I do.
The ache pressed harder against her sternum. People like that—people she could sit with and speak to without weighing each syllable—belonged to another life. A life she no longer had. Rachel was the only one she still allowed herself, and even that closeness she held at a cautious distance.
She would guard what remained: her love, her sister, John at any cost.
Rachel’s warning from earlier days drifted back to her. List making speeches in Parliament, stoking fear and suspicion. His boasts at parties about taking guardianship of orphaned heirs—boys with names, with fortunes, but no one strong enough to shield them.
What if he meant John?
The thought struck deep. The ache sharpened into something cold and steady.
If Faivish was gone, if she must wear this mask forever—so be it. But John would not fall into List’s grasp. Not while she still drew breath.
She would keep watch—silent, unseen if she must—until the boy was old enough to stand against the world himself.
Without another word, Maisie turned from the table. Her skirts whispered across the polished floor as she crossed to the window. She pressed her fingertips to the glass, the cool pane grounding her as her eyes sought the night.
Darkness had deepened—the last wash of twilight fading into blue-black. Streetlamps along Green Park flickered, casting faint halos that kissed the edges of the clipped hedges. Beyond the garden gate, a stir of movement caught her eye.
The Pearler children had long since gone upstairs. Deena would be among them, perhaps chasing the little ones in the nursery or curled in the library with a book too heavy for her lap. Deena, perched between child and woman. Old enough to notice everything. Young enough to pretend she hadn’t.
Maisie’s chest tightened. The weight was hers to bear now for both of them.
Her gaze slipped back to the garden.
And then—she saw him.
A lone figure moved along the shadows of the park. His stride is unhurried. His posture is upright. The lamplight touched the line of his coat—dark, plain—and glanced off the curve of his shoulder as he paused.
Something about the stillness of him rang inside her, that quiet loneliness she knew so well. She was rarely without company—Deena’s laughter, Rachel’s welcome—but loneliness had nothing to do with company. It was the hollow echo of a heart searching for its other half.
Maisie leaned closer, palm flat against the glass. Breath slipped unbidden from her lips.
Not again.
It couldn’t be.
Her eyes strained against the dark. The man lingered near the hedgerow, past the iron gate. His features lost to shadow, his distance impossible.
Tall. Dark hair. Straight-backed. Nothing remarkable—yet—
Her heart fluttered once, twice, then stumbled into a restless beat. Something in him tugged at her with quiet insistence.
Don’t be foolish.
She had seen him before—everywhere. In the blur of carriage windows, in the angle of a stranger’s shoulders, in dreams so real she woke certain his breath was still warm against her cheek. Her mind conjured him whenever it pleased, and tonight was no different. It couldn’t be.
Still, her eyes clung to him.
The hedgerow shivered. Leaves stirred, restless. She blinked hard. Lamplight fractured across a thin veil of droplets.
Rain.
Her fingertips pressed harder against the glass. “Not again,” she whispered.
England rained like Vienna had, but here it carried no sweetness. The Oxfordshire rain had smelled of meadows and turned the fields lush and forgiving. London rain collected in gutters, thickened into mud, and penned her in. No newspapers. No archives. No quiet alleys to chase his ghost.
Behind her, the stairs creaked.
Deena slipped into the room, her voice already softened with the finality of adulthood. “It’s raining,” she sighed. “I don’t want to walk home.”
“You can take our carriage,” Rachel said at once, rising from her chair.
But Maisie didn’t move. Didn’t turn.
The man had not stirred—
Until he did.
Slowly, he glanced upward, as if greeting the rain with the kind of patience only solitude allowed. Then, in one unhurried motion, he reached to lift his collar and began to walk.
Something about him pulled at her.
A strange weight pressed behind her ribs.
She exhaled, forced herself to look away.
“Yes,” Maisie said, finally stepping back from the window. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t say home. Not out loud. The townhouse wasn’t quite that—not truly. Perhaps it never had been.
But Maisie was pulled toward the door that faced the street.
Her chest tightened; it felt like the room had shrunk around her.
She needed to get out—out where the air was raw, even if it was wet and filthy.
Her palms grew damp as she pressed them to the wood.
If she stayed another moment, she would choke. She needed air. Now.
*
Rain. Again.
Of course.