Chapter Twenty-Six
Felix’s pulse echoed in his ears as loud as a cannon, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Not when she stood in front of him, silent, rigid. Every instinct screamed that if he reached for her, she might vanish like smoke.
Maisie. Here.
Her name beat against his ribs like a furious drum. She hadn’t aged—no, that wasn’t it. She had changed, ripened. The sharp-boned beauty he remembered had given way to something softer, richer. More dangerous to his heart. Her eyes—those impossible, whisky-dark eyes—met his at last.
Still, she said nothing.
The butler hovered. The footman offered her his arm. The rain drummed like a thousand hoofbeats behind him, but inside the house, everything fell into a still, aching hush.
“Lady Spencer,” the footman repeated.
Felix flinched. That name again.
His throat worked. “Maisie,” he said, low, not quite trusting himself. The sound scraped out of him, raw. “It’s… you.”
Her lips parted.
He waited another moment. Two. The silence carved him open.
Raphi’s voice rose behind him, a hesitant murmur trying to stitch the moment back together. “Yes, Lady Spencer. Of course. She’s the aunt of the Marquess of Stonefield.”
No. That wasn’t right.
His fists curled at his sides from the punishing restraint it took not to reach for her. Not to touch her. To demand: Where have you been?
How could she have allowed so much time to pass?
“Maisie?” was all that came out. He wanted to say more—Why didn’t you write? Why are you pretending you don’t know me? But the words clogged in his throat. “My Maisie!”
James stepped forward, ever dutiful. “Lady Spencer, the landau is ready.”
And still, she said nothing.
The click of Mrs. Rachel Pearler’s heels sounded down the corridor. “What is the matter?”
Felix couldn’t speak. His ears rang with her silence.
Maisie—Lady Spencer—just ogled him as if he were a stranger. As if he hadn’t once touched her hair with reverence, hadn’t kissed the hollow of her throat like it held his every hope.
What could it mean, this name she wore like armor?
Please, no. It couldn’t be what Alfie had wondered. Or Raphi. Or every awful thought he’d tried to shove down. Had she found someone else?
He’d been hers. Hadn’t she once been his?
“I…” He swallowed. “You don’t recognize me?”
The butler shifted. The footman’s arm hovered, forgotten.
Raphi made a sound—a soft, sorry breath.
But Maisie only blinked.
And then, finally, she said the words. “Faivish?”
Felix swayed. The ring of his true name in her mouth—half-prayer, half-wound—nearly dropped him to his knees.
She turned to the footman and took his arm.
And just like that—she was gone.
The silence she left in her wake was total.
He stared at the empty space she’d occupied, the place where his entire world had just stood. For a heartbeat, he could almost believe he had imagined her.
And then he turned, slowly, the way a man might walk away from a grave.
*
Once.
Twice.
The world tilted.
Two lives collided.
The moment the rain hit her face, Maisie thought she might collapse. Her skirts tangled around her ankles as she fled across the slick stones, heart hammering, the thundering rain swallowing her breath. The air was thick, syrupy, too dense to draw into her lungs.
I don’t know how not to be Lady Spencer in front of those people—and his Maisie at the same time.
Her hands shook as she clutched the footman’s arm—not with poise, but with the desperation of someone whose knees might give way at any moment. He guided her swiftly beneath the tilted umbrella, but every step dragged her further from him.
She didn’t look back.
She didn’t dare.
If she saw his face again, she would never leave.
The title echoed in her skull: Lady Spencer.
Tonight it felt like a curse.
The landau door yawned open. She nearly stumbled on the hem of her wet skirts as she climbed in, breath coming too fast. The door shut with a sharp clap that reverberated in the silence, sealing her away.
Alone, Maisie bent forward, pressing her hands to her mouth. A sob wrenched free before she could stop it. Hot tears streaked down her cheeks, burning against the cold.
It was him.
All the years she had told herself she had done the right thing, that Faivish had long since forgotten her, collapsed in a single instant. He had stood there, drenched and stricken, as if her absence had carved hollows into him too.
She had pretended not to know him—because if she had spoken, if she had acknowledged him in front of all those people, her world would have shattered. She would have fallen at his feet.
Maisie had built her life out of silence. Out of obedience. Out of the armor of Lady Spencer.
But her heart had never changed course.
The carriage jolted as the driver mounted the box. Rain lashed at the windows. Maisie wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, like a child, though the tears kept coming.
She did not know how to live as Lady Spencer while still belonging to the man who had once kissed her into believing in forever. And she did not know—would never know—whether he could forgive her for vanishing into another name, another life.
Her fingers dug into the velvet seat, clutching at it as though it were the only thing keeping her upright.
*
Felix couldn’t move fast enough.
There was no protocol for this. No medical training or apprenticeship could have prepared him. No way to steady his hands or slow his pulse when everything inside him screamed she was slipping away—and this time, forever.
“Doctor Leafley?” someone called.
His head snapped up.
It was the girl from the practice—the tall one with wary eyes and careful hands. She stood in the entryway now, dripping wet beneath a dark cloak. Her voice trembled slightly, but something in the timbre—the very notes she’d hummed at the practice—hit him like a strike to the chest.
Tumbalalaika. That was the tune! He’d heard her humming it while tending the little marquess.
His heart seized. He cocked his head.
No—surely not.
But—
His throat constricted. “Deena Morgenschein?” he rasped.
The hallway froze.
The girl smiled brightly. Rachel Pearler stiffened. Raphi’s brows shot up.
Fave turned, confused. “What did you say?”
But it was the girl’s face that betrayed her. Her eyes widened. She gasped—and her hands flew to her mouth. “I didn’t recognize you!”
Felix’s breath caught. Neither did I. She was so grown compared to the child Maisie had once dragged through Vienna’s streets.
No time to think, but no time to lose.
He turned on his heel.
The door still gaped open—the butler hadn’t yet closed it. Outside, the world gleamed slick and gold beneath the gaslamps, rain falling like a thousand pins on stone.
He looked toward the carriage where Maisie had fled. The driver had just opened the landau’s door.
And she was inside.
Lady Spencer.
No.
My Maisie.
“Maisie!” Felix shouted, his voice breaking as he ran.
His boots skidded across wet cobblestones, slick leaves clinging to the soles. He caught himself on a pillar, pushed off again, heart pounding like a drumbeat that belonged to another life—their life.
Voices rose behind him, a ripple of speculation and awe.
“Is it her?”
“They’ve found each other?”
“She was here all this time?”
Hushed, reverent. As though speaking too loudly might shatter the miracle unfolding before them.
But to Felix, they were echoes. Indistinct. Meaningless.
Only her.
He sprinted toward the carriage. Every instinct, every cell of him knew where he belonged—with her.
The landau gleamed in the dark, rain sliding down its windows like tears. The driver turned, startled, but Felix didn’t slow.
He tore the door open.
And there she was.
Not composed like in the hall. Not a stranger standing stiffly.
She was curled slightly into herself, her cloak damp, curls loose around her cheeks, tears carving tracks down her face.
His breath caught.
“Maisie,” he whispered, softer now—a broken benediction. He could say nothing else.
He loved the ring of her name—especially now, with her looking at him through tears, with those warm, whisky-dark eyes.
She gasped. Her lips trembled.
She’s crying. She remembers me.
And he climbed in—without invitation, without pause—and slammed the door shut behind him, sealing them together.
For one long heartbeat, there was only their breathing—loud, ragged. The steady drum of rain. The fragile space between them.
And then Felix reached for her hand. Because how could he not?
*
“Faivish.” Her voice faltered the instant it left her lips.
His name was a lifeline and a wound, tangled in memory and longing. She said it because she always had. Because she’d always reached straight for him.
Tears fell freely—hot, aching, unstoppable—as if her body had waited years for permission. The cabin was dim, rain streaking silver across the glass, but all she saw was him.
He didn’t sit across from her. No, he was kneeling at an angle—on the wet, wooden floor of the landau. His movements were unsteady but sure, like a man whose soul had already chosen. One hand hovered between them, hesitant, but with the other, he cupped her cheek with exquisite gentleness.
He kissed her cold hand. “Maisie,” he rasped.
The pain in his voice tore through her. A hush bloomed inside her. She didn’t dare look at him—because if she did, everything she’d held together might shatter.
She couldn’t find him, so she built her life protecting people like Deena and the boy, ultimately burying her own identity. But this wasn’t how she imagined their reunion. Not in a carriage. Not with half the Pearlers watching. Not trembling, unspeakably fragile.
But Faivish was here. Flesh and breath and water—staring at her as if she had never stopped belonging to him.
“Are you still my Maisie?” he asked.
The words struck like lightning—raw, desperate, stripped to the bone.
She blinked. “What?”
“Lady Spencer?” he forced out, his jaw tight. “Did you… marry?” His eyes, rimmed red from rain and something deeper, searched hers.