Chapter Four
London, Saturday Morning
The house shook itself awake with happiness that made leaving feel impossible.
Sun fell in bars across the chequered tiles, coal scuttled somewhere below, and the twins’ chatter rose and fell like birdsong—bright, relentless, ending in a shriek of triumph as one stole a ribbon and the other reclaimed it.
A footman passed with John’s small trunk, blinking his eyes: “Does my lord depart now? At once?”
John tugged on his gloves instead of answering, pressing the seams flat as if he could press down the nerves rattling inside him. He heard Felix and Maisie’s voices as they seemed to finish speaking to one of the servants.
Tell them now before leaving. Say you’ll bring her home next time. Say her name. Theresa.
Alfie leaned on the drawing-room doorjamb with a lazy grace. He had a knack for looking casual while weighing every word within twenty feet. “So,” he murmured, pitched for John alone, “that girl you like—how will she take it when you leave Oxford?”
John’s stomach tightened. He’d confessed to Uncle Alfie that a girl existed before he’d realized his heart belonged to her.
Where should he begin? With the tower warmed by the chimney flue, and letting fragrant smoke run up the inside shaft?
With apple and cinnamon on her lips? With the silence that broke when she looked at him as if she expected him to be brave?
He smoothed his gloves. “I’m considering how best to tell her.”
“Consider faster,” Alfie said mildly. “You’ll be gone after graduation.”
“I mean, Mother. I want to bring the girl home.”
“Mm.” Alfie’s head tipped, eyes sharpening. “Look, I know you’re old enough to have… experience. But you’ve never asked me for anything from my apothecary. If you need anything, just ask.”
Heat climbed John’s neck. “Not that talk again.”
“Yes, that talk.” Alfie’s tone stayed even, but the warning under it rang clear. “You have a title, and some ladies—the not-so-ladylike ones—will try to trap you. Some for coin. Some for consequence.”
“I won’t let anyone trap me.” John’s mouth curved. “I’m not a fox running panicked through the woods.”
“Have you been to Almack’s?”
“No.”
“When you get there, you’ll envy a fox in a trap. At night.”
John’s laugh escaped before he caught it. “Then I’m glad I’m not going as a bachelor.”
Silence dropped like a handkerchief.
Alfie straightened a fraction. “Who is she?” The lightness drained. “What have you done?”
“Her name is Theresa.” John kept his voice controlled. “And thank you for checking, but I’ve done quite well.”
The twins thundered down the corridor, ribbons in their fists, curls bouncing. “Mama! He’s leaving! Jetzt!” Their cries drew Felix and Maisie away, laughter and German chasing after them.
The corridor quieted, hollow. Alfie’s gaze didn’t waver.
“I’ll just go,” John said.
“Not so fast, young man.” Alfie raised his voice, clipped now. “Felix! Maisie—kommt mal bitte her!” The German cracked through the air. Serious.
John thought absurdly of finding a shovel. Digging his own grave might be less painful than the conversation galloping toward him.
Felix appeared first, Lily’s golden tail thumping against his knee. “Alfie, I thought you were leaving—”
“You have to hear this. Now.” Alfie shook his head.
Maisie followed, shawl tossed over her shoulders, hair not yet tamed, the crease beside her mouth betraying a morning of porridge and small tyrants. “What’s happened?”
“He’s gotten himself into lady trouble.” Alfie crossed his arms as if uttering a fatal diagnosis.
The shawl slipped from Maisie’s fingers, pooling on the floor. Felix bent to pick it up, and his brows shot up so hard his spectacles nearly toppled; he caught them grimly with two fingers.
John sighed. The shovel might be quicker. “Before you all faint dead away, perhaps wait to hear what he means by trouble.”
“Explain.” Felix used his diagnostic voice—surgical precision, ready to slice the trouble off his son.
John drew a deep breath. “I’m not a boy to be shepherded around Society’s edges and bartered like a cow. I’m finishing Oxford. I’m ready for Stonefield. And I intend to bring someone home after graduation. To this family. To these walls.” His gaze held each of them. “I love her.”
Maisie’s lips parted, color rising quick and bright. “You love—who is this girl, darling?”
“Theresa.”
“Theresa who?” Felix cut straight to the vein.
“Hofer. She’s at Oxford. She works in the library.”
Alfie’s eyes narrowed, sharp as glass. “A female student? H-how?”
“She—” John refused to make her small. “She keeps the Bodleian from losing itself. Knows where all the bones are buried. She helped me with land returns.” True enough. Useful enough.
Maisie still hadn’t reclaimed her shawl. “And you wish to bring her here after you finish. To introduce her—or to—”
“Both,” John said. “I intend to offer for her hand.”
Felix’s chin lifted. “You intend. Have you sought permission from anyone whose permission matters to her?”
“I’ve sought hers. That’s the permission that matters. She’s alone in life, and I wish to change that.”
The corridor held its breath. Children’s laughter floated faintly from the nursery upstairs, and something thudded against a skirting board, most likely the favorite wooden dolls of the day.
Life went on, bright and ordinary, making the weight here heavier.
Maisie’s eyebrows rose as if to allow room for her eyes to see straight into John’s heart.
Alfie broke the silence, voice lower than John expected. “Does she know who you are? The name. The estate. The… rest of us?” His hand sketched the circle of them—dentist, apothecary, a Jewish family for a marquess built from stubborn courage.
“She knows what matters.” She knows how I kiss her, how I listen when she speaks, how I look when fear corners me. “She knows enough.”
Felix studied him like a patient concealing pain. “You look sure.”
“I am.”
Maisie crossed to him, palm rising to cup his cheek, fingers trembling. “You always were a stubborn boy,” she whispered, pride threading the scold. “I don’t know why I’m surprised to find a stubborn man.”
John kissed her hand, as he had as a fevered boy. “I want her to have this.” He glanced down the hall to the schoolroom, the kitchen, the pile of shoes gathered at the back door. “All of it.”
Felix made a sound, half-assent, half grief. “Then we will need her name. Her family. Her circumstances. And we must be sure she isn’t compelled by the magnitude of what you offer.”
“Compelled?” John’s jaw tightened. “No one compels Theresa.”
“Good,” Felix said. “See that they never try.”
Alfie cleared his throat. “Since we’re laying out truths, I repeat—if you require anything practical from my shelves, you won’t scandalize me by asking.”
“Uncle Alfie—”
Maisie’s mouth twitched, and Alfie insisted. “A title draws moths. Some bring music. Some bring fire.”
John managed half a smile. “Then we keep the candles low.”
Felix’s gaze slid to the side table where Debrett’s lay beneath the morning post, and above it the folded paper with the eagle seal. Two futures stacked: ballroom and delegation.
Alfie gestured to the pile. “Bea thought you might like the newest Debrett’s. She says she’ll see you properly launched when the time comes—introductions, vouchers, the works. Prince Stan’s even offered to throw a ball at the embassy in honor of your graduation. A dignified affair.”
John gave a short breath, not quite a laugh.
Bea meant well. Prince Stan meant well, too.
The man who once picked mushrooms barefoot in the English woods had become the same figure the ton bowed to in London drawing rooms. And still—ballroom and embassy, pleasure and politics—lay side by side in John’s life.
Alfie shifted, too late to block John’s sightline to the other paper, the one with the eagle seal.
“Hofst?tter.” The name struck John like iron. “What’s that about?”
The air in the corridor tightened. Maisie’s hand on Felix’s tightened till her knuckles went white.
Felix’s jaw worked once, twice, as if the right words had to be forced out. “They are coming with a delegation from the Kaiser. Hospitals. Universities. And Cloverdale among them.”
John’s pulse kicked. Cloverdale. Deena’s ward. Their life’s work.
Rector Hofst?tter and his Bruderschaft, an anti-semitic fraternity, had chased Maisie and Felix out of Vienna, leaving wreckage in their wake.
A Hofst?tter had cornered Alfie and Felix in a Vienna alley, fists and boots threatening to kill Felix until Alfie stepped before him.
A Hofst?tter had hounded Felix from the practice that Maisie’s father had built with clean hands and sharper skill.
Their circle had scared Maisie’s father into his grave.
And their reach blackmailed his own father into exile, so John had grown up with only stories and a title for inheritance.
That name was the reason he had been raised in another man’s house, the reason he had learned family not through blood but through choice.
Felix’s eyes met his, steady as steel.
“We’ll need a marquess in that corridor,” Alfie said. “We can’t shrink away. If the Kaiser’s delegation won’t get to see Cloverdale, the suspicion could ruin our reputation.”
A worry line surfaced on Maisie’s forehead. “They will recognize us, especially if we stand together.”
“We don’t need a marquess in the line of fire but a son at our table,” Felix said, ever protective.
“I’m both.” John’s words came low, certain.
Maisie’s gaze turned fierce. She caught his lapel and straightened his cravat with brisk fingers, her hands trembling. “Well, leave it to us for now. Just go and be safe, before the little ones drag you into a tea party and you lose your chance to travel by day.”
The twins rounded the corner in a flurry of ribbons and giggles. One solemnly returned the shawl to Maisie’s arm. John crouched, breathing in soap and biscuit and the fleeting childhood that had rebuilt his heart. “Back by Passover,” he promised.
At the threshold, Alfie leaned close. “One more question—does she love you?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it.”
“Good.” Alfie clapped his shoulder, firm as a benediction. “Then the rest is weather. We dress for it.”
Felix fell into step on John’s other side, the steadying weight of him familiar as breath. “We’ll expect her then, and a plan.”
“You have my word,” John answered.
Maisie caught him once more at the door, her eyes wet but unflinching. “Our John.”
“Always.” He stepped into the bright morning, the air cool against his face. I am coming back for you.