He let that sit. He had been visible often enough in the wrong ways—his name, his nose, his skill when it made the wrong man feel small. But this—this was different. He could feel it in the way Fave spoke to him as to a peer in more than profession, in the way Prince Stan did not puff up to compensate for foreignness, in the way John did not look right or left before he reached for Maisie’s hand at a public table.
Raphi came by last, coat over his arm, Joseph’s abandoned sock tucked absurdly in the pocket. He bent a little closer than necessary. “We’ll walk you home,” he said.
“We’re at home,” Felix said.
Raphi’s mouth tipped. “Then we’ll walk you to your other home,the one on your letterhead now.”
Felix nodded. The Pearlers’ shutters threw slats of sun across the parquet. Outside, Green Park widened and then narrowed again where the trees met. He rose carefully—crutch under his hand, Maisie at his side, the room shifting into that soft chatter of leave-taking that always made him think a second act might still be ahead.
At the door, Chawa waited. She took Maisie’s face between both hands and kissed her brow, then did the same to Felix, as if he were also her child and always had been. “Azoy,” she murmured. “So.”
“So,” he said back, because sometimes the small words were the only ones that fit.
They stepped out onto the landing. Green Park breathed. The city went on. Behind them, the Pearlers’ morning room hummed with the last of the clearing away—cups stacked, chairs nudged back under tables, laughter still caught in the curtains if anyone wished to go listen for it later.
Felix leaned into the crutch and into Maisie both. At the foot of the steps, John waited, hat in hand as if he meant to escort them himself. Deena stood with Wendy, already discussing gloves and sterilization as if it were gossip. Joseph tumbled out of the doorway with one sock on and one sock off, and Lilly shot past him to reach the sun first.
“Ready?” Maisie asked.
“Yes,” he said, and meant the whole of it. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Eight years later
On a brightmorning, the carriage traveled the last mile to Oxford as John watched the towers grow closer and pretended his stomach wasn’t acting up. “No chocolate at bedtime,” Felix said from the facing seat, as calm as ever—father for all that mattered. “I won’t, I promise.” Maisie stroked the curve of her belly through her pelisse. “You’ll come home when the baby arrives, right?”
“I’ll come home as often as I can,” John said, and reached for her hand because it felt wrong not to. He called her Mother now. Not because he had forgotten the woman he’d started with, but because a life can hold more than one truth. More love. Soon, more family. The house had been whole this summer—Nurse Wendy ruling Cloverdale House like a benevolent tyrant, Uncle Alfie forever repairing a window latch, Andre declaring a chair unfit for human posture, and Deena so busy at the practice she came home smelling of clean towels and pride.
The carriage jolted over a rut. He thought he’d kept the flinch inside. Apparently not, judging from his parents’ pinched lips and sad smiles.
“I’m afraid I won’t fit in again,” he said, and only knew he’d spoken when the words sat in the air between them.
“You don’t need to fit in anywhere if you know your place,” Felix answered, mild and sure.
John let it land. Know your place. Not as the world meant it. As Felix did: the place you make by being useful and steady, by keeping your word when no one looks.
He looked out at the quad’s edge. He wanted what was ahead—lectures, the reading rooms, the quiet thrum of academic work. He wanted the law and understood how to use it like Felix’s sharp tools. Uncle Alfie had taught him that law was like a muscle, the way it could bend toward fairness if someone insisted or punch justice if it was abused. And there was the estate; Uncle Alfie had carried more than his share for years. On their last tour of cottages and fields, John had said he’d take on the ledgers himself this term. He meant to keep that promise.
The carriage turned by the gate and followed a path with a few puddles. A porter stood with a squeaking pen and a ledger that looked older than half the undergraduates. Bells marked the quarter hour. A boy in a coat too big for him wrestled a trunk up the steps and pretended he wasn’t losing.
And when the carriage door opened, John could almost smell the changed air. He was going to study here, among others who’d be his peers. But he was Marquess already and wasn’t preparing for a future riddled with responsibilities—he was trying to catch up.
Felix got out of the carriage first and offered Maisie his hand; she laughed at herself when she took it and held her belly as if to keep the unborn baby safe under her heart. John followed, boots on stone.
This is Oxford.
“Write when you settle,” Felix said, straightening a sleeve as if it were urgent work. “And when you need books. And when you don’t.”
“I will.”
Maisie tugged him in. “Eat properly. Sleep.” Her voice dropped. “And be kind. That’s the only rule that never fails.”
“Yes, Mother.” He wished his voice didn’t falter when he said goodbye to her.
He hugged them both hard. It wasn’t graceful and didn’t need to be. Felix’s arm came down to his back with the pressure that said I’ve got you. Maisie kissed his forehead. She now smelled faintly of soap and ginger tea, the new favorite because it eased her. They didn’t ask him to be anything he wasn’t. They never had. And their love had always been unconditional.
And before he could blink again, his parents returned to the carriage with a nod. Oxford was for him, for peers of the realm, for gentile aristocrats—not for Jews. It stung to think of his parents not belonging anywhere he did because they were inseparable—if not in person, then in their hearts. And that’s why he swallowed that lump in his throat when he saw Maisie pat her eyes with a handkerchief, not the dainty lace one but the sensible ones Felix carried in his coat pocket.
