*
Maisie spent theafternoon half-distracted from her work but entirely aware of him in every room. He glanced at her more than once—she was certain of it—but the look never lasted long enough to leave proof. In the cramped treatment room, their fingers brushed as she passed him a mirror. The contact sparked through her so sharply she nearly dropped it. And yet he said nothing.
When she asked, lightly, if he might stay for dinner, her father answered for him.
“No. The Marquess is coming,” he said, brisk enough to cut short any protest.
The dismissal stung.
So when Faivish stepped out into the dusk, coat folded over one arm, she followed. Coal smoke lingered in the air, sharp against the fading scent of leaves. Her heartbeat fell into step with her hurried feet. At the side alley, where lamplight failed to reach, shadows pooled deep and silent.
She caught his sleeve. “Faivish!”
He turned—surprise flashing in his eyes—just as she rose onto her toes and kissed him. Not tentative, not proper. A kiss pressed from days of restraint and every look they had not dared name.
The coat slid from his arm. His free hand found her waist, steadying, drawing her nearer. He kissed her back with a smile she could feel more than see, as if he had been waiting for her to be the one to cross that line.
Her hands knotted in his shoulders, unwilling to let go. His thumb brushed her side, unhurried, memorizing her shape.
She pulled back for breath, lips tingling.
“When will you speak to him?” she whispered.
“As soon as he lets me,” he said low enough for his breath to graze her skin. “Tomorrow. Together with you, perhaps. If he allows.”
The certainty in his tone left her dizzy. She kissed him once more, quick and fierce, before stepping away.
And the promise clung to her even more than his kiss as she slipped inside. But she stopped short in the darkened hall. Voices floated from the kitchen—low, urgent. She knew the Marquess’s timbre, but the other was Father’s.
“…Hofstätter… the faculty…”
She froze. Words tangled, muffled, but fragments broke free:“…trouble for all of us… Jewish…”Then another phrase, sharp enough to raise the hairs on her arms:“…Eleanor Spencer is dead now… but nobody needs to know…”
The voices dropped again, too low to catch, before rising just long enough for the Marquess to ask, “And what about Deena?”
Maisie’s hand tightened on the knob. She stood motionless, her pulse pounding, the echo of her kiss already eclipsed by a dread far larger—whatever lay waiting behind that kitchen door?
Chapter Four
Later that summer…
Maisie was late.
Again.
Silk hissed at her sleeves, louder than it should have been and clashing with the muted rise and fall of voices drifting up from her father’s practice below. She lingered at the looking glass, one hand pressing against her chest as if she might steady the thrum inside her. It wasn’t the silly flutter she’d known earlier this year but deeper now, heavier and the kind that left no air between one pulse and the next.
Faivish’s kiss still burned at her mouth: the one from last night, after Father and Deena had gone to sleep. His promise had lingered there too—I’ll marry you as soon as your father allows. And they’d based everything on this hope.
But father dismissed them every time they’d broached the issue. Had something shifted in that low exchange with the Marquess—the conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear? Did Faivish even know what secrets her father kept folded away like dangerous letters?
The clock struck, brisk and cold. She closed the clasp of the pearls at her ears with fingers that wouldn’t stay steady. The mirror gave back a tidy girl, cheeks faintly flushed, hair smoothed into place. But that reflection told none of the story thrumming under her ribs.
Another chime. Now she was later than late.
Her palms prickled with damp as she reached for her shawl. If onlyher mind would line itself in order like Father’s neat rows of labeled ledgers. Instead, it circled back, again and again, to those words overheard in the kitchen—Hofstätter. Jewish trouble. Eleanor Spencer is dead. What about Deena?The words that felt like stones she’d hidden in her bodice. Something about that conversation, she suspected, was why Father didn’t give Faivish official permission to ask for her hand. And yet, he treated Faivish like a son, as if he were family already.
She ran downstairs, slippers whispering on polished boards. The air shifted, sharp with antiseptic. And there it was—the sight she both longed for and dreaded.
