Always searching and missing her.
The curve of the cheek. The neatness of her hair.
Stop it.
Felix dragged his gaze back to the boy in the chair. He was seeing Maisie everywhere these days—in the sheen of a shop window, the break of a stone wall, even the folds of his own coat. If he wasn’t careful, he’d start imagining Wendy in her likeness next.
Absurd. Sad. But it was the truth of his life now.
The boy looked up at him with quiet unease, and Felix softened his voice, coaxing.
“Now, open again for me. A bit wider… that’s it.”
They worked in near silence. Each time the boy flinched even only slightly, Felix stopped, let him breathe, then continued. Patience was its own medicine. Wendy caught his look and wordlessly passed himthe finer scraper, her expression matter-of-fact—like two of them could coax trust back into a child who had every reason to withhold it.
“You may rinse now,” Felix murmured, tipping his chin toward the basin.
The boy accepted the glass from Wendy’s hand. Sage-scented water gleamed as he tilted it carefully, spitting into porcelain with the neatness of someone already trained to mask mistakes.
Felix should have kept his eyes on the patient. He knew that. But across the room, the girl sat with a book unmoved in her lap. Her gaze wasn’t on the page.
She was watching him.
His hands, perhaps? The steadiness or care?
The moment he looked her way, she ducked back behind the cover, but too late—he’d seen it. And still, at the edges of his hearing, that low humming circled him like smoke.
“When am I finished with the scraping?” the boy asked, voice muffled as Wendy dabbed his mouth with a cloth.
Felix eased the tool aside. “It will take a while longer,” he said gently. “These teeth must have troubled you for months. Has no one taken you before?”
The boy hesitated, then gave a half-shrug. “I don’t remember my father. My mother was ill, and the servants were—” He cut himself off, color flaring in his cheeks. Too much spoken.
“She died last year,” the girl said quickly. Her voice was even, but her lips pressed tight, as though sealing back the grief that wanted out. The look on her face—a ripple of pain contained, then gone—stilled something deep in Felix’s chest.
Wendy, practical as ever, broke the hush. “Is this your sister?” she asked, nodding toward the girl.
The boy opened his mouth to answer, but Felix was already fitting gauze into his cheek, sparing him the words.
Wendy returned to her tray. Felix bent over the work again. Buthis mind wasn’t on the teeth.
That girl. That song. The uncanny thread of memory winding through her presence.
It was nothing, of course. It had to be nothing.
And yet—why did it feel as though a shadow from his past had just walked into his treatment room?
Chapter Sixteen
Maisie sat stifflyin the corner of the rattling carriage, her gloved hands tight around the reticule, as though she might spill the future she’d once imagined and hadn’t stopped chasing since. With Deena escorting the little Marquess to the dentist, Maisie had a few stolen hours to continue her search.
London’s streets blurred past the glass, faces flickering by—anonymous, hurried, forgettable. Soot filmed the brick facades, a dull gray crust left by winter. She barely noticed. Her mind tugged toward one destination, one last thread she refused to let go of.
The carriage drew up to a narrow shop, the wooden sign above creaking faintly in the wind:
Rams and Son, Booksellers andNewsmen
Periodicals and Archives Acquired andCatalogued
