Chapter Seventeen
The next day,on Regent Street, not far from the dazzling jeweler shop at number 35, the bell above the tailor’s door gave a quick, cheery jingle as Maisie ushered John and Deena inside. Damp air clung to her hem, London’s drizzle following them in, but it was quickly swallowed by the sharper scents of the shop—wet wool mixed with starch, cedar, and a trace of pipe smoke. Bolts of fabric stood like silent statues in greys and navy, the tailor’s long measuring tape draped across his neck like a medal.
When the clerk appeared at once with a folded uniform, he ushered John onto a low wooden platform in front of a looking glass. Maisie smoothed his lapel, coaxing his scowl into something closer to patience as the stiff collar dug at his throat.
“This itches,” John muttered.
“It will soften. Hold still,” she said, tugging gently at the sleeve. “Your first day at Eton, you’ll want it to sit just so.”
Behind her, Deena perched on the windowsill, chin propped in her hand as she watched carriages splash past. “You sound as if you’ve been to Eton yourself.”
Maisie gave a low laugh. “No. But I’ve known many men who went to similar establishments if not the one. Their mothers always said the collar looked worse than it was.”
John tilted his head. “Where did you learn all this—tailoring,posture, the way you tell me not to itch?”
Her hands stilled at the buttons. The question was innocent, but the edge of truth in it pricked sharp. She pressed the fabric smooth before answering lightly: “Oh, here and there. One learns when one must.”
Maisie fastened the last button and brushed a speck of lint from his sleeve. “There,” she murmured. “Much better. Stand tall. See?”
John looked down at the crisp line of the jacket, then back up at her. His small brow furrowed, as if he were studying more than the fit of his coat.
“You always fix things for me,” he said, quiet but certain. “Like my collar. Like when I stumble.” His gaze lingered on her face. “You look after me as if you were… more than just an aunt.”
Maisie’s breath caught, but she only smiled, smoothing his lapel one more time.
“But you’re not married, are you?” John asked suddenly, his voice a little louder, braver now. “Do you even want to be? Married—or in love?”
Her lips parted, but before she could speak, the tailor swept in with a throat-clearing flourish, stepping between them as though she were nothing more than an attendant.
“Stand straighter, my lord,” he intoned. “Yes, fine shoulders—you’ll cut a figure at Eton.”
John puffed his chest, but his eyes darted to Maisie. She smiled for him, a steadying one, though resentment prickled like effervescent water from the springs in the Alps. Invisible again.
On a side table, a newspaper lay folded. The tailor, catching John’s glance, picked it up as though it were a scepter. “Have you read the morning’s report, my lord? Most edifying. A noble man has come to London with the purest intention: to preserve order in the kingdom.”
John tilted his head. “Preserve it from what?”
“From chaos,” the tailor replied briskly. “From the flood of foreigninfluence. A Prussian baron, no less, with the courage to address Parliament itself.”
Deena’s voice cut in, sly with curiosity. “Is he to clean the Thames, then? Or sweep the muck from the streets?”
The tailor didn’t so much as glance her way. His eyes stayed fixed on John. “Not the streets, miss. The spirit of England itself. Baron Wolfgang von List. A man determined to prevent dangerous reform.”
Maisie’s stomach tightened. The name was a match struck inside her—Rachel’s whispered warnings from Vienna flared at once.
John’s brows knitted. “Dangerous? What reform?”
The tailor pricked his sleeve with a needle. John yelped.
“Hold still,” the man chided. “Why, Jewish emancipation, of course. The Crown grants them more rights here than anywhere else already. They keep shops, earn money. What next? To let them study at university? To open the professions? After that”—he sniffed—“why not women, too?”
John rubbed his arm where the needle had stabbed. “Why not? They’d have to earn it first. Show good grades, I suppose.”
The next prick was deliberate—sharp enough to make him flinch again. Maisie darted forward, steadying him with both hands. Her voice was even, but her grip lingered longer than was proper, a shield between boy and man.
“Careful,” she said. But her gaze had already fallen to the newspaper.
The black letters leapt at her:
