Alfie cut in, softer now. “You’re the only one who stays—because you’ve no wife to pull you home.”
Felix gave a dry laugh, though it thinned before it reached his eyes. “I don’t mind being here.” What he wanted to say was:It’s Maisie I miss. She’s my wife in every way that matters. What if she comes looking—and I’m not here to be found?
“That’s not what I meant,” Alfie said, his voice edged with memory. “He won’t kill us. We’re tied to aristocracy—it doesn’t serve him. But you…”
Felix caught the weight beneath the words. He was the easiest target. The one left alone under the roof of Harley Street. He forced his jaw to stay firm.
Wendy tilted her head. “Any closer to finding her?”
Of course, it was Wendy—always seeing into the heart of her friends. It wasn’t a secret among them: Felix missed Maisie more than breath itself. His jaw worked, but no words came. At last, he was alone.
They all knew how he’d searched. Letters to synagogues across Europe. Notices in every newspaper that would print them. Inquiries to clerks who might know if she’d married under another name. Each silence cut deeper than the last. If she were married, she lived under another man’s roof—an agony too sharp to dwell on. If she is dead… he couldn’t let the thought take shape.
Nick laid a hand briefly on his shoulder. “You don’t have to leave to prove anything. But we see it, Felix. What you carry.”
Felix gave a faint, bitter smile. “I didn’t lose her. I let her go, believing she’d wait. I built a life she could come back to—just not in Vienna. And now… I can’t find her.”
The silence that followed was not heavy but whole, the kind that comes when brotherhood doesn’t need words.
Andre moved toward the back door. “I’ll lock up. If you needanything, send word—I’ll come back from Cloverdale House.”
Felix knew they would. They always did—stand with him, guard him as if he were breakable. But he didn’t want their pity. He didn’t want to be the brokenhearted stray tucked under the roof of 87 Harley Street.
He wanted Maisie. To carry her name beneath a canopy, to give their children the names his parents had borne, to prove that his vow had been more than a boy’s desperate promise. He had earned money—more than most of them—but what was gold without a family to guard it for? Without Maisie, he was hibernating, wings folded tight against his ribs. To find her would mean breathing again, experiencing the full span of life once more.
Alfie’s voice cut into the quiet. “I’ll leave the valerian in the top drawer under the counter. If List comes sniffing, it’ll keep the charade alive.”
The others drifted out one by one, their boots echoing hollowly down the hall.
Felix stayed.
The lamp above him flickered, then steadied, casting a weak circle of light that trembled around his still form. The corridor smelled of mint from Alfie’s tinctures and smoke from the candle stubs, but beneath it all was the ache he couldn’t air aloud.
He stood alone, ringed by silence and the ghosts of words he had never spoken. Every unspoken vow clung in the air—sharp, sweet, unbearable—like the lingering perfume of something beautiful already burned.
And in the quiet, the only thought that came was the cruelest one of all:
Even if he found her now, after all these years, would she still be his?
*
“What you saidabout love and holding together… did you mean me, too?” John sat at the dining table with one leg swinging under the bench. He had a pencil in his hand but wasn’t drawing anymore. His gaze kept flicking toward her.
Maisie looked up, surprised.
In her mind, before she could answer, the question turned itself over like a stone in a river.
What if I found him? What if I saw Faivish again, tomorrow, or the next day? What would I do?
She didn’t have to imagine long because she knew. First, she would throw herself into his arms. Then, she’d kiss him, long and fierce, until the world disappeared. Until Vienna didn’t feel so far behind them, and London wasn’t so cold. They’d speak the old words. Maybe even sing again. There would be a chuppah to wed under—some simple white cloth. They’d find two chairs. Two witnesses. Her hands in his.
Her father, if he were still alive, would bless them.
But the warmth that bloomed in her chest didn’t spread. It stayed tight and hollow. A dream she could picture in exquisite detail—but one she didn’t trust to stay.
She blinked, clearing it. “What do you mean?” she asked John.
John didn’t look at her. He resumed tracing circles with his pencil on the edge of the paper. “I mean if you married him, he’d be here, wouldn’t he? Like… like a father for me?”
