“Alfie’s been asked to bring ointments for the horses. Have you ever seen the Lipizzaners?”
Her eyes flicked toward him, quick as a heartbeat, then shifted to her father. The professor sliced another apple, precisely as a surgeon.
“No,” she said. “Since Mother passed… Father works so much.”
He heard what she left unsaid: outings had not been theirs to enjoy.
“Would you both like to come?” His voice was light, though his pulse wasn’t. “Deena, too. Alfie will be there. I’ll see you home before dark. Entirely proper.”
Professor Morgenschein looked up, surprised, but waved a hand. “Yes, yes. Go on, children. Maisie, keep an eye on your sister.”
Deena’s whole face lit. “Please, Maisie?”
A moment’s hesitation stretched thin as wire. Faivish held his breath.
At last, Maisie nodded. “All right.”
The word landed like a stone in still water, rippling through him. He’d longed to take Maisie out for so long, and this was as close as he could manage to the honor.
They finished the meal, but he barely tasted it. Outside, the city was turning to honey with the afternoon sun. Two months of imagining her beyond the bright walls of the practice—and tonight, it would be real.
Sometimes, it seemed, beginnings started with strawberries and cream.
*
The late-afternoon sunlingered on Maisie’s shoulders as she and Deena reached the wrought-iron gates. A small plaque beside the arch readSpanische Hofreitschule—the Spanish Riding School. She had heard of it since childhood: the oldest institution in Europe devoted to the art of classical horsemanship, where riders trained for years to master the white Lipizzaner stallions.
Warm metal gleamed under her fingertips as she pressed the gate open, and above, the imperial crest caught the light—the double-headed eagle staring down as if it had been taking the measure of its visitors for centuries. Maisie tilted her chin up, uneasy beneath its gaze. All that history—emperors, audiences, performances polished to perfection—pressed against her like a weight, neatly contained within one legendary building. Beyond the gates, marble columns and glittering chandeliers waited to preside over a spectacle older than she could truly grasp.
Faivish had brought them here in barely ten minutes, walking with that measured stride of his. His coat was buttoned to the throat, his shoulders straight enough to make other men look careless. Beside him, Maisie was suddenly conscious of her own steps, how her hem whispered over the stones.
Another figure stood waiting near the archway. Dark blond hair, broad chest, and a wooden crate balanced easily on one hip. It looked like the sort of box a greengrocer might have used for cabbages, butinstead it brimmed with squat jars sealed with cork. Even from here, the contents caught the light—green-gold, glimmering—and the sharp-sweet tang reached Maisie’s nose, herbs and something biting underneath. She wondered at the smell, but her gaze slid back to Faivish almost at once, as if drawn by gravity.
“This is Alfie Collins, my roommate,” Faivish said.
Alfie set the crate down and bent over her hand with a bow that belonged more to a ballroom than a stable yard. “A pleasure, Miss Morgenschein,” he said, vowels polished, clipped with English precision. He repeated the bow for Deena, and her giggle burst out, hands flying to her mouth.
“I’ve been pounding herbs all day for this liniment,” Alfie went on, throwing Faivish a conspirator’s grin. “If I reek ofPferdesalbe, forgive me.”
Maisie caught the name—an ointment for horses, camphor, and menthol meant to ease muscles. Now that she knew, the scent rose sharper, threaded with rosemary, pungent but not unpleasant.
Deena’s eyes went wide as saucers. “So you’re a true apothecary? Can you make perfume? Rose pomade? Poison?”
“Yes,” Alfie said cheerfully, “though I’d never put all three in the same jar.”
That was enough to entice her younger sister. Deena skipped to his side, peppering him with more questions until Alfie tipped back his head and laughed outright.
Maisie fell into step a pace behind, beside Faivish. She let her eyes climb the pale façade of the Riding School. Stucco curved into flourishes, each line drawing the gaze higher and higher. “Baroque,” she murmured without thinking. “See how the façade pulls your eyes upward? That was the point—to raise the soul as much as the sight.”
Faivish looked down at her, and the curve of his mouth softened into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’m beginning to believe you could make anything sound like poetry.”
Her breath caught. The words struck too close, and yet she didn’t look away. When he offered his arm, she hesitated only a heartbeat. To take his arm felt like admitting something she had spent too long denying. Yet her hand moved of its own accord, sliding into the crook of his elbow.
The wool of his sleeve was warm beneath her palm, and the strength of his arm was steady, unyielding. Heat crept into her chest, spiraling outward until she had to steady her breath. It was nothing more than a gentleman’s courtesy and yet so much more.
Her fingers pressed lightly, as if testing the reality of him, and she was startled by the answering jolt low in her belly. The world seemed to narrow to his strong arm, offered just to her. The closeness was more daring than his kind smile—because it was public, because it was real, because it washim.
They stepped together beneath the arch into shadow. The air shifted at once—cool and heavy with leather and hay, carrying the warm musk of horses. Somewhere beyond, unseen hooves struck stone in a slow, deliberate rhythm, each strike echoing against the high, whitewashed vaults above. Even the sound seemed ceremonial, as though it belonged not to animals at all, but to emperors and centuries.
