“So this is about my father?” he asked, his tone brisk as he swung the satchel onto his knees. “I’m missing geometry and history for this.”
Maisie’s throat tightened. She tried for a smile, but it barely formed. “John, your father asked me to protect you.”
His gaze fixed on hers, steady, too old for thirteen. “You told me once we protect each other.”
Her heart twisted. Nails hold like trust and love. And she had held—through fear, through hiding, through exile. But this boy was her last nail, her last piece of promise. If he slipped into List’s hands, she knew in her bones he’d be bent and hammered into something unrecognizable. And it would be her fault.
“Yes,” she whispered. “We do.”
He shifted, frowning. “When this is over… will we be a family? Properly, I mean. Will you marry the dentist now that you found him? Deena wrote it so cryptic but I understood.”
The question landed like a stone dropped in still water.
Maisie blinked hard. “John—”
“I’ve never had a father I knew,” he said, softer now. “Not really. And I trust the dentist. He’s kind. He doesn’t scold me when I fidget. He explains things. He…” His face reddened slightly. “He smiles with warmth that reaches his eyes. I’ve seen it. He’s not like others.”
Tears pricked hot at her eyes. How had he seen so much? She had tried to guard him from all of it—and still he knew.
Her hands trembled in her lap. “I don’t know what the committee will do,” she said at last. “But I know this: I will never let anyone take you from me.”
John shrugged, though the motion was stiff. “If this baron gets me, he won’t just take the estate. He’ll take my freedom. And I don’t want to go. He was at school and the headmaster made me greet him. He looked at me like a piece of bread he meant to tear in half.”
The words broke her. She reached across the carriage and drew him close, wrapping her arms around his narrow shoulders, pressing his head under her chin. He smelled of ink and chalk dust, of boyhood, of a future she couldn’t bear to see undone.
“I will never let that happen,” she whispered fiercely into his hair. “Not only because I promised it to your father but because you are my family just like Deena. And yes, I’ll marry and you’ll have us all to protect you.” He leaned into her, solid and real, and she thought she might shatter from loving him. Then, muffled against her collar, came his small attempt at humor:
“I didn’t think I’d have to defend my marquisate before lunch on my first Wednesday at Eton.”
Maisie laughed—an uneven sound, part joy, part ache. She pressed a kiss into his hair. “You won’t do it alone. Not now, not ever.”
John sat back, straightening with a dignity that startled her. His jaw firmed. His fingers curled around the satchel as though it were part of him. “I won’t let them take it,” he said. Then, sharper: “I won’t let them take you away from me. Not Deena. Not the family I’vealways wanted.”
Maisie’s eyes blurred. She managed a smile, tender and fierce all at once.
Nails hold, she thought. And this boy—this brave, unyielding boy—was one of the four corners of what would make them hold: She, Faivish, Deena and John.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The chamber atWestminster echoed with whispers, a restless tide of voices rising beneath the Peerage Committee’s vaulted dome.
Maisie sat motionless in the gallery, veil drawn, her gloved hands knotted white in her lap, gloves forgotten again. She wasn’t supposed to be here. No woman could speak before the Lords. Yet they had permitted her to sit—under the false name Lady Eleanor Spencer.
Below, Baron von List waited like a wolf at the kill, chin high, pale eyes glinting.
And across the floor, John. Alone. The leather satchel pressed to his chest like a shield. His back was straight, but Maisie saw the boy he still was—forced to carry what no child should bear.
“Who raised you, Lord Spencer?” asked the chancellor.
“There was always staff,” John said.
“And your father?”
“I didn’t know him. He lived in exile. Sent money. From Austria.”
“And why was that?”
“I don’t know for sure,” John said carefully. “He was charged with lies.”
