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She lifted her chin. “I would marry you… if the circumstances were right.”
Air returned to his lungs. “I’ll make them so.”
“It won’t work if you sail to Boston,” she said, truth loosening from her throat. “I don’t want an ocean between us. I want this bakery. I want you here, starting a life with me—not writing letters from a ship’s deck. But I don’t want to trap you in a Europe that doesn’t welcome Jews.”
His first promise to her—you are safe with me—rose like a weight and a blessing. Can you keep it from the other side of the Atlantic? No. He chose. “Then I stay,” he said. No flourish. Only fact. “I play when Mrs. Dove-Lyon calls it, and I come back to you. In the light.”
“In the light,” she echoed, and his chest eased.
He lifted their joined hands and kissed the backs of her fingers—one, then the next—as if each touch sealed a term. Heat loosened under his ribs; he held it neat, where it could warm and not scorch.
“What else do you need?” he asked. “Name it.”
The question steadied her—and him—more than any oath. She looked past him to the bare shelves, the counter, the future taking on edges. “A proper Gugelhupf mold,” she said, the old-country word filling the room like spice. “Copper, tinned inside. Tall flutes. A chimney so the heat runs clean through.”
Tenderness struck first; decision followed. “Then that is what you shall have.”
“And you?” she asked, because she always paid in full. “What do you need?”
“You,” he said simply. “And your yes—when you’re ready.”
She breathed out; the slight tremor left her hand beneath his. “Then make the circumstances right,” she said, a brave, small smile finding her mouth. “Stay in London. Win your game against Nagy and the earl and anyone else who’s in our way. Stay here, and you have my yes.”
“All of it,” he said, tightening his hold, the promise ringing through his palm. Stay. Play. Marry her. Loose and leave for Boston without her.
“I will,” he answered, rough with certainty. “I’ll make it so.”
“And I do not want Boston,” she added, because the air had conditions. “I want you here.”
“Here,” he vowed.
She nodded once, decisive now. “Then go do what you must, and come back with a Gugelhupf mold and a life that fits us both.”
His eyes warmed like a hearth catching fire. “Yes, Rosine.”
He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t need to. The promise kissed him. The bakery was a future; the mold was the first shape of it. And as he turned for the door, something hot and simple tightened at his throat: Keep the vow. Keep her here. Keep yourself in her warmth—no matter what.
Chapter Twelve
The time to return to the Lyon’s Den felt like leaving the bakery dream in a bubble, safely tucked into daylight as night descended upon London. The shop’s muted fell back into place behind them, and night breathed cool against Rosine’s cheeks as she slipped her arm through Sander’s after she’d locked the bakery’s door. I’ll be back soon, she thought, tightening her grip on Sander, who tucked her close in a way that warmed her heart.
“Tell me,” he said. “Why Gugelhupf and not any other sweet?”
“It isn’t only a sweet,” she said, voice low. “In Strasbourg, the mold sat on a high shelf—fluted copper. It was a little dented because I filled it with mud cake when I was four and dropped it. But that night … the last morning before they came and killed my parents, I hid the mold under my coat and kept it through the night, and for weeks, it was all I brought with me. All the way to the boat—until a wave took it off the deck, and I watched it sink like a small copper sun before I reached England.” Her mouth trembled; she steadied it. “Since then, I bake anything that rises. If the dough lifts, the room feels like mine—but without that mold, it has never quite been home.”
Horses clopped past; a lamplighter tipped his pole. “So, it means home.”
“It means survival.” She tightened his arm around his. “Freedom is survival. If anyone chooses for me, I disappear. Love is only safe if it leaves my work, my hours, and my name untouched.”
He exhaled, not surprised—confirmed. “Then hear mine.” He watched the pavement, speaking as if testing each word underfoot. “Protection is love to me. If I don’t take the blow first, I have failed just like I did when I let my family slip away from me. Decisions made in muted—doors barred before danger knows they exist—that’s how people live to see morning.”
That’s where we break if he has to go to Boston. She did not let go. “And now?”
“Now I learn new steps,” he said simply. “You speak first about what belongs to you. I stand in front when you ask—and aside when you don’t.”
Tension built behind her eyes. She leaned, just a fraction, into his shoulder. “Then we might fit.”
“Then we will work at fitting,” he said, and the quiet certainty steadied her better than a speech.
