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Tragic Lavinia, watering the garden with tears.

He didn’t think she’d fade for him. He had once called her a wordsmith. When she’d spun out ideas about what to name that ointment of his, he’d eagerly jotted down her phrases. He took advice from her. He appreciated her imagination. He made her feel essential, like earth and atmosphere. With him, she was water and salt, electricity and light, moss and silt. She was the tender new shoot unfurling from something deep and ancient and nourishing. Lovely didn’t begin to describe it.

Maybe she should trust him, trust that.

She entered the heart of the maze and roamed between the hedges and the narrow flower beds. She sat on a bench facing the enormous planter. It was bursting with new plants, concentric rings of pale green and pale pink leaves.

Where was Neal’s train now? Reading? Didcot? Swinton?

—

Later in the day, she went to Weston Hall to beg a position for Nan and discovered Anthony slumped over his desk behind a mountain of wadded paper. He was not a bookish man, and his statesmanship clearly cost him. She drew a chair close to his and tugged his latest effort from beneath his elbow. The beginnings of a speech on local self-government in India.

Indian self-government, not her area of expertise. Sentences, however . . .

“Once I figure out what you mean here,” she said briskly, pointing. “I’m sure I can make it sound much smoother.”

“I don’t want it to sound smooth.” Anthony batted away the paper.

Lavinia frowned. “Then I shall make it thunder.” She picked up his pen.

Anthony looked at her, startled, then kicked back in his chair with a laugh. “All right, then. Make it rain fire.”

“Gladstone will tremble in his boots!” She positioned herself at the end of his desk, the paper spread before her.

“Actually.” Anthony cleared his throat. “I’ve joined the Liberals.”

“Have you?” asked Lavinia absently, brows coming together as she tried to decipher his opening. His script was bad, his syntax worse. “Well, I guarantee someone will tremble. I am a writer of bloodthirsty prose.”

Hours passed. Hours of struggle, and some hilarity, during which she experienced her selves layering over one another. Her childhood self, bickering with Anthony, demanding her way. Her writerly self, newly confident, exploratory. At the end of it, they’d produced a legible document Anthony could read on the floor.

Lavinia sailed downstairs to take tea with Lucy and the members of her painting club, immensely pleased, Nan’s future secured, and a blow struck against authoritarian rule in the colonies. Tea turned into dinner, and by the time she left Weston Hall, she had in her possession several sketches by Gwen Burgess that answered to her descriptions of her novel’s most gripping scenes.

She’d feared the return to London, but here she was, reconstructing her life, different from the one she’d lived before.

Now she feared a return to Cornwall. But if she went, if she joined Neal, couldn’t she construct a life there too? One that was good for both of them?

Maybe she couldn’t. But couldn’t they? The two of them, together?

Back at Harcott House, she stood at the window in the guest chamber, waiting for the sky to grow dark. But it didn’t. The sun had stalled. The day stretched on and on. So much light.

Midsummer.

His mother’s last.

She scarcely slept.

In the morning, she called for the carriage and rattled into the north of London. When she stepped out, her heart was pounding. She paused on the street looking up at Holloway Prison, its turrets, then passed into the courtyard, stopping before the entrance, an enormous arched door flanked by twin griffins, stone keys clutched in their stone claws. A guard approached, and she ducked her head, retreated.

It wasn’t time.

She wasn’t ready to talk with her father, to hear his answers to the questions she now knew to ask. She could take longer, however long she needed. When she was ready, she’d welcome Neal’s support.

Neal was in Penzance now. Maybe her support didn’t measure up to his. Maybe she did the right thing, for him, keeping away. The selfless thing.

Being selfless wasn’t her strong suit.

Neal loved her for her selves. Shouldn’t she bring all of them to bear, rush to him with everything she had?