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Neal wasn’t a pup. And George—George was dead.

She would silence him.

Neal’s smile stretched. “All the Traymaynes in Kyncastle,” he amended, and came closer with an idle step, peering over her shoulder.

He said in a changed voice, “You picked the orchids by the vicarage.” He touched the pink lip of a flower, bending it with a gloved finger.

Was he scandalized? She’d learned on their walk to Juliot woods that he didn’t dig up every wild plant he saw, and when he did choose a specimen, he took pains to leave everything around it intact.

“You didn’t pick all of them?” he said. The other bottles of wildflower arrangements stood on windowsills obscured by the crowd, and on the table in the makeshift refreshment room. Orchids featured prominently in each bouquet.

“For a good cause.” She couldn’t help but touch the same flower. Her gloved hand brushed his as she ran her fingers over the delicate lobes. The muted sensation maddened her, and she bent over to inhale the faint scent of vanilla diffusing from the petals before she withdrew. The white leather at her fingertips was smeared with pollen, a golden stain.

“For Emmeline,” he agreed, and then his brows knitted together. “But—this bittersweet might have contented her.”

He was scandalized. Chagrin changed to indignation.

“You grudge her the orchids? After you reneged on your promise?” she said. “I spent all afternoon organizing a dance because you went hieing off to Cornwall before you could show her a proper good time in London. It wasn’t very cousinly.”

Now he raised his eyebrows. Would he question what she knew about cousinly behavior? She had no siblings, but she did have cousins. A few of them. Whom she’d lorded over as a wealthy young beauty destined for a duchy.

Those cousins, it was safe to assume, had very much enjoyed her comeuppance following her papa’s reversal of fortune.

He didn’t, though, quiz her on her own family feeling, or failure thereof. The lines in his forehead smoothed and his eyes hooded.

“How fortunate she is, then, in her friends,” he said, and she was relieved to hear the teasing note in his voice. He wasn’t going to belabor his point about the orchids.

As he leaned against the wall, a lock of hair fell across his brow, and she itched to push it away from his forehead.

“The guildhall hasn’t seen such numbers since Joan Traymayne was tried for a witch at the court of assizes.” He pushed the lock back himself, mahogany brown hair against the fawn-colored leather.

“When was that?” She glanced around the room, imagining a bench of black-clad justices, a woman in rags, old and bent but with Loveday’s face. “They didn’t find her guilty?”

“They did indeed,” said Neal. “It was 1646, the only year the assizes were ever held in Kyncastle.”

“So she was hanged,” breathed Lavinia. Neal claimed an executed witch among his ancestors. Perhaps a jailed father wouldn’t shock him.

“That was the sentence. But the good people of Kyncastle decided instead to string up the judges.” Neal grinned with pride. “Just to teach them a lesson. They lived to tell the tale.”

She stared at him. Certainly, those judges would have recounted their version with considerably less relish.

“Did you note that iron hook with the wooden handle on the nail over the mantelpiece in the parlor? Legend has it, that’s the gaff my several-times-removed grandfather used to whack the chief justice of the Prince’s Council. Knocked his wig off.” He laughed. “I don’t think my mother would have married my father if his forebears had let a woman of the family go to her death for witchcraft.”

His having a witch in the bloodline wouldn’t have been enough to win her over? Lavinia bit her tongue.

“Emmeline didn’t share that bit of history,” she said. Where was the girl? She seemed to have a penchant for disappearing, but at her own ball? The last time Lavinia had caught a glimpse of her, she was standing by the piano with a look of utter desolation on her face.

The ball was a success. But the right people hadn’t yet arrived.

Neal shrugged. “I’m surprised someone didn’t tell you about Mistress Joan, as we call her. She’s a beloved figure in our family. Emmeline had other things on her mind, I’m sure. The two of you could have walked to Devon, what with all the back-and-forth.”

“I’m well aware,” she said. She had a keen sense of how much she’d walked. Her feet had been blistered before she started dancing.

He fixed her with that direct regard of his, so different from that of other men she’d known.

“I did regret the timing of the move, for her sake.” He said it in a low voice, difficult to hear over the music. “But I couldn’t delay any longer.”

Did he leave London out of delicacy, to spare Elizabeth Fletcher’s feelings? Or out of disgust after he spied—while planting rhododendrons in a garden square—a flock of ladies in bustled gowns with swansdown trim? Realization hit a moment after these pettier possibilities surfaced.