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“I saved you a seat.” He drilled his pointer finger into Alan’s chest. “Which meant I ended up sandwiched between Hitchens and Bidmead, thank you very much.”

“Bidmead turned up, did he?” Alan looked down his nose at Neal’s finger. “I told Otis to haul him along, but you can never be completely sure of other people. They’re so often unreliable.”

Neal lowered his hand, teeth gritted. Of course, Alan had immediately pinpointed his irritation and decided to needle him.

“A life lesson for the ages,” he grated. “But let me rely on you for a bloody minute, please. I’ve made a mess of, well, everything, and the situation with Muriel has—”

“Hold that thought.” Alan turned from him to signal—without apparent success—to someone across the room. He shrugged and glanced back at Neal, a strange light in his eyes. “I shall return instanter.” Before he angled himself into the crowd, he looked over his shoulder. “Don’t run off.”

“Don’t boss,” Neal retorted, hating his own petulance. He might have been ten years old and quarreling with his brother Jory. He struck out blindly toward the opposite corner of the room. Suddenly, he itched to escape. He couldn’t stand another minute in the lecture hall, much less a dinner at the Criterion: Muriel, hoodwinked and happy; Alan and Bidmead, wherever he’d gotten to, crossing swords in a choreographed dance; Hitchens, the self-satisfied matchmaker, droning learnedly about iguanodons without one-tenth of Lavinia’s intuitive genius.

No, he’d abscond at once. Write Muriel a letter explaining everything. Cowardly. But apropos. Their relationship had been, first and foremost, a correspondence.

He was heading toward the door when Muriel intercepted him. “Neal! You’re not stealing away?”

He flinched, then recovered, clumsily. “What? No. No, wouldn’t dream of it. Wonderful talk.” He had found the talk wonderful. But as he continued to extol her eloquence and command as a lecturer, he could hear each phrase strike a false note. Damn his guilty conscience. He added insult to injury. But Muriel was glowing, ablaze with her triumph, insensible to his awkward demeanor. She wasn’t one to be insulted or injured easily; she’d proven that several times over.

But he would hurt her in the end, when he dashed her hopes, revealed that he’d misled himself and misled her in the bargain.

The thought put a foul taste in his mouth.

“Never mind all that. I told him!” She almost sang the words. “I told Robert!”

“Robert?”

“Robert Edevane, of course.” She beamed.

The room, overcrowded, overheated, felt smaller. The walls pressed in around him. Everyone seemed to be casting sidelong glances, smirking. The din of conversation dipped. Everyone was listening. His throat worked. Dear God.

“Told Mr. Edevane?” He spoke in a whisper. Damn his guilty conscience and double damn his consequent inaction. He’d let the situation lie fallow, and now new trouble had cropped up.

“I owed it to him.” She didn’t whisper. If anything, she spoke louder, to make up for his lowered volume. “He couldn’t find out from someone else. After Esmé died . . .” She faltered briefly, the slightest hitch.

“There were many people who didn’t consider that I was a competent general observer, plant collector, and botanist in my own right. Esmé and I had had offers of funding for future expeditions from Kew, from the Geographical Society, a half dozen institutions. When I went back to them, a widow, not one agreed to fund me. China is too perilous.” She snorted. “No matter I’d spent six years there. Robert rehired me. He made me the director of an expedition. He gave me back my confidence in myself. Enough confidence that I can see I’ve outgrown his nursery. So yes, of course, I told him.”

He stared at her. “But surely it’s too soon. We need to talk more, or not talk. I’d thought . . .” He pressed his thumb hard into his eyebrow. “I’d thought to put something in writing.”

His skin crawled, self-loathing rippling over him. Here he was, delaying. But what was the alternative? Reject her now? Here? Before an audience of colleagues and idle gentlefolk? If he waited, and wrote, she would receive his letter in private, where she could weep, or rail, or quietly absorb the blow, without interference.

But . . . who might she tell in the interim? He had to contain the damage, or the announcement would travel from one end of London to the other. Their wedding date might be printed before he’d revealed the engagement was inadvertent, a colossal misunderstanding. He continued staring.

“Writing? I expect something in writing, that goes without saying. I know how it works. I’ve done this before, as you well know.” Her eyes narrowed with sudden shrewdness, and her lips made a firm line. Then she smiled. “There’s Mr. Hewett. I have to tell him too.”

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it in farewell, but he held on. He’d been left no choice.

“Muriel.”

“Yes?” She looked at him, and all her virtues were written plainly across her countenance. Intelligence. Humor. Honesty.

She deserved honesty from him.

“I can’t marry you.”

She inclined her head, uncomprehending. She hadn’t heard. He cleared his throat, raised his voice.

“I cannot marry you.” He looked up toward the ceiling, wishing for a lightning strike. Then he straightened his head, met her gaze. She’d heard him. Her eyes grew wider by the moment.

“I’m proud to know you.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “You possess a remarkable mind. And the greatest personal charm. You are . . .”