Zelda was better at picking safe conversation topics to shift towards than he was. Maybe, in a family of ten, she had more experience trying to avoid talking about certain things. In any case, the teapot transfiguration thing next week was a very safe topic indeed.

"Oh! I'll be there. I've got tickets with Evander and Charity," he told her. Other assorted family members, too, but Evander and Charity seemed like the more relevant members. He certainly didn't want to mention that Miss Delaney was coming and further highlight the discrepancies between his courtship and a real one. He wondered briefly if that might be a better avenue for the conversation he'd been trying to have, but discarded the thought. She'd said she was working, which meant her appetite for confessions of emotional betrayals was presumably fairly low.

"I think I heard one of Uncle H's grandsons is competing. Should be fun," he said with a shrug. More fun than today was shaping up to be, at any rate.