After a few minutes of dead silence, Giles cleared his throat and said, “Would you like me to kill him?”

“What?”

“I could challenge Charles to a duel,” Giles said. “He wouldn’t put up much of a fight.”

“No!”

“I thought you’d say that.”

Yasmin struggled to come up with something to say. “If I had been carrying a child, my father intended to force Hippolyte to marry me and then stab him directly afterward.”

“Had you been my daughter, I would have done that whether a child was involved or not,” Giles said, his voice perfectly even.

“Yes, well, my father is . . . didn’t see it that way.”

“Are you still planning to retire to the country tomorrow?”

Yasmin gave him an incredulous look. “Yes!” She was trying to decide how many dances she had to endure in order to make it clear that she wasn’t running away.

Before she could run away.

And perhaps never return.

His jaw flexed. “Am I to understand that you don’t wish me to visit?”

“Why would you?”

“That is petty and unworthy of you.”

Yasmin took a sharp breath. “You’re right. I’m being childish. Yet there’s no need for a lengthy discussion. I have moved from being scandalous to being a fallen woman, in the Biblical parlance. The Countess of Lilford can perhaps have a marred reputation, but she cannot be a trollop.”

“Please do not use that word in relation to yourself. May I pay you a visit tonight?”

“No, oh, God, no,” Yasmin cried, the raw note in her voice surprising herself. “Please, Giles. I want to go home and leave for the country tomorrow without another scene. Please. I’m begging you.”

“You may be carrying our child.”

Yasmin gasped, but thankfully, the music was loud enough to prevent eavesdropping. “As I told you, we are not a fertile family,” she said in a low voice. “My mother managed it only once, as did my grandmother. In that unlikely event, I will certainly let you know. I will send a letter.”

Giles’s brows were drawn together, his mouth tight, but the waltz ended.

Jake Addison stepped forward. “My dance, I believe.”

“I will write to you,” Giles said urgently.

“Very well,” Yasmin said. Jake led her directly into a quadrille, which ended in front of Silvester, who swept her into a waltz, followed by Lord Pettigrew in a country dance, then her grandfather in a Scotch reel.

“I think we can leave now,” His Grace said as they processed together under an arch of dancers holding hands over their heads, none of them meeting Yasmin’s eyes. “Nine days’ wonder, my dear. By next Season, they’ll have forgotten all about it.”

It was not true, but she loved him for saying it. “I would very much like to go home.”

They were close to the entrance to the ballroom, so her grandfather simply turned and guided her out the door.

In the carriage, he handed her a handkerchief, but she didn’t need one.