Please write me back. I have penned this letter eleven times and crumpled it each time. I am going to force myself to send this to you.

In all sincerity,

Yasmin

Lydia did not like getting up early. But in the service of her family, she forced herself downstairs at the crack of dawn to sift through the mail waiting to be handed over to the post. Sure enough, her brother—her poor, besotted brother—was writing to Yasmin every night. One day he wrote to her twice.

The woman wrote to him as well, not as frequently, but regularly. A day came when a letter from Yasmin appeared on the entry table after luncheon; luckily, Lydia noticed it in passing. That Frenchified handwriting caught her attention.

The return address was for Mr. Addison, so apparently, Yasmin had moved on to another house party.

“My dear brother,” Lydia said at dinner that night, “so many people are asking me whether you have a tendre for Lady Stella. Surely, you feel, as I do, that the lady is principled and intelligent. Her spectacles are strangely flattering.”

Giles looked at her over his roast beef. “I like her.”

Excellent.

“Do you like her more than you like Blanche?” she asked boldly.

“Yes.”

With that, Lydia gave up her hope of seeing Blanche as a countess. Stella would do. If only Lydia could be certain that Giles’s attachment to Yasmin had been fleeting and died from not seeing her. Not to mention not hearing from her.

Yet he kept writing the woman every night.

Lydia found it pitiful. Her brother had no dignity. Yasmin never responded! Well, she had responded, but he didn’t know that.

As far as he knew, Yasmin had turned to another man.

Giles’s persistence was beginning to pose a problem, given Lydia’s upcoming nuptials. She and Rupert would travel to Belgium on their wedding trip, tracking a rumor of excellent bloodhounds bred to high standards. She was looking forward to being Lady Pettigrew, a future marchioness.

If only she didn’t have to worry about her brother sending more pitiable letters, once she wasn’t there to confiscate them.

Just when she was considering that she might have to bribe Duckworthy, Giles missed a day. She crept down the stairs in the early morning and discovered the salver in the entry held a few letters to peers . . . and nothing for Lady Yasmin.

Another day passed without a letter, and then a third.

The morning before her wedding day, fortune turned in her favor. She and Giles were seated at breakfast, and Lydia was devouring The Morning Post’s gossip column, which not only detailed her wedding gown but claimed, untruthfully, that she would arrive at St. Paul’s in a coach drawn by four white horses. Without question, crowds of Londoners would cluster around the church door, hoping the groom would toss coins.

“Goodness me,” Lydia said, clearing her throat. “I know that I have been rather unkind to Lady Yasmin, but I must be the first to offer my congratulations. It says here that she has agreed to become a duchess.”