Yasmin had to fight not to cry. Her parents had never expressed anything other than disgust for her stupidity.

The duke put his cup down before taking a sip. “Let me assure you that if that blackguard Charles ever broaches these shores, I’ll have a sword in his gut before he walks more than a step or two.” He leaned in. “I may be old, but I will avenge you, my dear, if I have the chance.”

She managed a wobbly smile. “He would never fight a duel over me.”

“Luckily, poverty is a revenge in itself,” the duke said, a twinkle in his eyes. “I made sure of that.”

“You didn’t—”

“Oh, but I did. I have many connections in France, even given all the unpleasantness, and it wasn’t hard to shear that particular ram. These days, with Joséphine gone and Napoleon in exile, the man can scarcely afford the pomade for those overgrowths he terms mustaches.”

Yasmin shook her head. “You are wicked, Your Grace.”

Her grandfather smirked and raised a finger. “Carson, where is that beer?”

The butler bowed so deeply they heard his stays creaking. “I shall visit the buttery myself, Your Grace.”

The duke turned back to Yasmin. “The lesson to be learned from dubious Frenchmen such as Napoleon and Hippolyte Charles is clear: one must never indulge one’s baser instincts.”

Or, to put it another way, no more waltzing with Giles Renwick, Earl of Lilford.

And definitely, without question, no more kissing him.

Chapter Five

Later that evening

En route to the Duke of Trent’s ball

Giles and his sister, Lydia, rarely talked about things of consequence. Their sibling bond had been forged in an unhappy childhood that they never discussed. Being so much younger, there was a great deal Lydia didn’t know about their parents, and Giles had no intention of revealing any of it.

From the minute she was born, he’d devoted himself to protecting her from the secrets that poisoned their household. But he couldn’t keep everything from her. When she was seven years old, she’d asked how their father died, and Giles told her the truth: he took his own life.

“Why?” she had asked.

He had given her the truest and yet most evasive answer: “He was unhappy because people said cruel things behind his back.”

They never discussed it again. When their mother expired due to an apoplectic fit after a judge had the temerity to rule against one of her lawsuits, they never discussed that, either.

During Lydia’s disastrous first Season, she gained a reputation for clumsiness before the dreadful mistake of fizzling, as Lady Yasmin had termed it, in the presence of the queen. She didn’t receive a single proposal and had cried all the way home to their country estate.

This Season seemed to be going better than her first, from what he could tell. But Giles couldn’t stop wondering why Lydia had left the ballroom in the middle of a waltz. When his sister had told him that she didn’t want a chaperone, he hadn’t hesitated to agree. But now he was prickling with misgivings. He felt another stab of annoyance. Yasmin had gossiped to him about his sister. She had listened to unkind chatter, and what’s more, she had believed it.