He blinked and asked, “Are we on a first-name basis?”

“Why not? You’re hardly going to take advantage of our familiarity, as we already established.”

More than anything he wanted to pull her into his lap and take advantage of any familiarities she would grant him.

“I promise not to address you so intimately when anyone might overhear us,” Yasmin added.

Giles wanted nothing more than for her to call him by his first name in the same teasing, affectionate manner with which she addressed Silvester. Actually, no. He wanted her to call him Giles in a throaty whisper.

He shifted in the seat and clenched his jaw to counter the punch of desire, and the desire to punch. Namely, Silvester.

“I can see that my informality makes you uncomfortable,” she said. “I apologize, Lord Lilford.”

“No,” he said abruptly. “I shall certainly address you as Yasmin. In private.” He should have foregone her title days ago. Certainly after he heard her addressing Silvester by his given name.

He could see her waiting for him to continue, but he didn’t know what to say.

“All right, then,” she said finally. She plucked aside the hackney’s greasy curtain and looked outside. “We’re nearly at my grandfather’s house.”

An elderly butler ushered them into the Duke of Portbellow’s townhouse, creakily bowing to Giles as a footman took possession of Yasmin’s shawl.

“May I introduce you to my grandfather’s butler, Carson?” Yasmin asked. “Carson, this is the Earl of Lilford.”

The butler bowed again.

Giles nodded, trying to remember the last time that someone introduced him to a butler. The only butler whom he knew was his own.

“May I bring you tea?” Carson asked Yasmin.

“Do we have time?” she asked Giles.

“Yes. We made good time.” That wasn’t precisely true, but he had made up his mind that he had to prevent Napoleon’s hat from being flaunted before the dowager duchess’s guests. Yasmin didn’t understand how virulent London gossip could be.

If she presented that hat to Silvester’s mother, it would force the duchess to take notice of Yasmin’s connection to a man whom the British Empire considered an enemy. Even if Her Grace had wished to welcome Yasmin into her family, accepting the hat would put her own reputation in the line of fire.

Which led directly to one question: Why was Napoleon’s hat on the list in the first place? In all London, no one except for Yasmin could possibly own one. How had anyone known that the hat was in Yasmin’s possession?

The duke’s drawing room ceilings were extraordinarily high, as high as those in St. James’s Palace. Steep windows had been made to appear even longer due to complicated curtain treatments that looped above the windows and dropped in heavy swaths of sapphire velvet to the floor. The walls were entirely covered with gold frames, the portraits within so darkened by age as to be practically indecipherable.

The floor was cluttered with eight or nine small tables, randomly placed to form an obstacle course. They were surrounded by chairs decorated with gilt paint that caught sparks of gold from the sunlight coming through the windows.