No.

“What if I promised never to engage in intimacies that you didn’t directly request?”

Feelings were cascading through Yasmin: embarrassment, mortification, irritation . . . desire. He was so irritatingly desirable, especially when he fixed his eyes on her face.

“It’s more than that,” she said, summoning up conclusions she had reached during the night. “I don’t think you want to marry me. Frankly, Giles, you don’t even like me! Desire is not enough, and it would eventually destroy us.”

He glanced down at their linked hands. “You’re wrong, Yasmin. I do like you. I won’t marry any woman, if not you.”

“You—you have danced with me only once a night for the last months,” she pointed out. “I have surmised from your frowns that you find me improper, empty-headed, and prone to chattering too much. You told me that you need to bind yourself to virtue, and my past will always be between us.”

“I danced with you only once a night because that’s all I would allow myself.”

“You certainly weren’t courting me,” Yasmin stated.

“No.” Giles’s lips curled into a smile again. “I didn’t think I could have you. But then I realized that if a duke could marry you, why not me?”

Yasmin bit her lip. “So you only realized I was marriageable once Silvester offered competition?”

Giles nodded. “I had told myself that I had to marry a woman of obvious moral fiber.”

“I think we’ve talked enough,” Yasmin said, jumping to her feet. “No matter what you think of me, I consider myself a good person.”

He stood. “It wasn’t you. Just the circumstances.”

“Bollocks! I was not good enough to be your countess when I was a dissipated creature beneath your notice. But when you realized I might become an immoral duchess, you decided I could be an immoral countess!” Her cheeks were hot, and tears were pricking at the backs of her eyes, but she kept her head high. “I would not marry you, not if you are the last man who ever proposes to me. I think better of myself, even if you don’t!”

“I’m not making myself clear. I was thinking of children, of the children I may have someday.”

“You are entirely clear. You believe my children will be ashamed of me.” Pain seared her heart, but it was a familiar feeling. She straightened her back and put on a calm expression. “Due to my mother’s love life, or my own? That would be the love life that you assume I have had.”

A pulse throbbed in his forehead. “You must admit, Yasmin, that you have done nothing to dispel the incorrect assumptions of polite society as a whole. You dress in a flagrantly sensual manner, and you carry a condom in your reticule. Moreover, it has a weak catch. If the condom had spilled on the ballroom floor, it would have been your last ball. Even your grandfather could not overcome the scandal that would have ensued.”