“What?” Giles racked his memory. “I didn’t counter it?”

Yasmin had indeed said something like that, just before they walked in the garden and kissed for the first time. He had ignored it.

What if Lydia was right? If Yasmin had been compelled to make him like her simply because he had disparaged her?

Suddenly, her comment after their first kiss jumped into his mind: “You needn’t like someone to desire them.”

Lydia sighed. “I’m sorry. She’s not good for you, and you’re not good for her, but that doesn’t help when one has been rejected.”

He stood. “It’s quite all right, Lydia. If you’ll forgive me, I shall not wait for tea.”

A patter of feet followed him up the stairs. “Giles!” his sister protested.

At the top of the steps, he took a deep breath. If Yasmin didn’t want to marry him, it was hardly a reason to be uncivil to his younger sister. “Please forgive me, Lydia. I am not myself today.”

“I blame her,” Lydia said, her voice shaking. “You are never—She has hurt you!”

“Not on purpose,” he said curtly. “I am shamed by my behavior, which she had to point out, and you have affirmed. I was attempting to ignore my feelings for her. I did so in an unpleasant fashion. I caused her pain.”

“You’re better off with a different woman,” Lydia declared. “I know you don’t want to hear that, Giles, but it’s true.”

He bit back an answer that would shred her. “I criticized your behavior on the grounds it might damage your reputation,” he said instead. “That was laughable, given the damage I was doing to another woman. I apologize, Lydia.”

“You were only trying to protect me,” his sister said.

“Perhaps. I was protecting myself when I treated Yasmin as less than a lady. That was unacceptable.”

“We all make mistakes,” Lydia said. “You too, Giles. Granted, this is the first mistake that I can recall you making in the years I’ve known you.”

He frowned at her.

“You’re perfect,” Lydia said flatly. “Always perfect. It’s as if we are from different families, rather than merely different fathers. I fart, I stumble, I make an exhibition of myself. I can’t help wanting revenge even though it’s unladylike. I rather liked kissing strange men.”

“I am not perfect,” Giles stated. “I just told you—”

“You were trying to be perfect,” Lydia interrupted. “You were trying to avoid the temptation to attach yourself to the wrong woman. You are a much better person than I am.”

“I don’t think so,” Giles said. “But thank you for your opinion, Lydia.” He leaned down to put a kiss on her cheek before he strode down the corridor to his room.

He didn’t break a window or dash the water pitcher into the fireplace, though those actions occurred to him. Instead, he closed the door and tried to imagine a life without Yasmin. A life in which he knew they weren’t together because he had hurt her.