Now, she looked up at Giles’s clear, grave eyes and couldn’t stop the happiness that bubbled up inside her.

She leaned in and kissed him, rather than the other way around.

Giles’s arms wound around Yasmin, and heat coursed through her, healing the cracks in her heart. When she drew back to take a breath, his mouth slid along the line of her jaw, and teeth gently tugged at her earlobe. It felt so good, and yet so silly that she burst into giggles.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Giles came back to her mouth. “You make me want to bite you.”

She shook her head, tapping his strong jaw with a finger. “Are you certain, Giles? I want to marry someone who knows I am not like my mother.”

“I trust you.”

“Even though I blurted out your sister’s secret?”

“She blurted out the truth in a rage, which is characteristic of Lydia,” Giles said. There was a painful edge to his voice. “I learned that my sister knows more of our mother than I thought, and the truth has hurt her.”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“My mother was carrying me when she married, as I told you. Thereafter, she took other lovers to bed. My sister and I have different fathers, and in her case, he was certainly not the late Earl of Lilford.”

“Goodness,” Yasmin said faintly.

“I didn’t realize that my mother had informed Lydia of her parentage, but now I think that the reason my sister almost ruined herself lies in my family’s past.” He took a breath. “As do my own convictions. I was raised to believe that my countess had to be the most prudent, virtuous woman in all London, so that her children would not experience that particular shame.”

He had both her hands again. “Yet I truly don’t care about the name I inherited. If we never have children, so be it. I will care if you take another man to your bed, because that will break me. That is the only thing that would destroy me.”

Chapter Nineteen

The only sound in Yasmin’s bedchamber was a lonely sparrow chirping outside the window. Somewhere in the bowels of the house, comforting sounds suggested that a meal was being prepared.

“I don’t know how to trust your feelings about me,” she said haltingly. “What will happen to your title without an heir?”

“I promise you, I promise you, that if you agree to marry me, I will simply kiss you for all the days of our life, if that is your wish.”

“I’ve never heard of such a marriage.”

The corner of his mouth curled up. “No one knows what goes on in a couple’s intimate life. My parents are a good example. My father did not mind the fact that my mother conceived children with other men. In fact, I think he may have encouraged it.”

Yasmin didn’t know how to reply.

“It was not a point of contention between them. They did argue at times, but not over that. I clearly remember my father’s joy on holding my baby sister for the first time.”