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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.

This evening, he would not ask Yasmin for a waltz. Nor on any future occasion.

It was one thing to indulge his fascination with an occasional dance. But given his certain knowledge that she had listened to blather about his family, if not shared it herself?

He and Lady Yasmin weren’t exactly friends. But he would have thought—

Anyway, he didn’t believe that Lydia would walk into the garden with a gentleman. Rumormongers always believed the worst. They jumped on the ugliest interpretation of an innocent action.

He cleared his throat. “Are you looking forward to this evening, Lydia?”

“Of course I am! The duchess has such novel ideas.” She removed the reticule tied to her wrist, pulled off her gloves, took out a talcum bottle, and began to powder her nose.

“Ought you to be wearing face powder?” Giles asked. Now that he looked closely at his sister’s face, he realized she was wearing lip color too. “Have you blackened your eyelashes?” They fringed her eyes in a startlingly sooty fashion.

Lydia flicked her brush in the air and then hooked it back on the talcum bottle and stowed it away in her reticule. “Of course.”

“Is that . . . Do debutantes paint their faces, then?”

Lydia cast him a pitying look. “I am not a debutante, Giles. I am in my second Season.” She pulled out a tiny pot and dipped her finger into the geranium-pink paint, rubbing it across her bottom lip.

Giles came to the blinding conclusion that he’d made a huge mistake. How could he have considered himself able to guide a young lady into society, sister or no? “Where did you buy those cosmetics?”

“They are sold everywhere.” She pulled her gloves back on, shaking her head at him. “I suppose you think that women such as Lady Yasmin don’t paint their faces?”

Giles studied Yasmin’s face every time they danced. Her skin was creamy and translucent, and her cheeks turned pink when she was embarrassed. Sometimes, if she was making a particularly dramatic point, she would close her eyes in exasperation. Her lashes were thick and dark brown, with golden tips. Not pitch-black, the way Lydia’s were.

“I don’t think she wears cosmetics other than on her lips.”

Lydia snorted. “Not that I’d ever want to model myself on Lady Yasmin, but of course she paints, not to mention wearing that scarlet lip color which, by the way, is a huge mistake. Given how puffy her lips are, it makes her look debauched.”

The disdain in Lydia’s voice made Giles’s jaw tighten. He may have private misgivings about Yasmin but— “Why do you speak so disparagingly of the lady?”

“I don’t say anything that isn’t repeated everywhere,” Lydia told him, wrinkling her nose. “She wouldn’t be welcome in society, except that her grandfather is foisting her on to us. I’ve heard any number of people say the same. Plus, she’s old.”

Giles caught back a snarl.

“Will you please tie my reticule back on my wrist?”

As he bent forward to comply, she said, “On that subject, I’ve been meaning to mention to you, Giles, that you shouldn’t dance with that woman anymore. I assure everyone that you dance with Lady Yasmin out of respect for her grandfather, the Duke of Portbellow. However, it would be more prudent to ignore her altogether, the way most people do.”