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Chapter Ten

Once in a hackney, they sat quietly until Yasmin couldn’t take it any longer. She was not silent by nature.

“This will be a new experience for you. Didn’t you tell me that you had never walked through Covent Market?”

“I have not,” Giles said. He hesitated. “I apologize for the insult offered to you by that butler. I shall speak to the duke and have him turned away.”

“Oh, I expect you frightened Wickford into future politeness,” Yasmin said lightly. “I should clarify, though, that the Duke of Huntington has not proposed marriage, and if I read his mother’s intentions correctly, she would prefer that Lady Stella have that honor.”

They lapsed into silence again. Yasmin spent the time reminding herself that she planned to have nothing to do with Giles. She had been spinning fantasies about him, but none of them could come true. He was a hollow man, cold to the bone.

Silvester, on the other hand, was charming and warm. Almost cuddly. Perhaps she would marry Silvester, just as Giles apparently thought she should. Or Viscount Templeton, who unfortunately had not been invited to the scavenger hunt.

They were drawing up to the market when Giles cleared his throat and said, “The Duke of Huntington will propose to you within a week or two. I’ve known him my entire life. He pretends to be frivolous, but he isn’t. When he makes up his mind, he doesn’t stop until he succeeds.”

“Silvester told me that you consider him frivolous,” Yasmin said, too surprised to censor herself.

“Not so. He and I are opposites.”

Yasmin gave him a rueful smile. “He talks all the time, and you never speak? He’s cheerful, and you’re grumpy?”

“He’s free,” Giles said unexpectedly.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“He does and says whatever he wishes.”

“I don’t see why you can’t say what you wish,” Yasmin said, just as the carriage rocked to a halt.

“The duke’s family is famous for its eccentricities,” Giles said. “Mine is equally famous for less salubrious reasons.”

“You feel that you need to mend the family reputation, whereas Silvester can simply cavort as he wishes?”

Giles nodded, then pushed open the door, jumped out, and helped her to step to the ground.

“You are an earl,” Yasmin said. “You can surely do as you wish.”

“A noble ancestry doesn’t give carte blanche,” he stated. “To the contrary, it binds you more to virtue.”

She didn’t have the virtue he required. He might as well have announced, Only virgins need apply.

Yasmin turned away. “I see my favorite flower seller. Hello, Lulu!” she called, waving her parasol.

The yellow-haired flower seller looked up from her cart. “Good day, Lady Yam!” she replied.

“No time to buy flowers,” Giles said. “If we’re snarled in traffic returning from your grandfather’s house, we could be late to return.”

Yasmin didn’t feel like answering, let alone listening, to him, so she walked over to the flower seller.

“I saved one for you,” Lulu said. Her bright face was mischievous. “Got one for Mr. and Mrs. Addison too.”

“What do you have?” Yasmin asked.

Lulu pulled a bunch from under the flowers filling her cart. “This! For the hunt.” It was a large boutonnière composed of a number of fluffy pink blossoms.

Giles appeared at Yasmin’s shoulder.

“For you!” Yasmin said, turning to him. She had never seen the grim-faced earl with a boutonnière, let alone a pink one. “Lulu was kind enough to save us one of her last boutonnières.”