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“Taken care of,” Giles said.

Yasmin smiled at all the fascinated faces they passed. She felt feverish, a sweet ache in the pit of her stomach, her heart speeding from a grave polonaise to a merry waltz.

Giles must have already warned the butler, because they walked straight into the night to find his carriage waiting. He silently handed her into the vehicle. Yasmin waited until the door was closed, and the carriage jolted into movement, before she said, “May we kiss now?” She pouted at him because this was so much fun.

“No, because when you are in my arms, I plan to rip that dress down the middle,” her future husband stated in the calm way that he might say that the grain tax was too high or the sun was setting.

Yasmin’s heart notched up. Her nipples tightened, not that Giles could see through four layers of fabric. They sat staring at each other as the carriage made its way through the streets of Mayfair.

“Do you plan to rip my gown because it is ugly?” she asked finally, unable to sit silently any longer.

His eyes strayed over her. “You are more enticing when you cover yourself up, Yasmin. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“I knew that scandalously low bosoms and dampened skirts didn’t make a real difference. People think they can interpret character by what someone wears, but that is never true.”

The carriage stopped. Giles flung open the door and leaped down, pulling her after him. Right there in the street, where the duke’s neighbors could easily see, he pulled her into his arms and caught her in a fierce kiss. “Mina,” he said, low and deep in his throat.

Giles was in the grip of some sort of primitive male desire. Yasmin laughed, took his hand, and drew him past Carson waiting at the door, straight up the stairs into her room.

“You’ll have to help me with all these buttons,” she said, smiling at Giles over her shoulder. “Unless you truly mean to rip it open.”

“I always mean what I say.” He reached out and wrenched the back of her dress in two. “I don’t want to see this gown again.”

Yasmin couldn’t help giggling. She held out her arm. “In that case, will you do the honors?”

He rent the seam of one puffy sleeve, and pulled it free, then the other, tossing them against the wall.

Yasmin didn’t care about the dress, didn’t care about anything other than the look in Giles’s eyes. “Now, will you please help me with these pearls?”

“Why so many strings?” he asked, his fingers working nimbly at her throat.

“I am drawing attention away from my bosom. Silvester compared it to the wreath that bedecks a winning horse.”

The last string of pearls clattered as Giles flung it onto her dressing table with its fellows. He unlaced her corset and let it fall. Her chemise was made of whisper-thin silk edged in Valencia lace.

Then Giles lifted her up, one arm under her arse.

With a laugh, Yasmin wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned into his kiss.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Long minutes later, when they were lying beside each other, trying to catch their breath, Yasmin asked drowsily, “Did you come up with the idea of ripping my gown in the ballroom? Because, though it was vastly entertaining, I’d hate to make a regular practice of it.”

Giles turned his head. She blinked, because his eyes weren’t tender and affectionate, but cool. Not that they were ever precisely warm . . . The thoughts tumbled through her mind. “Are you all right?” she asked cautiously.

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

She was probably misreading his expression. He naturally had a brooding aspect to his face, after all. The legacy of being the fifth earl, she thought.

“The idea came to me while watching men cluster around you.”

“I dressed as a wallflower,” Yasmin said, pushing herself up on the pillows. She didn’t like the edge in his voice.

“You made a mockery of my request,” Giles said, staring at the ceiling rather than at her. “You were not dignified.”

His flat statement was followed by silence as Yasmin thought about how to reply. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she offered.

“You delivered a lesson,” Giles replied. “A remarkably succinct one.”