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“I will write to you,” Giles said urgently.

“Very well,” Yasmin said. Jake led her directly into a quadrille, which ended in front of Silvester, who swept her into a waltz, followed by Lord Pettigrew in a country dance, then her grandfather in a Scotch reel.

“I think we can leave now,” His Grace said as they processed together under an arch of dancers holding hands over their heads, none of them meeting Yasmin’s eyes. “Nine days’ wonder, my dear. By next Season, they’ll have forgotten all about it.”

It was not true, but she loved him for saying it. “I would very much like to go home.”

They were close to the entrance to the ballroom, so her grandfather simply turned and guided her out the door.

In the carriage, he handed her a handkerchief, but she didn’t need one.

“I used to cry so much as a girl,” Yasmin told him, managing a wry smile. “But these days I simply walk through it.”

“As do I,” her grandfather said. “As do I. That might be the definition of maturity, dear.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ten days later

Dear Giles, if you don’t mind the informal address,

I am writing to let you know that my grandfather and I have safely arrived at Portbellow House. However, we have decided to make a prolonged visit to the Duke and Duchess of Trent’s country house in Norfolk.

I received your letter, with its kind assurance that you have no intention of breaking your promise to marry me. We both know that is a gentlemanly impulse, but a poor one. The Countess of Lilford, as you have told me many times, should be aligned with virtue. My answer is no. Please consider yourself free of any obligations.

I shall always think of you fondly.

With all best wishes,

Yasmin

A week later

Lydia was a woman who prided herself on decisiveness. She had steered her brother away from a disastrous marriage, and she was growing hopeful that he finally understood how suitable her friend Blanche would be as his wife. The other night, he had talked to Blanche for at least ten minutes about her canaries, and didn’t complain on the way home.

Giles wasn’t very communicative, but that was her brother. If Lydia hadn’t known he was a brilliant debater in the House of Lords, she would never have believed it. No matter how she tried to coach him in the kind of light conversation that would attract a young lady, he just sat at dinner, silent as a stone.

He’d become even worse after the debacle at the Prince Regent’s ball.

Since then, he was about as cheerful as a tombstone, which was incredibly childish. Frankly, no end of people had informed him over the last two years that Lady Yasmin was a loose woman. It shouldn’t have come as such a shock.

Everyone pitied her for being taken advantage of at such a young age, but facts were facts.

One couldn’t pretend the episode never happened. Ruined women were . . . well . . . ruined. Full stop. The episode had made her shudder to see how close she had come to a similar fate, though of course her brother would have forced Edwin Turing to marry her, whereas Lady Yasmin’s father unaccountably did not.

When she had a daughter, she wouldn’t allow her out of her sight.

“Do you have the mail?” Lydia called, seeing a footman with a silver tray piled high. “I’ll take that, if you please.”

Most of the missives would be for her, people sending congratulations and invitations. She and Lord Pettigrew would marry in just over two months. Her gown was finished, her jointure papers signed. More importantly, she’d learned how to handle her future husband. He didn’t like fuss or raised voices, which she privately thought was cowardly but made him easy to manage.

Quickly, she sorted through the mail. One made her eyes narrow as fury turned her cheeks hot. The woman was writing to her brother. Lady Yasmin hadn’t given up. It wasn’t enough that she had distracted Giles from making a decent match for the second Season in a row.

Yasmin must be desperately keeping Giles on a string, tied to her immoral petticoats. She was probably inviting him to the country; Lydia had heard a rumor that she had joined the Duke and Duchess of Trent.

The duke’s guests would go from his country house to Mrs. Addison’s, then on to another estate, perhaps the Duke of Portbellow’s. Yasmin would spend the summer traipsing from one house to another, likely enjoying any number of dalliances.

Giles would be destroyed if he married a woman with such light morals. Destroyed. He didn’t understand what infidelity did to a man. Lydia was certain that her father’s suicide stemmed not from his theft—committed years before, after all—but from their mother’s flagrant disloyalty.