Page 43

“I see.”

“So you might not wish to marry me,” he said, making a clean breast of it. “I packed Lydia off to seminary because I didn’t know what else to do with her.”

“Do you loathe going into society?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I like to dance with you. I would like to eat supper with you and your friends. But I spend my days at the House of Lords. We’re debating a treason act at the moment that could change the judicial system.”

“So when you’re standing about looking mysteriously broody, you’re actually thinking through the laws of the land?”

She kissed him again, which he thought might be a good sign.

“It’s important,” he said once they surfaced from that kiss. “There’s a case coming up, labeled the Duchy of Lancaster Act, that will allow landed gentry and aristocracy to sell part of their lands if they put the profits toward improvement of the land. People don’t seem to recognize how important that is. Words don’t come easily to me, so even in the ballroom I think through speeches that I intend to give in Parliament.”

Yasmin gave him a crooked smile. “Are you not afraid that marrying me would reduce your influence in the House of Lords? That having a disgraceful Countess of Lilford would ruin your family name?”

He had been afraid of that. His father’s warnings lay in the back of his head: The late earl had railed endlessly about rumors that lay in wait like the traps laid by poachers, ready to snap closed around someone’s leg. Of course, his father had been thinking of his own history of theft, which did indeed surface, albeit years after the fact.

Frankly, if he survived the scandal of his father’s suicide, he could survive anything.

“I do not care,” he said with passionate truth.

Yasmin took a deep breath. “I see.” She was fidgeting with his coat lapel. “I wouldn’t be a very good political hostess. Such a wife would put on grand suppers, entertaining people of opposite parties. Talking knowledgeably to the prime minister. I am frivolous.”

“I don’t care to dine with the prime minister,” Giles said.

“As long as you understand that I am not secretly intellectual. I read magazines that talk of la mode, never The Times. I adore lip color and silk underclothes.”

“I love them on you. Not that I am asking to see your underclothes.” His eyes devoured the curves of her breasts.

“Venetian lace,” she told him impudently. “Embroidered with rosebuds, laced in front, to here.” She traced a line from her waist up to her breasts.

He groaned, something that sounded like a curse.

“My point is that I won’t be an asset. Countesses are supposed to be clever.”

“I think you are the most intelligent woman I’ve ever known, and I’ve thought it since we met last year.”

A startled laugh broke from her mouth. “That’s absurd! I hate to admit this, Giles, but I’m not even sure that I know who the prime minister is!”

The fact was inconsequential to him. “For you, language is a game. I’ve watched as you’ve mastered English. I have the idea that at any moment your head swims with words, French and English, and you choose whichever you want as easily as . . . as a hen pecks grain.”

“I’m a chicken?”

He winced. “I just meant that so many words present themselves to you at any moment.”

Yasmin frowned at him.

“For example, how many words can you think of for the color yellow?”

“In French or English?”

“English.”

“Gold and lemon.”

He kissed her on her nose. “More than those.”

“Daffodil, mustard, honey, jaundiced yellow.”