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“Never,” she said promptly. “There’s no reason to worry. It takes ages to have a child. Just look at my mother having only me. She tried to have another with the emperor.”

Giles shook his head. “My point is that you, my dear future countess, may already be carrying a child.”

“I would know,” Yasmin said. “I would be nauseated, or dizzy, or any number of other symptoms that women discuss.”

“Excellent,” Giles said.

“You don’t want a child?” Yasmin’s eyes searched his face.

“Not yet.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead and went to the door.

She watched the door shut behind him, thinking about how in love she was with her grumpy, ethical earl.

Totally, wildly in love. The feeling was nothing like what she felt for Hippolyte. She knew Giles’s faults and loved him for them.

For being himself.

Chapter Twenty-Three

One week later

Lord and Lady Melton’s Musical Soirée

As guest of honor, the Duke of Portbellow was ushered to the front row of Lady Melton’s musical soirée, which meant that Yasmin was unable to turn her head and see whether Giles and Lydia had arrived yet.

“You seem rather subdued,” her grandfather observed in an intermission. “What did you think of this guitar? An absurd instrument, like a violin that belched.”

“Hush, Grandfather!” Yasmin said. “Mr. Rossini might hear you.”

“I prefer Handel. Or Haydn, on the violin.”

She patted his arm. “It’ll be supper time after a quartet performing Beethoven.”

“Thank goodness,” the duke said with satisfaction twenty minutes later, after the musical portion of the evening concluded. “I’ve arranged for us to eat a bite with young Pettigrew. He’s got prize hounds, you know. I mean to have one off him.”

“Do you still hunt, Grandfather?”

“Every gentleman hunts!” her grandfather said indignantly. But as they walked to the dining room, he added, “I thought a dog might be company when you leave.”

Yasmin hugged his arm closer, lowering her voice to say, “I won’t go far. Giles’s estate runs next to yours.”

“But that future husband of yours is endlessly in town, racketing around the House of Lords, raising trouble,” the duke said. “When he stopped by last night, did he tell you about the speech he gave yesterday?”

“We didn’t get to the subject,” Yasmin said, and broke into a storm of giggles at her grandfather’s wry chuckle.

“I don’t miss being young,” he said, leading her across a dining room dotted with small tables. “I do miss your grandmother. She had more joie de vivre than I did, so the early years of our marriage were a constant surprise. I have a feeling that your earl already finds himself similarly startled.”

“Oh, dear,” Yasmin said under her breath as she realized Lord Pettigrew was—naturally enough—seated with his fiancée, Lydia. She looked about wildly and caught Giles’s eye just as he seated himself at a table across the room. He had apparently asked Lady Stella for the supper dance.

The duke turned his head. “Hmm?”

“Lady Lydia is not fond of me,” Yasmin reminded him under her breath.

“Young fool,” His Grace said, barreling forward. “Here we are!”

Lydia and Lord Pettigrew came to their feet, His Lordship bowing with the respect due to an elderly still-powerful peer, and Lydia dropping a curtsy that expressed dissatisfaction verging on disrespect.

A footman had sprung forward and pulled out a chair for Yasmin. Her grandfather’s attention had been caught by an acquaintance at the next table.