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The earl had turned away and was peering over the stone walls, as if Lydia might be hiding in a quadrangle. Each grass oblong held two rows of stone posts topped with marble pineapples. Singularly unattractive to Yasmin’s mind—if rather funny.

He turned. “Why are you laughing?”

“Those dreadful pedestals,” she said, chortling.

A row of stone pillars set on square pediments rose into the air just high enough so their bulbous pineapple finials showed above the garden walls. But if someone glanced over the wall and viewed pillars from the ground up . . .

Giles made a humming sound, and the edge of his mouth twitched again. A belly laugh in another man, one had to presume.

“Once seen, you’ll never unsee,” Yasmin said. “No matter how much you might wish to. It casts a dubious light on our host’s notion of elegance, don’t you think?”

“His grandfather’s notion, I would think. It took time to scour stone pineapples to that smoothness.”

“But just imagine when they were new,” Yasmin said. “Most of them have lost the flourish of leaves on top, but if you consider that one, closest to the wall . . .”

“In medias res, as it were.”

“My education is inadequate as regards Latin,” Yasmin told him. “What does that mean?”

“In the midst,” Giles said. He hesitated, then elaborated. “In mideruption, in this case.”

Yasmin laughed. “I like you so much better when you aren’t imitating a Quaker. Look, your lips are actually curling upward.”

Unfortunately, that comment turned him back to a block of wood.

“Shall we continue, Lady Yasmin?”

“There it went,” she said with exaggerated mournfulness. “No more of this phallic foolishness. All hail the moment of joy, for it hath met its demise.”

“‘Hath met its demise’?” he repeated.

“I was caught in an extraordinarily long church service last week so I amused myself by memorizing bits from The Book of Common Prayer. Very good for my English, if a trifle antiquated.” Yasmin reluctantly began walking again. “We ought to return. I don’t want to turn the corner and be out of sight of the terrace.”

“You were certain that my sister had entered the garden with Lord Pepper. We should follow the path to its end.”

“Not unless you want everyone in that ballroom to be gossiping about us.” She caught sight of Giles’s instinctive flinch. Instinctive. He must positively loathe her to have that reaction without thinking.

Enough was enough. Later, she ought to give serious thought to why she always waltzed with a man who disliked her. Despised her, even.

After all, she had plans for this Season: she meant to find a husband.

A kind and charming Englishman, preferably one who had reached forty years of age, when the blood didn’t run so quickly. A man who would show her respect and give her children, without making false promises. A man generous in spirit to whom she could confide her scandalous past. He would understand rather than condemn.

Even contemplating how Giles would respond to her story made her instinctively flinch, just the way he had after the suggestion that people might gossip about the two of them.

“It’s growing cold,” Yasmin said, turning around. “I’m wearing fewer layers than you are, and my next dance partner will be looking for me.”

He began to remove his coat.

Yasmin raised a hand. “Don’t—”

She changed her mind as the earl’s broad shoulders emerged, clad in linen so fine that she could see the contours of his chest. His muscled chest. “On second thought, I am chilled.”

Even his shoulders had pads of muscles on them. It was something of a revelation. Most of her suitors had slim silhouettes. Even Hippolyte—with the ease of long practice, she dismissed that thought.

Giles shook out his coat and wrapped it around her. Unlike ladies—such as his sister—who piled all their hair on top of their head in a big puff, Yasmin let a few strands fall over one shoulder. Her curls bunched against the collar of his coat, and he carefully drew them free.

In another man, it would have been a tender gesture, but Giles’s expression was verging on a glare. There was no rational reason to be so attracted to him, and yet his chilly gaze felt like a caress, and the touch of his fingers on her neck made her shiver.