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She was barely in her room before she fell on her knees before the chamber pot. She didn’t realize Cleo had followed her until her friend draped a cool, damp cloth on the back of her neck.

Yasmin bit back a sob. “I peed in that pot last night.” She started sobbing. “Now I cast up my accounts on top, which is revolting. I almost never cry!”

Cleo curled an arm around her waist and pulled her to her feet. “Goodness me, you’re tall. Almost as tall as I am, aren’t you? Come over here.” She led Yasmin to an armchair and pushed her into it without ceremony.

Turning away, she dropped another linen cloth in the basin and wrung it out. “For your forehead. Now, where’s your fiancé?”

“In London,” Yasmin said, her voice breaking. “I wrote him a letter breaking off our engagement before I knew I was carrying a child. Since then, I’ve written letters that he hasn’t answered. I had the groom deliver a letter to his house, but he didn’t answer that either.”

“Well, spit!” Cleo exclaimed.

Yasmin blinked.

“Vastly improper American slang that Merry taught me,” Cleo explained. “I don’t know Lilford terribly well, but this isn’t characteristic behavior, is it?”

Yasmin shook her head. “I wrote one letter that I would give anything to take back,” she blurted out. “Two, actually. First, I broke off our engagement. Then I . . . I told him how I felt about him. Now I’m so humiliated. Of course, I put him on the spot, and he wouldn’t have liked that.”

“Do you love him?”

Yasmin nodded. “I just wish I hadn’t told him.”

“Does he know of the babe?”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “I hoped he would marry me for a better reason.”

“I shall send my husband to fetch your future husband,” Cleo said, dusting her hands together. “Lilford has no choice about marriage now that you’re carrying a child. His lordship can explain his correspondence failures in person.”

Pure humiliation made tears press on Yasmin’s eyes again. “Your husband has more important things to do.”

“He will understand,” Cleo said. “Happy marriages require conversation. Misunderstandings cannot be allowed to fester.”

“Giles is tremendously busy in the House of Lords. He puts things . . . me . . . out of his mind when he’s working.”

Cleo frowned.

“He divides his life into boxes,” Yasmin said, knowing how foolish it sounded. “I suspect my box is stored in a far corner. The attic, perhaps.”

A flash of pity crossed Cleo’s face. “No wife should be in a box or an attic,” she said, adding, “Parliament adjourned a week ago. What’s more, you wrote him that important letter. Two of them. He should be here.”

“What if Giles refuses to accompany your husband?” Yasmin asked, swallowing back tears.

“No one refuses Jake Addison,” his wife said with satisfaction. “It’s the American side of him. You’ll have the father of that babe at our front door in no time.”

Embarrassment was a cold lump in Yasmin’s stomach. Her fiancé had to be fetched, like a recalcitrant schoolboy. “I’ll have to tell Giles about the baby.” A sob forced its way out of her chest. “I don’t know why I’m so emotional. I never cry.” She snatched up a handkerchief Cleo offered.

“The baby does it,” Cleo said. “Merry told me that when she was carrying her first, she came across a dying heifer with a newborn calf and cried for two days.”

Yasmin’s eyes widened. “Its mother had died?”

“Merry fed it with a bottle!” Cleo said hastily. And then got up to fetch another handkerchief.

Chapter Thirty

Giles saw his sister and her new husband off for their wedding trip with a rush of relief. It wasn’t just that Lydia was safely married. Yasmin’s silence was driving him mad.

If she thought he would allow her to break their engagement, she was wrong. He would sue her for breach of promise. He was compelled to find her, to keep her. Even if, as he thought in his worst moments, she had chosen another man.

His trunk had been loaded on his traveling coach since dawn.