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“My uncle had to pay him to go away,” Merry said, wrinkling her nose. “My point is that I can take you to America, darling.”

“I’ve already found my own crowd of fortune hunters, along with one American,” Stella pointed out.

“Boston is full of handsome, unmarried men, and not all of them are fortune hunters.”

“Yes, but Giles is an earl,” Stella said. “If he does propose, how can I possibly say no, Merry?”

“Yasmin apparently did! You could simply say: ‘No, you big lummox, I will not marry a man who cherishes another woman.’”

“Easier said than done,” Stella said gloomily. “My aunt would have an apoplexy.”

The following night, Mrs. Thyme and Stella had no sooner entered the door of Almack’s when Lydia ran to their side and said breathlessly, “You’ll never believe what happened! Lady Yasmin is gone!”

“Gone?” Mrs. Thyme echoed.

“Left for the country with her grandfather,” Lydia said, proceeding to loudly announce that one of Lady Yasmin’s former lovers had appeared at a gathering hosted by the Regent. When the man approached her, Lady Yasmin blurted out the truth: Apparently, when she was a mere girl, the knave had pretended to marry her, but the elopement had been a sham, an effort to extort money from her parents.

“After that, my brother knocked him out,” Lydia concluded. “Of course, any gentleman would have responded in that fashion.”

Stella couldn’t help thinking that should one of her former lovers appear—not that she had any—the Earl of Lilford would not avenge her with a blow to the chin.

Not even if they were married.

“The Duke of Huntington has reportedly accompanied her to the country,” Lydia added, waggling her eyebrows. “I gather the reputation of his future duchess is irrelevant to him.”

Wherever Stella looked, she saw clusters of people, eyes alight, chattering avidly. Despite her better interests, she began defending Yasmin. “She was a very young girl,” she pointed out again and again. “Shouldn’t her parents or her chaperone have been blamed for allowing such a blackguard to make her acquaintance?”

To Stella’s satisfaction, Mrs. Thyme took on the battle as well. The fact Yasmin was seduced at such a young age lent itself to a cascade of scathing comments about men and their unbridled lust.

The next day, her aunt devoured the gossip columns at breakfast, fascinated by the downfall of Lady Yasmin. Stella just felt sad. At the beginning of the Season, she’d admired Silvester and Yasmin for their lavish beauty and seeming goodwill, their giddy pleasure in the ballroom and each other.

They didn’t have feet of clay, as she had originally thought of Silvester, but they were real people, with real faults.

If she could hardly resist Silvester’s kisses, how could Yasmin have resisted a man whom she adored, who had pretended to marry her? Frankly, Stella thought the earl should have run the Frenchman through with a rapier.

In the next days, Lydia talked feverishly of scandalous country house parties where supposedly Yasmin had hidden herself, shoring up her dislike of Yasmin as if it were a living thing that could change her brother’s feelings.

Because Giles was in love with Yasmin: Stella was certain of it, and she thought Lydia knew as well.

The Earl of Lilford’s cheekbones had always been pronounced, but he was beginning to look gaunt. Once he began to tell her something about Yasmin. But he stopped himself and offered her sugared almonds instead.

He wasn’t the only gentleman languishing in Yasmin’s absence. She had swept through London, collecting suitors as if she were playing pickup sticks. Without her, they ambled about ballrooms, flirting listlessly with less favored ladies. Blanche collected more proposals; even Stella had a few, though her uncle promptly rejected them.

The promise of a title—Countess of Lilford—hung over the family’s every thought and action.

Stella couldn’t imagine why Yasmin had bothered to charm anyone other than Silvester. Courting Giles was exhausting. It wasn’t reading the papers and taking notes, or wearing prudish gowns to please a prudish earl (and a prudish aunt, for that matter).

It wasn’t even finding herself all too often in company with his sister, Lydia, whom she frankly loathed.

It was the weariness of submitting to a process that gave gentlemen all the power over marriage. If Giles wasn’t in the room, her aunt or Lydia were planning their next encounter, next dance, next supper.

Yet even when they were together, he was only partially in the room.

His gaze would drift away in the middle of a sentence. Something was wrong. It reminded Stella of a cloud of smoke that signaled a house was burning down a few streets away.

Frustrated by her brother’s lax courtship, Lydia set up an evening at the Theatre Royal, ensuring Giles would have ample opportunity to drop to his knee and offer a ring.

“After all, what is he waiting for?” she demanded.