Page 3 of A Deal for the Duke’s Virgin

Christian paused. “Has she? Last I recall, she was struggling with French.”

His mother glanced up at him with a soft, wry smile. “When you left, Christian, she was a gawky fourteen-year-old who scarcely dared look people in the eye. You have been gone for a long time, my son. Things have changed, and so has your sister.”

He said nothing, clenching his jaw.

The plain fact was that the Laura he had returned to from his travels was not the girl he remembered leaving. She was four-and-twenty now, tall and slim, with a torrent of rich golden hair and half-narrowed, smiling blue eyes. At some point in his absence, the awkward little girl who bemoaned being taller than the boys had disappeared, only to be replaced by a young woman.

A stranger.

And I missed it, he thought with a pang. I missed it because I refused to come home and face Father.

As always, memories of the old Duke brought up a jumble of emotions. He remembered their last meeting in the study. He remembered his own grief and rage.

He thought briefly about Sophie and the baby, and his chest tightened.

Perhaps Father didn’t arrange their deaths, but it was his fault that they were in that carriage in the first place.

Clearing his throat, he pushed aside those thoughts. It would do him no good.

“Mother, there must be somewhere Laura feels comfortable going,” he heard himself say. “She won’t have gone out alone; she’s not a fool. She must have gone to a friend. Are you sure she’s got no suitor?”

“You know how Laura frightens away the men. And the ladies, too. She’s far too wild. Do you know, I hear mothers warning their debutante daughters away from her?”

Christian growled. “They had better not do so in my hearing. So am I to understand that Laura has no friends at all?”

This thought was accompanied by a distinct twinge of guilt. When he had left home, he had known all of Laura’s friends. She had never had many, but there were some. In the first days after his return, after a shocking eight-year absence, he had tried to ask her about her friends and been rebuffed. The girls, apparently, had mostly married and gone about their lives, leaving her behind.

Is my sister lonely?

“Now, there is one,” Celestia murmured, brightening. “She’s such a strange little thing, but she and Laura are close. Lady Thalia Hamilton is her name.”

Christian frowned. “The name sounds familiar. Am I acquainted with Lady Thalia?”

“I doubt it. She’s an odd woman. A spinster, of course, and shows no interest in marriage. I daresay that is why she and Laura are such friends.”

Christian sucked in a breath. “Hamilton. Of course. Is she a relative of Lord Jonathan Hamilton, the Marquess of Hawton?”

“Her older brother.”

He sniffed. “I can’t say that he and I are particularly friendly, but he would never be one to pass up an acquaintanceship with a duke if I remember correctly. However, I don’t believe that I’ve met Lady Thalia. Is she out?”

“Of course, she is two-and-twenty. But I don’t believe she cares to move much in Society. Her brother is always bemoaning her reluctance to marry. I don’t believe he approves of her friendship with Laura. I daresay he assumes that she will encourage Lady Thalia to stay unmarried. But Lady Thalia has a mind of her own; I know that much. She’ll do as she pleases.”

“And she’ll encourage Laura to do the same,” he muttered sourly. “Well, can you find me Lady Thalia’s address, please?”

Celestia clicked her tongue. “You cannot possibly mean to simply turn up at their home and demand that they turn over Laura.”

Christian cleared his throat. That was exactly what he had intended to do.

“My sister is my responsibility,” he said shortly. “I will do what I can to keep her safe. I will go where I must and do what is necessary to find her. The Marquess had better not get in my way.”

“He’s a well-connected man,” Celestia mumbled unhappily, tugging at the ends of her hair.

Often, when they were in the house all day, she would let her hair hang loose, a gray curtain swinging around her shoulders. The old Duke would never have permitted such a thing any more than he would have permitted Laura’s habit of running around barefoot or Christian’s persistent love of novels.

“What are you saying?” Christian asked crisply.

“Only that I hope you do not annoy him too much.”