Page 35 of A Deal for the Duke’s Virgin

Damn. That is Edwin.

They pulled apart, both gasping. Thalia stared at him, her lips red and a little swollen, her eyes wide.

Angry? Disappointed? Confused?

He couldn’t fathom her expression.

“I…” she began weakly.

“I am sorry,” he said shortly. “This must not happen again.”

CHAPTER 10

Well, of course it must not happen again. It should not have happened, to begin with.

Thalia swallowed thickly, resisting the urge to fiddle with her hair and straighten her dress. She felt ridiculously untidy and thoroughly out of sorts. Was her face red? No doubt it was. Her spectacles, which had been pushed up and sideways, slid down her nose. She reached up to adjust them and noticed with horror that her hands were trembling.

What have I done? I let him kiss me. No, it’s worse than that. I kissed him back.

Shivering, she saw herself in her mind’s eye, clutching at his shoulders, pressing her lips against his, pushing herself against him.

It had not done anything to ease the heat in her gut. If anything, it had made it considerably worse.

Her heart thumped, and that tight feeling had returned, sitting in her stomach and dipping low to rest between her legs. She resisted the urge to press her thighs together.

Lord Trowbridge spoke again. “Christian?”

“Here we are,” Christian said aloud, gaze still fixed on Thalia.

Without seeming to move, he had put space between them, and the scene looked marginally more respectable than it had before.

Daphne and her husband appeared. Daphne’s face lit up at the sight of Thalia. She had come here as a favor to Christian, but it seemed that she and Thalia were getting on well.

“Where did you wander off to?” she asked, sounding faintly annoyed.

“Nowhere,” Christian answered placidly. “We were here the whole time.”

Daphne and her husband exchanged glances, and Thalia was not entirely sure she liked what she saw on their faces.

How much do they know?

The answer to her question came sooner than she had expected.

“We noticed that a great deal of the pictures were landscapes, and they seemed familiar,” Daphne explained. “We spoke to one of the ushers here and described Laura. He remembered her.”

Christian’s eyes widened. “She’s been here?”

“Yes, but she only looked at the paintings of the Highlands. She asked several questions, but he could remember very little.”

Thalia glanced between them.

So, Daphne and her husband know about Laura’s disappearance. Christian must trust them a good deal. Almost like family.

“Well, that means very little,” Christian muttered, frowning. “We’ve learned nothing.”

“Perhaps she’s traveling to the Highlands,” Thalia heard herself say.

The three of them glanced at her.