Page 36 of Stolen By the Heartless Duke

Wynten House stood behind her like a dark memory. Its familiar outline softened by moonlight, its gardens quieter now, emptied of the day’s gossip and music.

Jane pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders as she moved. Every sound felt louder at night. She told herself it was practicality. Not the fact that she had spent far too much of the past week thinking about a man she did not trust.

A shadow shifted ahead. The carriage was there. Jane hesitated only once. Then she stepped forward. The door opened before she reached it.

And there he was. The Duke of Sunderford.

Inside the carriage, barely lit by a dim lantern, he looked even more composed than he had in daylight, as though he belonged more to shadow than to society.

“Get in,” he said simply.

Jane lifted her chin. “I received your note,” she said. “That does not mean I take orders from you.”

Then, very faintly, he said, “You came anyway.”

Her grip tightened on her cloak. She hated that he noticed that. Still, she climbed in. The door shut behind her. The carriage began moving almost immediately.

Jane sat opposite him, spine straight, hands folded tightly in her lap as though that alone could maintain control of the situation.

“You said it was urgent,” she began.

The duke didn’t waste time. “My man followed every lead from the brothel ledger,” he said. “Every name. Every alias. Every coded entry I gave him from Evan’s previous habits.”

Jane leaned forward slightly despite herself. “And?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” she repeated.

The duke’s gaze stayed steady. “No Foxglove entry. No matching aliases. No repeat appearances under any known pattern Evan has used before.”

Jane leaned back slowly. Frustration rose sharp and immediate in her chest. “So it was a dead end,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

Silence filled the carriage again, heavier this time. Jane looked out of the window for a moment, her jaw tight.

“I thought,” she said carefully, “that we were close.”

The duke didn’t respond immediately. When he did, his voice was lower. “We are not done.”

Jane looked back at him. He was watching her with the same intense expression he always seemed to have.

“What else can we do?” she asked.

That was when something shifted. Not in him exactly, but in the energy of the carriage. A subtle change, like the conversation had reached a fork in the road.

“My man heard something,” the duke said.

Jane sat straighter again.

“He was near a gaming hell on the east side of the district,” he continued. “Speaking with a doorman. A casual conversation, but with enough drink involved that people stopped guarding their tongues.”

Jane’s expression tightened. “And?”

“There are private suites upstairs,” he said. “Used for discreet meetings. Transactions. Conversations that cannot happen in public rooms.”

Jane’s mind immediately sharpened. “And you think Colin might have…?”