Page 78 of Stolen By the Heartless Duke

“Well,” Lavinia said softly, “that looked… complicated.”

Jane blinked once, then straightened. “It really isn’t.”

Lavinia raised an eyebrow.

Jane added more firmly, “It isn’t anything.”

But even as she said it, her gaze drifted back toward the crowd where Hector had disappeared, and stayed there longer than she intended.

Jane told herself, firmly, that she was not going to think about Hector Lockwood tonight. It was an unnecessary and somewhat pointless instruction. Her thoughts disobeyed her immediately.

Chapter Ten

The first thing Jane noticed was the silence thatwasn’tsupposed to be there.

Wynten House was never truly quiet during the day. Even in its current strained state, it still held the steady rhythm of servants moving through corridors, doors opening and closing, distant footsteps on polished floors. But today there was an odd hollowness to it.

There was an absence where sound should have been. Jane stepped out of the morning room and immediately saw why.

Two footmen were moving down the corridor ahead of her, carrying a large, framed portrait between them. It was carefully wrapped, but she knew the shape of it instantly, even though it was half-covered and tilted at an angle in which she wasn’t used to seeing it.

Her father.

Jane stopped so abruptly her skirts barely settled. “Put that down,” she said.

The men froze. Neither turned at first, as though hoping the voice had been directed at someone else.

Jane’s tone sharpened. “I said put it down.”

One of them shifted uncomfortably. “My lady?—”

“Now.” The word cracked clean through the corridor.

They hesitated another second before lowering the portrait carefully against the wall, still wrapped, still half-hidden. Jane crossed the distance in a few quick steps, her heart already tightening for reasons she couldn’t yet define.

“What are you doing with this?” she demanded.

Before either man could answer, a new voice drifted from behind her.

“Oh, there you are.”

Jane turned sharply.

Her uncle Zachary stood at the far end of the corridor as though he belonged there. As though he had always belonged there.Hands loosely clasped behind his back, expression composed in that infuriating way he had begun wearing more often lately.

Behind him, another footman appeared carrying a small side table, one Jane recognized from the sitting room immediately. Her father’s sitting room.

Jane’s stomach dropped. “What is going on?” she asked, though she already feared the answer.

Zachary walked forward unhurriedly. “Morning, Lady Jane.”

“This is not a social call,” she said.

“No,” he agreed pleasantly. “It is not.”

Her gaze flicked to the portrait again. “Why is that being taken out of the house?”

Zachary followed her line of sight and sighed as though she were being deliberately difficult. “Because the estate requires funds.”