Page 106 of Stolen By the Heartless Duke

“What is it?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer. He simply stared. In the very center of the room sat a single wooden chair. Someone was bound to it.

Jane’s breath caught. “Oh…”

The man’s head hung forward. His wrists were tied behind the chair. Ropes circled his chest and ankles. His clothes were filthy, torn in several places, and stained with dried blood.

Dark bruises covered the exposed skin of his face. One eye was swollen nearly shut. There were cuts along his jaw and temple that had crusted over days before. His dark hair hung across his forehead, matted with sweat and blood.

For one terrible moment, Hector thought they were too late. Jane whispered only one word.

“Colin!”

She took a hesitant step forward. Then another. Hector moved with her, though more cautiously. His eyes swept every shadow surrounding the chair. A trap remained entirely possible.

Nothing moved. No hidden gunmen emerged. No ropes were released from the rafters. Only silence. Satisfied for the moment that they were alone, Hector approached the prisoner.

Jane was already kneeling beside her brother. “Colin?”

Her voice trembled. She reached toward him with shaking fingers but stopped just short of touching his face, as though she feared what she might find.

“Colin…” There was no response. Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, please…”

Hector crouched beside them. He studied the man’s injuries with the practiced eye of someone who had seen more than enough violence. He was bruised, beaten, and malnourished.

He looked carefully at the earl’s chest. There was a slow rise, and then another. A long breath escaped Hector before he even realized he had been holding it.

“He’s alive.”

Almost as if the words themselves reached him, Colin stirred faintly. A weak, ragged breath escaped his lips. His head shifted only a fraction.

Jane immediately took one of his bound hands between both of hers. “Colin.” Her voice broke. “It’s me.”

Another faint movement. His eyelids fluttered. They didn’t open fully, but just enough to show that somewhere beneath exhaustion and pain, he was still fighting.

Jane let out a choked sob of relief. “Oh, thank God.”

She bowed her head against his hand for only a moment before forcing herself to regain control. “We have to get him untied.”

Hector was already reaching for the knife he’d taken from one of the attackers. “Move back slightly.”

She obeyed immediately. The ropes had been tied tightly enough to leave angry red marks around Colin’s wrists. Hector began sawing carefully through the first knot.

As the coarse fibers started to give way, he glanced once more around the warehouse. Something still troubled him. This was all just far too easy.

They had found Colin. Alive and waiting, almost as though someone had wanted him to be found.

The thought settled heavily in his mind. He cut through another rope. Behind him, the warehouse remained unnervingly silent. And somehow, that silence frightened him more than the fight ever had.

Chapter Fifteen

Jane scarcely remembered crossing the distance. One heartbeat she stood beside Hector. The next, she was on her knees before her brother, her skirts pooling across the dusty warehouse floor.

“Colin.” Her voice broke around his name.

He looked even worse up close.

Bruises painted nearly every inch of his face. One cheekbone had swollen so badly that his eye was almost forced shut. Dried blood crusted along his temple and disappeared beneath his dark hair, which had become tangled and filthy after several days of captivity.