An Inconvenient Arrangement (Inconvenient Matches Book #2)

Chapter 8: Sylvie and Rafe.

Sylvie sat down in the study, exhausted and spent. The sun had started to come up over the horizon and there was still no sign of Jane. She did not know where she could possibly be. Jane was not a silly child. She was inquisitive and curious and always up for an adventure but she was not the sort to disregard rules and put herself in undue danger.

She put her head into her hands and forced herself to take large deep breaths. Raphael was right. Crying and panicking were not going to help at all. Sylvie had already summoned and spoken to some constables, the neighbors, the men in the stables and no one had seen a thing. Raphael had sent some of his staff over and they had tried their best to help, but no one could find a single trace of Jane. They were out now, scouring the streets near Thomas' home for Jane.

Think.

Think, think, think.

Jane knew better to go somewhere without her notebook. She knew she could not communicate with someone without it. But she had left hers right here, next to her toys? She needed it to talk to Thomas; though Jane was usually decent at reading lips, his own proficiency with sign language left much to be desired. She picked up the notebook and flipped through the pages until she came across the empty ones. A page had been torn out.

Which was not unusual, Jane sometimes tore a page if she felt as if she had not expressed herself well enough.

There was nothing nefarious going on. Her tired mind was conjuring up fantasies.

She began to pace.

Deep breaths. Calm yourself. Think.

Where would she go?

She was playing with Thomas. And then....?

Wait.

Thomas.

Thomas had invited them to stay with them.....only to take his own life? He had begged and argued and cajoled until Sylvie had given in.

No. Something did not sit right with her at all. The other two times Thomas had taken an attempt on his life, he had made sure no one was around. He would not want to make a horrifying spectacle, especially not in front of Jane.

She walked to his chair and sat herself down, thinking the change in perspective might spur her mind down a new path. Thomas had been sitting right here, Jane had been playing near the table. Her toys lay scattered on the floor. Was she just making things up in her tired mind or did the toys look tossed away haphazardly? As if a child was rushed to abandon them?

Stop it.

Jane was hardly a clean child and Sylvie was always scolding her for forgetting to put her toys away. It was a coincidence. Just a coincidence.

But why was Thomas' farewell note to her right?

She was going mad. She needed to stop it. She needed to thin-

Sniffle.

Sylvie's head swerved to the bookshelf beside the desk. Had she just heard something coming from...behind it?

She rose and walked to the wall, pressing her ear flat against the wall beside the shelf, and waited. And waited. And waited. And then, just as she was about to chastise herself for her insanity, she heard it again; a soft whimpering cry. The sound of a child weeping.

Jane!

A relieved cry escaped her as she hastened to the bookshelf, noticing for the first time that just a fraction of it was sunken into the wall. There was some sort of space behind the bookshelf! And the shelf itself was, Sylvie realized as she tugged it with all her might, sealed into the wall somehow. She pushed and shoved and pulled, but to no avail. The light of the lamp glinted off the floor as Sylvia noticed something she hadn't before; faint skid marks on the floor.