[The Inconvenient Matches series is comprised entirely of stand alone novels that can be read in any order]
Raphael St. Alexander, Viscount Carlisle, has only one goal: track the man who betrayed him in Belgium and bring him to justice. Forever chan...
There had to be something she was missing. A lock or mechanism somewhere?
Don't worry, Jane. I'm coming.
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Rafe's entire body thrummed with tension as he entered Thomas' house with The Major in tow. How had he found out about Thomas' death? He had summoned Raphael and had berated him for neglecting to inform him about the situation, particularly when it involved a missing child. The Major had lost both his sons, one to war and the other to disease; he was always impassioned whenever a child was involved in a case like this.
Truth be told, The Major would have been the first person Raphael would have sought out if the situation had been slightly different, but he just could not bring himself to allow anyone else into the fold. Not with Thomas' ominous warning ringing in his head.
You cannot trust The Collective.
Did that imply there was more than one person behind the murder?
The Widow, The Viper, and The Doctor had been in Belgium when Thomas had been captured. Who would have betrayed Thomas? Why would they have done that? What could their motive possibly be?
The operatives of The Collective were a nefarious bunch with dubious morality, but as the saying went; there was honor among their den of thieves. The Viper had taken bullets for him twice, The Doctor had helped Rafe find his humanity after he'd been recovered from the clutches of the French, and the Widow had been the one to run the rescue mission that had seen him freed after weeks in captivity.
He was supposed to believe that one of these people had killed Thomas in cold blood?
It made no sense.
"Raphael! Is that you? Come here, please!" The twinge of desperation in her voice had him hurrying to the study. She looked tired, her hair frazzled, her hand bleeding, and dark circles under her eyes. His poor girl, he had sent her word to go to his father's home and get some rest but he should have known that she would never have listened. "She's here! She's here but I can't get to her!"
"What?" Raphael strode forward to where she was, on her knees in front of one bookcase, staring up at it as if it were some kind of puzzle.
"She's behind the bookcase. I heard her! Look!" She pointed to where the shelf met the wall.... And if you looked closely enough you could see it was slightly sunken into the wall. It was more advanced than the average concealed room, but Raphael had seen enough variations of it to recognize it for what it was. Thomas had been clever, it was very discreet indeed. "I couldn't move it out of the way, so I thought there must be a different sort of mechanism. There are skid marks on the floor so there must be a way to move it! I looked and looked but I could not find any hidden levers or plates or cranks, but then I noticed- oh, hello, sir, who are you?"
