An Inconvenient Arrangement (Inconvenient Matches Book #2)

Chapter 14: Rafe and Sylvie

Four days after that, The Viper had been shot in the arm, rendering him compromised. The task of meeting with The Viper's informant had then fallen to Thomas.

Convenient wasn't it?

Since when had The Viper let something as menial as a non-fatal bullet wound stop him? He was a meticulous perfectionist who had thought Thomas wasn't doing the job correctly. So why send him in his stead?

And then, after Thomas had been caught, hadn't it been The Viper who had ordered Rafe to not attempt rescue?

Rafe pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling loudly trying to clear his sleep-addled brain. His mind had begun to connect the dots, though there were still gaps and blanks. The picture was far from clear, but Rafe could not deny that where there was smoke, there was fire.

How convenient was it that The Viper was presumed dead while all this had happened?

There had been no body, even though they had sent people to look. Not to mention that from the very start, not one of them could have believed that The Viper would have been defeated by his quarry.

He would ask the Major for whatever information he could give Raphael when they met later in the week, for now, he would try and trace through The Viper's last steps.

Taking a sip of water, Rafe turned his attention to the other file on his desk; a neat summary of the life of Michael Alder, from Cardiff. Raphael flipped through the pages, his scowl deepening with every pass of the page. In the end, he threw the file in the waste basket in disgust.

Sylvie's precious Mr. Alder had never done anything wrong in his bloody life it seemed, except cheat in a university exam. And that too was not him copying off someone else, it was him helping a friend, so Raphael could not even make an objection on his qualification.

Then he had tried to pacify himself by considering that Mr. Alder was a renowned figure in the naturalist community.

These intellectual types are always too prickly about women showing interest in academics, aren't they?

Surely, Sylvie would never marry a man who did not view her as an intellectual equal? He snatched the file back up from the basket and flipped through it once more, his mood soured even further.

His marriage to his first wife was the stuff of a bluestocking's dream. She had been his assistant, drawing the illustrations for all three of his published books, he had said on multiple occasions that he would not be half as accomplished if not for his wife. He had traveled with her to all corners of the earth, visiting jungles all over the planet to catalog species of beetles and other insects.

Ugh.

He could see it now, Sylvie and Mr. Alder, traipsing about the world, living in jungles, and having a thousand intellectual conversations a day.

Well!

Not if he had anything to say about it. He would never allow his ward to be exposed to all these diseases like Malaria or Cholera! Surely he could make Sylvie see sense. Additionally, even if she did marry Mr. Alder, they would not change the guardianship arrangement. Mr. Alder, after all, did not earn nearly enough to compete with Rafe.

Now, he just had to make sure that it did not occur to his father to be chivalrous.

Through the snow falling outside, Rafe took a look at the sun, which had now risen high enough in the air to indicate it would be around the time his father would be rising.

Half an hour later Rafe was dressed, shaved, and walking up the steps to his father's townhouse with a hangover remedy in hand.

"Kindly see to it that Miss Heartwood receives this with her breakfast, and let me know as soon as she comes down," Rafe handed the tonic to a nearby servant when the butler interrupted.