An Inconvenient Arrangement (Inconvenient Matches Book #2)

Chapter 31: Rafe

They looked.....they looked like a family.

And it hit him in places that he thought he had long buried. Parts of him that he had killed off years ago. The boy who he used to be, the one who had quietly wept in his lonely bed in Eton's dorms, wondering why he was the only one whose mother had not come to see him off. Who had hurt every Christmas that he had spent away from his father. Who had seen the stilted coldness between his parents and ached for the family that he would never be part of.

That boy saw Jane and Sylvie and he yearned.

He yearned for things that Rafe could not have, could not indulge in. And Rafe was helpless to stop him.

"Now why is it that you do not want to dance?" Sylvie frowned at her daughter solemnly. "And after all this fuss you threw over wanting to go to a ball?"

'I look ugly. All my clothes are old and all the new ones are in black. They are hideous.'

"Jane!" Sylvie said disapprovingly. Absently, Rafe wondered how Jane knew that Sylvie was admonishing her if she could not hear the tone in her voice? Though the reproach was written all over her face, he supposed.

'And it doesn't even matter for I can't even dance. I can't hear the music.'

"One problem at a time, my dear," Rafe swept into the conversation, trying to shake off this bewitchment that had been cast over him, his heart thundering in his ears. "I have just the solution to both your problems. Come along."

He swept out of the room with his customary swaggering gait, trying desperately to appear normal when it felt like something inside him had been shaken loose. And he feared that there was no putting it back into place now.

.

.

.

"May I present, the lovely, the beautiful, the utterly ethereal Miss Jane Heartwood?" Rafe stood at the top of the stairs and his voice boomed about the foyer as well as any majordomo's. Jane appeared at his side, finally grinning from ear to ear, a tiara of diamonds shining atop her head, a matching brooch pinned to her bodice, and earrings far too big for a girl of her age dangling from her ears. From the bottom of the stairs, Sylvie gawked in surprise.

"Surely this is too much, Raphael! Where did you even produce these from at this time of night!"

"Nothing is too much for my most esteemed ward," He said gallantly as he led Jane down the stairs. "These are part of the jewels that belong to the Marquessate. They're kept in a safe in this house, seeing as how there is no Marchioness to use them. I merely borrowed them, they are technically mine. Or will be. In several long decades."

Rafe reached the bottom of the stairs and was greeted by the loveliest, heart-wrenching smile on Sylvie's face. He offered his arm to her and resisted a pleasured shiver as he felt her chest press against the proffered appendage. He had considered dressing her in jewels as well, but something inside him had liked that idea a little too much for his own comfort and he was feeling all off-kilter anyway so he decided that it would be for the best if he did not.

When he threw open the doors to the music room, both mother and daughter let out surprise exclamations. In the time that it had taken them to get dressed and solve Jane's crisis, the staff had indulged him by setting up the room with some decorations and by lighting the grand chandelier in the room.

'Uncle Rafe! It's like a real ball!'

"Nothing short of perfection for you, my poppet. Do you like it?"

'Oh, I love it! I love it, I love it, I love it! Thank you, Uncle Rafe!'

She left his hand and ran ahead, squealing with delight as she approached a fancy arrangement of flowers, how his father's staff had procured them was beyond him, but he would make sure to reward them mightily.