To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,6

yet he was praying for deliverance.

He could walk out. He could leave. He hadn’t signed anything, hadn’t agreed, didn’t have to agree, had every right to escape…

“Bloody hell, don’t tell me you’ve paired me with Sphinx, of all people.”

John craned his neck from side to side in irritation. “Had to be Hal. Hal is Sketch, Sketch is Hal, doesn’t take intellect to make that leap.”

“Why is he muttering? What are you muttering over there?”

“Not everything is your business, Hal,” John snapped before he could stop himself, turning to glare at the fair-haired tyrant whose hair seemed determined to escape whatever hold she had tamed it into.

Her upper lip curled into a sneer, her pale eyes narrowing. “Listen, Stinks, neither you nor any other pompous…”

“Nice to see you both here,” a new voice greeted with a calm steadiness that stopped any argument, though John was still muttering a great deal in his mind.

An older gentleman with a few wrinkles and even fewer strands of hair atop his head entered the room, looking at them both with the sort of familiarity one usually saw in family alone. His gaze started on Hal, and John was pleased to see the woman turn moody and sullen, folding her arms like a temperamental child, though she did obey the silent command.

Then the grey eyes came to John, and the most unnerving sensation of being seen clear through from front to back and every thought and process in between started rising. The impulse to confess a very great deal created the strangest buzzing on his tongue, though John was no great sinner, and his mind began racing all on its own to find some task he had accomplished lately that he could report in on.

Lord Cartwright to the world, and Tailor to those individuals who knew him better, was unquestionably the most powerful man in England. Not even the King himself could cause to happen what this man could, though it would be treason to have expressly said so. Though he was not a man of action at the present, the tales of his exploits as an operative in years past were legendary. Likely exaggerated into the realms of impossible, but no one could quite exclude the possibility.

Not where Tailor was concerned.

A shorter, younger man in the plain ensemble of a clergyman followed, nodding silently and moving to the rear of the room, where he quietly sat and waited.

Priest, John could only assume. He knew little of the man, and even less of the operative, but if the man was legitimately in holy orders…

“The two of you quite understand what you are taking on?” Tailor asked, finally releasing John from the power of his gaze as he set his hat down. “It has been explained to you?”

“Yes,” John said at once.

“Not satisfactorily,” Hal said at the same time.

John looked at her in exasperation. There was no mistaking the stubbornness in her tone, nor the insolence.

She would get them both killed before they ever reached France purely by her tone.

She met his look with a derisive one of her own. “What? You don’t have any more questions on the subject? You’re perfectly content to marry me at this minute before we venture off on our assignment?”

Well, when she put it like that…

A shiver raced down his spine and somehow settled in the smallest toe of his right foot. “Perhaps there is a point there,” he allowed mildly, turning to face Weaver and Tailor with an apologetic smile.

Tailor, much to his credit, only gave them a faint smile and nodded. “I understand. You comprehend the task of the mission itself?”

“More or less, yes,” Hal replied with a much tamer turn of her voice. “Use my mind and my hands, combined with his skill and intellect, to discover who, what, and how regarding the Faction. Yes?”

It was a crudely simple description, but John, for all his attempts, could not find fault in it.

Interesting.

“Yes.” Tailor nodded again, just once. “We simply cannot afford to risk more of our valuable operatives to missions associated with the Faction when we have already experienced some compromise with a few. We do not know how secure our connections are any longer, nor how deep the compromise extends. Given the personal connections the pair of you have within the network, that should be motivation enough to succeed, I gather.”

John stiffened at the thought of his brother Jeremy being compromised. He’d only just married a few months ago, and to see them in danger already, to