To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,21
for company.”
“And you think I am?” she shot back. “Look at this monstrosity.” She jabbed a finger to indicate her hair. “Colette insisted that, since I want for a fine gown, my hair must compensate.” She said the word with a distinctly French accent, deliberately mocking the maid who must have only recently left.
“I like it,” John admitted with a shrug, eyeing it as one might a masterpiece of architecture.
“Then you wear it and see if it doesn’t make your head ache.” Hal huffed and turned her back. “Now, do me up. I was so vexed with Colette that I sent her out before I was ready for fear of lashing out at her.”
John stared at the back before him, eyes widening at the open vee of skin below the slightly bowed neck.
Four buttons, perhaps five.
He had never done up a woman’s buttons in his life, and here his wife…
His wife…
Dammit.
With a scowl of his own, John closed the distance between them, fingers extended towards the material with a single-mindedness he usually saved for his work. “Surely, it’s not that bad.”
Hal snorted softly, lowering her head a little, unwittingly bearing more of her neck to his view. “Remind me to have you pull the pins when we retire, husband. Then you may make assumptions on my hair.”
John exhaled a wry laugh as he fastened her buttons, trying not to twitch every time his fingers brushed skin. Not that there was anything amiss with doing so, it was just…
Well, it was Hal’s skin he was brushing against.
He didn’t like her.
Did he?
“I see you’ve escaped with a moderately sensible cravat,” his wife said with a far more pleasant tone. “How did you manage? Even I could see that Leys prefers a peacock.”
“And I fear he will have one.” John shook his head as he did up the last two buttons. “I may have told him we are fetching our better belongings, and then he may have more to do.”
Hal nearly hit his head with her own as she tossed her head back to laugh heartily. “You didn’t! Whatever possessed you to say something so absurd?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, but I regretted it the moment the words escaped.” He nodded to himself with some pride as he finished the buttons, then patted a hand safely on Hal’s shoulder to signal his task was complete. “There. Done up and ready.”
She grunted softly, turning to face him with a dubious look. “That will depend on what one considers as ready. For the present, I call it awake and dressed.”
“Strangely, I quite agree.” He offered his arm to her without any gusto. “Shall we?”
She looped her arm through his and heaved a sigh. “I’ll give you ten pounds if you can find a way to get us out of supper early without scandalizing or offending anyone.”
John smirked but found himself growing more weary at the thought of an entire meal with the exuberant family of the Baron de Rouvroy.
“I extend the same wager to you,” he told his wife as he moved them to the door of her rooms. “Get us out of there, and I’ll pay you.”
“Deal, Sphinx.”
“Deal, Sketch.”
They exchanged tired, resolute smiles, then moved out into the ornate corridor in the direction John could only hope was that of the dining room. At the moment, he wasn’t sure which way was right and which left.
Blessedly, they found the stairs that would lead them down, allowing John to breathe a silent sigh of relief. One obstacle gone, but so very many more to go, and in this state…
“How does a place look garish even in the evening?” Hal murmured to him as they entered the more public rooms of the house.
The words made him want to laugh, though he couldn’t do so, and he glanced around to verify them. The same gold and white theme from before echoed the corridors here, the rugs beneath their feet exquisite in their design and expensive in their quality. Finery was everywhere, could not be avoided, would not be ignored. Every piece of art sat in frames that could have graced any palace in the world and fetched a fortune in any market on the streets. And the art itself would likely have done the same, if not better.
John half expected them to eat off plates entirely made of gold and with utensils encrusted with gemstones.
“I thought you said that their family title had been stripped,” John said in a low voice, leaning close to her. “Wouldn’t the