To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,26

from the stage before the show began…”

“I wouldn’t put it past you, if it served your ends.” He gave her an all too knowing look, which was hardly fair, as he barely knew her.

She barely knew him, come to think of it. She realized she had been less than polite with him in the past, quick to take offense and snap back at presumed injuries. He was not a man of outward congeniality as his brother was; perhaps she had assumed the brothers shared a similar nature when, in fact, they were nearly opposite. Her judgements and assumptions had been ignorant where he was concerned, and she had little reason to think he’d done otherwise with her. But she had never doubted his abilities or his loyalties, and she’d never heard of him slandering her work either.

There was no such thing as a professional marriage, as far as Hal was aware, so she supposed that, mission-based or not, she might as well treat it as the connection it was.

“I’ll have you know,” she told him with a playful sniff, “that I happen to be remarkably reserved in company. Anything involving Society at all, and I barely speak a word.”

The look of uncertain disbelief was worth the revelation, and she couldn’t help but grin at it.

“That cannot be true.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “It is. You would know if you saw me in company, but I never go out in it. My brother inherited all the charm and social affability my parents had to offer. I am always more content in intimate circles or on my own.”

Pratt blinked, and Hal could almost feel his thought process, agile as it was, working on the idea. “Then we are destined to struggle in this mission of ours,” he admitted slowly, “because I’m reserved no matter where I am.”

“That is a slightly less shocking statement.” She continued to grin, and he smiled in return.

He opened his mouth to reply when the coach stopped, bringing both of their attentions around to the building before them.

A line of carriages preceded them, and elegant people disembarked and made their way inside. Thankfully, many of the ladies had their hair coifed in a similarly ridiculous style as Hal.

If all else failed, at least she would not stand out because of her hair.

“Please don’t be offended if I fall asleep during the performance,” Pratt muttered as he moved to the door of the coach, which a gold liveried footman opened. He nodded and stepped out.

“I will ensure you do not,” Hal returned as she followed, allowing him to help her down. “If I am to endure this, so must you.”

He made a face, then extended an arm and looped her hand through it, sighing.

Cousin Jean, Victoire, René, and Agathe approached them, having ridden together in another coach, and the group moved into the theatre.

The general murmur of the public could have been described as a discordant hum that ebbed and flowed as though on a wave. Everywhere Hal looked, she saw finery and excess. While not the grandest theatre in Paris, and certainly nothing to the London Opera House itself, it was hard to think of anything lacking even in comparison. As with the de Rouvroy home, nearly every surface was gilded, shining with the luster of gold in the candlelight, and pristine in its artistry and workmanship.

The guests within, especially those currently lingering along with their group in the entrance and corridors of the theatre, could also fit that description.

Hal had never seen gowns of such detail and finery, and she had been to events in some of the highest circles in London. Not in some time, granted, but the memories of those events lingered in her mind with astonishing clarity. Nothing she had ever seen there compared with the excess before her now. Fortunes had clearly been spent on the gowns, and possibly hours on the ladies’ hair alone, both of which seemed to be a waste to Hal. Some gowns clung to the fashions on their way into the catacombs of such wares while others were evidently the styles that were yet to come.

How could a matter of skirts, sleeves, and waistlines have so much influence on Society? What power did they wield, and how had they been granted it? And by whom?

Hal had never understood it, but she had to abide by the rules set down just as the rest of the ladies did. Reluctantly, as her unremarkable yet acceptable gown would testify, but abiding just