To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,28

best of times, let alone at a time like this, but a smile it was.

And somehow, doing so made her nerves ease just enough that she could breathe.

Rounding the top of the stairs, her hand still tucked neatly in Pratt’s arm, Hal managed that small smile as well as glancing about, as though the attention her cousin encouraged was also welcomed by her.

Then her breath caught in her chest, and the smile froze on her lips.

Memory sprang to life, and the pages of its book spun as though by a breeze.

Who? Where?

“John,” Hal whispered, barely managing the breath, her eyes staring straight ahead now, her fingers digging into his arm.

“What?” he replied at once, his frame coiling. “Ange, what?”

“That face…”

“Which face? Where?”

Hal shook her head once, her mind spinning between memories spanning years of missions and the moment of seven heartbeats ago.

She never forgot a face or a drawing, but placing them…

“Thirteen people from the stair’s entrance,” she recited, clarity snapping into place. “On your left. Tall. Light hair. Angular face, but sunken. Frowning, disapproving, bored. Dark coat, blue waistcoat, ridiculous cravat.”

Pratt took a long, slow glance about the room, starting with everyone and anyone to their right before panning to look behind them. “I see him,” he told her as he came back to center. “Who?”

“Don’t know,” she ground out, inching closer, her smile paining her face. “But I’ve drawn him, John. I’ve drawn him.”

The slow intake of breath told her that her husband understood the significance of that statement and took it seriously.

“Where?” Hal hissed to herself. “Where?”

Pratt’s free hand came to rest on hers, firm yet gentle, his hold secure. “Calm yourself. We are not under any pressure constrained to a timeline, and your exacting mind is not going to work any better with you forcing it. Smile.”

“Smile?” Hal couldn’t believe her ears. How in the world was she supposed to smile when someone who had been somehow part of an investigation was in this same building?

“Smile, Ange,” Pratt ordered, squeezing her hand. “Breathe. Walk. Let your mind work, and give it the space to do so.”

Her teeth ground together, her jaw ached, resistance and rebellion against instruction rising like a tide she couldn’t hold back.

If she could just go back. Demand to speak with that face. Put all the pieces together until something emerged from them.

“Ange,” Pratt said again, this time with surprising gentleness. “Inhale.”

She did so, completely against her will, the action surprising her.

“Exhale.”

The air in her lungs expelled on cue, somehow not rendering her into a pathetic, panting, embarrassing excuse for a woman supposedly of high standing with well-connected relations.

“And again.”

This time, she allowed herself to do so with intention, the panic beginning to fade, and the pressure. With those obstacles removed, the whirl of faces slowed and came into better focus.

How infuriating. Her husband was right.

“I hate you,” Hal muttered half-heartedly as she eased against Pratt, letting him lead her in following the others.

“Only because it worked,” he pointed out with a smile. “You’ve given us our first clue in this puzzle, and now we have to work it out. Perhaps the opera will jog something in your memory.”

She sniffed with a hint of derision. “And now he smiles.”

“Of course.” Pratt seemed to stride a bit more proudly, his posture much improved. “You’ve made the entire evening far more enjoyable for me with a simple stroke of your brilliance.”

Hal looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. “Did you just compliment me?”

Pratt glanced down at her, half-smile still in place. “Out of all that I’ve said, that is what impressed you most?”

“It’s such a rarity, I had to be certain I wasn’t imagining it.” She smiled and drummed her fingers along his arm. “Brilliance, you say. Hmm. What a novelty, I’d never considered such a thing.”

“Now, don’t wave your butterfly net about for more compliments,” Pratt teased as he led them into the box after her cousin, leaning close enough that his lips brushed the rim of her ear. “I have so few to give for anyone, I cannot, in all conscience, exceed those limits for you.”

Hal nodded soberly, warmth spreading from the center of her chest throughout her body with every continuing beat of her heart, though the skin of her ear continued to buzz in a ticklish manner.

“Of course.”

“But brilliance, Ange,” he said again, his voice lowering in both volume and timbre. “Absolute brilliance.”

If he said that word one more time, she would either laugh, blush, punch him, or kiss him.

And she