To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,31
gold of his livery almost startling in its shade against the relative simplicity of the parlor. “Monsieur et madame, un message por vous, s’il vous plaît.”
“Merci,” John murmured as he reached for the note on the platter.
The footman gave a crisp nod, clicked his heels, and left the parlor with nearly silent steps.
“A note?” Hal frowned at the paper in John’s hand as he broke the seal. “Who in the world knows we are here?”
“Our brothers,” John reminded her, laughing once.
“Ugh.” Hal rolled her eyes. “They wouldn’t write to us, and you know it.”
John nodded as he scanned the message. “Why would Madame Moreau send us a note to thank us for our patronage?”
Hal blinked. “I haven’t the faintest idea. She did?”
“And in English, too.” He frowned and tilted his head for a moment. “Not particularly accomplished English, but English still.”
“She spoke it well enough, what do you mean?”
He pointed at a passage and showed it to her. “See here? The sentence structure is backwards, and it would be wrong in French, too. Strange, isn’t it?”
Hal tapped on a word near the bottom. “Pratt. She hopes I am enjoying my parasol?”
“Yes. So?”
His wife scooted her chair closer, which forced him to look at her, the proximity not as startling as it was enticing.
His eyes wanted to drift to her lips, but he forced them to remain where they were, though every motion of those lips was noticed in periphery.
“I didn’t get a parasol from Madame Moreau.”
The hypnotic motion, even in limited view, repeated itself in his mind’s eye at least four times before the words those lips had said caused his actual eyes to blink, breaking the spell.
“You didn’t?” He looked back to the message with far more interest. “That is exceptionally interesting…”
Hal scooted closer, her attention on the paper as well. “What does it mean, Pratt?”
“Not sure.” He tilted the paper this way and then that, letting the light play on it, his pulse skittering with familiar excitement and anticipation. “Well, well… Let’s see what this little pretty has to say.”
“Are you going to turn into an obsessive paramour with a certain degree of lewdness over a note? Because if you are…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” John breathed as his eyes danced over every letter in every word, flew across the page with a scrutiny that should not have matched the speed. “Nothing lewd about it. Full, healthy, dedicated appreciation is more appropriate. It’s an experience, you see. Revealing the truth beneath what is before you, not exposing it. Nothing is as it seems, or means what it says, and everything you’ve assumed is absolutely irrelevant until you discover that beauty hidden from eyes that know not what they see.”
A soft scoffing sound near his left ear made him smile despite his search. “And now you’ve turned poet and philosopher as well as patron. I barely recognize you.”
“Shh,” he said softly as his eyes darted to and fro. “I’m almost there.”
“Are you really?” Her voice was stunned, disbelieving, and, he flattered himself, impressed. “How?”
He shook his head very slightly, patterns forming. “In a moment, Ange. Just wait…”
She heeded him now, and only the faint ticking of a mantle clock accompanied his work. He could feel her hovering around his arm, sense her efforts to see what he was, knew she was waiting for some answer from him, any answer at all. In his usual work, such observant company would have detracted from his efficacy, perturbed his process into something he couldn’t tolerate.
Not this time.
Not with her.
“There.”
The word surprised him as he said it, and a heartbeat later he nodded, seeing now what his mind acknowledged before his eyes did.
“There,” he said again. “Fetch me another piece of paper, will you?”
She was already handing him one before he finished the request, and he looked at it, then up at her in puzzled surprise.
“What?” Hal lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug as she took her chair again. “I knew you had it from the first ‘there.’ Seemed to me you’d want to take it down, so I didn’t see the need to wait for the invitation.”
“I’ll make a note of that for future reference.” He flashed her a quick smile and returned to the note. “Right. Let’s see what you really say, pet.”
“Do you always talk to your puzzles?” Hal teased, leaning an elbow on the table.
“Only if it needs the encouragement.” He squinted for a moment, then started writing down the letters in question. “But it seems she’s in a giving mood.”
Hal