To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,40

of their marriage, and to ensure her safety, though he wasn’t exactly a towering example of impressive musculature. He would assist her in any way he could, though at the present, that wouldn’t be much at all.

How could he find nothing?

Six letters. Six in the space of two weeks, and nothing at all to show for it.

Every single cipher he could think of, he had applied to the letters. He’d looked at them individually, he’d looked at them collectively, he’d looked at them in batches… He’d even gone so far as to question Hal as to the accuracy of the words.

She had recited each and every letter verbatim without looking at them, then hadn’t spoken to him for an entire day after that inquiry. In the tight quarters of their rooms, the silence had been deafening, and it had felt much, much longer.

He wouldn’t be questioning her memory again, that was for certain.

But he didn’t know what else to do. He hadn’t struggled with a project like this in his career, had barely struggled in the years prior to beginning his career, and this was a crushing blow.

There would be no advantage for the Shopkeepers against the Faction if he couldn’t break the cipher. There would be no regaining the ground lost in Rogue’s compromise and Trace’s capture. There would be no knowing what was planned, and every office that had operatives investigating the risk would be working half blind. It could very well be the fate of England herself in his hands.

And he had nothing.

John groaned and put his head in his hands, the pressure and the weight of such a responsibility seeming to pull him further and further into the earth, yet refusing to actually swallow him whole.

Yet another taste of the humor of heaven and fate. Hardly kind to him, but that was another matter.

“Still nothing?”

His wife’s voice might have been the screech of an irritating rat for all the pleasure it gave him. He lifted his head and glared at her as she entered the parlor from her bedchamber.

“What do you mean by that?”

Any other woman might have stared back at him with wide eyes, surprised and hurt by the sharpness in his tone. They might have cried and made him feel an overwhelming sense of guilt for behaving badly. They might have fled the room in the face of their distress.

Not this woman. Not Henrietta Mortimer Pratt.

Not his Ange.

“Exactly what I said,” she replied, somehow without actually snapping back, her hands going to her hips.

“If I had made any progress, I’d have informed you,” he said, straightening his hair and folding his arms.

Hal snorted softly. “How magnanimous. What a noble partner I have.”

The sarcasm stung as though each word were a blade, and his lip curled with the offense of it. “I don’t need you reminding me of my failure, thank you very much. The throbbing ache ringing through my head on a semi-hourly basis is rather an apt reminder without your assistance.”

As though the mention of it had bid its return, the now-familiar ache began between his eyes and spread up into the front of his head, pulsing ominously.

Hal stared at him without any emotion whatsoever. “If you’re already declaring failure, we might as well go home.”

“I’d love to.”

“Marvelous. The Shopkeepers can find another artist with an exact memory and a codebreaker without equal, and they can marry for respectability and find connections in Paris on their own, hopefully with the right standing to get them the information that is needed so that every operative in England can feel a bit safer when they begin an assignment. I’m sure there’s another pair ready to go at this moment.”

“Shut up.”

“No.” This time she did snap at him and strode over to the table, leaning her hip against it and folding her arms to match his. “This is meant to be difficult, Pratt, or they could have brought in anyone else. Do you think I am the only person in the ranks who can draw with skill? Or the only person with an exemplary memory? Are you the only person any Shopkeeper knows who can decrypt and decipher messages?”

John didn’t answer, instead, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the pain.

“You have not failed,” Hal insisted firmly. “You are being challenged, and that is all. When I ask if you still have nothing, I am not intimating that you ought to have found something by now. On the contrary, I am