To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,41
trying to be sympathetic to your evident discouragement. I am your wife, John, not your competition.”
He swallowed at that, dropping his hand, unable to meet her eyes.
“I know,” he whispered.
Hal waited, clearly expecting him to say more. When he did not, she sighed. “If you’re going to be disagreeable about it, I’ll take no more interest. Lord knows I’ve enough to be getting on with.” She pushed away from the table and moved back towards her bedchamber, skirts swishing with the brisk strides that seemed to be her natural pace. “Blast these ridiculous petticoats,” she muttered, making him smile despite his pain and melancholy.
The layers of additional fabric got in the way of how she preferred to walk, and even with practice and experience, she still had not grown accustomed to them.
Secretly, he hoped she never would.
“Hal,” he called softly, not looking in her direction.
Her steps stopped, and he could almost hear her turn towards him. “Yes?”
“Why did you say wife?” He waited a beat, his fingers rubbing together with a sudden anxiety he didn’t understand. “Why not partner instead?”
“Hmm.” She took two steps in his direction. “I’m not sure. Is there a difference between them in our situation?”
John looked over at her, the clean lines of her gown and the simple style of her hair somehow presenting the most agreeable picture he’d ever seen her make. Not the most beautiful, but the most agreeable.
Most likeable.
Most comfortable.
“I suppose not,” he replied, more to himself than anything else.
He half smiled and looked back at the letters, strangely not feeling guilt or shame about his outburst, though he couldn’t say he approved of it. He’d had no recrimination from her, and it didn’t appear to have caused her pain. On the contrary, she seemed to almost understand his frustration, and take it in perfect stride.
His own brother had never handled him so neatly.
“If you’d try coming back in here again in a moment or two, Ange,” he told her simply, “I think you’ll find a better-tempered husband sitting here.”
“Oh, indeed?” came her bemused reply. “Could I find one with a larger fortune and darker hair while I am at it?”
He turned more fully towards his work, hiding the broader smile his lips had taken on. “I’m afraid not. Nor one with a particularly gifted singing voice, either.”
She heaved a dramatic sigh. “That is a disappointment. One does hope for fulfillment of one’s wishes in such things.”
“Perhaps you should have married someone else,” he suggested, holding his breath a moment.
“Oh, now, where would be the fun in that?” she asked in an almost bright tone. “Whatever would I do with a husband so very accommodating?” The swish of her skirts told him she had returned to the bedchamber, leaving him to grin like an idiot at the stack of impossible letters.
John shook his head, both at her wit and at his folly. “What, indeed?” he murmured to himself, pulling the top letter towards him without any hope for it at all.
It was some time before Hal ventured into the room again, and John had no progress to report to her when she did.
“I don’t know what I’m missing, Hal,” he confessed when she sat in the chair beside him. “I’ve tried every cipher I’ve seen used in Faction-related correspondence and codes. I’ve tried ciphers that were used in the war with America, on their side and ours. I’ve tried ancient ciphers and I’ve tried ciphers that most of the world hasn’t seen yet. What they are using is either very sophisticated or very specific. Or both.”
“Both?” Hal repeated, looking at the letter he was presently poring over. “How would someone do both?”
John sat back again with a sigh. “The Faction are overly cautious and layer their codes. You remember the trouble with Cap’s family?”
She nodded insistently. “Of course. It was my letter from Trick that sent them to you in the first place.”
“That gave us the hint about layers in the code,” John confirmed. “It’s time-consuming to decipher, but not impossible.”
“Until now,” Hal murmured with a hesitant glance at the letter.
He nodded. “Until now.”
She frowned and turned towards him more fully. “How would you know that it’s wrong or right? You’d have to decipher one way and then decipher those answers as well, over and over again until something worked, and that just couldn’t be feasible.”
“That’s exactly how it works, in fact,” he told her with a laugh. “Ideally, there would be a team of codebreakers working on the same material, trying every