To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,44

I am pleased someone will make use of the box other than René.”

Hal smiled for her cousin as she was helped into her cloak. “Are you sure you won’t accompany us?”

John gave her an exasperated look over her cousin’s shoulder, making her giggle.

“I think not,” de Rouvroy answered without concern. “It is not an opera I am fond of. I do not share my son’s appreciation for every opera, I fear. But perhaps you will find it to your tastes.”

“I do hope so.” Hal smiled again and pulled her cloak around her further. “John?”

His knees were suddenly jolted with a sharp sensation, though he wouldn’t call it unpleasant. Weak yet strong, numb yet filled with energy, frozen in place yet aching to move. All because of his name from her lips.

“Yes,” he replied, not entirely sure what question he was answering, or if he gave the right response. Taking a risk, he extended his arm to her. He exhaled silently when she took it, then escorted her to the waiting coach.

They didn’t exchange words on the short drive to the theatre, the air between them thick with unspoken tension. Silently John helped her from the coach, silently they entered the building, and silently they made their way to the box reserved regularly for members of the de Rouvroy family. John had always been comfortable with silence, never seeing the need to fill it unnecessarily, and the intensity of this silence was no different. There was a divinely comfortable feeling to it, though he had never felt a more uncomfortable comfort in his life.

The contradiction in such a thing was not lost on him.

“So many of our new friends are here,” Hal murmured aloud as she sat and glanced about the theatre.

“Are they?” he asked, not wishing to look anywhere else.

She nodded, indicating with her head. “Leclerc, Savatiers, Marchands, Bouchers, Degarmo... The gentleman whose name I have never seen written so I can never remember…”

“Roussell,” John reminded her. “And I don’t particularly care, Ange.”

Hal glanced at him then, her breathing seeming a trifle faster than normal. “No?”

He slowly shook his head. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m here alone. With you.”

Her full lips quirked into a dazzling smile, and she returned her attention to the stage, the grand overture striking up.

John watched her for a long moment, torn between taking her hand and simply fiddling with her skirt like a child. The fabric was close enough to do so, and the hand just out of reach in her lap. Yet he had to be connected to her somehow, had to cross the barrier between them that taunted him so.

Smiling to himself, he pulled his glove off and laid it in his lap, then reached out two fingers to gently, almost absently, stroke the skin of her upper arm from just above her elbow to just beneath her precarious sleeve.

He watched her take in a sharp breath, never slowing or stilling in the deliberately grazing action, waiting for her to shift away. But his clever wife settled more fully into her seat, even shifted a hair closer to him, and continued to watch the stage.

A wave of bumps began to appear on the skin of her arm, her neck, her shoulders, and John found himself wearing a more satisfied, secret smile for the remainder of the opera. The friction of his fingers against her arm was the most delicious sensation he had ever known.

Chapter Ten

Hal walked silently beside John, arms folded tightly about her, his hand almost protectively at her back, each of them shaking their heads. It was madness to be meeting him so close to their current residence, and with their evening being so carefully scheduled? It would be fortunate indeed if Leys and Collette did not hang them both from their bedposts by the ankles in joint mutiny.

“Utterly ridiculous,” Hal muttered under her breath. “I’ll have you know I am already in my stays, and they chafe with the utmost discomfort to move at this speed.”

“I could have gone my entire life without knowing that,” John replied, his tone completely unconcerned and mild.

Hal bit back a snarl and opted not to jab her elbow into his side at the present, but only because it would slow their progress, and they had no time for that. “This had better be crucial to our evening.”

“Oh, it is, Sketch.”

She gasped and stumbled into John as Ruse stepped out from between buildings just to her left. “Bloody hellfire and brimstone…” she managed, though