To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,71
something that I might enjoy reading, I could be a reader,” she informed him with a sniff. “You never know.”
“No, I suppose I don’t.” He sighed and looked around the ostentatious library, shaking his head. “I don’t know how, but I think I may actually miss this finery.”
Hal giggled, though she understood all the same. “It does grow on you. Perhaps we may have some fine things in our home in London.”
His smile deepened, as it usually did when she referred to anything regarding their marriage. “Perhaps we might.”
She clasped her hands before her, tilting her head back to look up at the painting above them. “Is it time to leave, then?”
“Shortly,” John replied, coming further into the room. “They’re loading up the coach now, and Jean is sending us home with a good stock of French brandy. Says he’ll give us a letter for the examiners that will ensure that we have no trouble getting it home.”
Hal barked a loud laugh. “Why do I have no doubt of that?” She lowered her eyes to her husband, now more directly before her. “He told me to come in here and find a book or two to take with me. He doesn’t know what they have here, as he rarely comes in anymore. Apparently, René is the reader, not Jean.”
“Well, René is a romantic,” John reminded her. “He’s the reader, he’s the opera lover, he’s the poet… Bit of a popinjay, really.”
Coughing in surprise, Hal flicked her hand to smack her husband in the chest. “He is not!”
John’s expression turned so sardonic Hal began to laugh uproariously. “The man is a puppy, Ange, and a sycophant. I daresay if we had more wealth, he would have introduced us to everyone of his acquaintance, flattered us endlessly, and never let us walk or breathe unless he was there to see to our every need.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Hal shook her head, returning her attention to the books. “I presume all of your extended relations are perfectly rational and well-behaved?”
“So, what books do you think you’ll be taking with us?” he asked at once, suddenly quite interested in the books at hand. “Anything striking your fancy?”
Hal snorted and turned around to kiss her husband once. “Excellent transition, my love. So subtle.”
“Your attentions to my improvement are much appreciated,” he replied cheekily, “as always.”
Rolling her eyes, she turned back around and wandered along the row of books. “To answer your question, I’m not sure. He mentioned a book or two my mother might have had that are still here somewhere, but he couldn’t think which ones.”
“That would be a treasure, to be sure.” John took her hand and began to search the books with her, sharing her newfound appreciation for her mother, now that she had told him of Skean’s revelations regarding her. “Any thoughts?”
“Not really,” Hal sighed. “She wasn’t much of a reader when I was a child. At least, not that I saw.”
Hand in hand, they scanned the shelves, fingers occasionally stroking against each other’s in a warm familiarity that was becoming so natural.
Marriage was a funny business, and loving whom one married was even more peculiar.
“Oh my,” John suddenly said, amusement rife in his tone. “That’s something I didn’t expect to see on these shelves.”
“What is it?” Hal came to him, looking where he pointed. She laughed once. “Mary Wollstonecraft?”
“A Vindication for the Rights of Women,” John read. “And they have A Vindication for the Rights of Men, as well. In fact, they have several Mary Wollstonecraft works. Impressive.”
Hal eyed the works surrounding them and pointed one shelf lower. “Look here. The Rights of Man by Paine. Oof.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t make it through that one. Too scholarly.”
“See here,” John murmured as though he hadn’t heard. “Du contrat social; ou Principes du droit politique.” He gave her a strange look. “Rousseau.”
That wasn’t a standard work to be kept in one’s residential library, to be sure. Hal looked again. “And another Rousseau. Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes.”
“Ange.”
Hal’s eyes flicked to John’s hands, holding a pamphlet he’d pulled from the shelf. “Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état?” she read. Then her heart leapt to her throat, and she met her husband’s eyes. “Sieyès.”
They shared horrified looks, not that Sieyès’s work ought to horrify, only his significance to the Faction. Combined with the other works sitting in this library at the moment, the coincidence was too great.
“Could it be?” Hal breathed, her hands beginning to tremble. “René?”
John shook his head in disbelief, though not, she noticed, in denial. He scanned the shelves around them, then pulled one book out.
A history of the revolution of France.
He opened the book to discover that it was a false book, hollowed out to be nothing more than a box among books, hidden in plain sight.
Glancing at the slightly open but empty doorway, Hal huddled close to her husband to pull out the documents stashed within the box.
Lists of names were among the papers, each with dates by them. Some were from the days of the Revolution; some were as early as the week before. A few names, she noticed, had been crossed out. Most, however, were not.
There were at least fifty names there, and all of them French. And each of them had tally marks beside their names, though there was no indication what any of it meant.
Hal took the box and rifled through other papers within, her heart sinking with dread. Maps of London, names of important figures in both Society and government, and a few names of known Faction supporters on English soil were among them. This was far too organized to be anything less than what it appeared. But how could he be one of them? He hadn’t been at the meeting, and he’d been at the ball with them…
John pulled out a folded document and opened it carefully. Hal nearly dropped the box when she saw it in full.
A map of England with several stretches of coastline in Kent, Essex, and Sussex marked.
Most of the marks, however, were in Kent.
The coastline of Kent.
Hal looked at John again, the color draining from both of their faces. There was only one thing they could do at this point, only one course of action.
She managed a very weak, very hard swallow. “We have to warn the Convent.”
About the Author
Rebecca Connolly has been creating stories since she was young, and there are home videos to prove it. She started writing them down in elementary school and has never looked back. She lives in Indiana, spends every spare moment away from her day job absorbed in her writing, and is a hot cocoa junkie.
Coming Soon
Agents of the Convent
Book One
“Some new mischief this way comes.”
by
Rebecca Connolly