“Smile,” Pratt murmured beside her. “We’re not porcelain, even if we look it.”
“This coming from you?” she murmured through her teeth. She managed a laugh. “You never smile.”
“I’m a gentleman,” he retorted. “Smiling is not required. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for young ladies.”
Hal would have snarled if her face had let her. “I’m not young.”
“Ange,” Pratt grunted. “Smile.”
Something about the mixture of frustration and amusement in his voice made her want to smile, but the sound of his name for her was the only thing that actually brought a smile to her face. Not a grand one, that was beyond her during the best of times, let alone at a time like this, but a smile it was.
And somehow, doing so made her nerves ease just enough that she could breathe.
Rounding the top of the stairs, her hand still tucked neatly in Pratt’s arm, Hal managed that small smile as well as glancing about, as though the attention her cousin encouraged was also welcomed by her.
Then her breath caught in her chest, and the smile froze on her lips.
Memory sprang to life, and the pages of its book spun as though by a breeze.
Who? Where?
“John,” Hal whispered, barely managing the breath, her eyes staring straight ahead now, her fingers digging into his arm.
“What?” he replied at once, his frame coiling. “Ange, what?”
“That face…”
“Which face? Where?”
Hal shook her head once, her mind spinning between memories spanning years of missions and the moment of seven heartbeats ago.
She never forgot a face or a drawing, but placing them…
“Thirteen people from the stair’s entrance,” she recited, clarity snapping into place. “On your left. Tall. Light hair. Angular face, but sunken. Frowning, disapproving, bored. Dark coat, blue waistcoat, ridiculous cravat.”
Pratt took a long, slow glance about the room, starting with everyone and anyone to their right before panning to look behind them. “I see him,” he told her as he came back to center. “Who?”
“Don’t know,” she ground out, inching closer, her smile paining her face. “But I’ve drawn him, John. I’ve drawn him.”
The slow intake of breath told her that her husband understood the significance of that statement and took it seriously.
“Where?” Hal hissed to herself. “Where?”
Pratt’s free hand came to rest on hers, firm yet gentle, his hold secure. “Calm yourself. We are not under any pressure constrained to a timeline, and your exacting mind is not going to work any better with you forcing it. Smile.”
“Smile?” Hal couldn’t believe her ears. How in the world was she supposed to smile when someone who had been somehow part of an investigation was in this same building?
“Smile, Ange,” Pratt ordered, squeezing her hand. “Breathe. Walk. Let your mind work, and give it the space to do so.”
Her teeth ground together, her jaw ached, resistance and rebellion against instruction rising like a tide she couldn’t hold back.
If she could just go back. Demand to speak with that face. Put all the pieces together until something emerged from them.
“Ange,” Pratt said again, this time with surprising gentleness. “Inhale.”
She did so, completely against her will, the action surprising her.
“Exhale.”
The air in her lungs expelled on cue, somehow not rendering her into a pathetic, panting, embarrassing excuse for a woman supposedly of high standing with well-connected relations.
“And again.”
This time, she allowed herself to do so with intention, the panic beginning to fade, and the pressure. With those obstacles removed, the whirl of faces slowed and came into better focus.
How infuriating. Her husband was right.
“I hate you,” Hal muttered half-heartedly as she eased against Pratt, letting him lead her in following the others.
“Only because it worked,” he pointed out with a smile. “You’ve given us our first clue in this puzzle, and now we have to work it out. Perhaps the opera will jog something in your memory.”
She sniffed with a hint of derision. “And now he smiles.”
“Of course.” Pratt seemed to stride a bit more proudly, his posture much improved. “You’ve made the entire evening far more enjoyable for me with a simple stroke of your brilliance.”
Hal looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. “Did you just compliment me?”
Pratt glanced down at her, half-smile still in place. “Out of all that I’ve said, that is what impressed you most?”
“It’s such a rarity, I had to be certain I wasn’t imagining it.” She smiled and drummed her fingers along his arm. “Brilliance, you say. Hmm. What a novelty, I’d never considered such a thing.”
“Now, don’t wave your butterfly net about for more compliments,” Pratt teased as he led them into the box after her cousin, leaning close enough that his lips brushed the rim of her ear. “I have so few to give for anyone, I cannot, in all conscience, exceed those limits for you.”
Hal nodded soberly, warmth spreading from the center of her chest throughout her body with every continuing beat of her heart, though the skin of her ear continued to buzz in a ticklish manner.
“Of course.”
“But brilliance, Ange,” he said again, his voice lowering in both volume and timbre. “Absolute brilliance.”
If he said that word one more time, she would either laugh, blush, punch him, or kiss him.
And she wasn’t sure which reaction she would succumb to.
“Indeed, Monsieur Pratt,” de Rouvroy agreed in an almost booming voice, making Hal jump as Pratt assisted her to her seat. “It is a piece of complete brilliance, is it not? Such a beautiful building, and not half so grand as the Salle le Peletier, if you can believe that.”
Hal snickered behind a hand when she caught Pratt’s miserable expression as he sat beside her. “Save me,” Pratt whispered. “Find your familiar face, I beg you.”
“I don’t know,” Hal mused with a flutter of her lashes, opening her fan and setting it to work in as elegant a manner as possible. “I’m rather enjoying this discussion of architecture and art and decor…”
“Ange…” He gave her a long-suffering look. “Please.”
Shaking her head, she reached out to pat his arm, leaving her hand there as she scanned the other guests taking their seats.
“Anything?” Pratt asked eagerly.
“In the last fifteen seconds?” she shot back. “Not bloody likely. Have you seen the number of people here?”
He held up his free hand in a sign of surrender. “Apologies. Please.” He gestured to the theatre with a sigh. “We have… a long time.”
Hal nodded as she continued to look, seeking the flash of the familiar she had felt and seen earlier. The overture of the opera began, and still she looked, hoping she was no longer the subject of inspection for others, as her attention was anywhere but on the stage.
The actors began to perform, when finally, she found the face she sought.
She smiled indulgently and leaned closer to her husband, her fingers sliding down his arm until her fingers laced between his.
He jerked beside her, but quickly recovered, leaning towards her in expectation.
Intelligent man.
“Last box across from us,” she whispered. “Towards the center. Third seat in, second row.”
“Bless smaller theatres,” he replied in the same tone.
Again, Hal nodded, the motion brushing her hair against him, which she somehow felt to her toes. “See him?”
This time he nodded. “I do. Try to recollect the specifics of how you know him. Leave the interval to me.”
“The interval?” Hal hissed, facing him more fully. “What are you…?”
He gave her a quelling look, somehow smiling without smiling. “Leave it to me,” he said aga
in.
Scowling, Hal nudged him hard, but let her attention move to the stage, then promptly fix itself on her memories, sketch after sketch flipping through her mind.
She would find the man. She would remember who had seen him. She would be able to tie him to their mission somehow.
She would.
As if he could hear her thoughts, feel her determination, Pratt’s fingers, still laced between hers, curved around her own, comfort and confidence tight in their grasp.
Chapter Seven
“I don’t see why I couldn’t have come with you. To be left in the box with Victoire and Agathe was torture, I’ll have you know.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“What in the world do you mean by that?”
John exhaled in resignation and looked across the small table in the parlor he and Hal shared while they ate their breakfast. Thankfully, de Rouvroy and his family were not so particular about breakfast that they had everyone eat it together in the breakfast room at a particular hour. René and de Rouvroy ate there themselves, naturally, and the children did as well, but it happened that Madame de Rouvroy and Agathe were more inclined to take trays.
He’d been hard-pressed not to kiss their host’s feet when he’d suggested that they also might enjoy breakfast in their rooms, though he could have done without the mischievous smile that had accompanied it.
Whatever the reason, solitary breakfast with his partner was a blessed relief.
Most of the time.
“You don’t engage in small talk, Hal,” he explained, ignoring how she had yet to put her hair up and it waved down her neck and across her shoulders with a freedom that intrigued him. “This isn’t a flaw; or, if it is, then it is one we share. Even with ladies as admirable as Madame de Rouvroy and as fine as Agathe…”
“She’s not that fine,” Hal grumbled with an impressive frown as she picked up her coffee. “Surly, spoiled brat. I’ll wager you half a crown she marries an aged marquis with a gouty disposition near to reclining on his deathbed and weasels the whole of his fortune away from his legitimate heirs.”
John blinked at the specificity of her suggestion and actually paused in the middle of his point. “Is that half a crown for that exact result? Or for each aspect of it?”
The look his wife gave him would have made her a widow, albeit not an especially wealthy one.
More’s the pity.
“At any rate,” he went on quickly, “I’ll take your wager, and furthermore, you’d have hated being up and about with René, de Rouvroy, and myself just the same.”
“I highly doubt that.” She sipped her coffee slowly, and John felt the almost bitter taste of the beverage in his own mouth, wondering how in the world she could drink it. “Walking about in silence would have been an improvement on the situation, let alone having intelligent conversation.”
John shook his head and buttered the dry toast before him. “Nothing intelligent about it. Your cousin and his son, bless them, are worse than any sixteen-year-old girls I have ever met. They knew everyone and had to chat with everyone. They were energized by each conversation and dragged me from person to person as though I were a pawn in a social game of chess.”
“Who won?” Hal murmured, eyeing him with a smile over her cup.
“Amusing.” He cleared his throat. “I had to meet nearly every person in attendance purely so I could meet the one man I wished to.”
Hal’s eyes widened and her throat moved on a swallow as she set her cup down. “You met him? Why didn’t you say anything last night?”
He raised a brow at her. “How could I? René insisted on riding with us and chatted the whole way home. You did your best to give him the right impression, scowling every time he asked a question about England, even if he is too simple minded to have noticed.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” she scolded, though there was no force behind her tone.
“He isn’t simple in the mind,” John told her, rolling his eyes. “He’s only filled the space with more fluff than he should and thus has no room for weighty matters. Even you can admit that.”
She nodded as she spun her teacup on its saucer. “Of course I can. I only felt the need to defend him as my relation. So René prevented the revelation last night, but it’s not as though he shares rooms with us. Why not tell me then?”
“Because I was deuced tired, and so were you, and nothing could have been done last night. Now, would you like to know or not?”
Hal gestured quickly, sitting forward in her chair eagerly.
“Monsieur Laurent Fontaine,” John told her with a small smile. “Influential, wealthy, stately, but all in all, none too impressive. Showed absolutely no inclination to be friendly to de Rouvroy or René, though he took no pains to discourage them from conversation.”
“Did he react at all to your name?” Hal demanded. “Did he seem familiar to you at all? Did he recognize you?”
“No, no, and no.” He let his smile spread as he bit into his toast and cut into a piece of ham. “You are the only one between us who suspects him, for which I thank you. Any details come to you yet?”
Hal sat back in her chair roughly, pursing her lips. “Sort of. It was one of Gent’s faces, and I think it was from a party. The trouble is that he does so many of them and I’ve drawn so many faces for him that I cannot place him in particular. I don’t suppose it matters, though.” She smiled ruefully and plucked a piece of toast from her plate, taking a quick bite. “I never have the details of their assignments when I make the drawings, so we really are no worse off than I ever am.”
No, they were not, and they had, in fact, gotten further than John would have expected to at this stage. They hadn’t even been in Paris for a week and they already had a lead to investigate. They might not know how exactly he was tied in, or what he might be suspected of, but any person, male or female, whom Hal had drawn for an operative was worth pursuing.
There was some question as to how exactly they could investigate Monsieur Fontaine, but a sociable host would certainly be a benefit in that regard.
Unfortunate for John, but a benefit for the mission.
That would undoubtedly become a pattern.
A knock sounded at their parlor door, and they glanced at each other in confusion. As a general rule, they were not disturbed here, which was part of the attraction in remaining within.
“Come,” Hal called, shrugging her shoulders, eyes widening.
One of the footmen entered, the brilliant blue and 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, th
ough 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.
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