Page 33 of The Hood and his Thief

“These will have to do, although you might have to show an indecent amount of ankle,” he admitted, putting the stack of clothes on the table.

“It would hardly be the first time somebody accused me of indecency.”

“I doubt it will be the last,” Ansel added, seemingly under his breath but still loud enough that Rhosyn shot him an exasperated look.

She pushed back from the table, picking up the pile of fabric. Maybe once she got changed, the Foxes would be more comfortable with her, and she would be able to glean more specifics of their activities to report back to Chief Thorne. And maybe she wouldn’t feel like such a traitor to the uniform for walking freely among thieves.

Either way, it was time to live with the Foxes.

Chapter eight

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?” Ansel asked.

Rhosyn stared suspiciously at the single, rickety bedframe before her. “Aren’t you worried about your reputation?”

“I’m a young man who is apparently wanted by the Royal Police and owns a circus. I wouldn’t think I had much of a reputation to maintain.” Ansel shrugged, sitting down on the bed and beginning to pull off his boots as if the matter had been decided. “Besides, aren’t you worried about your reputation?”

“That ship has left the harbor,” Rhosyn admitted. “But why can’t you just tie me to the bed again?”

“You’ve already proven that isn’t enough to hold you, unless we immobilize you completely, and that hardly seems humane. Besides, we only had one free bed, and you have left it unfit to sleep in,” Ansel pointed out.

Rhosyn grimaced.

“There are no more beds, and besides, wouldn’t you be more comfortable if I only had to bind one hand? I’m a light sleeper, so if you try to escape, I’ll wake. None of my performers will have to lose a full night’s sleep keeping an eye on you and need the next day off,” Ansel explained. “You sharing a bed with me should be the most agreeable solution for everybody.”

“I slept just fine when I was tied down,” Rhosyn grumbled.

Ansel moved on to removing his waistcoat and unbuttoning his vest. “I noticed, and honestly, I’m mildly concerned. But if you could sleep like that, then certainly my presence shouldn’t bother you. I’m told I don’t even snore.”

Rhosyn swallowed. Truth be told, it shouldn’t be an imposition to sleep in the same bed as Ansel. These days, she so rarely got an opportunity to shut her eyes for multiple hours together, and any offer of sleep wasn’t one she should turn her nose up at. After years of multiple small, squirmy orphans pushing their way onto her narrow cot with her, she could likely share a bed with the circus’s lion without issue.

It was the fact that the bedmate in question was Ansel that gave her pause. He had already wormed his way past her defenses as Mr. Blakely, and Rhosyn had paid the price for her lapse in vigilance. Now, letting her guard down around him, even in the unconsciousness of sleep, seemed unwise.

For the rest of the afternoon, as she spoke with Paul and Olivia under Little John’s always watchful eye, Ansel’s tale had seeped into her brain. He made it sound so sympathetic—so like something Nate and the Lion’s would have done. As the Foxes joked and conversed around her, she had to remind herself on occasion that these were criminals, wanted by the Royal Police, who were no longer corrupt.

She would wait until Olivia and Paul were safely away. Then she would do her duty as an officer of the Royal Police, escape, and turn in Ansel and his whole operation. A few nights in the same bed wouldn’t change that.

With determined steps, she walked to the opposite side of the bed and sat.

“That’s a shame for you,” Rhosyn commented, “as I snore terribly.”

She pulled her own boots off, keeping her back to Ansel but still hyper aware of the sounds of rustling cloth as he undressed. Her shoes hit the ground with a startling thump as she dropped them, and Rhosyn paused in the resulting stillness, staring down at her clothes. She would normally undress further for bed, but that level of familiarity seemed ill-advised.

When she and Mr. Blakely had danced, blood had rushed to her cheeks—and much less ladylike places—at the firm grip of his fingers on her waist, despite having engaged in more than polite dancing in her life. In the moments Rhosyn had spent with him as the Hood, his hard chest pressed tightly against her back as they hid in the confines of a carriage, her heart had pounded with a cocktail of adrenaline and something wild, which awakened at the feel of his hand muffling her mouth.

Now, she was about to let her guard down almost completely around Ansel, who was the amalgamation of two men who had led her thoughts down the path of impropriety. Staying anything but fully clothed seemed almost comically unwise.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, you know.”

Ansel’s voice came from close behind her, startling Rhosyn out of her thoughts where she had been staring at her boots, haphazardly toppled on the floor. They were filthy, she noticed dispassionately.

“Excuse me?” Rhosyn asked as the meaning of his words hit her.

“If you keep yourself under the blankets, I’ll see far less than I did that night in the Gower’s stables.”

Rhosyn turned to glare over her shoulder, finding Ansel staring at her with a single brow arched. The expression, casual as it was, hit her like a challenge.