Page 41 of The Hood and his Thief

“Fierce, eh?” Rhosyn prompted.

Ansel held up his other hand to reveal a bandage around his ring finger she hadn’t noticed before. “You have tried to bite me twice. Once you succeeded, and nearly took my finger off.”

“Just be happy I didn’t manage to get my teeth around you in the Gower’s carriage too.”

“Oh, I am.” Ansel admitted. “I’m all for a bit of biting between friends, but that wasn’t the time or place for it.”

Rhosyn swallowed thickly, unsure whether Ansel’s return to flirting was a sign that the tension from their early morning encounter was dissipating, or if he was trying to use it as a weapon against her.

“Why were you there that night?” Rhosyn asked to change the subject. “You had already done your job to get Olivia and Paul away.”

He considered her, both still sprawled on the dusty floor, slightly sweaty and panting. It wasn’t the posture of a hostage and her captor—or a police officer and a gang leader, for that matter. But something about it made such questions feel less like a game for information and more like a real conversation.

Ansel must have felt the same, because he answered, despite having no obligation to.

“Something…didn’t seem right,” he admitted. “When we got Olivia and Paul back to the safehouse that night, they were so tired they seemed almost ill. They’ve been adamant that they weren’t physically mistreated, but the way they seemed positively dazed put my hair on end.”

Rhosyn grit her teeth. It ached in her bones to know that young Lions had come to be in such a state—even after everything Nate had done for them. She had been there that very night and thought Paul seemed off, but it wasn’t her who had been able to help him and his sister.

“I’m not sure what I expected to find,” Ansel continued. “Maybe I was looking for evidence that they mistreated their staff, to explain why Olivia and Paul barely seemed to be able to talk about their time there, other than to be glad they were out. But that conversation we overheard between Mr. Gower and that other man, Hamish…”

Rhosyn pondered, remembering the cryptic words of the stolen conversation she had barely had time to process, given that she and Ansel found themselves in a tussle moments later.

“He seemed desperate to have Paul and Olivia return,” she remembered.

“I still haven’t been able to figure out his urgency. But I know that it doesn’t feel right in my stomach. Something about the way he collects Talented servants doesn’t sit right with me.”

Rhosyn frowned. Mr. Gower’s tone when he had demanded Paul and Olivia be returned—and seemingly to the groom of all people—was certainly sinister. It didn’t give her any compelling evidence as to his intentions. Perhaps he was just a rich, pompous prick who was unused to being denied anything.

“One overheard conversation is hardly evidence of wrongdoing,” she pointed out.

“I’ll leave the evidence gathering to the police.” Ansel inclined his head towards her. “I know when to trust my gut, and it was right.”

Rhosyn grimaced. Perhaps she should be more ashamed that she had broken into the Gower’s property without a warrant that night, only to come away without evidence, but more of an instinctual notion that they were up to no good. Instead of focusing on that, she asked, “You were right?”

“I’ve spent the few days arranging chance meetings with most of the Gower’s Talented staff out in the city and casually offering the Foxes’s…ahem…services. None of them have said anything outright against the Gowers, but they’ve all accepted our help.”

“That’s why you’re planning to hit them again.” Rhosyn thought out loud about her overheard conversation with Little John and his associate yesterday.

Ansel’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “And how would you have known what we’ve been planning?”

“Don’t blame Little John.” Rhosyn smiled wryly. “He thought I was too busy stabbing myself with a needle to eavesdrop.”

He ran a hand tiredly through his hair. “We might call ourselves the Foxes, but I had a feeling keeping you here would be like letting a fox into the hen house. May I ask what else you overheard?”

“You may, but I don’t have to answer.”

“You’re my hostage right now. Is it wise to deny me?” Ansel asked.

Rhosyn gestured between them. “Do you normally talk to your hostages like this? I don’t think you’re very good at it then.”

In truth, trying to beat the sense out of each other had gone a long way to level the playing field between them. As if the fight had temporarily funneled the animosity out of them and given them the ability to speak rationally for once.

“Maybe I don’t want you to be my hostage anymore,” Ansel murmured, looking down at his hands, which had come to lay in his lap during the conversation.

“That doesn’t seem very wise. If you let me go, I might just tell Chief Thorne about your plans to rob the Worthingtons.”

Ansel glanced up through his lashes. “You know they don’t need all that wealth.”