Page 48 of The Housebreaker's Assistant
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let his iron-tight grip on his emotions slip. Love was a liability, and everyone he’d ever cared about that way had been taken from him. The child he’d once been had barely recovered from his losses. The adult he was now wouldn’t be able to survive if he lost something so precious.
“You’re a fool,” he hissed, jerking away from Penny and walking on. “I don’t want to work with you anymore.”
Penny’s reply of “What?” came after a too-long silence. He caught up to Greer and matched strides with him.
“You’re too unpredictable,” Greer spat. “You have no discipline, no discretion at all.”
“And how did you think we were going to get into a tower room on the third floor of a castle without a key to unlock the door?” Penny demanded.
“I have lockpicking tools,” Greer reminded him.
“The key is faster,” Penny argued.
“And if we’re very unlucky, that guard will be fast when we try again, too,” Greer snapped back.
Penny shook his head. “All we need to do when we go back to rescue Lord Fabian in earnest is to cause a commotion downstairs that will call the guard away.”
“A commotion that will wake the entire house?” Greer asked, staring at him and nearly stumbling when he took his eyes off the dark road.
Penny frowned peevishly, but Greer was certain that was because he’d pointed out a legitimate problem. “We can puzzle out a way around that.”
They would have to, but Greer wasn’t ready to forgo their argument to think rationally yet. “The entire house will be on the alert now, knowing someone came in and stole those keys.”
“They’ll assume the keys were misplaced,” Penny argued. “Or that someone in the household took them. No one knows we were there.”
“The cat knows we were there.”
It was a lame argument, but it was genuinely the best Greer could do. Penny was right. As harrowing as their mission had been, they had successfully infiltrated the castle, proving it could be done, and learned the arrangement of the rooms. They knew where Lord Fabian was—well, it wasn’t confirmed, but what else would Dalhurst keep in a guarded tower room—and they knew there were a dozen ways at least to get in and out of the castle.
By any measure, their excursion had been a success.
But Penny could have been hurt.
“I don’t wish to speak to you anymore,” Greer grumbled, picking up his pace and trying to march ahead of Penny.
“Good,” Penny said, speeding up to match him once more. “I don’t wish to speak to you either.”
They walked on like that for a few minutes, fast enough that they were both slightly out of breath as the farm where their things were waiting came into view as a black smudge on the horizon. It was too much, and Greer slowed his steps to a more reasonable pace. He didn’t want to make any noise that might alert Bob and his family that he’d done anything other than gone straight to bed. He didn’t want them to see Penny by his side either. The invitation to sleep in the barn was for just him, not a brash, overconfident, idiot red-head.
“So where do we go from here?” Penny asked once they’d reached the barn and climbed up into the hayloft.
Of course he would start talking at the first possible opportunity.
“We go to bed,” Greer said, knowing full well he sounded like a grumpy old curmudgeon.
Penny planted his hands on his hips and stared at him as Greer sat heavily on a pile of hay, then lay back, using the coat he’d left behind earlier as a pillow.
“No,” he said, fierce and determined. “We go back to the castle. To rescue Lord Fabian. Like we’ve been commissioned to do. We should talk about how and when we do that.”
“We do that tomorrow,” Greer said, frowning up at him. “Discussions of how we do it can wait until I’m not so angry with you that I could spit in your eye.”
Instead of deterring him, Penny grinned. More than that, before Greer could brace himself or ward the young man off, Penny tackled him, straddling his thighs and planting his hands on Greer’s shoulders, pushing him deeper into the hay. “You’re angry with me?” he asked as if he thought that was the most charming thing in the world.
Greer grunted, not wanting to dignify the man’s teasing face with an answer.
Penny tilted his head to the side. “Is it because you’re furious with me for outshining you during the housebreak to get the keys or because you were afraid I might get hurt and you’re glad I didn’t?”
Greer’s eyes went wide. Damn the man and his perception.
