“My sisters will let no harm come to me while you are handling the challenges,” Mrs. P said to me.

“No, we will not, although I think we should get Gilly to our room,” Ipy said, giving her priestess sister a gimlet eye. “Lest she succumb to the lure of more champagne.”

“Give her our room key, gel,” Mrs. P told me.

“Huh?”

“The sisters are staying with us, naturally.”

“But…” I glanced at Rowan, who looked as surprised as I felt. “But don’t you have your own rooms?”

Ipy shrugged. “We cannot guard our sister if we do not sleep at her side. Come, we shall make the accommodations ready for our dearest one while the champion is guarding her.”

I didn’t see any way out of it. Mrs. P was paying for the trip, and I had no right to keep her friends from our cabin if that’s what she wanted. Reluctantly, I handed Ipy the key, and the ladies all took off.

Except Mrs. P, who told Rowan, “The shop has men’s costumes. Tiny ones. You might want to perk up your romantic life with one.”

“I don’t need to wear a costume, tiny or otherwise, thank you,” Rowan said stiffly as she cackled and snagged another glass of champagne before sitting down in a chair next to where May and Gabriel were now talking in low voices.

I gave Rowan a look that told him he should know better. “If you are implying that we’re doing this for the hell of it, we aren’t. We literally have nothing else to wear. And speaking of that, how is it you knew about our room being trashed? You wouldn’t happen to have been there, would you?”

“Yes, I was there,” he answered, taking me completely off guard. “That’s why I called the hotel’s front desk—so that they’d send someone up to find out what happened before you returned to see it.”

I took a step closer to him, and immediately was aware once again of the scent of him, part citrus and part something that made me think of leather-bound chairs in a private library. “And just why were you there?” I asked in a soft tone, making sure to meet his gaze. His eyes, now more gray than green, were wary, but as I took another step closer, the interest in them turned molten. “You wouldn’t be trying to steal Mrs. P’s jewels, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was, but someone beat me to the job.”

The words pierced me as if they had been arrows. It took me a minute to be able to answer him, but I was proud that when I did so, my voice was steady. “You’re a thief? You really do want to steal from Mrs. P? That’s… that’s… that’s just infuriating, Rowan!”

“There’s a reason for what I’m doing—”

“On the contrary, there’s no reason. Not a valid one. Not for theft.” I took a deep breath. “Well, at least you’re honest about the way you’ve been using me.”

“What? No!” He took me by the arms, his eyes clouded now. “Sophea, what we had last night is nothing to do with this—with the ring. What we did was about us, no one else, and I’m more sorry than I can say if I gave you the impression that you were a stepping stone on the way to Mrs. P. I would never use you like that.”

“But you just admitted that you want to steal from Mrs. P.”

His lips thinned. “Not for my own gain. Not for money, or satisfaction, or hell, even by my own free will. There’s a situation, and I’m more or less obligated to help fix it.”

“Obligated like being blackmailed?” I asked.

Pain flashed in his eyes for a few seconds. “You could say that.”

I searched his face for signs he was lying, but there was nothing in it but sincerity. And something heated that left me feeling restless and needy. Although I didn’t condone his plan to steal from Mrs. P, it made much more sense that he was being forced into doing so. I wondered idly what he’d done that was so bad it could be used to force him into his present acts, but decided that was a discussion for another time. “Now I feel like I should apologize,” I said, my emotions tangled into a giant ball of confusion.

“Don’t. You have nothing to apologize for.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I seem to have messed things up without being aware of it. What can I do to make it right with you?”

“Well, the biggest thing is to stop trying to steal Mrs. P’s jewelry.” I touched the side of his face. He still looked tired, but there was something in his eyes, a layer of pain that I knew I had a part in, that made me forgive him. “I am sorry for thinking you were the sort of man who’d use me. I should have known better.”

“It was entirely reasonable to think so,” he said, pulling my hand up to kiss my knuckles. “If I promise you that I won’t take anything from Mrs. P without her permission, will that return your faith in me?”

I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from me and realized with a start the true depth of emotions that were tied in with Rowan. This wasn’t just a case of me needing to have a good time with a man… it was something more profound. And while it was true my emotions were tangled together, they were emotions that had lain dormant for the last few years, emotions I was happy to feel again.

Trust you to fall for the first pretty face you’ve seen since Jian died, I said to myself, the name of my deceased husband generally dousing any feelings of attraction for another man, but for the first time since his death, it didn’t leave me feeling as if I’d had a bucket of water dumped on me. “Yes, it would help if you stopped being a cat burglar. For one, I don’t think it’s very honorable, and for another, it’s bound to end badly, and I don’t want to see you end badly. I want you to end good. Er… well.”

“Thank you,” he said with another one of those little bows that thrilled me to my toes.

“And as for not telling us about our room… I don’t know whether to scream at you, hit you over the head with something heavy, or ask the captain to throw you overboard. Why didn’t you tell me that someone destroyed our things?”

“I had no way to contact you. I did what I could by ensuring someone from the hotel would find out what happened before you got back, and left it at that.”

“But you would have stolen Mrs. P’s jewelry if her things hadn’t obviously already been gone through?” I pointed out, then shook my head. “Never mind, it’s a moot point now. Not only have you just sworn not to steal anything from her, whatever she had is gone.”