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either as he put out the candle, then crawled into bed, careful to arrange himself so that no part of him touched the boy under the linens.
    Radcliffe was dreaming of his last mistress, Lena. They were cuddled up in bed, wrapped in each other's
arms. She was murmuring sweetly to him, her full lips brushing kisses across his chest as she reached down with one hand to cover and caress his manhood.
    Sighing pleasantly, he opened his eyes and hugged the woman a little closer, then stiffened. The woman in his
arms was not a woman at all. It was a sleeping Charles Westerly. The hand he had dreamt was caressing him was actually the boy's knee thrown over him with abandon as he slept. The lad was wrapped about him like he was a warm whore on a cold night, and worse yet, Radcliffe himself was responding to the proximity in a way that no whore would. He was as hard as a poker.
    Cursing roundly, he struggled out from beneath the boy in a fit of panic, gained his feet, and turned back to glare at the lad as if it were his fault.
    Startled awake by the jostling and bouncing, Charlie sat up abruptly, glancing about with alarm.
    "What? What is it?" the boy cried. Charlie was barely awake, but had apparently caught Radcliffe's panic like a communicable disease and cast about for an explanation. The lad's first thought must have been that they had been robbed. Rolling onto his stomach, he leaned off the bed to peer under it, visibly relaxing when he spied the bags still there. Dragging one out, he yanked it open, then sighed as he saw that the jewels had not been stolen.
    Closing his eyes, the boy took a couple of deep breaths, then turned back to glance at Radcliffe, who still stood by the bed, glaring down at him almost furiously. Bewilderment obvious on the boy's face, he rolled again onto his back, straightened the wig on his head, and sat up. "What?"
    Blinking, Radcliffe stared at the boy for a moment, then glanced grimly away. The lad was totally oblivious to what had happened. One look at the lad's lap was enough to tell him that Charles had not been the least aroused by the encounter, asleep or no.
    Turning his back to the boy, lest he notice Radcliffe's own arousal, he grabbed up his shirt and shrugged quickly into it, muttering, "Bad dream," by way of explanation.
    He finished dressing quickly, though he could feel the boy's bewildered gaze boring into his back. Once finished, Radcliffe snatched his bag and headed for the door. "Wash up, then wake your sister. We leave as soon as we have eaten."
    He closed the door behind him with a slam.
    Shaking her head over the peculiarities of men, Charlie glanced down at the bag she had dragged out from beneath the bed. Closing it quickly, she moved to the washbasin to clean up, her mind going over the night before. She had been determined to outsit Radcliffe downstairs, then haggle with the innkeeper for the pistol. It would seem that she had failed miserably. She could not remember much of the later part of the night. The innkeeper had kept refilling her glass and she had kept
drinking. She had not meant to, but somehow
every time she had turned around she was swallowing more ale. She did not even remember coming up to bed last night. She supposed the fact that she had come to bed meant she had been unable to purchase the pistol.
    Sighing, she glanced briefly at the closed door,then tugged the wig off of her head. Scratching at her scalp with both hands, she moved back to her bags to dig out a hairbrush. Seated on the side of the bed, she tugged her waist-length hair out of the back of her shirt, undid the tie that secured it in one long tail at her neck, then ran the brush through it. It felt greasy to the touch, and she imagined it looked even worse, but she was not surprised. She had worn that blasted wig for two days and two nights, her head sweating something fierce under it. Still, that had not been nearly as uncomfortable as the tight binding around her breasts, and her hair