Crow grinned, feeling smug as Penelope tensed and reached for her own weapon. That she even considered him enough of a threat to put one hand on the hilt of her sword was amusing to him. Of course he wasn’t so foolish that he would actually attempt to use the blade in his hands. He wasn’t completely lacking in experience when it came to sword fighting, but he knew he was no match for a battle trained knight. Most of the time, his interest laid in stealing the weapons rather than in drawing them to fight. If he tried to come at her now, especially in the back of a moving cart, she would cut him down in half a second. Instead, he had other plans for the brand.

“Oh, relax,” he rolled his eyes and waggled the sword to keep the knight’s attention. “Despite my appearance, I’m not so useless with a blade that I would injure myself.” While he toyed with the brand, he gently pushed a small dagger behind his body with one foot. The motion was slight and almost unnoticeable, a perfected trick that he’d developed over years of practice. Distraction and misdirection were two ladies with whom he was intimately familiar and used to his advantage whenever he wanted to purloin an object in close quarters with another person. Unless his audience already knew about his tactics, the ploy worked almost every time.

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll put it away though,” he went on, keeping up his charade as he slid the blade back into its sheath. While he returned it to the bundle with the others, he smoothly dropped the dagger into his right boot with one hand, keeping his torso positioned between the small weapon and the knight so she couldn’t see the movement from where she sat. Once it was in place, the leather-sheathed blade rested snugly against his ankle, completely out of sight.

“I wouldn’t want to make a lady uncomfortable,” Crow smiled wryly and inclined his head to Penelope, waving his hand in a garish bow before he went back to sifting through the weapon stock. Having already attained his prize, he pointedly knelt at an angle where the knight could see both of his hands as he looked over the other blades and bows. He hoped the false sense of peace he offered with the gesture would deter her from searching his person for any stolen goods.

When he felt like a plausible amount of time had passed, he wrapped the weapons back up in the cloth and retied the twine that kept them bound. “See?” he patted the bundle and looked up at Penelope. “No harm done. I just wanted to have a look.” Moving back to his spot by the blanket pile, he laid back and stretched out his limbs in a harmless manner.