I don't like this one as much as my other HMC fic, but read and review anyway?
I don't own Howl. I'm not sure I'd want to, either...
Sometimes she wondered if he'd only wanted her to sleep in his room was so he had someone to open the door in the mornings.
That had to be it, she realized. There was nothing else that made sense. After all, when he had asked her about it (Asked- ha! Only with Howl could "You're not going to sleep in the cubbyhole anymore" be considered a respectful request. And only Sophie wouldn't point out that since they'd moved the castle into the hat shop in Market Chipping she'd been sleeping in her old room again.), and she'd made it perfectly clear that, happily ever after or not, if he even tried to do anything to compromise her honor, she would leave the castle in an instant, he had been nothing but respectful to her wishes. So clearly that wasn't it.
But even though she was only "sleeping with him" in the most chaste sense of the term, no mother would be happy to find her daughter (or stepdaughter, as the case was) sleeping in a man's bed, and Fanny had actually started to visit once in a while- almost always without warning. Lettie and Martha came by sometimes too- Martha more than Lettie, but who wouldn't come by frequently when the apprentice was their betrothed? She knew her sisters probably wouldn't be bothered if they knew the situation, but they couldn't be trusted not to tell Fanny. So since there was no telling who would be at the door at any moment, it had to be Sophie who opened the door early in the morning or late at night, because it was the only way to assure nobody knew where she was sleeping.
And it would be just like him to have thought of that ahead of time.
"Nngh… who was that?" he asked as she crawled back into bed. He'd barely moved an inch since she'd left him there. The jerk.
"Just another one of the kings messengers, checking on your progress. You are working on that spell for him, aren't you?"
"Part of the time. Go back to sleep; I can't get any peace when you're talking like that."
Yes, she was almost certain he'd done it to get her to open the door. But she'd take whatever she could get.