'Right,' she said. She glanced at the clock over the fireplace. 'I'll ... if I make a start on this now ...'

'Could have it all done and dusted by morning and we can go home,' Banks said.

Eve yawned. 'Right,' she said again. 'Okay.' She picked up the power cable and started trying to untangle it. That cable looked like a USB, and that one might have been Ethernet, but she wasn't sure. And that one 'Sarah,' Daz said, and Martindale looked round. 'You're limping.'

'Just fell badly, sir.'

He gestured for her to sit down, and knelt by her, feeling at her ankle while she protested there was nothing wrong with it.

'We should have a light day tomorrow anyway,' Harker said, 'you can rest it then.'

Sure, Eve thought, she can rest her ankle, when I busted mine I spent the next day hopping up steps and getting locked in prison. She tugged the end of the power cable free, lost her grip and dropped the whole knot on to the floor.

'It's all right, nobody help,' she said, when nobody did.

'It's not swollen,' Daz said, pressing on Martindale's ankle. 'Just twisted, I think. Take it easy tomorrow.'

'Reckon we all ought to get some rest, sir,' Charlie said, smothering a yawn.

Eve sat down on the floor and started to pick through the knot of wires again. She gave another yawn.

'Right, bed everyone,' Harker said. 'Sleep in tomorrow. Good work tonight.'

They all trooped out. Charlie cast Eve a distrustful look. Eve ignored her, and unwrapped a USB cable from the prongs of the plug.

'Cold down here,' she said, to no one in particular. The squad had all gone.

'You could drink your mead,' said Harker, making her jump and drop the cables again.

'I'd rather not.'

He stubbed out his cigarette, picked up Eve's mug and swigged from it. 'Is that really going to take hours?'

'Probably.' Especially since she was tired, and not thinking straight, and her fingers were clumsy, and she was cold.

'Eve.' He hunkered down and peered at her. 'Go to bed.'

She looked at the wires, which were so blurry they could have been snake-dancing for all she could tell.

'Thought you wanted me to make a start on this tonight.'

'Since when have you ever done anything I've said?'

She smiled at that, and Harker took the wires from her, put them on the desk, and held out his hand. She hesitated for a moment but it was only his hand, she could touch his hand without bursting into flame and took it.

His grip was strong, of course, and his hands warm, of course, and as he tugged her to her feet she lost her balance and fell against him, just for a second. Just long enough to register how very big and hard he was, before she jerked away, mortified.

'Night then,' Harker said, and Eve swallowed and looked away and mumbled, 'Night,' and half-ran from the room.

'Did you sleep all right?' Tallulah asked Eve the next morning as she lay there trying to summon the will to get out of bed. The trundle bed wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but it was warm, and Hatfield Chase wasn't centrally heated.

'Fine,' said Eve, who'd been disturbed by dreams of falling against Harker's hard body in various states of undress.

'You were talking in your sleep,' Tallulah said.

Oh God. 'Really?' Eve said weakly.

'Well, sort of. You were making noises, maybe not actual words.'

'Bad dream,' Eve managed, which seemed to pacify Tallulah, even if Martindale didn't seem to be entirely convinced. She didn't say anything, but after the look she gave Eve, she didn't need to.

At breakfast, everyone was giving Eve expectant looks, except for Harker, who seemed to be ignoring her.

'Well?' Banks said eventually. 'Are you gonna fix the computer today?'

'Look,' Eve said. 'I'm not an expert on this. I know how to use a computer, I don't know how they actually work.' At their blank looks, she tried to explain. 'Like when you use a ... a car. Do you know how they work?'

'Yes,' said Tallulah.

'Or a gun,' Eve tried.

'Yes,' said Harker.

'But I mean ... if something went wrong, could you fix it?'

'Yes,' said Tallulah.

'Yes,' said Harker.

'Or put one together from component parts?'

'Yes,' said Martindale. 'Worked in munitions before I joined up.'

'Didn't you join up at eighteen?' Eve asked.

'Yes.'

When Eve frowned, Harker said, 'Not everyone has the luxury of spending their teenage years what were you doing, Eve? Singing?'

'Yeah, and it was damn hard work,' Eve snapped. 'Fine, look. I'll go and fix your damn computer.' She threw her toast back on her plate. 'I'm not hungry anyway.'

Her stomach betrayed her by growling as she stood up. Banks stifled a smile. Harker's lips thinned.

'Oh, get lost,' she snarled, and stomped upstairs to Harker's sitting room, where the computer sat in pieces, looking oddly sad.

She'd barely sat down before the door opened and Harker came in, bearing her plate of toast. Eve said nothing, so he set it down on the floor next to her.

'I said I wasn't hungry.'

'And you lied.'

'I can't eat it now, I'll get the computer all ... toasty.'

He nearly smiled at that. 'Well, then. Don't want it to go to waste.' He picked up a piece.

'Bastard!' Eve yelped, because she really was hungry.

Harker grinned and handed it back to her. 'You'll just have to wash your hands.'

She made a face, but ate the toast, which had been spread with honey and was delicious, while Harker sat opposite her on the floor, his back to an overstuffed chair and his legs stretched out.

'Can you really fix this?' he said. 'Or is it all too broken?'

'I don't know,' Eve said. 'Is there any reason why it should be broken?' He shrugged. 'Was it working when you got it?' When you shot someone for it?

Harker looked nonplussed at that, so she sighed and elaborated, 'Was it on? Were there lights here?' she pointed to the front of the CPU. 'Was there anything on the monitor? Colours, pictures?'

'The monitor is the screen thing? Yeah. I didn't see what they were, though.'

'Doesn't matter.' Eve finished her toast and clambered to her feet, wiggling her sticky fingers at Harker, who pointed to the bedroom. 'No, I want to wash them.'

'Bathroom through there.' When her eyes went wide, he grinned. 'Yeah, perks of an officer.'

'Charlie and Daz don't have their own bathrooms.'

'Nope.' Harker stretched. 'They ain't in charge.'

Shaking her head, she went through the bedroom to the small but beautifully appointed, rather Victorian-looking bathroom.

The one she'd been using, along with the rest of the squad, was awash with towels, bars of soap, razors and the rather fancy shampoo and conditioner Tallulah had produced from her pack. Unlike the others, Eve had no toiletries of her own and was using what had been provided by the housekeeper, so she'd been able to leave nothing personal in there.

But Harker, it appeared, had also left virtually nothing personal in his bathroom. There were a couple of towels, presumably hung up by the maid, since she couldn't really see him as the tidy type, and some soap and a toothbrush, along with a pot of the weird-tasting paste they all used to clean their teeth, and that was about it.

He probably didn't own a razor. Or a comb. Eve would bet good money he'd never even heard of conditioner. But now she thought of it, he was rarely actually dirty. Just untidy. He didn't smell.

Actually, he did, he smelled of soap and cigarettes and hot skin and other indefinable things that made her pulse speed up just a little.

But since she wasn't attracted to him, that didn't matter.

Eve finished washing her hands, and went back into the sitting room, where Daz was kneeling by the computer components, peering at them in fascination. Harker was standing, looking at his watch.

'How long does it take you to wash your hands?' he said incredulously.

Eve stuck her tongue out at him. 'How long does it take you to become computer literate?' she said. 'Because until you are, I'm the one in charge of this, all right, and I'm having clean hands touching it.' She glanced at Daz, who rolled his eyes.

'I'm a doctor,' he said. 'I know about clean hands.'

'It's a machine,' Harker said. 'It's not going to go gangrenous.' He looked at it doubtfully. 'Is it?'

'No, but you really don't want to get sticky fingers inside it. I'm still not even convinced that keyboard is going to work.'

'Well, then you'll have to fix it.'

Eve closed her eyes. 'Harker, you can't just fix a keyboard that's had blood spilled all over it. If we're lucky, there'll have been a layer of rubber protecting the components inside. But if there isn't, or if some of the ... liquid got inside, it will have fried the electronics and you're going to need someone with about a hundred times my skills to fix it.'

'Can't you learn? Daz has books'

'Written in hieroglyphs,' Eve said, because Daz had showed her some of the books and they'd reminded her that the Americas hadn't been colonised by anybody from Europe. 'Do you speak American?'

'Algonquian,' Daz murmured.

'I know a few words,' Harker said.

'Any of them repeatable?'

Harker narrowed his eyes at her, then said, 'Daz. We need a phone line. Can you see what you can do about it? And send Charlie up, will you?'

Daz looked between them, then without smiling in any way at all, nodded and left the room.

Eve gave Harker a look and settled back down on the floor to finish untangling the wires. She figured she'd plug in the CPU first to see if it actually worked, then start on the peripherals.

'Are you going to sit and watch me all day?' she said, without looking up.

'Yep.'

'Marvellous.'

'Would it really stop the ... the ...'

She looked up. He was waving his hand at the desk.

'The keyboard?'

'Yeah. Would getting it wet really break it?'

'Yes. Trust me. I once spilt coffee on one and could only type words on the left side of the keyboard. Unfortunately, I was working for someone called Ogilvie, so his name ended up as 've'.'

Harker was looking nonplussed again. Eve sighed, and debated explaining a QWERTY keyboard to him.

'Never mind,' she said.

She untangled the power cable at last and plugged one end into the CPU. Holding her breath, she plugged the other end into the wall socket, and pressed the power switch.

Nothing happened.

'Well, damn.'

'What?'