It helped if she thought of him as a little boy, not as a rather large, hard-muscled, brave and stoic man. Because thinking of him as a large, hard-muscled, brave and stoic man made more strange things happen to her insides, and she wasn't quite ready to deal with them yet.

Eve made him sit up to wrap the bandage around his chest and shoulder, which brought her into disturbingly close proximity with his hard, naked torso. Dammit, she thought, he's doing this on purpose. He's being all lean and sexy on bloody purpose.

She let him fall back to the bed with a slight thump, which Harker didn't even seem to register. His head fell to one side, his hair feathering against his cheekbones, his breathing deep and even.

'I can't believe you're asleep,' she said, and jumped when he murmured, ''m not. Stop staring at me.'

Eve stuck her tongue out.

'Saw that,' he mumbled, snuggling against the pillow.

'Liar,' Eve mouthed, because his eyes were closed, and started gathering up all the kit she'd used. She threw the bloody towels in the bathtub, washed the implements and left them in the bowl to dry, then splashed water on her face and scrubbed at her hands until most of the blood had come off.

'What, will this hand never be clean?' she muttered, looking at the pink stain around her nails. 'How can he have heard of Stoker but not Shakespeare?'

When she went back into the bedroom, the last oil lamp was guttering, so she turned it off, then did the same for the dim overhead electric lights. The fire in the sitting room had reduced itself to ashes a long time ago, so she left it.

Her shoulders ached, her limbs were heavy with fatigue, and as she stood in the doorway to Harker's bedroom, cold crept over her. She thought of her chilly little trundle bed in the room she shared with Martindale, who was probably still being operated on, and Tallulah, who was assisting with the operation. The thought occurred to her that she maybe ought to go down and see if they needed any help.

'No,' she said out loud. 'I can't bear it.'

Besides, she was so tired she'd be useless anyway.

She shivered in the cold, dark room. Funny how she hadn't noticed the heat fading away while she was working. But then, Harker had been generating enough heat of his own.

She frowned. Hope he's not getting a fever.

Maybe I ought to stay and keep an eye on him.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight, she watched him sleeping. At least, probably sleeping. He was bare to the waist, and without decent light she couldn't see most of the scars marring his body. All she could see was his flat stomach, his broad chest, the curve of his hipbones before they disappeared below his waistband.

There was no fat on him, none at all, and none of the showy muscle she'd become used to with the over-pumped backing dancers who'd gyrated on stage with Grrl Power. Harker didn't have the sort of carefully designed physique generated by hours of weight training in the gym. She doubted he'd ever even seen a gym. What he had was a lean, hard body, with the narrow waist and broad shoulders of a man who'd been used to hard physical work before he'd even finished growing.

She regarded him for a long time, her head on one side. Would you be handsome? No, he never would. But he was already quite beautiful. Gently, she pulled the quilt over him. 'Harker,' she said softly. 'Are you asleep?'

He didn't stir.

'Harker?' she said, louder this time. 'Charlie's outside with a gun pressed to her head. She's going to kill herself because I've spent so much time in here with you, all alone.'

Nothing.

'That's after she's killed us both.'

Still nothing.

Sleep softened the harsh lines of his face. The moonlight made the bandage on his chest gleam stark and white, rising and falling with each breath.

'Harker,' Eve said softly, and watched him a while longer before whispering, 'I think you're amazing.'

Then, without entirely working out a valid reason other than I really, really want to, she toed off her boots, unbuttoned her shirt, and crawled into the bed next to him.

In twisted dreams Harker watched, over and over, Martindale's body jerking in the air. And over and over it became, as injured friends inevitably did, James White, the tattered ribbons of flesh on his back leaping with each thrash of the whip, even after his body had gone still, sagging in its bonds.

Mary White lay curled on the floor, her hands tied and her mouth gagged, beaten and bloody and flinching with each cry of her baby. Harker couldn't forget the sound of that baby. In the lonely hours of the night it haunted him, screaming and screaming with pain and fear.

He woke with a start into a silent room, pale daylight creeping past the open curtains. The day was grey and misty, impossible to tell how early or late it was.

His right shoulder throbbed. His left was weighed down by something.

The right shoulder made sense. He remembered the failed raid, the keyboard that had probably saved his life, and Eve's subsequent care. Well, if you could call it 'care', when she'd bitched and argued and poked him with the tweezers until he'd very nearly burst into tears.

What confused him was the weight on his left shoulder and the warmth pressing against his body. It felt almost like a woman curled up next to him, but that made no sense.

He cracked open one eye.

He quickly shut it again.

Okay, he was still dreaming. There was no way in hell Eve was curled up next to him; and not just next to him but half on him, too, her arm stretched across his waist and her leg propped over his. Her other hand curled in his hair, and that was curiously more intimate than the rest of it.

The quilt had slid down so he could see that she was wearing an undershirt and trousers, which answered one question thank goodness he hadn't done anything he'd forgotten about but raised another. Namely, what the hell was she doing there?

He opened his eyes, and she was still there.

Well, damn.

She was soft and warm and fitted against him very nicely, her head tucked into the hollow of his unhurt shoulder, resting against the bandage she'd wrapped around his upper chest. In the gap between her trousers and t-shirt was an inch or so of exposed skin, wonderfully silky, which Harker was surprised to realise he could feel because he had his arms around her.

Apparently some men didn't like women who clung to them. Harker had never minded, so long as the reason she was clinging was that they'd just had really hot sweaty sex and she needed to hold on to something to stop the room from spinning.

Unfortunately, he'd done no such thing with Eve, but for some reason he didn't mind her cuddling up to him.

Besides, the day was still young.

She shifted and sighed in her sleep, all that softness pressing against him, and for a few minutes Harker allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy that she'd curled up there because they had spent the night having hot sweaty sex. All that fire and anger, those fast fingers and faster mouth, all that warmth and softness damn, she could drive a man insane.

She could certainly drive a man to hold on to her to stop his world from spinning.

Eve made a soft noise in the back of her throat and shifted again, her arm stretching over his stomach, her fingers idly caressing him. This was entirely too much for Harker, who swiftly changed from fantasising about Eve to hoping she wouldn't move her leg any more and see just how much she was affecting him.

Then she went still, as if she'd just realised what she was doing, where she was and who she was stroking who did she think he was? and she very, very slowly raised her head.

Harker waited.

Her blue-green eyes were sleepy, her hair tousled, and there was an imprint on her cheek of the bandage she'd been resting on. Her lips were parted and dry and she licked them, her eyes meeting his.

Her fingers curled in his hair. Her heart thudded against his ribs. And Harker forgot all about the stitches in his shoulder and the potentiality of Eve being a spy, and leaned forward to kiss the most desirable woman he'd ever seen.

But he never got there, because someone banged on the suite door and it swung open, and the idiot who'd designed the house had made it so that the person standing in the hallway could see through the bedroom doorway, to the bed.

Where Harker lay with Eve cradled in his arms, his lips inches from hers.

'Sir, we can't find Eve and'

Banks trailed off, his fist still raised to knock, his eyes growing wider. In a split second he took in Harker's bare chest and Eve's arm stretched across it, and he started to grin nervously.

'but, uh, there she is. Um, never mind,' he said quickly, and backed out, yanking the door shut, and Harker was left with a petrified motionless replica of the soft warm woman he'd been about to kiss.

'' she said, and swallowed, and managed, 'I should go,' in a frozen whisper.

He started to tell her no, but she was already pulling away from him, and in a tiny split second her gaze darted down to his bare chest, then skittered away, and his stomach turned to lead.

The way she'd looked at him last night.

He released her instantly, appalled, and Eve scrambled away, off the bed, grabbing at her shirt and tripping over her boots.

Horror on her face, revulsion in her eyes.

She shoved her arms into her shirt and stumbled away from the bed.

'How are you still alive?' Because he looked like he ought to be dead, punctured and ripped open and smashed with glass and knives and shrapnel and shot.

'I' Eve began, pausing in the doorway, then her nerve deserted her and she ran, out of the bedroom and the sitting room and Harker's reach, leaving the suite silent and cold.

Harker sat motionless in the empty, suddenly huge bed, staring after her for a second, then he swung to his feet and strode into the bathroom.

His reflection glowered back at him, six foot-odd of glowering scars and bruises. No wonder she'd run.

He kicked off his clothes, washed and dressed and glared at the computer, the source of all this damn trouble, before slamming out of his room and stomping downstairs for breakfast.

So what if she really found him that hideous? Did he want a woman who looked at him like that? No, he didn't. She knew who and what he was: a soldier, a serving soldier; did she think he was going to be pristine? What kind of numpty survived sixteen years in the infantry without gaining a few scars? Granted, he had a few more than most people, certainly than most officers, but then most officers treated shaving cuts as war wounds.

Harker was proud of those scars, dammit or if not proud then at least not ashamed. They were part of him, his life, his career he was a survivor, and The kitchen was very quiet. Tallulah looked up at him from the table, her face drip-white.

'What?' he said, his anger evaporating, and then the answer hit him like a sandbag. 'Martindale.'

She nodded, swallowed, and said in a half-whisper, 'Banks has gone with one of the maids to fetch the priest. It won't be long now.' Her breath hitched. 'Sir, we tried'

He stared at her for a second, then shoved past the cook and into the scullery, where Charlie stood and Daz sat and Martindale lay, all of them unmoving. But Daz and Charlie looked up when he came in.

'She told me,' Harker said. He looked down at Martindale, who was still and waxen, looking dead already.

'We were up all night,' Daz said, 'I tried, sir, I tried'

'I know,' Harker said, his voice hollow.

Daz took a ragged breath and let it out. He nodded. 'I'll stay with her,' he said. 'Until the priest comes, until ...'

Harker exchanged a look with Charlie. She gave a slight nod, and said, 'I'll stay too.'

Harker left, passing the cook again on his way out and daring her to make any comment about needing her scullery back. To her credit, she didn't say a word.

Eve was sitting with Tallulah at the table, her arm over the younger girl's shoulders. Tallulah was praying.

So, Harker, good morning. Snubbed by the only girl you've been interested in since Saskia, and one of your men is dying. And it's not even nine o'clock.

Again.

Chapter Twenty.

Sir Dennis, to Harker's mild surprise, offered the family plot for Martindale's body. Frederick complained, and his father slapped him, which made Harker grudgingly respect the old man.

Martindale lingered, while the local priest and Daz sat with her. Harker ordered Charlie to get some sleep, Banks and Tallulah to fetch Sir Dennis's car, and Eve to fix the computer keyboard.

She sat on the floor of his suite, not looking at him, using his tweezers to pick out bits of dirt from the keyboard's innards, and by midday she'd fixed it. But she didn't cheer, didn't smile, just asked him for a few words in French and typed them in.

'There,' she said, as the French flag came up on the screen. 'All yours.'

He dealt her a heavy look. 'You're the one who knows how to use it.'

'Sure,' Eve said. 'But what do you want it to do?'

'Well, use it to connect to that Internet thing you talked about.'

Eve gave a sigh, and he knew what she said next wasn't going to be good news.

'You need a modem to connect to the Internet. I told you that. And you need an ISP, and who knows what you people use for that around here'

And Harker lost his patience.

'You know, I just knew you were going to come up with something else we needed for this,' he snapped. 'If it's not one thing, it's another. Martindale is dying because of some part you said you needed and now it turns out you didn't'

'Hey, I didn't know this was going to work,' Eve said.

'And now you tell me you need this piece'

'I told you it would need a modem, but look, it might'

'If any more of my men die because of this stupid computer, you can bloody well go with them,' Harker roared, and Eve drew back just a fraction of an inch, her face going tight.

'It might have an internal modem,' she said quietly. 'I'll check.' She turned back to the keyboard, paused and said, 'A French dictionary would be useful.'

'Ask me. I can'