She nodded again and whispered, 'It's all right.'

'No, it's not.' He looked frustrated. 'What are you even doing, walking around here by yourself? In the dark?'

'I missed the curfew,' Mary whispered. 'I had some things to finish for the tailor, and I worked so late I missed the curfew. It's all right though, my friend Prudence lives in the city. Her husband works nights, so there'll be someone up.'

'And Emmy?'

'She stays with Sal and Smiggy when I'm working late,' Mary said. Her eyes darted between them both. Eve smiled and tried to look non-threatening.

'Well, look. We'll walk you there. You shouldn't be out alone,' Harker said.

'I'm fine, really'

'Are you? What if the next person who catches you lurking in shadows isn't James's old sergeant?' Mary flinched, and Eve glared at Harker, because that had been unnecessarily harsh.

'We'll walk with you,' Eve said. 'We're in no hurry.'

Mary gave another jerky little nod, and they set off, flanking her, taking narrow alleys and dark lanes, saying little. When they reached the low, leaning cottage where Mary's friend lived, she turned and thanked them.

'No problem,' Harker said. 'I'm sorry I frightened you.'

Her shoulders were still stiff. 'It's all right. I was just ... startled. I was hiding because I heard voices and I didn't want to attract any attention,' she added, with a slight smile.

'Next time you're working late, get someone to come and meet you at the shop, okay?' Harker said, and Mary nodded as she knocked at the door.

It was answered by a man holding a tetchy-looking baby. He didn't seem surprised to see Mary, but he blinked at Harker and Eve.

'Friends of my husband's,' Mary said, and he nodded and thanked them for walking her home.

As they turned away, Harker glanced at Eve and said, 'Don't ask.'

'I think I can guess.'

'I bet,' he said grimly, 'you can't.'

They walked to the end of the little lane, unlit by gas or oil lamps, and Harker pointed down another street that ended at the city wall.

'See that low roof against the wall?' he said. 'You can climb up there and be over the wall. If we get separated, go there, it's where Banks is waiting.'

Eve nodded, and they turned back towards the river. The night air was cold and damp, and she shivered in Harker's jacket. When he put his arm around her it seemed entirely natural, and she leaned into his warmth and strength.

'When I was in Grrl Power,' she said, 'we did a skit for Comic Relief. And as part of the whole thing we met some women who were running a women's shelter in London. They didn't film us with any of the victims because they all wanted to keep their identities private, but we talked to a few of them.'

Harker frowned. 'Okay, I only understood about half of that. Comic Relief?'

'It's a charity thing,' Eve said. 'It doesn't matter. My point is, I've seen women act like Mary before. They were victims of domestic abuse, most of them. One had been kidnapped and raped.' She hesitated. 'What did her husband do to her?'

At that Harker looked surprised. 'He didn't do anything. He tried to defend her, and it ended up getting him killed.'

Eve considered that. 'Why was he defending her?'

'Because he loved her.'

'No, I mean'

Harker sighed. 'This was back when I was still a sergeant, in the 17th. James White was one of my men and his wife was allowed to stay with the regiment. They had a baby, less than a year old. He was devoted to them both. And then ...'

'And then?'

'Then a vicious conniving lying cheating bastard of a man called Sholt bribed and blackmailed his way to a commission, got assigned to my company, and took a liking to Mary White.'

Eve winced.

'Yeah,' Harker said. 'And he planned it out, the slimy bastard. Didn't take any chances. Waited until James was out on manoeuvres with me and the rest of the men and ambushed her in her tent.'

'So there was no one there to hear her?' Eve said.

'No. Or the baby, who cried and cried, and eventually he shoved her on the floor, knocked over a candle and burned her leg. She still limps now.'

'And Mary?'

Harker's face was grim and dark, his eyes ferocious with anger and disgust. The fury he'd shown Frederick Winterton was a mere shade of this.

She never, ever wanted him to look at her like that.

'You don't want to know what he did to Mary.'

'I think I can guess.'

'Can you though, Eve? Has anyone ever bound and gagged you and cut you with a knife in places' He broke off, his fingers curling into a fist. 'And the worst of it was that James knew who'd done it and went after Sholt, and threatened him and hit him in front of other officers, for which he was sentenced to a flogging.' He delivered the story in a curiously flat tone, as if he was reading it from a book, but anger simmered under every one of his words.

'A flogging? How barbar' She broke off, shook her head. 'But surely he was provoked? Didn't they take that into account?'

'They did not. The army,' Harker said flatly, 'likes proof. Besides, Sholt bought his commission with bribery and blackmail, remember? He had several officers in his pocket. He said James beat her. He said she dropped the baby. And they listened. They bloody listened to him. Not one bugger listened to a word James said or gave a damn about the only person defending him.'

'You?' Eve said.

'Me. I'd only been a sergeant less than a year. Didn't know Saskia then, either. Stood up for James's character but it was just pissing into the wind. They'd already decided to have him killed.'

'I thought you said he was flogged?'

'Twelve hundred lashes'll kill most people.'

Eve shuddered.

'Yeah,' Harker said. 'They made Mary watch, too, the sadistic bastards, while Sholt's standing there smirking the whole time, watching a man flogged to death. We tried to take care of her, me and the men, and their wives not too many women in the army then, but we had plenty of good lads. They looked after her.'

'You looked after her,' Eve said. 'You look after everybody.' She paused, and added sadly, 'She wasn't even one of your men.'

'She was James's wife,' Harker said, as if it was obvious. 'That makes her one of mine.'

Eve looked up at him, at his hard, strong face, determination evident in every line, and wished that she was one of his, too.

But Harker said nothing, and she knew his thoughts were both miles and years away, and didn't include her.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Meeting Mary had unsettled him, but for once in his life Harker didn't dwell on it. He wanted to he even tried to; anything to distract himself from Eve's attentions as they approached the grammar school in The Calls.

But she leaned into him and looked up at him with those big eyes, and pressed all that softness against him, and smiled so provocatively that even the guard at the school gate couldn't concentrate on anything but her.

'Are you sure you're not an actress?' he asked as they crossed the small lawn, and Eve looked up at him with an unfathomable look in her eyes.

'No,' she said, 'I'm really not.'

Harker didn't stop to try and work that out, mostly because he'd just spotted a second guard prowling around the inside of the school. Eve saw him too, and said, 'Quick, come here.'

She drew his face down to hers, but just when he was sure she was going to kiss him, she darted to one side and kissed his cheek.

'There,' she said, 'lipstick all over you. Better.'

Harker, his heart racing, took a second or two to focus on her, before he nodded and said, 'Yep. Right. Good one,' incredibly fast, and dragged her inside.

It was dark inside the school, but he could hear the hum of electricity and see a dim light coming from a set of tiled stairs.

'Lot of security for a school,' Eve murmured as she followed him, hand in hand.

'A school with a computer,' Harker said, and she laughed silently. 'What?'

'Nothing, it's just to me ... it'd be a pretty poor school that didn't have any computers.'

'Well, your world ain't my world,' Harker said, wondering as he did whether he actually believed that. Was she from a different world? Or was she just crazy? No, she was too lucid to be crazy.

He refused to believe she was a spy. Not after everything she'd said and done.

Nonetheless, he was taking her right into enemy territory. And if she turned tail and handed him over to the Coalitionists, he'd never hear the end of it from Charlie.

Come on, Eve, he begged her silently as they climbed the staircase and turned towards the half-open door from where the pale blue light was coming. Prove me right. Help me steal this piece, make the computer work and come home safe and sound. If you do that, Charlie will have to accept you're on our side.

'Why is there a light on?' Eve mouthed as they approached the door, as silently as possible. Harker gave a facial shrug. Probably there was someone in there.

'Well,' Eve whispered, sliding her arm around his neck and speaking into his ear, 'sneaking around won't help. We have a right to be here, remember?' Then, much louder, she said, 'Go on, then, show me these books.'

'I don't know where they bloody are,' Harker hissed, but there didn't seem to have been any reaction from the other side of the door.

'What's in there? There's a light on,' Eve said. Her words were rougher than he was used to, slightly slurred and shouty. She was clinging to him and stumbling as if she was drunk. Well, she certainly smelled of beer, her own trick in the pub had seen to that.

He grinned a little. Old Whiskers, that had been mean. Nobody liked the stuff. He didn't even like the stuff. He'd only been drinking it because ... well, because he'd wanted to impress her.

Which was rather pathetic of him.

'Why don't you come and see?' he said out loud, reaching for the door handle and swinging it inwards. His free hand slipped into his pocket, where a cosh would help him knock out anyone inside the room, but there was no one there.

The light was rather dim, coming from the screen of the computer set up on the desk. The rest of the room was filled with books, clearly the school's library, and they stretched off into the darkness, shelves and shelves of them.

'Oh, wow,' Eve said, still in her floozy voice. 'Look at all these books, Will!'

'Yep,' he said, 'look at 'em.'

'Close the door,' Eve said, and he did, and she immediately dropped the act and went straight to the computer, moving the mouse and tapping at the keyboard.

'Might need you to translate,' she murmured. 'All the commands are in French ...'

Ducking her head, she peered at something sitting on top of the CPU box. It trailed wires, one of which went to the back of the computer and the other to a telephone.

'Bingo,' she said. 'That's our modem.' She unplugged it and handed it to Harker, who turned her to face him and tucked it into the pocket of the jacket she was still wearing. She stood still, not reacting at all when his hands brushed her body, then turned away quickly, saying, 'Let me just check the network settings, okay?'

Harker, who still didn't really understand what network settings were, nodded and watched her get on with it. She was frowning slightly, leaning over the desk so that his jacket rode up and her curvy backside was exposed in all its tight red satin glory.

'Harker?' she said after a minute or two.

He was still staring at her. 'Mmm?'

'Stop staring at my arse.'

For the second time that night, he felt colour creep into his cheeks.

'Do something useful,' Eve said, nodding at a strongbox next to the computer. 'See what's in there.'

'How?'

'I dunno, can't you break the lock or something?'

Harker, who did in fact own a lockpick and knew how to use it, scowled. 'Yes, but I'm disappointed you expected me to,' he said.

As she clicked on things and asked for translations, he worked on getting the box undone. Whatever was inside rattled rather alarmingly, and he set it down on the desk to work on it as quietly as possible. But then Eve sucked in a sharp breath and he turned to look at her too fast, catching the strongbox and knocking it on to the floor, where it clattered, rolled and clattered some more, incredibly loud in the silent building.

Harker froze, so did Eve, her expression turning to horror as a distant voice said, 'What the hell was that?'

Harker grabbed for the box, only to have the lid fall open and the contents spill everywhere. Swearing, he scooped up dozens of the little sticks like the one Eve had taken information from earlier in the day, shoving them into his trouser pockets as footsteps sounded on the stairs. Eve snatched up the box and set it back on the desk with the lid shut, if not locked.

'Oi, who's in there?' said a voice outside the door as Harker straightened, and Eve suddenly grabbed him, pulled his head down to hers and, as the door opened, she wrapped her arms around his neck and touched her lips to his.