The UnTied Kingdom (30 page)

She took a deep breath, which he watched with interest, and that forced a laugh from her.

‘I know they’re right there,’ she said, looking down at her heaving bosoms, ‘but you don’t have to stare at them so much.’

It was hard to tell in the dim light outside the tavern, but she thought his clean-shaven cheeks got a bit pink.

‘Why, Major Harker,’ she said, ‘are you blushing?’

‘Of course not. I don’t blush.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘You’re obviously feeling better. Come on, then.’

He didn’t extend his hand to her this time, but started walking away, and Eve frowned and stayed where she was. After a few paces, he stopped and turned back, scowling at her.

‘Well? Are you stopping there?’

‘I am if you don’t stop this hot-and-cold rubbish,’ Eve said. ‘Either be nice to me or don’t, but stop turning on a dime because you’re confusing the hell out of me.’

He came back, looked down at her for one long, inscrutable moment, then said, ‘Turning on a dime?’

‘Never mind,’ Eve said. ‘Are you going to be civil to me?’

Harker gave a sigh, as if it was all too much trouble for him, and said, ‘Yes. Fine. Miss Carpenter, would you do me the honour of accompanying me?’

He gave her back his jacket and held out his hand. Eve looked at it for a moment, at that missing little finger and the scars edging his palm, then took it and stood up.

‘Lead on, Macduff,’ she said.

‘Macduff?’

‘Never mind.’

They walked along the riverbank, slowly, Eve’s hand tucked into the crook of Harker’s arm. It felt nice, companionable, as if they were friends or maybe on a first date. Eve wasn’t exactly sure what a first date was meant to feel like, though, since she’d never technically been on one. When she was a teenager, ‘going out’ with someone meant being seen with them at lunchtime and sitting next to them in double maths once or twice. At fourteen, the price of a cinema ticket and bus fare had been beyond most of the boys she knew, and anyway, most of her evenings had been spent in rehearsals for musicals with boys who played for the other team. Once she hit fame in Grrl Power there’d simply been no possibility of going for dinner or a movie. She and Kevin had just appeared together at various parties and premieres, and then sort of drifted into couplehood.

Evidently it had rained recently in Leeds, because the cobbles were damp and slippery, hard to walk on in heels. It gave her an excuse to hang on to Harker, with his rock-hard biceps and strong forearms. Eve had always had a thing for a nicely defined forearm, the mark of a man who used his hands a lot. Holding on to Harker was like clinging to an iron bar. He felt solid, indestructible, and more than once he kept her from falling when she stumbled on an uneven cobblestone.

To distract herself, she watched the lights dancing in the river, unexpectedly pretty in this slightly seedy part of town. She didn’t realise she was humming until Harker said, ‘What’s that song?’

‘Oh,’ Eve said. ‘Uh – it’s called
On My Own
. There’s just a verse about lights on the river, and I was thinking of it. Sorry.’

‘How does it go?’

Without really thinking, she sang the first three lines of the verse, and then got to the line about being with him forever and forever, and broke off abruptly.

There’s no ‘him and me’, he thinks I’m a spy, and crazy to boot. Stop being sentimental, girl.

‘ “And”?’ Harker said.

‘Um … I can’t remember that line,’ Eve fumbled. ‘Sorry. It’s from the same musical – the same play as the song you wouldn’t let me sing on the way up here, do you remember?
Do You Hear The People Sing
?’

‘Is it? Sounds different.’

‘Well, that one was a call to rebellion, and this one is about a girl who’s in love with someone who doesn’t want her.’

‘I thought it was about trees and rivers,’ Harker said, but when she looked up at him, he was smiling. Eve smiled back, and something sparked between them that made her a little dizzy. She stumbled, losing her footing, and as he pulled her closer to his body to keep her upright, she forced her gaze out at the river, away from him.

Beautiful as it was,
On My Own
was also sad. The only time Eponine got to be held in the arms of the man she loved was when she was dying, and Eve didn’t think she wanted to go that far.

Eponine died, and Marius survived, victorious, to marry his chosen bride and live happily ever after. Without her, his world went on turning.

‘Harker?’

‘Mmm?’

She tried out various ways of saying it before eventually going for the simplest.

‘What’s going to happen to me? I mean, after we get this modem and you have your working computer, and presumably take it back down to London … you won’t need me any more.’

Harker looked away, out at the river.

‘Will I just be going back to St James’s for the rest of my life?’

He let out a sigh and stopped walking. ‘I wish you’d come up with a bloody reason for flying over the Thames,’ he muttered, and turned to face her. ‘Eve, I don’t want you to be a spy. I want you to have a bona fide explanation and be pardoned and go free.’

Eve caught her breath at the intensity in his voice.

‘And I will do what I can to see you free, but without anything to prove you’re innocent …’

He was gripping her arms, looking so fierce she was terribly glad he was on her side.

‘And helping you? Won’t that earn me some Browni – some points?’

‘Aye, a few. But the army likes proof,’ Harker said, more than a trace of bitterness in his voice. He dropped his hands. ‘Come on,’ he said, offering her his arm again, and Eve took it. Her heart was thumping.

‘Harker?’ she said after a few more steps.

‘Yeah?’

‘Um. About this morning. I … um.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘No, it’s not. I shouldn’t have stayed, I was just … I was really tired, okay, and not thinking straight, and I was freezing and the bed was warm and … and I didn’t really want to go back to my own room, without Tallulah or Martindale–’

Harker reached over and touched the hand she had curled into his elbow. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘And … well, now Banks probably thinks … and who knows what he’s told everyone else–’

‘Ignore ’em,’ he said.

‘Well, I do, but that’s not the point.’
The point is, I woke up and nearly kissed you, because you were lying there looking so warm and vital and sexy, and if Banks hadn’t come in I’d have taken advantage of the fact that you were nearly naked to pin you down and ravish you
.

Harker was frowning at something in the distance.

‘I just didn’t want you to – to think that I’d– What are you staring at?’

‘There’s someone hiding in the shadows there,’ Harker murmured. ‘Wait here.’

‘Wait here?’ Eve hissed, as Harker tried to disentangle her arm from his. She clung on. ‘Are you serious? We’re walking by the river, I’m dressed like a bloody hooker, and you want me to wait here?’

‘Yes,’ he said patiently. ‘That’s why I said “wait here”.’

But there’s someone
hiding
in the
shadows, Eve thought, watching him walk away, her iron bar.
They don’t do that for honest reasons!

But he just walked up to the darkened gap between buildings and reached straight in, pulling out a huddled, skinny woman, whimpering and looking as if she might faint with fear.

Okay, he can be scary, but honestly woman, grow a spine,
thought Eve. Then the light fell on the woman’s face and Harker dropped her instantly, raising his palms and looking horrified.

‘
Mary
? What the – what are you doing here? I thought you were a thief or something.’

Mary was holding herself very tightly, arms wrapped around herself, tears trickling down her face. She looked utterly petrified.

‘Eve, come over here,’ Harker said, and she frowned but did so. ‘Mary, this is my friend Eve. She’s nice. She won’t hurt you.’

Eve tried to look friendly. Her initial assessment of the sobbing woman as a bit of a wuss changed when she got a look at her colourless face and the soul-deep terror in her eyes. Mary’s whole body was rigid, her hands shaking slightly, her posture huddled and submissive.

‘You’re Mary White,’ she said, and Mary’s eyes snapped to her. ‘Harker told me–’ She glanced at him, and there was warning in his eyes. He hadn’t actually told her anything other than Mary’s name, but Eve knew him well enough by now to recognise the tightness around his mouth when he said it.

‘He told me he’d met up with the wife of one of his men,’ she said carefully.

Mary gave a stiff little nod, and Harker said gently, ‘Mary, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

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.’