The UnTied Kingdom (28 page)

‘Yes,’ Harker said, watching her pick up the guitar and stalk back across the room.

Tallulah giggled. Eve scowled, sat down opposite Harker again and gave him a smile that wasn’t at all friendly. Then she started to play Sheryl Crow’s
All I Wanna Do
, and when she got to the line about William’s name, Harker glowered, Tallulah giggled, and Eve knew he’d played the Gosh-I-don’t-know-who-Major-Harker-is-my-name-is-just-Will trick on her, too. Presumably when his ex-wife had first taken him home to meet the family.

‘Yes, very clever,’ he scowled. ‘Now, if you’ve done insulting me?’

‘Who said that song was about you?’ Eve said innocently, feeling she’d redressed the balance somewhat. ‘It was about LA, and bars, and lowlifes.’ She played a few more chords, smiled again, then started
You’re So Vain
.

Harker looked pissed off, but even he had to smile when she sang the chorus.

‘All right,’ Eve said when she’d finished. ‘I’ll stop now.’

‘Not a moment too soon,’ Harker murmured, and she decided to stop torturing him.

She thought for a moment, then glanced at Tallulah and started
18 Til I Die
. By the time Daz came in, complaining about the noise, Banks and Tallulah were singing along with the chorus, and by the look on Harker’s face, he wasn’t entirely hating the whole thing.

After a minute, Daz joined in.

Eve caught Harker’s eye, and he smiled at her. An actual genuine smile. She smiled back, caught unawares, and then Daz interrupted, and the moment was lost.

‘What was that song you played the other day?’ Daz asked. ‘
I Never Really Loved You Anyway
?’

Eve tore her attention from Harker and dutifully started playing. She liked the song, but it never failed to remind her of Kevin Hayes, a boybander she’d walked out with a time or two during her Grrl Power days. He’d been pretty enough, but about as clever and interesting as an old carpet sample.

And when the taxman had come calling, Kevin had suddenly found lots of elsewheres he needed to be.

When she’d finished the song, she shook her head and said, ‘Wish you hadn’t picked that one, Daz. Reminds me of someone I’d rather forget.’

Harker’s face didn’t move in any way, but somehow his expression did.

‘Ex-boyfriend?’ asked Tallulah, a touch slyly.

‘Whom you never really loved,’ Daz guessed, grinning.

She shrugged. ‘Well, no. I liked him … well, most of the time I liked him. It was just … convenient, you know? And we did look good together.’

Harker rolled his eyes. ‘A very important factor.’

‘Yeah, well, I was famous, remember? Had to think about my press coverage.’ She strummed a few chords, but broke off to say, ‘Why do we do those things? I mean, when I was about fourteen I went out with the ugliest boy just because he was the only one who asked me out.’

‘Saskia says it’s low self-esteem,’ Tallulah opined, and they all looked at her. ‘She says it’s because you think you’re not good enough, so you settle for something worse than you deserve, because you don’t know what you do deserve.’

‘Smart girl, your sister,’ Eve said.

Harker slid down in his seat, glaring half-heartedly at her.

‘It’s true, though. So many really smart, pretty, funny girls go out with total losers because they just don’t think they’re good enough for anything better.’ She hit a few more chords for emphasis. ‘What’s the difference between men and women, Lu?’

There was an embarrassed silence. Tallulah went pink again.

‘It’s that when we look in a mirror, we think we look terrible. A man looks in the mirror and thinks he’s God’s gift.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Harker protested, and Eve gave him a once-over.

‘Well, okay,’ she conceded, strumming a couple more chords. ‘Maybe not you.’

Harker looked surprised: was she being nice to him? But then Eve said, ‘I reckon it’s been some time since you were on nodding acquaintance with a mirror.’ And she launched into her next song.

Banks stuffed his fist in his mouth. Daz looked away. Tallulah tried as hard as she could not to laugh.

But Harker looked at Eve without a shred of merriment in his face, and Eve wondered if she’d gone too far this time.

Harker looked at himself for a long time in the mirror, which wasn’t something he usually did. He knew what he looked like, and he’d never seen any point in liking or disliking his appearance, since there wasn’t much he could do to change it.

Okay, his hair could probably do with a cut, since he couldn’t actually remember the last time Charlie had nagged him into it.

Or the last time he’d shaved. Well, what was the point? It just grew back. Every time there had been some high-toned and fancy do, Saskia had asked, begged, argued and then finally locked him in a room with a barber and refused to let him out until he was clean-shaven.

Harker, who had a pathological aversion to other people waving sharp things near his face, had always thanked the barber and done it himself. But since he no longer went to fancy shindigs with Saskia, he’d stopped bothering. Besides, it seemed to annoy the other officers, and Harker liked annoying them.

He was wearing his uniform. He couldn’t see much point wearing anything else, and besides, he
liked
his uniform. And he at least conformed to regulations with it. Well, sort of. Probably regulations stated he was supposed to look a damn sight neater and tidier, but if he was going to arse around making sure his clothes were always perfectly pressed, he’d never get anything done.

He pulled off his shirt, slowly, and then his undershirt after it. Eve’s bandage was still wrapped around his chest and shoulder, pristine and stark against the ruin of skin covering the rest of him.

How had it got to be like this? How had he gone from not really minding a few scars here and there to being so disfigured he repulsed pretty girls? Saskia hadn’t minded. At least, she’d despaired a little each time he got hurt, but he’d figured that was concern for his well-being. Not how he looked.

His civilian clothes were set out on the bed, fresh from the laundry. His uniform was a crumpled heap on the floor next to his pack.

Harker regarded himself for one more long minute, then took a dull blade from his pack, and started sharpening it.

Eve was teaching Tallulah how to play
Brothers in Arms
on the piano when the harsh ring of a telephone bell startled her.

Weird,
she thought,
three weeks ago I’d barely have noticed it. Now it’s the most incongruous thing in the world
.

Benson the butler entered the drawing room, viewed the squad with slight distaste and said, ‘A General Wheeler for Major Harker.’

Charlie told him Harker was upstairs, and the distaste on Benson’s face grew as he realised he’d have to put himself out to find the Major.

The telephone was in the hall, and the whole squad, including Eve, shamelessly eavesdropped on Harker’s conversation. A lot of it consisted of ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘Fine, sir,’ but then he said, ‘Actually, sir, we do have some information on where the other computers are.’

Charlie glanced at Eve, who raised her eyebrows.

‘Well, I think we need to confirm it first, sir. Eve thinks we might be able to connect to the others, but we need a special device for that … No, sir, I mean we can connect to it remotely. Keep it here and see what they’ve got on their computers there.’

He hadn’t mentioned the computer at the Tower. Eve wondered why.

‘Hull? Well, yes, I suppose so. I – when? Right, sir. I’ll bear that in mind.’

They listened a bit more.

‘Ah, that might be a problem, sir. Eve says we need a phone line to connect to the other computers. That’s how the information is sent … Something to do with sound waves or something, I’m not sure. Daz – Captain Haran might be able to explain it, sir.’

They all looked at Daz, who shook his head rapidly, eyes wide.

‘Oh, fine, sir. Very co-operative … No, sir, I think this is all we’ll need … Yes, sir, as soon as we have it all working. We can go in for the final piece tonight and be in Hull by tomorrow. Yes, sir.’

There was a click as the telephone was replaced – evidently General Wheeler wasn’t big on goodbyes – and the squad hurried to look as if they hadn’t been listening at the door. Eve scrambled after Tallulah to the piano, and had just hit a totally random collection of notes, explaining, ‘See, you play it like this,’ when the door opened and Harker came in.

‘I should bloody hope not, that’s horrible,’ he said, and she turned to snipe at him only to find her mouth totally useless.

He was wearing an open-necked shirt and dark trousers, and while it was weird to see him without his uniform it was even weirder to see him without his stubble. Because Harker was clean-shaven, every inch of his face smooth and perfect. Without the week-old beard that usually graced his jaw, he looked sharper, younger, and as handsome as she’d doubted he could be.

Eve had just realised she was gaping at him when Daz said, ‘Oh, my saints.’

Everyone else looked up.

‘Saints be praised,’ Charlie said.

‘Yes, all right,’ said Harker, who could clearly scowl just as well without facial hair as he could with it. ‘I own a razor, get over it.’

‘I thought you was someone else,’ Banks said.

‘Last time I saw you look like that, you were getting married,’ Tallulah said, and Eve lost a few seconds while she pictured Harker in morning dress.

‘Well, I ain’t getting married today,’ Harker said. ‘I’m going nicking a computer piece.’

‘You look very respectable for a thief,’ Charlie said.

‘Well, I’m breaking into the grammar school,’ Harker said. ‘And my papers say I’m a teacher.’

‘You need to be clean-shaven to be a teacher?’ asked Daz.

‘Hah, not my teacher, he was a weird beardy old guy,’ Banks said.

‘Look, can we stop this?’ Harker said. ‘Eve. Why ain’t you ready yet?’

Eve licked her lips, swallowed, and found her voice. ‘I, uh. Well, after Tallulah ripped that dress, none of the maids were particularly inclined to lend me anything.’

Harker made an impatient sound. ‘Look, this is the bloody army, go and
requisition
something. Do you even have a cover story?’

‘Do I need one?’ Eve said. ‘You’re the teacher, I thought you were going to be the one getting us in there.’

‘Yes, you need one. And don’t make it complicated.’ He waved his hand at the piano. ‘Tell ’em you’re a singer, in case they ask you to prove it, you can–’

His face changed.

‘No,’ Eve said pre-emptively.

‘Oh yes.’ Harker’s newly beautiful face lit up. ‘Lu, go and get that dress.’

‘But it’s torn–’

‘And you know how to sew, I’ve seen them tapestries you did. Go on.’

Tallulah scampered away, and Harker turned to Eve with a look in his eye she wasn’t sure she liked. Even if it did make him look devilishly attractive.

‘You’re a singer,’ he said.

‘No, I’m not,’ she said nervously.

‘In that red dress of Tallulah’s.’

‘Actually, technically I think it was the head housemaid’s–’

‘Banks, have you put her occupation on those papers yet? Singer, then. Entertainer. Whatever. You’re a nightclub floozy in your red dress–’

‘Hey,’ Eve said, affronted. So much for devilishly attractive, he was just devilish.

‘And what is a nightclub floozy doing with a respectable, clean-shaven teacher?’ Daz asked. Eve was pretty sure he was making fun, but she was also pretty sure she knew where this was going.

‘What do you think she’s doing?’ Harker said. He grabbed Eve’s hand and whirled her into his arms, which was most avowedly not an unpleasant place to be. ‘Reckon you can put aside your violent dislike of me for an evening?’

Eve couldn’t quite manage to speak, so she nodded, because right then it was hard to imagine ever disliking this man, with his smooth, hot skin and beautiful throat, his warm eyes dancing at her.

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ he murmured, and let her go so abruptly she crashed into the piano. ‘Now, go and get that frock off Tallulah.’

Eve stumbled away, quite eager to get away from Charlie’s ferocious glare and Harker’s raging pheromones.

It’s not just because he’s had a shave and washed his hair,
she thought
. He was damn good-looking before that. It’s just that now … now he looks …

God, I wish I’d kissed him this morning
.

In a slight daze, she found Tallulah ripping lace from the hem of the dress and tacking it over the rip in the bodice of the dress, which was red and shiny and the sort of thing Eve didn’t usually touch with a bargepole.

‘It might be short on you,’ Tallulah was saying as her fingers flew. ‘The head housemaid isn’t particularly tall. It was very short on me.’

Tallulah practically had to sew Eve into the dress, which was low-cut and fiendishly tight and left no allowance at all for underwear.