Work Text
John Steed could still hear the crack of Dr. David Keel’s fist making contact with his jaw, sixteen years later. He remembered spitting blood on the floor, and the dark, florid bruise that he’d explained away to One-Ten as an encounter with a drunk at a pub who had a bone to pick and a particularly lethal right hook. His superior didn’t believe it, and Steed knew it, but the older man didn’t press the issue, and that was all that mattered. He also didn’t bother to make the connection between the injury and Steed’s casual comment that he wouldn’t be calling on the good doctor for his latest assignment.Steed’s memory was good, and long. Always had been. A useful asset in the trade, although it could sometimes be a curse as much as a blessing. There were things he wished he could forget-- awful, unpleasant things--but it was equally important for him to remember that he had lived through them, just in case he found himself repeating the experience and needed something to hang onto in the wee hours.He remembered what they were arguing about, Keel and him, and why the good doctor finally broke his vow to ‘do no harm’ and let loose with his fists in the way he had almost done countless times before. And because he was David Keel, he remembered the doctor wound up patching him up in his surgery afterwards. Because he was a good man who inevitably got angry with himself for getting angry at someone else; one who waited until Carol Wilson had left for the evening before bringing Steed inside, because he was too ashamed to tell her what had happened.Memory aside, Steed was also good at reading people, but that particular skill had been harder-won, the product of many years of experience, and more than a few mistakes. If asked, Steed would describe himself as a people person, but not in the way the term was usually bandied around. It was more a matter of him figuring out how people worked and pushing the right buttons than just being naturally gregarious and outgoing, though Steed had always been able to play those roles with aplomb. He’d always been good at a party or over dinner, charming and full of bonhomie. But something changed after the War. He changed. He wasn’t entirely certain what it was—he’d never been a misanthrope, or a sadist, or a troublemaker for its own sake. But he developed a habit, a need, call it what you will, to push people--to see how far he could push them. Perhaps it was a coping mechanism—the War, followed by a career in espionage, does not fill one with trust in other people and their motives. So Steed pushed and pushed and pushed, seeing how far he could go, how loyal people really were, how much they’d take, how many liberties their goodwill would allow. It was a good way to divine someone’s mettle. It was also a good way to alienate them. And alienate Steed did. Keel. Dr. King. Venus. Cathy. They’d all been friends to him, in one way or another. He couldn’t fault them for their loyalty or willingness to come to his aid in a pinch. But neither could he fault them for walking away when they felt ill-used one time too many. And Steed had ill-used them. He’d pushed them that little bit too far, just to see if they’d crack. And they had cracked.Steed knew he was as good at using people as he was at reading them, but no one liked being used. When he met Emma, he’d tried to use her as he’d used the others, but when she reacted with anger, he felt fear, real fear--for the first time in much too long--that she, too, would leave. That was when he realised that he desperately didn’t want to alienate Emma, would do almost anything to prevent it. That their bond had extended past the professional, past even friendship, into something much more precious. Something it would be tantamount to criminal to throw away due to his callous behaviour. So he started to reconsider his methods. He changed. Changed for the better. Changed for Emma. The fact that she left him for something beyond his control was perhaps the cruellest blow fate ever dealt him.Then Tara came around, and Steed found himself in a new position. Tara was a subordinate, not a talented amateur or a fellow agent of equal standing. Using her would be tantamount to bullying, and anyway, Steed had learned his lesson well from Emma. That ruthless streak that the job entailed would always remain, for his own good as much as his partner’s, but he was more careful now in how he used it. He was no longer eager to test the limits of Tara’s patience. His reward had been an amiable partnership, and an equally amiable parting. Steed was still in touch with Tara, who had yet to let more than a few months pass without at the very least a call or a letter, regardless of where she was in the world. Steed was quite proud of that—how he’d handled that relationship, how it had evolved, and how it continued, despite the end of their professional bond. He’d known when to keep Tara close, and when to let her go. His reward had been someone he knew he could call on in a pinch—and had—without worrying about the weight of history hanging over them, or how she would react. She’d gone on to other, better things, and Steed flattered himself that he had had a hand in that. But he was also humble enough to know that Tara had helped him just as much as he had her, if not more, and he owed her a great deal for guiding him through what had been an admittedly difficult part of his life.That brought him to his current partners, Purdey and Gambit. Steed was very fond of Purdey. He also knew she was beautiful. It would have been a lie to deny it—Steed had eyes, and knew a beautiful woman when he saw one. But he didn’t look at her the way he had Emma, or even Cathy. It was a sort of academic assessment, as though he were looking at her in a textbook, and she met the definition of ‘beautiful’ that he’d written for himself. But Steed had never felt any desire to chase her, as charming as she was. If he was brutally honest with himself—and Steed often was at this stage in his life--he wanted friends, good friends, the kind he could rely on, not just on the job but in life. And Purdey had been a good friend to him. Smart, sharp, funny, lively, engaging, and more than a little eccentric, she was never anything but good company, guaranteed to brighten up the dullest day. But Steed had seen the glint of hero worship in Purdey’s eyes from the beginning, and he’d been well-schooled in that particular phenomenon with Tara. He knew that it was the idea of him that fascinated Purdey, more than the man himself, and he knew how insubstantial a relationship of any kind was when built on an illusion. The longer Steed had worked with her, the more Purdey had figured out that he was flesh and blood—a legend perhaps, but a man all the same. Steed had felt relief every time another scale fell from her eyes, until they’d all gone, and he’d been laid bare to her as a person. A person who was really, truly her friend now, after all they’d gone through in the roughly two years since they’d become acquainted. There was a frankness between them now, a candidness that had developed in tandem with their comfort level with one another, and the result was a solid friendship, umblemished by romance, that he treasured. Steed considered himself lucky to have someone as incisive yet sympathetic as Purdey in his corner at this stage of his life.Now, Gambit—Gambit had always been the complete opposite of Purdey when it came to his relationship with Steed. He saw through the inflated, living legend stories instantly, and he knew exactly who, and what, Steed was the second he laid eyes on him. He reminded Steed of David Keel in that way. The difference was that Gambit has become a friend: a solid, loyal friend who hadn’t walked away as Keel had, in spite of that stark, clear-eyed assessment. Steed valued that more than Gambit probably knew. Just as he valued the unvarnished honesty between them. Purdey often accused Steed and Gambit of practising ‘telepathy’, but Steed knew their wordless exchanges were the product of complete honesty coupled with absolute trust. Steed knew Gambit wouldn’t tolerate games or being spun a yarn, and Steed found it something of a relief to forgo the dressing up of the truth in favour of giving it to him straight. It was so refreshingly freeing to be able to cut through all the noise and go right to the heart of the matter. And once all of that nonsense was stripped away, Steed could rely on Gambit, and his hard-won worldly wisdom, to understand whatever Steed conveyed with a look or a few words, and trust Gambit to know how to respond or what to do. Gambit hadn’t let him down yet, and Steed didn’t suspect he would any time soon.But Steed knew Gambit in ways that went beyond his personality and modus operandi. There were things behind the curtain that Gambit had deftly draped in front of his past that went beyond the thin personnel file that the people in records would permit Steed to see, as per departmental rules. Steed knew that Gambit had seen and experienced things that he didn’t talk about, mostly because he was the same. For that reason, Steed always knew something was very wrong when Gambit started turning down one too many invitations for drinks or dinner, or even a quick friendly chat in the hallway, without the excuse of a date with an attractive women to call him away. Some people sought out distractions when they were struggling, but Gambit shut down and withdrew when he was in distress. Not completely, because that would attract attention. The jokes would still come easily to his lips, but the smile when he told them wouldn’t reach his eyes, and he would slowly, silently, start to drift away—a cancelled evening out here, a solo assignment there. It had happened after Spence, and it happened again after Larry Doomer. Each time, Purdey either didn’t notice or didn’t want to notice, possibly unaware of his personal crisis because she was, in each case, dealing with one of her own, great or small. Steed couldn’t blame her, but he also knew that if the team was to survive, there were some realities that Purdey was going to have to face, eventually, and that Gambit was going to have to let her face them. One of those realities was fast-approaching, and taking its toll on Gambit, whether he wanted to admit it or not. And Steed was determined that, this year, the younger man was not going to get away without providing his female partner with a more thorough explanation.That was why Steed was sitting in his car outside Gambit’s block of flats in the dying light of a chill autumn day, waiting for the younger man to return from his brief sojourn to Scotland on a research and recce assignment tangentially related to one of their cases. There were half a dozen other, more-junior agents under Steed’s authority who he could have, and would have, selected for that particular task under normal circumstances. An agent of Gambit’s skill and capability was better used elsewhere, and Steed knew it. But Gambit had volunteered, and Steed had accepted his offer, where normally he wouldn’t have even considered it. Under any other circumstances, Gambit probably wouldn’t have been quite so eager to disappear up north to the Highlands, where no one knew him from Adam. But at this time of year, Steed knew it was a place Gambit could hide, could retreat as the dark currents of anxiety and shadows of fear began to overwhelm him, neither of which he could control. At least if he was alone, he didn’t have to exhaust himself further by putting on a brave front for any concerned observers in the process.But now the few days of private, tortured anticipation were up, and the main event loomed large on both Gambit’s and Steed’s mental calendars. Steed knew and accepted that Gambit would never be able to bear nearly a whole week of someone looking over his shoulder, wringing her hands over his mental state. But Steed had experienced enough of his own personal traumas to know that, on the darkest of days, it was best to have someone with full knowledge of the facts by one’s side to lead one back into the daylight, and he was determined to ensure Gambit had that advantage this time around, even if the one holding his hand in the walk through the shadows wasn’t his. A sudden flash of headlights wreaked temporary havoc with Steed’s nightvision, but when his eyes cleared he saw Gambit alight from the XJS across the street. Steed waited until he’d ducked inside his building before getting out of his own car. He reached the front door just as the lift doors closed, timing it perfectly to ensure that Gambit wouldn’t see him as he entered the building, but so that he could call the lift back as quickly as possible. He arrived in the corridor of Gambit’s floor and rounded the corner just as Gambit was unlocking his door. “Ah, Gambit, I’m glad I caught you!” he exclaimed jovially, even though he could have easily waited by the flat door, if not inside, for Gambit to arrive. But Steed was keen to not let Gambit know what his intentions were, at least not right away, and taking up residence in Gambit’s flat when the man himself hadn’t even returned home was a definite red flag. By the same token, it was more difficult for a homeowner to fob someone off when he intercepted him just as he was crossing his own threshold than waiting until said homeowner was already inside and only had to not answer the door to avoid any unwanted visitors. Steed’s plan required perfect timing to be executed properly, but fortunately for him, perfect timing was part of Steed’s stock and trade.Gambit’s head whipped around in surprise at Steed’s greeting, and Steed was momentarily taken aback at how starkly the harsh overhead lights picked out the too-prominent cheekbones in the noticeably thinner face, and accentuated the loose draping of his suit on his decidedly slimmer frame. Knowing what he did about Gambit’s response to personal stress, Steed had been expecting some signs of distress, but Gambit’s time away meant that Steed was seeing the changes in his appearance all at once, rather than gradually, over a longer period of time. Gambit looked as though he’d lived on nothing but coffee since he left London, and Steed had the awful feeling that that particular scenario wasn’t far from the truth. Old pro that he was, Steed quickly concealed his distress at Gambit’s appearance. If Gambit knew Steed was there out of concern, he’d claim to be all right, beg off letting him in with the excuse that he was tired after a long day of travelling, and steadfastly refuse to discuss the most pertinent issue Steed wanted to broach until long after the proverbial deadline had passed. So Steed rearranged his features into his most cheerful smile, and carried on as if it were just an ordinary evening, and Gambit was his ordinary self. “How was the train ride back from Scotland?”“Nothing to write home about.” Gambit’s eyes were weary, and it was clear he was keeping his long face from getting longer out of sheer force of will, with neither the desire nor the ability to engage in small talk. “Really? I’ve always found it lovely this time of year.”“I didn’t have much time to look at the scenery.” Steed noted that Gambit didn’t specify what had been distracting him for enjoying the view, but he could make a good guess. “Did you want something?”“Oh, yes. I have this file on the Jarvis assignment.” Steed plucked the file, which he’d brought along as a prop more than anything, out from under his arm. “I was passing by and thought I might drop in and give it to you, in case you want to get a head start on it for tomorrow.”“Oh.” Gambit looked nonplussed by Steed’s supposed motivation. He stared uncomprehendingly at the file in Steed’s outstretched hand for an uncomfortably long time. Suddenly, he seemed to remember himself, and the niceties of social interaction, and took it with a weak smile. “Thanks, Steed. I appreciate it.”“My pleasure.” Steed’s now-empty hand joined its umbrella-holding mate behind his back, and he rocked jauntily back on his heels as he waited expectantly for Gambit to finish unlocking his flat door. Gambit did so with one eye still on Steed, popped the door open an inch and assessed the older man’s body language for any tell-tale signs of imminent departure. There weren’t any. When he met Steed’s eyes, all he got in return was a disingenuous smile.There was a moment where Gambit seemed to debate whether or not he could just slip inside his flat with a quick ‘good night’ and leave Steed stranded on the doorstep. But Gambit knew Steed, and he knew his modus operandi was such that that course of action would only lead to an umbrella thrust across the threshold and a nasty chip out of his door. Steed waited patiently for the fight to leave his colleague’s body, until Gambit sagged resignedly. “Would you like to come in for a drink?” he sighed, without much enthusiasm. Gambit really wasn’t up for company, but Steed was making it infinitely clear in that infuriatingly polite, mannered way of his, that he wasn’t going to go away without an invitation to come in. It was Steed’s secret weapon—to make even the most diabolical mastermind feel like a heel for being rude to him, even if being polite put his plot at risk. It was just as effective when Steed employed it against his friends, perhaps more so. After all, his friends had more to lose—John Steed was a good man to have in your corner.“That’s extraordinarily kind of you,” Steed enthused, as though Gambit’s invitation had been completely unexpected. “I’ll take you up on that, if you don’t mind.”“Pleasure,” Gambit replied, with just a hint of sarcasm, gesturing for Steed to go in ahead of him with a wry knowingness. Gambit was onto Steed, and Steed knew he was onto him, but that was all part of the dance, and Gambit knew the steps better than most. What he was counting on, once he’d given Steed the admission to his inner sanctum that he so obviously craved, was that Steed would put his cards on the table and come clean about his true intentions for insinuating his way into Gambit’s evening. “No games.” That had been the deal Gambit had struck with his boss-cum-mentor back in 1975, and for the most part, Steed had held to it, with one or two egregious exceptions. Steed had to know that if he didn’t cut to the chase soon, Gambit was going to pin him down on the issue himself, and all of Steed’s manoeuvring would be naught.Steed was setting his bowler and brolly on the dining room table when Gambit closed the door behind them, indicating he meant to stay for longer than a quick drink and a chat. Gambit wondered what he’d done—or someone else had done—to warrant this personal intervention. It made him vaguely uneasy, which, given his already not insubstantial personal unease, was not particularly welcome. But Steed usually had a good reason for putting a word in his ear, so he wasn’t about to fob him off without hearing him out. “Scotch?” he offered, crossing to the bar.“That’ll be fine,” Steed agreed, moving to the window to look out across the city. Gambit glanced at the elegant back as he poured two glasses, then moved to join him. Steed took the glass graciously. “Cheers.”“Cheers,” Gambit echoed, and sipped his drink without taking his eyes off Steed. The man was cool as the proverbial cucumber, damn him, leaving Gambit both infuriated and impressed. Those emotions often came in tandem where Steed was concerned. They stood and watched the city dissolve into darkness gradually. Eventually, Gambit said, “Why are you here, Steed?”“Without getting into specifics, my parents took a rather invigorating holiday in Scotland in 1921…”Gambit laughed in spite of himself, shaking his head in disbelief at Steed’s cheek. “Fine, I’ll be more specific. Why are you here, in my flat? And don’t say it’s just because of that file.” He pointed accusingly at the folder he’d left resting on the bar. “You know I won’t get a chance to look at it before we start work tomorrow.”“Surely a man can share a drink with a friend without having his motives questioned?” Steed suggested, feigning offence, then added, carefully and calmly, “Especially on the eve of a day of some personal significance.”Ah. There it was. “You mean my unhappy anniversary,” Gambit murmured, gazing down into the amber depths of his glass to avoid looking Steed in the eye. “I didn’t think you’d remember.”Steed shook his head. “Africa? A cell? A cruel captor?” Gambit cringed involuntarily, but Steed carried on. “It’s not the sort of thing I’m likely to forget. I didn’t last year, if you recall. I would have paid you a visit then, but you wound up leaning on Purdey. A task she rose to admirably, as I recall. Even if she wasn’t privy to the specifics.” He trailed off meaningfully, let the words hang in the air between them.“Ah,” Gambit said with dawning realisation. “You think I should tell Purdey what happened to me.”“She did you no end of good last year,” Steed pointed out. “At least as far as I was given to understand. I imagine she’d not be unwilling to help you through the darker hours again, but she’ll want to know the full story if she does, and so she should. I think after all you’ve been through together, she’d understand and be sympathetic. But she needs you to let her in. I think it rather frustrates her that you haven’t.”“You’re right,” Gambit sighed, the admission coming easily. “On all counts. And I have been thinking about telling her.” That was the truth, and not just because of the reasons Steed had given, either. Gambit did know that Purdey was curious about that chapter of his life, was owed an explanation after the catastrophic end to their evening out the previous year. But he also felt that, now that they were involved, these were the sorts of secrets that he wanted—needed—should—open up to his lover about. Indeed, it was the lack of that additional level of intimacy that had caused him to hold back the previous year, had prevented him from telling all. The extra layer of defences that had been stripped away when they became lovers was exactly the sort of thing that needed to happen if he was going to engage in that sort of soul-baring, raw vulnerability. Steed had only been brought into his confidence because of extenuating circumstances, and because Gambit knew that the man had suffered more than his share of similar ordeals. And if Steed knew, then Purdey had even more of a right to know, and he really did want to tell her. But… “It’s hard,” he said finally, looking Steed in the eye for the first time. “It’s not something I like to talk about at the best of times. But by the time tomorrow rolls around, I’ll be a wreck.”“All the more reason to tell her,” Steed said flatly. “You’re going to wind up reliving that night regardless of whether you tell her or not. You may as well make it a less lonely journey and bring her along.”Gambit shuddered. “It would be nice to have her with me again, but how do I know if it’s a journey she wants to go on?”“You know that she cares about you,” Steed said simply. “By default, that means she wants to know how you were hurt and how she can help you recover from it.”Gambit was starting to look a bit sick. “But it’s not nice to hear about. You know that. I don’t wish it on anyone, even second-hand.”“Purdey’s made of stern stuff,” Steed said optimistically, clapping him on the shoulder. “I don’t disagree that she’ll find it upsetting, but she won’t faint, either.”“I know she won’t,” Gambit sighed again. Steed kept making good points, and he was too tired to counter them properly. “But what I worry about is whether she’ll ever look at me the same way again. I can’t take any more people looking at me like I’m a basketcase. After I got out of hospital, I didn’t want anyone to ask me how I was for ages. Even the man on the street.”Steeed nodded in understanding. “It’s quite common to crave normality, particularly if you’re not the sort of person to make a fuss. I’d say we’re both rather prone to minimising the shape we’re in, more than is probably good for us.” He treated Gambit to a conspiratorial smile. “Unless we’re liable to get some sympathy from an appealing source, and we’re not too incapacitated to take advantage of it.” Gambit laughed a little at that. “But this is too serious an event to play for sympathy. In fact, I suspect there’s going to be no space for play at all.”“Or ever again,” Gambit said grimly, laughter fading away as quickly as it had come. “I know Purdey’s not the fainting kind, but I don’t want to scare her away because all she can see when she looks at me is some broken shell.” His mouth turned down at the ends like a small child’s, conveying innocent, helpless despair. “After everything we’ve built together, between us, for me to ruin it by throwing a grenade like that in the middle of it all…” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know if I could bear that, having my past be the end of us. Of the team.”“Ah, but we all have pasts,” Steed reminded. “Pasts that have implications for the present. Purdey had Larry Doomer. She didn’t tell us who he was, or what he’d done, until the eleventh hour. And even when she did, she sabotaged my attempts to stop him. Seen objectively, she betrayed us both. Betrayed our trust.” “That was different!” Gambit exclaimed, shaken out his gloom by the fierceness of his tone, almost taken aback by it. “She used to trust Doomer. She didn’t think he could be involved, and when she did work it out, she did try to stop him.”“Tried, yes. But not as she should have. She was emotional,” Steed said calmly, coldly, grey eyes suddenly devoid of feeling. “No, it was worse than that. She was irrational. Incapacitated.”“No.” Gambit shook his head, edging away, but Steed was relentless, following him, meeting him stride for stride, backing him into a corner. “No, that’s not fair.”“Fair isn’t in it,” Steed said sharply, eyes burning into Gambit’s, so ruthless, so steely. “She acted as she did because of what Doomer did to her. And there are words to describe what happened to her. Unpleasant words.”“Stop!” Gambit demanded, voice hoarse, eyes desperate.“Abuse.” Steed bit the words off one at a time. “Trauma.” More words. More steps. Gambit slammed back into the bar in an effort to escape, but there was no escape from John Steed, not when he had you in his sights. “Victim.”“Shut up!” Gambit, nerves ragged, temper fraught, grabbed a handful of Steed’s jacket and yanked forcefully. “Not one more word, you hear me?” he ordered, accent fraying toward the cockney of his youth, teeth bared like a feral animal’s. “Not one!”Much to his surprise, Steed smiled, the warmth flooding his features just as quickly as it had been extinguished. “I must say, I admire your restraint. I half-expected you to take a swing at me. But, uh--” He cast a look down at the distressed fabric at his chest. “—do you mind? It’s rather hard on the tailoring.” All of the tension instantly drained from the room, and from Gambit’s face. He looked down at his fist bunching up Steed’s jacket as though seeing it for the first time, and released it like he’d been burned. “Steed, I, I…” he stammered, edging away, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. “John, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”“Purdey did,” Steed said simply, tugging at the hem of his jacket to smooth out the creases. “As usual.”Gambit turned away, tears pricking at his eyes, leaned on the bar, and choked back a sob. Purdey had given Steed the Cliff’s Notes of what had happened between her and Doomer, but since she’d gotten romantically involved with Gambit, she’d given him a much more detailed version, one that still made Gambit’s blood boil and stomach churn in equal measure. Steed couldn’t have known how hard his words would hit home, but he had known they would find their target. Which, Gambit realised, was rather the point. Another of Steed’s teachable moments, albeit perhaps a more brutal one than even the senior agent realised.“Gambit.” Steed’s hand was on Gambit’s shaking shoulder, forcing him to turn around, even though every fibre of his being resisted it. But turn he did, facing Steed with red eyes and wet cheeks, like a small child who had fallen down and hurt himself in the schoolyard. But all Steed did was smile in that kindly way of his, and continue his lesson. “Purdey’s situation with Doomer wasn’t all that different from your own. She was hurt, badly, in her past. She didn’t tell us about it until late in the day, probably because she was worried that it would change how we thought of her. As a result, that day—the day Doomer died--could have been the end of our team. In some ways it very nearly was. But it wasn’t.” He cocked his head inquisitively at Gambit. “But in spite of it all, did Doomer irretrievably change the way you saw Purdey?”Gambit wiped his nose with his sleeve and stared at the floor for inspiration. “It made me understand her better,” he said eventually, between shaky breaths. “Why she did the things she did, made the choices she did.” He raised his eyes to meet Steed’s, finally, and added, firmly, “But at the end of the say, she was still Purdey.”“She was still Purdey,” Steed echoed. “You rejected those words I just used to describe her, because your perception of her has never changed. You’ve refused to let that knowledge determine who she is in your eyes.” He looked hard at Gambit, trying to make him see. “And at the end of your tale, to Purdey, you’ll still be Gambit. I’m not going to deny it may rattle her, just as what she told us rattled you. But these sorts of things should rattle people—it’d be the sign of a very deficient psyche if they didn’t. It means that Purdey cares, just as your reaction to Doomer signalled the same. And it’s because she cares that she won’t let it cloud her vision and become all she sees when she looks at you. She’s built up too much of a picture of you as a man, made up of too many other variables, too many memories, for this to become the overriding one.” He paused and considered. “Which I suppose is why you wanted to wait until you knew each other better before you told her. Not so early in your partnership that it became the lens through which she subsequently viewed everything else about you.”Gambit smiled weakly. “See, I’m not completely mad.”“I never said you were,” Steed replied mildly. “And I don’t think you’re mad to have trepidation about telling her. But if I may, I’d like to offer one final piece of advice before you make your decision.”Gambit regarded him expectantly, taking a deep, cleansing breath. “Go on.”“You may worry about driving Purdey away by telling her. But you may do that just as easily by keeping her in the dark. If she thinks that you’re keeping things from her, that you won’t let her in, that you don’t trust her, that can be just as damaging as keeping quiet. More so, I’d wager.”Gambit swallowed hard and nodded. “I want to tell her,” he admitted. “But I think I needed a final push to do it.” He looked gratefully at his boss and friend. “Thanks, Steed.” “My pleasure,” Steed replied, releasing his shoulder and turning back to the window. “Now, then, let’s finish our Scotch, and then I’ll be on my way. I think you ought to have an early night. That train ride took more out of you than I thought.”It was a weak offering by Steed’s standards, but Gambit laughed, in relief, as though it were the funniest thing in the world, for much longer than it warranted. Steed, being Steed, simply sipped his Scotch and smiled.vvvLater that evening, after Steed was safely ensconced in his home in the country, with the gentle sounds of horses substituting for the rush of London traffic, he pondered the conversation he’d had with Gambit, and the events that he anticipated would unfold the next day. Steed had long suspected that Gambit wanted to unburden himself to Purdey about that particularly dark chapter of his life, but it hadn’t hurt to give him a little encouragement, and Steed didn’t think he was flattering himself by believing he’d been responsible for nudging Gambit to the point where he’d actually take the plunge. All the same, Steed thought it wouldn’t hurt to lay the groundwork on Purdey’s end, as well, particularly if she failed to recall the exact date of her last encounter with a distraught Gambit. It wasn’t exactly the type of thing one put in one’s calendar. Steed knew Gambit wasn’t the type to lose his nerve once he’d made his mind up to do something, no matter how unpleasant, but all the same, if Purdey was in the picture to encourage him, everything would run much more smoothly. It would be good for both of them, Steed decided. Purdey had been the one doing the unburdening in the past several months, and Gambit had been the willing confidante, supporter, and defender as required. It would be a refreshing change of pace, a rebalancing of their relationship, for Gambit to be the vulnerable one, and Purdey the sympathetic ear, pillar of strength, and fellow warrior standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her colleague against his demons.Steed nodded to himself in resolution, and reached over to switch off the living room lamp. He’d need to turn in early if he was to rise in time to catch Purdey before she left for work.vvvPurdey, as it happened, wasn’t asleep when Steed called, but had risen early, ostensibly so she could complete some early morning exercises before she got ready for the day. The other reason for her to be up with the larks, which she was trying not to admit to herself, was that the bed felt rather cold and empty without Gambit beside her, as it had the past few nights since he’d been away. Purdey was not the sort of woman to fall apart the second her man was away for any extended period. Indeed, it wasn’t uncommon for her and Gambit not to share a bed for a day or two, lives and work schedules often making it inconvenient not to return to their own flats. And Purdey rather enjoyed sleeping on her own when she was exhausted and wanted to stretch out with the whole bed herself. So she was quite capable of getting on with things, and living her life on her own terms, without Gambit there to hold her hand. But four days was the longest period of time that they’d been apart since the start of their romance, and coupled with the fact that Gambit’s time in Scotland had meant Purdey hadn’t even seen him at work, she was starting to feel his absence, in more ways than one. The bed had started to feel increasingly cold and empty. Her flat had seemed far less lively. Her days seemed to be sapped of a certain amount of levity, joy, and warmth. And, if she were brutally honest with herself, which she couldn’t quite manage at that time of the morning, she was rather missing the sex as well. Despite years of voluntary celibacy after breaking up with Larry, her sex drive had returned in force since she started sleeping with Gambit, and four days without the sensation of his body moulding to hers, without his lips on her flesh and his hands touching her in the most intimate ways he knew how, was starting to build up inside her into an unpleasant tension, a burning need that she herself couldn’t satisfy. Not that she’d tell Gambit that when she saw him, of course. His ego, among other things, would inflate immediately. Although Purdey wasn’t entirely certain that would be as much of a disadvantage as she believed…Purdey was dragged away from that train of thought with a blush and a start when the phone rang. She moved gracefully over to the side table and picked up the receiver, banishing thoughts of Gambit whispering sweet nothings in her ear. “Hello?”“Purdey? I sincerely hope I didn’t wake you.” It was Steed’s voice. Given that Purdey had elected not to tell anyone, even their partner and close friend, about her involvement with Gambit, she knew she had to be exceptionally diligent about not allowing her daydreams to reveal themselves in her tone of voice. Steed could pick up on just about anything, and Purdey was only half as sure as she wanted to be that he was still in the dark about what she and Gambit were up to. “Steed? You’re giving the early bird something to worry about,” Purdey opined, using the sleeve of the sweatshirt she’d tied around her shoulders to delicately dab away the sweat beaded on her top lip from her workout—well, mostly from her workout. Maybe her thoughts about Gambit were affecting more than she wanted to admit. “No, I was doing my early morning exercises,” she said crisply, leaning and squinting through the beaded curtains that served as her bedroom door to check the clock on the bedside table. “I’m not late, am I? I thought we were meeting at nine.”Steed chuckled. “No, no, you’re not late at all. I was wondering, have you heard from Gambit at all?”Purdey steeled herself, hoping that anything she said wouldn’t sound odd. No matter how innocuous the topic, talking about Gambit with Steed always felt as though she was taking a test she was never entirely certain she could pass. “Not since before he left for his train. He knew he was going to get in late, so he wasn’t going to ring me when he arrived. I’m going to see him this morning, so it hardly matters.” She felt a sliver of anxiety wedge itself into her mind. “Steed, is there something wrong? Is Gambit all right?” Concern, at least, was always a fairly innocuous emotion, especially where Gambit was concerned. The man had a habit of making people worry after him, just by being the self-sacrificing idiot he was. Steed wouldn’t think twice about her worrying after Gambit’s well-being, and in any case, if something serious was going on, she hardly cared about keeping secrets. Gambit’s well-being was more important.“No, no,” Steed soothed, undoubtedly detecting the note of panic in her voice. “But I thought that you might drop in on Gambit on your way in to the Ministry this morning, perhaps offer to drive him in. You could update each other on the progress you’ve made since Gambit went to Scotland.” Purdey’s eyebrow climbed higher. “I should think Gambit’s quite capable of driving himself in. Or has he finally crashed the XJS while reliving his racing days?” Steed’s laugh was merry, but there was something Purdey couldn’t quite put her finger on behind it. “All right,” Purdey said carefully, not entirely sure how to construe Steed’s reaction. “I’ll ring him, and—“ “All things considered, perhaps it’s better if you go straight to the source,” Steed cut in, in a way that was meant to be construed as a suggestion, but Purdey knew it was an order. “He has had a long trip, and got in very late last night, as you said. He might appreciate being ferried in this morning, although as you know, he’ll hardly accept an offer for help unless it’s waiting for him on his doorstep.”That sent alarm bells ringing more than anything Steed had said thus far. Gambit liked driving—he’d pursued it briefly as a career, after all. And she didn’t think the train had been so desperately late that he’d feel he wasn’t capable of being behind the wheel. Whatever Steed said, something was wrong with Gambit, and he wanted Purdey there with him. Purdey was now feeling very uneasy. “Steed,” she said seriously, “has something important happened that I should know about?”“If it has, I’m sure Gambit will be happy to tell you all about it,” Steed sidestepped, tone permanently upbeat. “That’s settled then. I’ll let you get back to your workout.”Purdey knew that was all she was going to get from Steed at this stage, but she was now so concerned that she didn’t need to be persuaded further. She needed to see Gambit for herself, and soon. “I’d better get ready then, hadn’t I?”Steed, uncharacteristically, sounded relieved. “Excellent. I’ll see you shortly.”Purdey rang off and practically dashed for the bathroom. Whatever was going on, she felt there wasn’t any time to waste.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Steed’s words lingered in Purdey’s mind on the drive to Gambit’s flat, and she was more than a little worried by the time she pulled up to his building. She started imagining all of the terrible things that might have happened to Gambit while he was gone. Had he been injured while he was in Scotland? But surely Steed would have told her straight away. It was hardly unusual for Gambit to acquire damage in the line of duty, and even though she wasn’t particularly pleased when it happened, Steed knew she could handle those situations more than capably when they arose. She certainly didn’t need to be lied to in order to fend off a nervous breakdown. And besides, even if he had been hurt, it couldn’t have been something worse than a few stitches, because Gambit would be in hospital otherwise, not at home. So if he was physically fine, that meant something else. Purdey thought hard. A personal problem? Had someone died? If it was a Ministry colleague, Steed would have told her. A family member? Purdey still didn’t know too much about Gambit’s family, but she knew he must have some, so that was possible. Or perhaps a friend was unwell? She tried to think of anyone Gambit knew who didn’t work with them, and other than the contents of his infamous little black book, came up empty. Gambit still kept those details of his personal life fairly close to his chest, despite their recent involvement. All of the people he was friendly with that she knew about worked at the Ministry, but that didn’t rule out someone from his past she had never met before having taken a bad turn. So either something had happened to someone she didn’t know, or Steed had been alluding to some other issue entirely. As she alighted from her TR7, made a mad dash across the street, and stepped into the lift in Gambit’s block, she decided she would just have to wait and see what was what when she was face to face with the man himself. Unfortunately, that decision did nothing to soothe the tremors in her gut as the lift began its ascent.And yet, as she watched the floor indicator panel slowly track her progress, Purdey’s mind drifted back to the last time she’d seen Gambit, a scant few days previous, and automatically re-evaluated some key moments that, in retrospect, should have told her something was afoot, long before Steed put his oar in…vvvThe tranquil peace that had settled onto Gambit’s flat since its owner had departed that morning was shattered suddenly—rudely—unceremoniously--by the turn of a key in the lock. It was followed quickly by hurried footsteps as Gambit barged in, with Purdey close on his heels, her palms pressed to his back, nose nuzzling his neck. Without missing a beat, Gambit spun on his heel and pushed the door shut behind them with one hand, the other already returning his keys to his pocket, before turning both to more pleasurable purposes. “We haven’t got long,” he reminded Purdey, pulling her to him—or did she pull him to her? It was so hard to keep track once their hands started going everywhere. “I told Steed we’d be back at the office by two.”“I don’t need long,” Purdey said simply, businesslike tone deliciously undercut by her hands running down the length of the lapels of his formally pinstriped suit with lascivious intent. “Just you.”“That can be arranged,” Gambit murmured, a pleased smile on his lips just before they sought hers as he crowded her against the door.“I should hope so. It’s the least you can do since it’s your fault that we had to come here in the first place,” Purdey declared, having broken the kiss to better loosen his tie and undo the first few buttons of his shirt.Her mouth otherwise occupied, Gambit’s lips instead sought out a particularly sensitive spot on her neck. “I don’t know what I’m guilty of,” he admitted, in a tone that was less-than-innocent, and definitely not repentant, “but if you let me know, I’ll make sure to do it again.”“You know perfectly well what you did,” Purdey said pertly, unbuttoning his waistcoat with nimble fingers. “You know how vulnerable I am to the tailoring on this suit, and yet you chose to wear it on today of all days, when you know we have all of officialdom breathing down our necks at a very important departmental meeting. And then you made it worse by shooting smouldering looks at me across the table all through McBain’s presentation.”Gambit pulled back and regarded her with hooded sea-green eyes, slightly pouted lips curved in a slightly wicked, humourous smile. “What looks?” he asked innocently.“Looks like those,” Purdey said drily. “Honestly, Mike, it wasn’t fair. I couldn’t hear a word McBain said because of you.”“Nothing to do with you playing footsie with me under the table, then?” Gambit pointed out wryly, eyebrows rising incredulously.That gave Purdey pause. “Well…”“Never mind,” Gambit said with faux regret. “I’ll take my punishment.” He was interrupted by Purdey’s delighted exclamation of surprise as her blouse opened effortlessly beneath his fingers. “—and make reparations.”“You had better,” Purdey teased, as Gambit gathered her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist, and carried her bodily to the couch, where he used a knee to nudge the mechanism. “I won’t get any work done otherwise.”Gambit adopted a mock serious expression. “This is purely to improve productively, then.”Purdey nodded smartly in his arms. “Definitely. It’s our only motivation.”“Absolutely.”“Positively.” Never one to be shown up on the definitives front, Purdey flashed a triumphant grin at having had the last word just before they tumbled onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. Somehow, they managed to get everything straightened out in record time, if the chanting of Gambit’s Christian name that followed was any indication.When the last echoes of their shared cries had faded into the depths of Gambit’s blessedly sound-proofed walls—Purdey tried not to think about what her neighbours might be privy to—and they were laid out side by side, stretched out on their backs, chests heaving and identical blissful expressions written across their faces, Purdey finally attempted to rearrange her thoughts into something semi-coherent. “We ought to have been doing that long ago,” she panted, eyes half-closed, parted lips still sucking in great lungfuls of calming air.Gambit managed a lusty chuckle despite his boneless sprawl. “I hate to say I told you so, but…”“Oh, you would say that,” Purdey sighed, turning onto her side so she could rest her head on his chest. “But you would also be right.”“Right?” Gambit repeated, mock-incredulous. “Me? It’s amazing what you’ll admit after sex.”“Oh!” Purdey gently swatted his bare chest, then soothed the bare skin with her fingertips before his nerves registered even a hint of a sting. “You’re incorrigible, Mike Gambit. But you’re also the most wonderful man I’ve ever known, and I love you dearly.”“I’ll have to remember what I did just now. I’ve clearly short-circuited your brain,” Gambit quipped, tongue-in-cheek, brushing some hair out of Purdey’s eyes as she turned her face up to look at him. “To have the most beautiful, most brilliant woman in the world say things like that to me, it must have been one for the record books.”“What you’ve done is make me happy, Mike,” Purdey said truthfully, rolling over and onto him, her body flopping effortlessly to layer over his. Gambit looked up at her with a mixture of love and wonder. “Funny. I was just about to say the same,” he murmured, finger tracing the curve of her cheek, then drifting down the elegant line of her neck, over her delicately cut clavicle, before his fingertips fell to idly hook the edge of her bra. “How did I get so lucky?” he asked rhetorically, head shaking in mild disbelief. “To fall in love with you and have you love me back?”“How did we get so lucky, you mean?” Purdey amended, mirroring his gestures on his own chest, before bending to press her lips to the skin revealed by his open shirt. Gambit’s eyes fluttered closed at the sheer bliss that washed over him at the sensation. “You gorgeous, wonderful man,” she praised, slithering lower, before kissing a trail from Gambit’s trouser waistband up the exposed flesh, finishing with a kiss on his lips before folding her arms atop his chest, and resting her chin on top, smiling beatifically at him. “It’s a good job we decided not to tell anyone about us yet,” Gambit murmured, eyes glittering as they met hers. “It’d be sickening, watching us carrying on like this.”“Yes, we are almost disgustingly happy, aren’t we?” Purdey agreed, nose wrinkling endearingly. “I didn’t know I could sail on quite so blissfully for so long,” she confessed, tipping her head so her cheek pressed against his bare chest. “I keep trying to work out what we’ve done to deserve it.”“We did put in almost two years of groundwork,” Gambit pointed out, fingers playing idly with her hair, “so it didn’t exactly fall in our laps.”“I suppose,” Purdey sighed contentedly, savouring the sensation of Gambit’s fingers combing their way through her blonde strands. “But it’s all been so idyllic, being with you.” She started drawing small circles on his rib cage, not far from the small scar left behind by one of the infamous three Berlin wall bullets. “I suppose I keep expecting the other shoe to drop.’“Now who’s thinking negatively?” Gambit chided, wagging a finger in mock rebuke. “We’ve had about a hundred other shoes drop on our way here. I think fate can hold off for the time being.”Purdey shook her head in disbelief. “Now I know I’m hopelessly besotted.”Gambit arched a quizzical eyebrow. “Meaning?”“You keep making good points,” Purdey elaborated, clamouring up so she could press her lips to his cheek. “And I keep agreeing with them without a fuss.”Gambit’s eyebrows waggled ridiculously. “Ah, I’ve cast my spell, have I?”“Yes. But then you’re also very good at breaking it,” Purdey pointed out wryly, taking in his expression. “Now, for example.”“I’d better take emergency measures, then,” Gambit said solemnly, before capturing her mouth with his. His arms wrapped around her as he flipped them over, hips settling naturally between Purdey’s thighs as she wrapped her legs around his waist.They were seriously edging toward round two when the phone rang. Gambit emitted a groan that definitely wasn’t due to pleasure, and disentangled himself reluctantly, leaving a flushed, irritable Purdey in his wake. Gambit fumbled around for the receiver at the bedside before attempting to answer the phone in as natural a tone as possible. “Hello?”“Gambit?” It was Steed, and Gambit said a quiet prayer of thanks that he’d made the extra effort to sound normal. Steed certainly wasn’t gullible enough to believe that Gambit breathing heavily with Purdey around was the result of them engaging in an impromptu relay race. “Where are you? You and Purdey were supposed to be here ten minutes ago.”Gambit consulted the watch face on the inside of his wrist and cursed internally. “Sorry, Steed,” he apologised. “We stopped off at my flat to let Purdey get her car, and decided to have, uh, a snack while we were here.” His mouth curled into a smaile of its own accord as Purdey nudged up behind him and pressed a kiss to his neck. “You know how insatiable she is.”“I’ve some idea.” Steed was sounding more relaxed now that he was assured of his colleague’s attention. “Get here as soon as you can. Everything else aside, it is audit season, and McKay wants it to be known that he runs a tight ship.”“Audit?” Gambit’s brow furrowed, despite the delectable sensations Purdey was eliciting. “It can’t be November already?”“It can and it is,” Steed confirmed. “Has been all week.” There was a pause, followed by an incredulous, mildly concerned, “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?”“I’ve been preoccupied,” Gambit confessed, chancing a rueful glance at the calendar on the occasional table, which he had forgotten to flip over in anticipation of bonfire night. He’d taken to a new method of keeping time as of late, his usual mental calendar instead monopolised by keeping track of how long it had been since he and Purdey had finally confessed their feelings, how many hours since their last liaison, how long until their next date. Everything could be measured in terms of Purdey and the moment she had welcomed him into her heart and her bed. As far as Gambit was concerned, life may as well have started then. “November,” he repeated thoughtfully to himself, feeling a familiar, far less pleasant, sensation instantly take form heavily in his stomach.“Gambit?” He’d almost forgetten that Steed was still there. “Are you coming?”“I think that’s down to me, isn’t it?” Purdey hissed playfully in his ear, hand sliding downward on a very pointed trajectory.“We’ll be right there,” Gambit promised, jerking bodily away from Purdey, who recoiled in surprise. “See you soon, Steed.” He rang off and leapt off the bed like he’d been burned, hands darting to fix his trousers. Purdey watched him readjust his clothing in puzzlement.“Mike, we still have a few minutes,” she protested as Gambit turned, and found her pouting delectably, blouse still gaping open in a tempting display that seconds before Gambit would have been powerless to resist. “I could have—"“No time,” Gambit cut in hurriedly, hastily doing up his shirt buttons. “You heard the man. We’re already late. If we hang about any longer, we’re going to make him suspicious. And we don’t want to make Steed suspicious. You said so yourself.”Purdey was nonplussed. “Yes, but really, Mike, I don’t think—"“I’d better get a move on,” Gambit went on, as though he didn’t hear her, fixing his tie as he moved to the door. “I told Steed you were picking up your car, so you’ll have to drive yourself. I’ll see you there.”Purdey looked both cross and flummoxed now. “Yes, all right, but Mike—"But the door closed before she could finish, Gambit’s rocking steps retreating rapidly down the hall. Purdey was left sprawled on the bed, well and truly left in the lurch in every sense of the word. The entire scene had been very unlike Gambit, Purdey mused, as she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. At the same time, his point about not making Steed suspicious was in keeping with wanting to keep their secret—a secret that was being kept at her behest, Purdey reminded herself as she buttoned up her blouse. Maybe the call had just made Gambit nervous, she rationalised, standing up and pressing the button on the couch’s control panel, watching it roll into place as she fixed her hair and smoothed her skirt. That was probably why he was behaving oddly, she decided. Probably.vvvA few hours later, the scene was reversed, with Gambit the one ensconced in the flat, and Purdey the one using the door, albeit to enter rather than leave. She strode in without bothering to knock, or even uttering a greeting, but stalked straight over to where Gambit was packing a suitcase on the very couch they’d been lounging on so blissfully only a few hours before. “All right, Mike Gambit,” she began warningly, hands planted firmly on her hips. “What are you playing at?”“Playing at?” Gambit’s expression when he turned to face her was the definition of inscrutable. “What do you mean?”Purdey’s hands left their posts to allow one to tick off the fingers on the other. “You leap up and leave me mid-assignation, which you never do without good reason, and definitely not when we had time before our deadline. Then, when I get to the Ministry, you avoid me. And most unforgivably, once I finally manage to track Steed down, he tells me you’re going to Scotland! Today! Without bothering to tell me.”“Steed sent me,” Gambit protested, one hand raised protectively as the other added a toothbrush to the case. “And I didn’t have time to tell you. I had to come home and pack.”Purdey’s hands returned to her hips. “Steed said you volunteered,” she accused.Gambit tossed a shirt into his suitcase with a sigh. “We pushed our luck, Purdey-girl,” he said grimly. “Steed knew there was something funny about our stop-off this morning. I needed to do something to throw him off the scent.”Purdey bristled. “You don’t know what he was suspicious about. He wouldn’t necessarily think that we were sleeping together!”“It doesn’t matter what he thinks. He’s Steed,” Gambit said simply, tucking balled socks into the sides of the case with the economy of one who had spent more of his life living out of a suitcase than in any permanent lodgings. “If he’s suspicious at all, about anything, he’ll figure it out eventually.” He slanted a sceptical eyebrow at her. “Don’t tell me that when he saw you today, he didn’t give you one of those looks where his eyes went straight through to the back of your head?”Purdey shifted uncomfortably. “Well…” she said lamely, trying not to think about how piercing Steed’s gaze had been when he’d asked what sort of snack had been irresistable enough to be worth the delay. Luckily, she had several answers to that particular question that didn’t only see use when she needed a quick cover story.“There you have it,” Gambit said flatly, tamping down the case’s contents to prevent shutting the case on one of his shirt sleeves. “So, I thought it was time to take evasive action. Everyone knows the last thing I’d ever want to do if I was involved with you is take on a job that takes me away from you. So that’s what I did.”Purdey pursed her lips. “This smacks of your ‘the only person who could be a sleeper is someone who couldn’t possibly be a sleeper’ reasoning,” she accused.“Yes,” Gambit agreed, snapping his case shut. “And I was right then, too.”Purdey’s hands dropped to her sides in surrender. “It might throw Steed off the scent,” she allowed, reluctantly. “But it also leaves me in the lurch. Without you, I’m going to have to work everything solo. Steed won’t bother pairing me with someone else if you’re only going to be gone a few days.”“I know.” Gambit abandoned the case and moved to take her hands. “And I’m sorry about that.” He smiled apologetically. “But it’s only for a few days.”“I suppose it might work out,” Purdey sighed, looking down at her hands in his. “I’ve fallen behind on things of late. Someone has been monopolising all of my attention.” She looked pointedly at Gambit. “I could use the time to put my affairs in order.”“That’s the spirit,” Gambit said wryly, squeezing her hands. “You know I’m going to miss you, Purdey-girl. Desperately.”“I should hope so,” Purdey said airily. “A girl likes to be missed. It means she isn’t being taken for granted.”Gambit shook his head rapidly. “I never take you for granted,” he vowed in a voice that cracked, and Purdey thought his eyes looked too bright for a wistful goodbye. Those couldn’t be tears. Could they? She brushed the thought aside as her imagination—or her ego—running away with her. Gambit was a romantic, but he wasn’t prone to sobbing uncontrollably at the drop of a bowler hat.“I’ll miss you, too,” she said softly, lest he think she didn’t. She’d played disinterested for so long that it had become second nature, and she still played it when she was teasing, but sometimes she had the sense that Gambit half-believed she meant it. Nearly two years of not knowing which way was up where she was concerned had left him with a propensity to be unsure of his ground, even at this late stage. She touched his cheek. “Mike Gambit, you brilliant, beautiful man.”That seemed to break some reserve in Gambit, some intangible barrier that she’d sensed more than noticed the moment he’d taken Steed’s call, and he leaned forward, lips capturing hers in a passionate kiss that tingled, Purdey sensed, with the heartache of parting, and a need to take advantage of it, as if it would be the last time he could indulge for some time. She gave as good as she got, as determined to create a memory to carry her through as he was, hand still resting on his cheek. When she broke away, she was certain that his eyes, so close to hers, were, in fact, full of unshed tears. “You will call, won’t you?” she inquired, voice soft, reaching up to stroke his hair back from his forehead.He nodded, ever-so-slightly. “Every day,” he promised hoarsely. “When I can manage it.”Purdey smiled a little crookedly. “I know it’s your line, but I’ll look forward to it.”“You’re welcome to it,” Gambit told her, breaking away reluctantly to retrieve his case. “You’re welcome to everything of mine.”“All I need is you. You can keep your epic statuary,” Purdey teased, trying to lighten the mood even as her heart sank watching him go. She clung to his hand and extended her arm until his fingers slipped from hers. She watched him make his way to the door, before he turned to say farewell. She raised a hand and closed it. “Ciao.”Gambit mirrored the gesture. “Ciao,” he echoed. And then he was gone.vvvGambit, much to his own surprise, managed to make it all the way down to his car before the tears fell. He didn’t want to leave Purdey, and definitely didn’t want to lie to her, but he couldn’t put a brave front on for her, either. Not when he knew what was coming. He needed some space and time to work out what to do, without anyone asking awkward questions. And no one knew him well enough where he was going that they would notice or care that something was wrong.Unlike…When he was sure he could trust himself not to crash, he turned the key in the ignition and sped away.vvvGambit kept his promise to call every day, although Purdey found herself carrying most of the conversation due to his weary, terse replies. She asked him more than once if he was feeling all right, but the answer was always a variation on having had a long day and working too hard. Purdey accepted it, as she’d accepted his reasons for leaving so abruptly after Steed’s call, and for taking the job. On the surface, they’d seemed like good reasons, even if it had all sat a bit uneasily in Purdey’s gut. But she had no concrete reason to think anything was amiss, so she let the matter lie, and carried on as best she could.Until now, as she stepped out of the lift and made her way to Gambit’s flat, cursing herself. She should have seen through the excuses and the explanations and trusted her instincts when they told her that Gambit was behaving oddly. What sort of partner was she, overlooking his signs of distress? But then they’d already been through so much, and they were so happy, she hadn’t wanted to entertain the idea that there might be trouble afoot. She was going to rectify that now, she promised herself, though she was still none the wiser as to what awaited her in Gambit’s flat. The thought itself was enough to tie her stomach in knots.It was for that reason that, when she opened Gambit’s flat door without knocking—she wasn’t certain she could bear it if she knocked and there was no answer--and slipped inside, she was quite relieved to find Gambit dressed in trousers and shirt sleeves, standing at the kitchen counter with his back to her, pouring himself a cup of coffee. From a distance, at least, he looked normal, and a quick glance around the flat showed no evidence of any sign of distress. She was so relieved, in fact, that she didn’t even bother to wonder why Gambit hadn’t heard her come in, or why he continued to remain oblivious to her presence as she crept up behind him, even though she’d never been able to sneak up on him before, much to her chagrin. Instead, she took advantage of her stealth the way she’d always meant to, and leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Guess who?”To her surprise, Gambit did not respond with a purposefully inaccurate guess as to her identity, but instead started violently, the coffee cup leaping from his grasp and smashing onto the countertop, sending brown liquid splashing everywhere. Gambit whirled around and Purdey was amazed to see fear in his eyes just before the flash of recognition.“Purdey!” he exclaimed, trying to pull himself together and failing miserably. “You startled me.”“So I gathered,” Purdey replied, taken aback at his skittishness. “Are you all right?”“I’m fine,” Gambit said quickly, and unconvincingly, straightening his tie.“You have coffee on your shirt,” Purdey observed, pointing to the brown spots that had splattered across his front when he dropped his cup. She reached for the dishcloth. “Let me.”“No,” Gambit cut in hurriedly. “I’ll just change my shirt. Won’t take long.” He brushed past her before she could reply, making for the closet alcove between the living area and the bedroom, tugging at the buttons on his waistcoat as he went. He flung open the closet door, but Purdey’s sudden arrival had rattled his already-fragile composure, and even choosing from the row of shirts that met his eyes was painfully overwhelming to his addled brain, and he pinched his eyes shut as a wave of lightheadedness washed over him. His legs turned to jelly and he braced his back against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on solid ground, legs stretched out in front of him, the painted surface cool against the back of his skull. A moment later there were footsteps and Purdey appeared, kneeling before him, hands on either side of his face. A brief moment of déjà vu reached Gambit through the whooziness, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to try to remember the source. Not with Purdey looking at him like that.“Mike,” Purdey said worriedly. “What’s wrong? Should I call a doctor?”“No,” Gambit croaked, reaching up to weakly grasp her wrist. “No, I’ll be all right.”“You don’t look all right,” Purdey said tartly as he struggled to his feet and took a breath. She couldn’t help but be uneasy about the way that Gambit was looking at her: carefully, with great precision, as though he were seeing her for the first time. She put her hands on her hips and stared back, waiting for an explanation. When none was forthcoming, the words “Mike Gambit…” spilled out almost automatically, following the standard script. But she never got any further than his name. Gambit closed the gap between them, pulled her close, and kissed her deeply. Purdey felt her hands curl around his neck instinctively as she returned the kiss, one of many that they had shared in the past two months. But this time it was different. This time his lips betrayed him. It was as though he was committing the moment to memory, wanted to take note of every sensation. When they finally parted, all she could manage was a breathless, “You’ve recovered nicely,” as his lips ventured over her face.“I haven’t,” he corrected between kisses, arms still tight around her. Purdey felt the sense of unease settle back over her, frowned and pulled away. “What…? Mike, you’ve been acting oddly since Steed called you before you left. Steed sent me over here to drive you to work with an entirely unconvincing explanation. I hardly ate breakfast for worrying. There’s something going on, and I want you to tell me what it is.”Gambit sighed and leaned back. Steed was right. He had to tell her. He should have told her a long time ago, but he hadn’t wanted to spoil things when they were going so well. There was no telling how she’d react, but he owed it to her to let her know. And he wanted to tell her. He always had. Because she was the only thing that made it better. And she was the best reason he had for overcoming it.“First things first,” he started, shrugging his waistcoat off with a groan. He felt as though he’d aged a hundred years in the past few days. “Let me get changed.”“Here,” Purdey offered, softening at his obvious discomfort, and tenderly started to unbutton his shirt before he could stop her. She managed halfway before Gambit shrank away, as though he’d been burned.But as it turned out, not quickly enough.“Mike!” Purdey cried in alarm, as the outline of a slightly-too-prominent rib was quickly concealed as Gambit tugged the two halves of his shirt together. “What’s happened? You look as though you’ve lost a stone at least.”Well, that already hasn’t gone well. Gambit pressed his hand over his eyes, the other still holding his shirt closed. “I didn’t want you to see me like this,” he said bitterly.Purdey looked stricken, paling before his eyes. “Mike,” she said in a hush, dismay contorting her features, “are you ill?” She pressed a diagnostic hand to his forehead, found it suddenly clammy, and felt her stomach churn. After everything they’d been through, all the ways Gambit had nearly met his end, all the possibilities her over-active imagination had dreamt up in her darkest moments regarding how he could potentially be killed in their perilous profession, it had never occurred to her that it might ultimately be something far less bombastic, far more sinister: illness. Perhaps in half a century’s time she could picture it, but the idea of the young, vital, athletic Mike Gambit she knew being felled by anything other than a bullet seemed inconceivable. Now she had the horrifying image in her brain of Gambit slowly fading away while she sat by, unable to do anything to change the outcome. Only hold his hand and try to keep a reassuring smile on her face for his sake.All these thoughts flashed through Purdey’s mind as she stood there, hand pressed to the forehead of a peaked, emaciated (in her skittering brain) Gambit, until she felt sick at heart and threw her arms around him tightly. “Oh, Mike, why didn’t you tell me? How long have you known?” With her arms around him, she could not only see but feel that he was thinner, which only served to upset her further. This was what Steed had been trying to tell her, she surmised. That Gambit had received bad news on the health front. How unbearably cruel! “What did they say? Whatever it is, we’ll get a second opinion. They could be wrong. They could—"“Purdey.” Gambit’s voice sounded weak and tired, but somehow he managed to conjure up the strength to disentangle himself sufficiently from her grasp to meet her eyes. “Purdey,” he repeated, a little firmer this time, trying to cut through her worried murmurings. “I’m not ill. At least, not physically.”Purdey blinked up at him uncomprehendingly, tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, not physically?”“I’m not sick,” Gambit repeated patiently, still looking peaked, but he seemed to be trying to draw strength from whatever reserves he had. “I’m not dying.”Purdey let out an audible sigh of relief as that information sunk in, and blinked the tears away, but she still looked worried. “But there is something wrong?” she deduced. Gambit nodded.“Yeah,” he managed, taking a deep, shaky breath. “But I’d rather you didn’t see me like this before I could at least try to explain.”“Thin?” Purdey asked gently, eyes darting fearfully to his still-covered frame in spite of herself. “Or upset?”“Both,” Gambit confessed, scrubbing his face angrily with his hands. “Okay.” He took a deep breath, remembering Steed’s counsel that he was making the right decision. “Okay. There is something going on. Do you remember—last year around this time, we went to the disco and I got plastered and had a…breakdown, I guess you’d call it.”Purdey smiled ruefully. “You wound up in the shower with all your clothes on, and I had to go in after you. It’s not the sort of thing a girl forgets.” “Well, I owe you,” he said sincerely, “for fishing me out.”“It was a year ago tomorrow,” Purdey recalled quietly, eyes lighting up with anticipation. “Does this mean you’re finally going to tell me what it’s about?” she asked hopefully. “You did promise you would. Someday.”Gambit nodded, relieved that he didn’t have to struggle to explain it to her, but then it was Purdey—of course she could put two and two together. “Yeah. It wasn’t the right time to tell you then. Or maybe I just didn’t have the nerve. But the way things are now…” He took her hand in his, squeezed it tight. “You deserve to know. I owe it to you.”Purdey stroked his cheek. “You don’t owe me anything, Mike Gambit. But I am worried about you.”“I know,” Gambit said softly. “But you have a right to know. Now. Before we go any farther, and end up with a couple of kids and a cottage in Wales.”“Why not Scotland?” Purdey quipped, and Gambit couldn’t help but smile.“I thought it didn’t balance.”“Only on the maps,” Purdey clarified, then repeated thoughtfully. “A year ago tomorrow. An anniversary,” she concluded. “An unhappy one, evidently.”“Yes,” Gambit confirmed. “An unhappy one.” He searched her face. “And it won’t be a pleasant tale to tell, for either of us.”Purdey paled a little. “Then don’t tell me. If it’ll only make you worse--”Gambit shook his head. “No, I need to tell you. I want to tell you. And if you’re honest, you want me to.” Purdey bit her lip. “I won’t deny it. I can’t help but want to know. I know Steed does. I’m sure that’s why he had me come here.”“That bothers you, doesn’t it? That I told him and not you?”“A little,” Purdey admitted. “I mean, I don’t want to push. You’ve always given me space. After Larry.” She saw Gambit grimace at the name, and moved on quickly. “What I don’t understand is why you felt you could confide in him and not me.”Gambit sighed. “I probably wouldn’t have told him, either, but circumstances forced my hand.” He pulled her close and rested his chin on top of her head. “It was probably for the best in the end. Steed’s one of the few people out there who really understands these things. I was grateful for his help at the time, but it doesn’t mean I particularly enjoyed telling him about it. And I don’t think he enjoyed hearing it, either.”Purdey ducked out from under his chin so she could meet his eyes. “And that’s why you don’t want to tell me.”“Yeah. I don’t really enjoy putting people through it.” He smiled a little shakily. “Then again, I don’t enjoy it much either.” Purdey’s frown lines deepened, and he smiled encouragingly. “It’ll be all right,” he tried to reassure. “Knowing you, you’ll be more stoic about it than I am.”“I don’t know. You’re not exactly prone to fainting fits,” Purdey countered. “But I’ll shore us both up, if need be.” “That wasn’t all. I—" He took a deep breath. “I didn’t know how you’d react, to be honest. If you’d look at me the same.”Purdey shook her head firmly. “Mike, whatever it is, it won’t change what we have.”“You don’t know that,” Gambit said bitterly, feeling his confidence ebb away. “You haven’t heard the story. And I don’t want to lose you over it.”“You’re not going to lose me,” Purdey said fiercely, putting both her hands on either side of Gambit’s head to force him to meet her eyes. “You don’t remember, but when we were in that shower I promised not to judge you. And I’ll tell you something else, Mike Gambit. Whatever it is, it’s part of who you are. And I love you. I know you. And that won’t change. You’ll still be the same man after you’ve told me. I’ll just know a bit more about your past.”“But—"“Did you feel differently about me after I told you about Larry?” Purdey pressed. “No,” Gambit admitted, remembering Steed’s words. But Steed aside, he was well aware that he was going to lose against Purdey’s unshakeable convictions, and somehow glad for it.“Then why would I feel any differently about you?” Purdey said with relentless logic.“You’re right, I suppose,” Gambit murmured gratefully, happy to hear the words coming from her own lips this time. “But I wanted to get one last kiss before you started looking at me oddly.”Purdey blinked in surprise. “Was that what that was for? I thought something seemed different. But I promise I’ll still feel the same after you’ve told me.”“Same Purdey-girl?” Gambit wanted to know.“Always,” she said firmly, brushing a stray curl from his forehead. “And I won’t hear any more about it.” She ran her thumb across his lips. “When do you want to tell me? Now?”Gambit shook his head. “No. We’re due at the Ministry and there’s no time. I’ll tell you tonight.” He smiled wanly. “Sorry to keep you in suspense.”“I can be very patient when I want to be,” Purdey declared, leaning forward and kissing his forehead. Gambit grinned in spite of himself. “That’s not what I heard.”“Mike Gambit!” She slapped his arm playfully. “Come on. I’ll help you find a fresh shirt.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The end of the day arrived, and Purdey could tell Gambit was becoming progressively tireder, and more anxious, both about the evening itself and what it would bring. Whether it was the prospect of reliving his worst nightmare or trepidation at finally telling her his story that was worrying him more, she didn’t know, but the lines around his mouth were becoming more pronounced, the furrow in his brow was deepening with every frown, and the haunted look in his eyes was impossible to ignore. More than once she inquired subtly as to whether he ought to be at work, and if she should run him home, but the answer was always “no.” The mask would slip back into place, and he’d make more of an effort to seem cheerful and focussed, but it was painful for Purdey to watch him exert himself. Judging from the looks Steed wasn’t quite managing to conceal, he felt the same way.The hours crawled by, and Purdey wasn’t certain how productive they were as a team, what with one member struggling with his own personal demons and the other two worried after him for doing the same. Purdey felt as though she was trapped in a time warp, willing the clock to move forward even as the hands seemed determined not to budge an inch. But finally, eventually, the late afternoon arrived, and Steed told them that there was little left to be accomplished for the day. “Why don’t we reconvene when we’ve all had a chance to rest?” Steed suggested, and Purdey knew that it wasn’t a coincidence that he phrased it that way rather than, “After we’ve all had a good night’s sleep?” She suspected he knew that Gambit would be sleeping very little, if at all, that night. “Gambit, if you’d like I can run you back to your flat. You could always leave your car here for the night.”“That’s all right, Steed,” Purdey jumped in, saving Gambit from having to reject the offer. “I brought Gambit in my car, so I can take him back.”Steed looked from Gambit to Purdey and back again, assessing the situation. He looked levelly at Gambit and said with feeling, “Gambit, I’ll understand if you don’t want to inconvenience Purdey.”Steed was offering Gambit a way out, Gambit knew, just in case his counsel had been too forward and revealing all to Purdey that night was more than he could bear. Clearly he looked almost as bad as he felt if even Steed was starting to second-guess his own advice out of concern for his well-being. But Gambit had been heartened enough by Purdey’s reaction to his situation that he was ready to unburden himself to the most important woman in his life. “It’s okay, Steed. I don’t think Purdey will mind.”The meaning behind his words was not lost on Steed, and Purdey knew the men were practising their particular brand of telepathy again. There was a moment when Purdey swore that Steed was rifling through Gambit’s thought processes like so many files down in the archives, searching for some elusive scrap of information that had fallen down the back of the filing cabinet. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it, and Steed smiled his beaming Steed smile. Purdey had surmised that he’d been hoping Gambit would finally confide in her, as evidenced by his cryptic call that morning, and he seemed genuinely pleased that things were unfolding as he’d planned. “Excellent. I’ll leave you in capable hands.”“They ought to be. I’ve had enough practice,” Purdey quipped, lightening the mood and sending Steed chuckling. Even Gambit managed a wan smile.“I’ll see you later then,” Steed told them, and bid them goodnight.She waited until they were out in the corridor before she slipped her arm through Gambit’s, supporting him both physically and emotionally. “Come on,” she said gently. “I’ll take you home and we can face whatever this is together.”Gambit could only nod, but she felt his arm tighten around hers.vvvThey arrived at Gambit’s street, and Purdey guided her TR7 to park behind Gambit’s XJS and Range Rover, still standing guard awaiting their owner’s return. She turned off the ignition, sat back quietly, and switched on the overhead light. Gambit was sitting stock still and ramrod straight, complexion pale under the yellow-white glow. The unforgiving brightness of the overhead light near his cheek emphasised every contour and bone of his visage, highlighting the dark circles under his eyes and lines around his mouth, the latter aging him noticeably. The other half of his face was cast in shadow, lending him an air of tortured mystery. Purdey didn’t know how much of her perception of his state of mind was due to her imagination running away with her, and how much of it was accurate, but as they sat in the darkened vehicle, a cone of light between them, his distress was impossible to ignore. He certainly hadn’t been in any shape to drive, that much was certain.A few minutes passed. Gambit persisted in staring off into space, jaw tight. Purdey wasn’t even certain that he knew they’d stopped, and debated what to do next. She settled with covering his hand, tightly gripping the dash of the car, with her own. “We don’t have to go up,” she said quietly. Gambit started slightly, shook his head as if to clear it, and snapped out of his reverie, suddenly back in the present day. Clearly disoriented, it took him a moment to work out where he was and who he was with. He turned sharply to look at her, and his whole face was suddenly illuminated, the dark from within and outside temporarily banished. “What do you mean?” he asked belatedly, brain catching up on what had been said.“We don’t have to go up,” Purdey repeated kindly, thumb gently caressing the back of his own hand. “I don’t know where you’d rather be, if anywhere else would be make it bearable. But we don’t have to go to your flat.” She shrugged, acknowledging that she didn’t have all the answers, but willing to make suggestions anway. “We could stay out all night and you could tell me your story over dinner or drinks or dancing. Maybe being around people would make it seem less difficult.”Gambit shook his head again, this time in disagreement. “No, that only makes it worse. You remember when I took you out dancing last year, and how that turned out?”“As I recall, we wound up in the shower together, so it wasn’t a complete disaster from your perspective,” Purdey pointed out with a cheeky smile. Gambit smiled faintly. “I don’t remember any of that because I’d had one over eight by that point. Wish I did. So much went wrong that night I could have used some happy memories.” His smile faded and his expression turned despondent. “But I was long-gone by then and that was because I couldn’t face that disco sober. Anywhere with people other than you around is guaranteed to make me feel the same way. And if I’m totally sloshed, I can’t tell my story.” He passed a hand over his face in exhaustion. “Not that it’s going to be much fun either way.”“I’m not here for fun,” Purdey pointed out, taking the key out of the ignition. “I’m here to look after you, Mike Gambit, and I am not going to be put off by you getting drunk on alcohol or guilt. So if you’d rather do this in your flat, we may as well go up. Unless you want to risk us being arrested for public indecency when they misinterpret what we’re doing in this car.”“I like that explanation better.” Gambit managed an eyebrow waggle in spite of himself. “I’m willing to be supportive, but you can only push the sympathy card so far tonight,” Purdey said pertly, but her eyes were dancing in a way that indicated she wasn’t entirely adverse to the idea when they were less preoccupied. Gambit sighed, somewhat theatrically. “No last request for the condemned man…” He looked up the building to where his darkened flat overlooked the street. “All right, let’s go,” he muttered resignedly. Purdey bit a lip as she watched him fumble with his safety belt with no small amount of concern. “Are you sure you want me there?” she pressed, second-guessing herself, concerned that her presence was going to prove more of a hindrance than a help, though she wasn’t sure she could leave him alone even if he wanted her to. “It’s not too late to back out. I won’t think less of you if you do.”Gambit looked up from disentangling himself from the belt and shook his head. “No, this needs to be done. You deserve answers and I can’t keep this bottled up. Especially now that we’re together.”Purdey bit her lip uncertainly. “Well, if you’re sure…”“I am,” Gambit said forcefully, as though trying to convince himself as much as her. “I’m going to do this tonight.” He smiled a little crookedly. “Although you may wind up running in the opposite direction before it’s all over.”“Not likely,” Purdey said brightly. “If you haven’t scared me away with your bad jokes, Mike Gambit, I doubt that you’ll be able to get rid of me now.”Gambit’s laugh was shaky, but at least it was a laugh, and Purdey felt a modicum of relief that she could still get that sort of reaction from him at this point. She only hoped that she would still be able to do it after she descended into the heart of what was, presumably, the darkest chapter of Gambit’s life.She opened her door and stepped onto the curb before they could talk themselves out of their newfound resolve, and took his arm as he rounded the car to step onto the pavement, for support in both the literal and figurative sense. They walked into the lobby of the building, and Purdey stroked his shoulder to try to ease the tension she could feel there as they waited for the lift. When it arrived and they stepped inside, Purdey knew she didn’t imagine the way he jumped slightly at the sound of the lift doors sliding closed. They were suddenly confined in a box—a cell in Gambit’s mind—and he felt his heartrate speed up, his breathing become laboured. Suddenly he was in the dark, alone, with sweat trickling down his face, and only the threat of pain to look forward to, to remind him that he was still alive and that this wasn’t all some hideous nightmare conjured up by his mind. The door to the lift opened with a ‘ding’ and Gambit stumbled out into the hallway, colliding haphazardly with the wall with a spectacular ‘thunk.’ He scrabbled frantically at the paintwork with his fingernails, seeking out the smooth texture of the surface that would prove to him that it wasn’t a concrete barrier, thick and suffocating, slick from the stifling heat.“Mike!”Purdey’s voice cut through the all-encompassing flashback, and he found himself pressed against the wall in the hallway, just to the left of the potted plant that was decidedly less than exotic. The hallway was brightly-lit and carpeted, and he could smell the faint of trace of perfume from someone who had passed through a few minutes earlier. He turned around and pressed his back to the wall, found Purdey looking back at him with obvious concern. Gambit, chest heaving and eyes wide, looked at her as if she were a particularly vivid mirage.“Purdey?” He barely recognised his voice, it was so hoarse and raspy, more a wheeze than a proper vocalisation.Purdey looked not just concerned now, but alarmed, as though she expected him to collapse or have a stroke at any moment. “Mike, you would tell me if you needed to go to the hospital...?” She edged closer, slowly, as though she was afraid of startling a skittish animal.Gambit licked his lips, could taste the sweat that was coating his face. “I’m okay,” he murmured, even though it was patently clear he wasn’t. “I just—I had an—"“Episode?” Purdey supplied, taking another step toward him and sending a tentative hand out to rest against his chest. She could feel his heart slamming violently beneath her palm. “That’s what you had a year ago, isn’t it? A sort of blackout. Flashback. Hallucinations.”“Something like that,” Gambit confirmed, wishing he didn’t need Purdey’s hand against him to feel like he wasn’t going to pitch forward at any moment. “Things trigger them. Sounds, lights, sensations. I can’t control them or predict when they’ll come, but when they do…” He swallowed hard, the lingering sensation of the most recent flashback still making him tremble on the inside.“Well, at least I know it wasn’t all down to drink last time,” Purdey quipped, slipping her arm under his shoulder and wrapping it firmly around his back. “But your neighbours might not be so forgiving, so let’s get you inside. I’m not letting you move in with me if your neighbours throw you out for total degeneration.”“You always know just what to say,” Gambit rasped, suddenly feeling desperately thirsty, as though—well, as though he’d been locked in a hot, dark cell with the threat of pain and death forever pricking at the base of his neck. Somehow, Purdey and he managed to sway their way down the corridor, the slim blonde taking entirely more of his weight than anyone, barring him, would have thought possible. After what seemed like an eternity, they reached his front door, and Purdey fished idly in his pocket for his keys. Gambit, not in shape to appreciate being gently frisked by a beautiful woman, belatedly registered her hand’s intimate search of his outer and inner jacket pockets, and was just in time to feel her slender fingers slip into the left front pocket of his trousers. “You’ve gotten brazen,” he managed, a ghost of a smile twitching his lips. “I must be having a good influence on you.” “I prefer to think of it as ‘forward’,” Purdey corrected, breath tickling his ear as her fingers wriggled a little deeper into his trouser pocket. “And I was already corrupted before you came along. You’re just the first proper victim.”“Either way, I’ll take it as a compliment,” Gambit hissed, as Purdey worked the keys back out and found the one they needed, slid it into the lock and pushed the door open. She helped Gambit inside, kicked the door shut behind her, and half-walked, half-dragged him to the bed. Ducking briefly while still supporting his weight, she managed to press the button on the control panel and sighed in relief as the mechanism rolled out Gambit’s automated bed. “Do you know,” she began, as the bed came to a stop with a satisfying ‘click’, “I used to think this bed was a ridiculous ‘boys and their toys’ novelty for people with more money than sense.”“And now?” Gambit managed, as Purdey turned them around and started to lower him gently onto the mattress.“Now I still think it’s that,” Purdey grunted with exertion, “but I’ve also come to appreciate that, on occasion, it has its uses. And this is one of those occasions. Oof.” She let Gambit’s arm fall heavily from her shoulders and sat back on her hands for a moment. Gambit, deprived of the support, flopped backward onto the bed with little grace and lay there pondering the ceiling with glazed over eyes. “Well, at least one of us has improved in your eyes.”“Don’t be like that,” Purdey chastised, turning round so she could regard his prone form. “And don’t be stubborn, either. We don’t need to do this tonight. Whatever your story is, it’ll keep for a few days until you feel better. You don’t have to tell me tonight because you made some sort of ridiculous ‘honourable’ promise to yourself that you’d spill your heart and soul to me the moment I told you I loved you.”Gambit shook his head mournfully. “I appreciate the ‘get out of jail free card’,” he told her. “But if I’m going to relive the whole damn thing through flashbacks, I might as well tell you while I’m at it. But you can always bolt back to your flat if I scare you witless.” He scrubbed his face angrily, but stopped when Purdey leant down very close to his face.“I’ve already told you,” she said with mild annoyance. “Several times. But just in case it hasn’t gotten through your thick skull: whatever you tell me, it’s not going to change how I feel about you.”“Oh, I love you,” Gambit almost prayed, and they kissed once, twice, three times, Purdey’s hands on either side of his face as she leaned over him, Gambit’s arms around her waist, clinging to her for dear life. “Come on,” she said when he finally broke away. “Let’s get you comfortable. Then you can tell me what all this about.”They started by getting Gambit out of the most constrictive of his work clothes, so the jacket, waistcoat, tie, boots, and socks went by the wayside. Purdey kicked off her heels while she was depositing the extraneous wardrobe on a nearby chair, and Gambit undid his shirt cuffs with a fierceness that suggested the buttons were constricting him to the point of imprisonment. The fact that his hands were shaking didn’t make the task any easier for him.“Right, what else do we need?” Purdey said as casually as possible, hoping he didn’t notice quite how worriedly she was looking at him as he struggled with the garment.Gambit ran a hand through his hair, then looked to the bar. “Scotch,” he said wearily. “And a glass. Two if you’re joining me.”Purdey bit her lip. “Won’t it defeat the purpose if you’re so drunk you pass out?”“If I thought passing out would make a difference, I’d do it,” Gambit said flatly. “It doesn’t. Believe me, I’ve tried.” There was a defeated look in his eyes that made Purdey’s heart ache for him. “But I can numb it a little. Believe it or not, I’ll actually be a little more coherent if I’m not completely breaking down every few minutes.”“Well, if it’ll make you coherent for a change,” Purdey tried to quip, but Gambit’s obvious despair meant her heart wasn’t in it, and he didn’t bother to respond. She fetched the Scotch without further comment, taking a glass for herself as well. She had a feeling she might need it.They settled onto the bed, and Purdey poured them each a dram, trying to decide whether the glass rattling against the bottle was because she was shaking or he was. He pulled away with a wan smile before she could make up her mind, and took a healthy swing while she turned to set the bottle on the bedside table. She pressed the button that automatically closed the drapes and then turned back to Gambit. He was sitting crosslegged and barefoot on the bed, cradling the glass in his hand in the gap between his legs, looking for all the world like a storyteller from ancient times, the dim light of the bedside lamp taking on the quality of firelight. She folded her legs beneath her and propped her head up in one hand, elbow resting on the back of the couch, waiting for him to begin. “Where should I start?” he asked, half to himself and half to Purdey, eyes pointed squarely down at the amber liquid swirling in his glass.Purdey shrugged. “Usually the best way to begin is at the beginning,” she pointed out, and Gambit nodded thoughtfully, as though this was sage advice. It was bad enough talking about it without getting the timeline mixed up in his mind and having to start over. He took a deep breath, and proceeded to do just that. “It was after I got tired of crashing cars…,” he began, then took one look at her blue eyes and felt himself waver, the prospect of actually getting started sapping some of his resolve. “Sorry,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Sorry. I’m faltering right out of the gate.”“It’s all right,” Purdey soothed, reaching out to rest a comforting hand on his leg. “Take your time.”Gambit nodded to himself, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to remind himself that they had all the time in the world, that the only one putting pressure on him was him. “Do you remember I told you that I left the navy at 21?”“Of course.”“Well, the reason I left was because I gave someone a ride in a borrowed car when I was on shore leave, and he said I ought to join the racing circuit.” He smiled to himself at his youthful hubris. “And for a young lad with more confidence than sense, it seemed like a good idea.”Purdey smiled back. “But it didn’t prove very successful. All those crashes made an impact. Forgive the pun.”Gambit grinned back, fully accepting the jibe. “Right, and I only played around with it for a few years. Around four, with other jobs in between to make up for my losses, before I gave the lot of it up. But that’s another story. The point is, the racing circuit takes you all over the world, and between that and my navy days I got pretty damn sick of globetrotting. So I decided to go home and stay put for a bit. And seeing as I was used to the military life, I signed up for the army.”“When was this?” Purdey queried.“1968,” Gambit supplied, turning thoughtful. “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have bought season’s tickets and spent a few evenings at the ballet. I regret never seeing you onstage.” He remembered Purdey’s balletic onstage defeat of Juventor, transplanted into the tap-dancing form of Ranson. “In an actual show, that is.”Purdey blushed a little. “Might have kept me clear of Larry,” she conceded. “But you’ve gone and made it about me. Go on.”Gambit sighed. “There isn’t too much to tell for the first two, two and a half, years. I got into the Paras as a low-ranking officer, spent my time climbing the ranks. I was still friendly with Spence and he taught me karate whenever I had the time. Looking back, I should have taken up his offer of a job at his dojo.” His mouth pursed grimly. “Or gotten out of the parachute regiment while the getting was good. But I was still young, and I had to be an idiot and show off, draw attention to myself.”Purdey felt herself tense with curiosity and anticipation. “What happened?”Gambit sank back into the couch, eyes looking heavenward. “I made a risky jump,” he explained. “No, stupid is more like. I delayed opening my chute for longer than recommended, and obviously I made it.” He smirked to himself. “Got me a lot of drinks at the pub afterwards, I can tell you. And I’ll admit, to this day I can remember that adrenaline rush, watching the ground rushing up at me. It’s a feeling you can’t describe or reproduce.”“Although you seem intent on trying,” Purdey mentioned tiredly, “from the habit you make of jumping out windows.”“That’s nothing,” Gambit said saucily, with a wink. “You should have seen me.”“I have. I can imagine. What does this have to do with anything?”“I got a call,” Gambit explained, “to meet with my commanding officer. At first, I thought he was going to ream me out for it, for doing this damnfool stunt on army time, and I was going to end up cleaning the lavatory with a toothbrush. But when I got there...”***It was 1972. Major Michael Gambit, late of the parachute regiment, found himself knocking on the door of his superior officer, with more than a touch of trepidation. Their last exercise had gone off without a hitch, even if Gambit had pushed his luck a little. But he couldn’t think of any other reason he’d be disciplined, other than that practical joke in the canteen, but that had all been in good fun, and even Private Norris, the ‘victim’, had thought it was amusing once his heart slowed down. So when a voice from within told him to enter, he did so expecting a dressing down for his recklessness at the very least.Said superior, Colonel Crichton, was a serious, solid man, forged in the aftermath of the war to do his duty to the best of his ability, and who expected others to do the same. He was a tough nut, but also fair, and Gambit respected that, as well as his straightforward unwillingness to cross the line from discipline to abuse, and his refusal to play mindgames with his troops. Crichton was a man who’d tell you like it was because he respected you enough to take it. So when Gambit entered the office to find Crichton looking very worried indeed, Gambit knew it was neither a ploy to put him off his guard, nor a case of the man letting his own personal problems spill into the professional arena. Rubbing his chin in thought, he nodded at the chair in front of his desk. “Take a seat, Major.”“Yes, sir.” Gambit did as he was bid. “Something wrong, sir?”Crichton’s hand dropped from his chin to a more familiar position, laced with his other hand on the desk’s surface. He regarded Gambit with guarded interest. “What makes you think there’s something wrong, Major?”“Sorry, sir. Only I can’t think why else I’m here, sir.”“Can’t you?” Crichton peered at Gambit from beneath his bushy eyebrows with an expression Gambit couldn’t quite decode. “So you assume the reason must be something unpleasant. Very pessimistic of you, Major.”“I’m sorry, sir,” Gambit said automatically, wondering if he’d only made things worse for himself. “Force of habit.”vvvv“Negative thinking,” Purdey surmised knowingly. “You haven’t changed.”“He didn’t say I was wrong” Gambit pointed out, with a touch of his usual bravado.“Oh? What did he say?” Purdey inquired, curiousity piqued.vvv“Never mind. Your instincts have served you well, Major,” Crichton said wearily, looking as though he would have preferred that Gambit be wrong than right at that particular moment. “As they always have. You’re my best man because of them, and therein lies the rub.”Gambit cocked his head in bemusement, brow furrowed. “Sir?”Crichton sighed. “A few months ago, I was contacted by certain individuals in the Ministry of Defence. High up sorts. Secretive. I don’t like associating with them if I can help it, to be quite honest, but I don’t have a choice in the matter. They were asking after the best men under my command, for their personnel files and the like. They didn’t tell me why or what they planned to do with them, but I had my instructions, so I gave them what they asked for. And one of the files was yours.”Gambit sat up a little straighter, permitted himself a small, grateful smile. “Thank you, sir.”Crichton raised an eyebrow. “For what, Major?”Gambit felt his smile waver a little, wondering if he’d misread the situation and done something wrong. “For thinking so highly of me, sir,” he explained, hoping that he hadn’t escaped discipline only to earn a more severe punishment for being too proud of his accomplishments.“Don’t thank me just yet,” Crichton said darkly. “You don’t know why they wanted it.”Gambit felt the cold knot in his stomach reemerge just as quickly as it had dissipated. “Why did they want it, sir?”“They want you to work for them,” Crichton said grimly. “They’re sending a couple of fellows along later today. They’re going to offer you a new posting.”vvv“Two men showed up that afternoon,” Gambit told Purdey, just before he downed a healthy measure of the Scotch. “Ministry types, officious, gave me the salespitch about how they needed good men like me for a special assignment.”Purdey pressed her lips together until they turned qhite. She’d heard that line before. “What sort of assignment?”vvv“Sit down, Major Gambit,” one of the men behind the desk told Gambit, with a sharpness that Crichton only deployed on special occasions.“Yessir.” Gambit did as he was told, but kept his eyes on both men as he did so, as if they might lunge forward without warning at any moment.“Forgive me, Major,” the man on the left, with silver hair that belied his youthful features, said with an oily smile that made the hair on Gambit’s neck stand on end. “Where are our manners? Let me make the introductions. Carpenter. Jeremy Carpenter. And this is my colleague, Gordon Thorburne. We’ve come to make you an offer.”“What sort of offer, sir?” Gambit asked suspiciously.“To work on a very special project, my boy,” Thorburne broke in, with a jocularity that felt forced. “Very secret. We’re choosing a few select men to try out for an elite unit, to be based overseas and assigned to execute operations of a highly sensitive nature.”“And you want me, sir?” Gambit surmised, resisting the urge to leap out of the chair and make a run for it. There was something about the whole situation that smelled wrong, and Gambit’s instincts were screaming at him to get out while the getting was good. At the same time, the solider in him was telling him to sit tight. What would Critchton say if he turned tail and ran before these men had even finished making their pitch? Even if his superior was as unenthusiastic about these men from MOD as he’d led Gambit to believe he was, that didn’t mean he was going to tolerate outright insolence. Not to mention how poorly it would reflect on the man and his unit. Crichton was good to his men, and Gambit’s loyalty, once earned, was not easily shaken. If Crichton needed him to hear these men out, then hear them out Gambit would.“We’d like to test you, Major,” Carpenter corrected, smile still unnerving, delighting in refuting Gambit’s assumption that he was good enough to be taken at face value. “You and a handful of other men, before we make our choice. But we’ve heard about your little, uh, stunt, and we think you’re perfectly suited for the sort of work that would be required.”Gambit looked unimpressed. “Really, sir?”“Yes. Men who are willing to take that extra leap into the unknown. There would be a chance to climb the ranks rather quickly, as well, if that may influence your decision at all,” Thorburne added, as though the prospect alone should have had Gambit champing at the bit.“But if you’re not up to it, we understand,” Carpenter told Gambit smugly. “It’s not for everyone.”“If I decide to try out,” Gambit asked carefully, “can I still back out, even if you choose me?”“Of course,” Carpenter assured smoothly. “But once you accept the post—if you pass muster, that is—then you’re locked in. We do have to have some assurances that you aren’t going to go back on your word eventually. For planning purposes, you see.” The oily smile reappeared. “But of coure there’s no harm in simply trying out. None at all.”Gambit worked his jaw a little, looking from one faux smile to the other, and seriously considered telling them both to stuff it. But Crichton would get an earful if he didn’t even try, he knew, and he wasn’t about to let him down. No one said he had to commit even if he got it. And there was no guarantee he’d even pass whatever tests the two men required. “All right, sir. I’ll give it a try.”“Excellent,” Carpenter enthused with a glint in his eye that reminded Gambit uncomfortably of a fox eyeing a rabbit. “Really excellent.”vvv“Looking back, I should have just walked away, gone back to the Paras,” Gambit said bitterly. “But that would have looked bad on Crichton. And then they were so damn condescending, and I was curious. And egocentric. I wanted to prove I could do it, get into whatever it was that was so damned elite. Even if I didn’t really want to be there.”Purdey scooted a bit closer, intrigued, drawn in by his tale. “I’ve a feeling this is where things start to get hot.”Gambit nodded. “You’re right. They spent two weeks putting me and a handful of other men through our paces. Some of us were a little more leery about what they wanted us for, others were pretty gung-ho about the whole thing, but we were all determined to make the final cut.”Purdey raised an eyebrow. “And you did?”Gambit smirked ruefully. “I was the best of the whole damn unit. Or cell. That’d probably be the better word for it.”Purdey felt her heart stop at the word choice. “Cell?” she asked tentatively.Gambit took a deep breath, rubbed his palms on his trousers anxiously, trying to wipe the beads of sweat away before they could form. “This is where things get a bit…uncomfortable,” he said hesitantly.Purdey reached out a hand and placed it on his leg encouragingly. “I stand by what I said. Whatever it is, it’s not going to drive me away. Do you need a moment?”“No, no, let’s get it over with,” Gambit replied, blue-green eyes distant. “They told me, Thorburne and Carpenter…”Vvv “You’ve performed very well, Major,” Thorburne enthused, beaming at the young soldier. “Even better than we expected. Isn’t that so, Carpenter?”Carpenter smiled, but the words came out as more of a sneer. “Yes. Very impressive. So impressive, in fact, that you’ve passed muster. We’ve selected you for the team.”Gambit didn’t bat an eye, instead levelled his gaze at his audience of two, far from exuberant. “Wonderful. Only I’m not accepting anything until I know what it’s all about.”“Indeed not, my dear chap,” Thorburne agreed, in that earnest way that Gambit had already pinned down as a sure sign that he was trying too hard. “We’d expect nothing less. However, what we say will have to remain within these walls. And of course, we can’t disclose everything until you’ve fully committed to the operation, even though you’ve signed all the requisite forms. I’m sure you understand.”Gambit smiled knowingly. “Otherwise you’d have to kill me,” he quipped. Carpenter’s lips twitched in a way that Gambit sensed meant his words were a little too close to the truth for his liking, but Thorburne simply laughed his painfully jocular laugh. “Ah, indeed, Major, indeed! A good sense of humour is very important. Keeps one sane, as it were.”“Hmm,” was Carpenter’s only comment on the matter as he leaned toward Gambit. “Here’s an overview. We’re going to establish a small team, a unit—or cell, if you will—in Africa, with the express purpose of dealing with certain persons. Criminals would be a generous description, people with connections. We need them taken care of, quietly, before they can do any more damage. And without anyone being able to trace those activities back to us.”“Dealing meaning killing?” Gambit asked flatly, not bothering to conceal the menace leaking into his voice. “You want us to be assassins? That’s what this all about?”“Heavens, no,” Thorburne exclaimed, as though the mere use of the word had offended his sensibilities. “Normally you’ll be called upon to simply persuade or meet with these persons. Negotiate deals. Make them come around to our way of thinking. Sometimes you will be required to capture certain individuals or acquire their assets.” He cleared his throat, and sat up a little straighter in his chair, as though good posture would somehow disguise the murkiness of what he was about to say. “Naturally, there is the risk of having to use lethal force in any security operation, but it would always be a last resort, not the sole purpose of the assignment.”“What makes you think I’ve got any interest in killing people, whatever the reason?” Gambit snapped, outraged.“A sense of justice, my boy,” Thorburne broke in, rifling through a file laid out on the desk in front of him, one that Gambit knew likely contained his entire life, parsed into bite-sized snippets for easily-digestable reading. “You’ve gotten yourself involved in your fair of scuffles, often against enemies who were rather out of your league, because you saw a wrong being perpetuated, and you knew it needed to be righted. In every instance, you’ve met with remarkable success. We only want you to take that innate instinct for doing the right thing one step further, use it to help you deal with unsavoury characters that pose a threat to Britain’s, and the world’s, affairs.”“You’ve got it partly right,” Gambit growled, leaning forward in his chair, stabbing the desk’s surface with an index finger. He was undoubtedly out of line, but he didn’t care. If Crichton wanted to punish him, he’d take it happily. But he wasn’t going to sit quietly by while these men sat there and patted him on the head, saying that he should be happy to do a little light murdering for them just because they’d asked nicely. “But it’s one thing to help someone who’s caught up in a fight that he didn’t pick. It’s quite another to put a bullet in someone’s brain in cold blood.” He got to his feet, stared imperiously down at the two men. “You can keep your offer. I’m staying where I am.” With that, he turned smartly on his heel, and strode purposefully toward the door. His hand was on the knob, seconds from escape, when a soft cough stopped him in his tracks.“I take your point, Major,” Carpenter said mildly, and Gambit didn’t have to turn around to picture the man casually shuffling papers while he practiced the slightly shady art of rhetoric. “But there’s something else about you that makes me think you’ll accept this offer. You now know what will happen if you go. But has it occurred to you what might happen if you don’t go?” Gambit felt himself stiffen, felt a cold grue travel down his spine. “We’ll do our best to keep things from becoming unsavoury, of course. But we can only control so much of what goes on in the field when we’re not on the same continent as the action. If things spiral out of control, well, I’m afraid our hands are tied.” He paused meaningfully, allowing his words to sink in. Gambit stood there, jaw working madly, as he listened to more papers being shuffled, heard the warble of thick card as a file was gently closed. “Of course, if someone were there, in the field,” Carpenter continued leisurely, with all the studied indifference of a big cat deciding whether or not it was worth expending the energy required to pounce on a passing antelope. “Someone with the moral turpitude to anticipate the slide, head it off before it could devolve into something unsavoury, well, that would be different, wouldn’t it?” Gambit turned, only to be met with another version of Carpenter’s oily smile, this one painfully knowing. “All things considered, Major Gambit, I think you might want to reconsider your answer. It might not be your cup of tea, but can you make yourself walk away in good conscience?” The smile broadened as the dismay that failed to crinkle Gambit’s mouth surfaced in his eyes. “I think you’re going to want to go, if only to ensure that things are happening by the book, that the cell doesn’t devolve into an arbitrary killing machine. Just to keep it in line, you’ll go. To keep it decent.”Gambit swallowed. Carpenter leaned back smugly, knowing he’d trumped Gambit’s ace soundly.“Well, Major?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
"Oh, Mike." The words left Purdey's lips in an unhappy hush, even as he averted his haunted eyes to avoid meeting her gaze. "He was right, wasn't he? He pegged you as the self-sacrificing idiot you are, and he played you like the proverbial violin.""Am I that transparent?" Gambit sighed, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly, still not looking her in the eye.Purdey smiled crookedly, rested a hand on his shoulder to encourage him to look at her to see her reaction. "There's nothing wrong with trying to be a moral compass," she pointed out. "It's made you a good agent." The smile disappeared. "But it came at a price. Even I've pieced together that much.""It did," Gambit agreed bitterly. He let out a long breath through his nose. "But it was more than that. I joined the army after I quit motor racing partly because I didn't know what to do with myself, and partly because I needed to scrape a living somehow. I knew it'd pay better than manual labour, which was all I'd be able to get since I left school so young. But aside from all that, I thought it'd be nice to join up with something that was making a difference somehow. The way I thought I could when I joined the Ministry and started working with Steed. So even though I didn't trust those MOD types, I agreed to it because I thought I could do something worthwhile, either through the assignments, which, against my better judgment, I hoped were going to be as worthy as they kept insisting, or by keeping the whole operation from going over the line if they weren't." He shook his head sadly. "I still held out hope even after I'd signed up, and they started teaching us new skills that went beyond our training. New ways to kill, to disarm, to extract information. All of it. They always said that it would be used as a last resort, that we needed to know these things for our own safety. And then they shipped Major Gambit and his crew out, me and five others, to Africa, to do their dirty work."Purdey was holding her breath so tightly she could barely get the words out. "What kind of job was it, really?"Gambit's entire expression turned dark. "They had a name for us. 'Special Undercover Operatives: Military'. But what it really boiled down to was government-sanctioned mercenaries. They started us out slow, with easy, unobjectionable stuff—picking people up, espionage, sometimes making an arrest. The stuff they'd promised me we'd be doing. But after a month or two, they started to feed us targets and we were supposed to follow orders, no questions asked. And in-between, we were supposed to pick up side work, legitimate contracts in the local area, so it'd look like we were being hired and paid by whatever local criminal underground was in the area, and no one would ever suspect our people ever had a hand in picking some of the targets. Diplomatically, they couldn't point fingers if they traced a killing or capture back to us, because who was to say it wasn't some other unsavoury character that wanted him disappeared. Nice set-up for them, but on the ground, immersed in it…" Gambit shuddered, and Purdey could feel the nightmares emanating from his trembling body, physical manifestations of old, traumatic memories. He took another, desperate drink of the Scotch, then held out his glass with a shaking hand. Purdey refilled it without comment, sensing that to interrupt now would only make it harder for him to continue. He took another long drink, a bit more calmly this time, and after taking a moment, composed himself."They'd send me to kill people," he said flatly, the words blunt and harsh, bitten off with undisguised disgust. "They'd never phrase it that way, of course. There were never explicit kill orders, because those would be too hard to deny if they got into the wrong hands. But they'd put me in lots of hairy situations where they figured it'd be too hard, and would draw too much attention, to do anything but kill them." His face split into a perverse grin. "Or so they thought. But I saw it as an opportunity to get creative.""Creative?" Purdey echoed, eyebrow quirking inquisitively, but she was encouraged by the mischievous gleam in Gambit's eye."Well, they did say, 'by any means necessary'," Gambit reminded, using that overly-reasonable tone he reserved for poking fun at the officious. "They never said I actually had to kill anyone, remember. That was the point of giving ambiguous orders that couldn't come back to bite them. So I found ways to achieve the same ends, but by different means. Gather the right evidence, grease the right palms, maybe incapacitate them a bit in they kicked up a fuss. But I'd get them locked up, charged, sent back home to face the music—anything that'd put them out of action without killing them.""Two fingers to authority," Purdey marvelled, shaking her head in undisguised admiration. "You haven't changed a bit.""Yeah," Gambit agreed with a chuckle, as pleased with himself as she was. "That was the fun part of the job. The good bit." His smile faded as a new thought occurred to him, replacing the cockiness as quickly as it had arrived. "Too bad it didn't last."Purdey felt her stomach twist. "What happened?""They started to get creative, too," Gambit said bitterly. "And even worse, they worked out my weakness. They knew they couldn't bribe me. I wasn't interested in killing for its own sake. I wasn't going to blindly follow orders for the reward of their approval. But they did work out that I wouldn't let other people get hurt."Purdey pursed her lips. "You mean they hadn't forgotten you were a self-sacrificing idiot in the intervening months."It was a testament to how upset Gambit was that he only nodded in acknowledgement of the description, not even offering a smart retort in reply. "So they started to put me in situations where the choice was kill or someone else got hurt, or died. Someone innocent. That was bad enough, those split-second decisions where you can't hesitate or it's too late. But then, once or twice, they put me in the middle of things that were so awful, and the people who were doing it were so awful…" He shook his head, in a mixture of self-reproach and anger at his handlers. "I still wonder if I could have avoided it-if I really tried, if I could have found a way out of it that didn't involve death, if I'd only tried hard enough." His head dropped in shame. "But I didn't. And I killed them." He said it so bluntly, so flatly, it took Purdey a moment to register what he was saying, to let it sink in. "In hot blood, as my Granny would say." His eyes were bleak now, just visible beneath the lids as he bowed his head. "I won't lie. Those people—all of them, every last one—deserved to face justice. They were all so evil, so sadistic... But to kill in hot blood—even if they're morally bankrupt, even if they've killed dozens of people the same way—it does something to you. You learn to switch off, you learn to not feel, to suppress all your emotions. You have to, or you'll go mad. But it's not any way to live. Even if it only happens once or twice." He took a shaky breath, held back tears that he didn't want to shed. "And I was good at it. I could do it, do it well. I don't what that says about me. I didn't enjoy it, and I tried to do it as little as possible, but…" He clutched at his head, ran a hand through his hair frantically, anxiously. "But I could do it when I needed to. Those are the ones that haunt me the most, because it does something to you. But what makes it worse is that I could do it again, under the right circumstances." He pressed his lips tightly together. "And I don't know what that makes me.""Brazil," Purdey breathed, flashing back to a dark night in the Amazon jungle, where sweat made the gun slippery in her grasp as she pointed it at Pym, the man who had killed her father, while Gambit stood by and pleaded with her, describing in gruesome detail what would happen to her if she pulled the trigger. She'd been in such a fog of rage that she'd hardly registered that Gambit could only be speaking from personal experience. "That's what you were talking about."Gambit nodded in confirmation, swallowed hard. Purdey reached out and put her hand under his chin, turned his head to face her. "I've seen you kill people," she reminded, allowing a little annoyance to slip into her voice at the mere notion that she was too fragile to cope with this revelation. "You've seen me do the same. Don't look as though you're introducing me to some dark world I've never been exposed to. I've had some idea for ages now that you didn't learn this business entirely from your Ministry training. You knew too much for someone who'd only come onboard two years before me.""Yeah, but this was worse," Gambit said hoarsely. "It was…deliberate."Purdey set her glass down on the bedside table and held his face more firmly. "Listen to me, Mike Gambit," she said, quietly but in a tone that brooked no argument. "I was quite prepared to do the same, if you'll recall. In Brazil. I would've shot and killed Pym without a second thought. And we'd already captured him. He wasn't going to hurt anyone else. But that didn't matter. All I wanted was revenge. And the only thing that stopped me was you. But you didn't have someone there to help you." She pressed a hand to Gambit's cheek, raised his head to look in her eyes. "We all have our line in the sand, Mike. And I've always admired the clear-eyed way you've drawn yours. You've never killed or hurt anyone for the sake of it. You've never taken any pleasure from it. But when there are terrible people who have done terrible things, and there isn't any other way to stop them, you've always done what needs to be done without hesitation. It's what makes you such a good agent."What happened there, in Africa, is no different. You did everything you could to avoid what they were trying to force you to do, even when faced with something so awful that I can't even imagine, and no options to speak of. All after having been put through so much by your own side, so much pressure, so many awful sights, none of which you'd signed up for. I think anyone would pull the trigger." She smiled reassuringly at Gambit. "I know I would, under the same circumstances. I definitely would if it whoever it was had done something to someone I cared about. Like you. Or Steed. Just the way you and Steed said you would if I'd died of curare poisoning. And I can't even claim your Irish granny's hot blood. Mine would be ice cold.""But…""No 'buts'. I know you, Mike Gambit. I've seen you on the job, and I know that you kill because the job requires it," she plowed on, refusing to let him slip further into the darkness. "We all do. We all switch off, me included. The point is, you do it for the right reasons, when it has to be done. I know you'd never kill anyone if you had a choice, a real choice. But you didn't have a choice. They took that from you by putting you in impossible situations and I don't think any less of you for it, do you understand? I know you. And I know that you wouldn't have completed any of those assignments if they weren't for the greater good, orders or not." She shook him slightly, forced him to look at her. "You're a good man," she said firmly. "And I won't have you thinking otherwise for a moment. I wouldn't be here if I thought you weren't."Gambit was eyeing her hopefully from the depths of his despair. "So you don't think I'm terrible?"Purdey stroked his cheek. "I think you're a very, very good man, who holds himself to an impossibly high standard, even when circumstances not of your making dictates otherwise." She brushed away a bead of sweat trickling down his brow. "Even you'll crack under the strain eventually, Mike. They were trying to break your nerve, and I think you have to allow yourself some leeway after being put under such extreme pressure. You've convinced yourself that you're not allowed to be human. But you are. And you're not omnipotent. You keep thinking there must have been a way out that you hadn't thought of. But I've seen you at work, and I don't believe for a moment that there was one. I think you're looking back with typical Mike Gambit self-effacement and convincing yourself that the entire situation was down to you. But it wasn't. You did what needed to be done. The fact that your blood was boiling doesn't change that."Gambit looked unbelievably hopeful now, eyes bright with cautious optimism. "Do you really think so?" he asked in a hushed whisper.Purdey smiled away his fears. "I know so," she said softly, simply, but with great conviction. "And you know I always speak my mind, Mike Gambit. I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it was true.""Thank goodness for that," Gambit said in a rush, clutching at her hand on his cheek, clasping it like the lifeline it was. "Oh, Purdey, Purdey, what would I do without you?""I think it's best not to think of that now," Purdey said gently. "You've gone through enough as it is. You need to rest now."Much to her horror, Gambit's eyes took on a pained expression. "I can't rest," he told her woefully. "I haven't finished telling you my story."Purdey, who had only just begun to feel her insides uncoil from the knots they'd tied themselves into, instantly felt them wind themselves into a sailor's knot that even an ex-Navy man like Gambit would have been hard-pressed to unravel. "You mean, that wasn't the worst part?"Gambit shook his head like a small child who was afraid to make a sound lest it earn him a clip round the ear. "No," he confirmed hoarsely, adding still more knots to Purdey's innards. "That's only the beginning.""Oh," Purdey said faintly, feeling a bit overwhelmed. She'd been congratulating herself at having done so well at setting all Gambit's fears to rest. Now she realised she'd only dealt with the preliminaries. But this wasn't about her ego. So she squared her shoulders and looked levelly at her partner. "All right," she said smartly, determined that Gambit wasn't going to faze her for long. "Shall I get something to grease the wheels for part two?""No," Gambit said quickly, catching her hand before she could move away. "No, please. Just—do you need it? Because I think I need you more.""I was offering more for you than me," Purdey soothed, adding her other hand to the one already being clutched in his fingers. "Of course. I won't leave you." She smiled to let him know she meant it. "What happened next? I'm ready."Gambit took a deep, cleansing breath, steadying himself to embark on the next chapter of his journey. "I got caught," he said hoarsely. "And that's where the real nightmares come in. That's why I have flashbacks, the hallucinations, can't sleep." He stared intently into Purdey's eyes. "Today's the anniversary of the day I got caught.""Caught?" Purdey felt an awful chill sink into her bones at the words. "What do you mean, caught? Caught by whom?""Her," Gambit replied forebodingly, but then seemed to realise that this information was less-than-helpful. "It was my last-ever assignment for that unit—or at least I was hoping it was. I'd started making noises about wanting out, and I don't think they could have fobbed me off forever. I'd been making a pest of myself and I think they might have let me go eventually. But first I was supposed to get these papers off a man called Solomon, a local crimelord. Looking back, that was a strange assignment right from the off—asking me to get intel instead of bring someone in…" Gambit shook his head in self-recrimination. "I wish I'd been able to find a way out of it. Would have saved me a lot of trouble." He smiled ruefully at Purdey. "But I ended up here with you, so it worked out in the end, eh?"Purdey smiled fondly back. "Well done," she praised. "Some positive thinking for once."Gambit seemed to physically take strength from the compliment, and the sustenance it gave his soul reinvigorated his flagging spirit, pushing him to resume his story. "Anyway, I got the assignment and I didn't have much choice but to do it. They could make our lives damned difficult for us if we didn't. I packed some supplies and set off around noon. Solomon had a compound in the jungle, secluded, secret, to keep him from being caught by the authorities—at least, the ones he couldn't pay off. I knew him by reputation and I'd tangled with some of his people in the past, but going into the heart of his operation wasn't something I was particularly looking forward to…"vvvGambit crept through the jungle brush in the dying light of the day. He knew he'd have to approach the compound in the evening if he was going to have any chance of slipping inside undetected. Dark as it was, he knew the chance of discovery was still high. He'd prepared as best he could, studied the plans that were available for the compound, gleaned as much information as he could from the locals and his fellow operatives, but it still wasn't enough. Everyone in the surrounding cities and villages knew about Solomon now, but no one wanted to talk about him, lest word somehow got back to him that they had been the one to spill the beans, and they had their blood spilt next. His colleagues were more forthcoming, of course, but even what they knew had been heard secondhand, filtered through rumour and insinuation. Solomon was feared, but flew under the radar, preferring to conduct his dealings while attracting as little attention as possible, letting the rumour mill build his reputation up through silence and invisibility rather than feed it with grandiose displays of power and cruelty.One aspect of his operation that didn't confine itself to the shadows was Solomon's right hand—a woman, by all accounts, and a fierce one at that. When Solomon made his presence felt the most explicitly, it was most often through her, and Gambit knew that she was the prime suspect in the deaths of at least two fellow operatives who had met their ends in suspicious circumstances. Gambit had seen their bodies after the fact and could still remember the way his gut twisted in repulsion and horror. Above all else, he didn't want to cross paths with the woman who trailed death and pain in her wake. He'd asked his superiors for a briefing on her, in hopes of finding something, anything that might give him the upper hand, should he need it. The dossier he'd received back was less than encouraging.The woman in question was known as Vanessa Thyme, though whether that was her real name or an adopted alias no one knew for sure, nor was there any clarity on her past life, including her nation of origin, her accent drifting between British, South African, and generic trans-Atlantic. By all accounts, she'd worked for several employers in her extensive career, during which time she'd acquired an impressive resume and a skillset to match before being recruited by Solomon, who presumably had earned her loyalty by paying better than the last person she'd worked for.All of this was running through Gambit's mind as he scoped out the compound from the safety of the undergrowth. The buildings were cordoned off by a high chainlink fence topped with razor wire which was, by all accounts, electrified. There was also a regular patrol circling the compound, and more men were posted on the front gate-all armed guards on the lookout for any suspicious activity. Gambit had no doubt the gates were alarmed, too, though no one had mentioned it. Presumably the chances of being shot, electrocuted, or sliced to ribbons first were so high, no one had bothered to worry about simply causing a ruckus. But all that only mattered if you got caught or touched the fence, and Gambit wasn't planning on doing either.He spent some time watching the guards on patrol, timing the regularity of their rounds, how frequently they were relieved, and when their routes intersected, ensuring that the guards weren't liable to stray unexpectedly from where they should have been. But whatever their other sins, which Gambit could safely presume were many, the guards kept to their schedule, and their route. So when Gambit identified a sufficiently large gap in their patrol for his purposes, he abandoned his hiding place and took off at a run, building up the speed that he knew he'd need to vault over the fence and praying that it would be enough.Almost everyone he'd talked to had been of the opinion that there was no way of mounting the fence without some sort of climbing aid, but Gambit knew that was a non-starter. It would be cumbersome to carry, and act as a rather obvious giveaway that someone was breaking in when it was inevitably spotted, because there was nothing to be done but to leave it behind once one was inside. So Gambit had decided that he would have to try something else.The answer came from his karate training, as it so often did. Spence had always been encouraging him to learn how to not only increase his power of forward propulsion, but how to channel it upward as well. Defying gravity was an essential aspect of some attack combos, but when utilised for its own sake, without the need to set up an attack, it freed up more resources to get airborne. The fence was high, but not that high. If a gymnast could vault upwards so spectacularly under nothing but his own steam, then it had to be possible for him to do it too. And there was enough overlap between the disciplines that Gambit had thought it was worth a try.He'd practised as much as he'd been able given the narrow window he'd had between being assigned his task and having to put his plan into action. Somewhere out there was a clutch of very confused wildlife who had borne witness to a south London lad's seemingly-indefatigable quest to surmount a hastily-constructed barrier, a task at which he failed more often that succeeded, all the while making extensive use of a vocabulary that only an ex-sailor would possess. Why he hadn't just walked around the thing was a mystery to them, but then all humans seemed determined to make life hard for themselves, at least in their experience.Gambit had managed to get over that wall in the end. Not always, but often enough that he thought he could make it over. Probably. Maybe. If he was lucky.As Gambit approached the point at which he'd have to lift off, he knew he needed to be lucky now. If not, he was going to find out firsthand just how good Solomon's security system was. Maybe his colleagues would glean some useful intel when they retrieved his mangled corpse. If there was anything left to retrieve.These thoughts weren't helping, and Gambit shut them away, compartmentalised them, along with the ache from all the bruises he'd acquired; and the hope that this assignment would be the end of the whole damned ordeal; and the closeness of the heat; and, most of all, the burning desire in his heart to go home, a yearning he'd never felt quite so strongly, in all his years of globetrotting.Please let this work. Let me go home.He left the ground and, despite the advantageous lack of witnesses, it was a shame that no one was around to admire the grace and athleticism at work as Gambit twisted, tucked, and soared over the top of the fence, missing the barbed wire by a fraction of an inch, before hitting the ground in a roll and popping upright once more. He stood still for a fraction of a second, dumbstruck that his audacious plan had actually worked, but there was no time for self-congratulation. After a quick sprint, he darted around the corner of the nearest building before the next patrol had rounded the fence and had an eyeline on where he'd just been.Safe for the moment, Gambit did a mental sweep of the compound's layout and his current location in it, based on the plans he'd consulted. His cover was a small storage unit, containing weapons and ammunition. Ahead stood a larger unit that was Solomon's people's quarters when they were onsite. There was also a garage and another squat concrete block with no windows to speak of and heavily barricaded doors. Gambit's research had told him it held cells, reserved accommodation for those who were foolish enough to tangle with Solomon and think they could get away with it. As Gambit looked at it, he felt a terrible sense of dread and foreboding. He looked away quickly before the shivers down his spine could get any worse.The focus of his quest was another building entirely. It was the building at the heart of the compound, a large, well-appointed house that served as Solomon's abode, centre of operations, and vault. It was the latter function that held Gambit's interest, the place where the papers he was supposed to retrieve would be kept. Security was tight, but not as tight as on the perimeter. Solomon obviously didn't believe that anyone would be able to breach the outer walls of his sanctum without being detected. Gambit took a quick look around at his surroundings, and then made tracks for the base.As he got close, he realised how incongruous the house looked, surrounded by quasi-military buildings on all sides and enveloped in the wilds of the African jungle. Three stories high and done in a Victorian architectural style, it was spectacularly out of place, juxtaposed as it was by the jungle wildness and the militaresque brutality of the accompanying buildings. Gambit idly wondered if the aesthetics of his grounds were contributing to the man's anti-social tendencies.The house had several well-appointed windows, and Gambit surveyed them for a likely point of entry. It took two circuits before he settled on an unassuming small window a few feet off the ground. Without hesitation, Gambit took hold of the windowsill and gently inserted an instrument into the bottom of the frame, expertly working the lock until he heard a click, keeping a watchful eye out for any unexpected visitors. He slid the now-unlocked window open silently, then hiked himself up onto the sill and over. His head and shoulders were barely inside when some sixth sense told him to stop. For a moment he hung there, suspended half in, half out of the window, arms straining with the effort of keeping still. It was then that he saw the tripwire, razorthin, stretched in front of the window, just waiting to alert the whole of the base to his presence. Gambit withdrew, dropped back onto the ground and considered his options. In the end, he leapt up, slid in a short distance, gripped the upper inside of the windowsill, and turned himself bodily around so he was moving through the opening on his back. Before he hit the tripwire he sat upright, pulling his body through the opening while keeping it tight to the window, almost climbing up the wall until he was upright, standing on the narrow window ledge. Gripping the ledge tightly with both hands, Gambit let his feet slip off the ledge and dangle, before letting himself fall lightly to the ground, arms and legs welded tightly to his body, making himself as slim as possible. It was then a matter of a few moments to carefully turn around and duck under the tripwire. Gambit breathed a sigh of relief. He was inside.The next task was to locate where the papers were hidden. In keeping with the house's exterior, the interior was also done up like an English Victorian home. Gambit had infiltrated a small parlour/reading room, but intel suggested that Solomon had an office somewhere, and chances were that was where he'd keep the papers until he sold them to the highest bidder.Gambit made his way carefully across the room, ever-vigilant for further traps or other signs of security, but found none. He made it to the door without incident, tried the knob and found it turned easily and silently. He swung it open a crack and peered through into the hallway, seeking out any and all signs of life, but the corridor was abandoned. Satisfied he was alone, Gambit slipped out into the carpeted space, closing the door softly behind him. He crept as quickly and quietly as he could in his army boots, thinking back to the speculative plans he'd memorised. The corridor was long and dark and twisted around a corner lined with all manner of paraphernalia that befitted this odd example of a bygone age in a completely different country. Ducking around an ostentatious suit of armour and drifting past some decidedly sinister taxidermy, Gambit made his way on lightly dancing feet to where he hoped Solomon's office was located.The doors along the corridor were all identical examples done up in heavy wood with a dark varnish, gold knobs set creatively in the centre of the panelling. They gleamed enticingly in the dim light of the corridor, daring Gambit to try his luck and see what lay beyond. Gambit hoped and prayed that whichever one he wound up choosing wouldn't have a nasty surprise on the other side.He reached the far corner of the house, where he spotted a pair of large double doors that stood apart from the rest of the aperture rank and file. Gambit recentred himself spatially, and came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, the entrance to Solomon's office, and made a beeline for it. His hand rested lightly on the knob as he pressed an ear against the panelling, listening intently for any sign that the room was occupied. When none was forthcoming, Gambit knew he had a decision to make. The silence didn't guarantee that some other danger wasn't waiting for him on the other side, whether it be human beings with weapons or more nasty booby traps. On the other hand, if he didn't venture into the lion's den, the whole excursion was pointless, and anyway, loitering in the corridor wasn't exactly a foolproof method of remaining undetected. Just because he hadn't run into any men yet didn't mean he wouldn't soon, and the very fact that he hadn't was starting to make Gambit feel nervous. Rather than wait for it to happen, Gambit took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and plunged into the breach, turning the knob and slipping inside.After all the buildup, it was a bit underwhelming to find that the office was unoccupied and also apparently lacking in deadly booby traps. Gambit quickly closed the door behind him and took out his torch, switched it on and panned it around the room. He'd guessed correctly—this was, indeed, Solomon's office: a riot of expensive, plush carpets; cases full of exotic, expensive, and probably ill-gotten artifacts; and, most importantly from Gambit's perspective, a very large, imposing desk and a safe. Gambit headed straight for the latter, sweeping his torch ahead of him as he went to avoid any traps along the way. He reached the safe without incident, and quickly removed a small lockpicking kit from his pocket, unrolled it on the floor and selected the listening device that would be best for cracking the safe's combination. Among his courses for his new career had been a unit in safecracking, and Gambit had passed with flying colours. As he put the listening device against the door and heard the tumblers fall into place, obeying every whim of his fingers, he was reminded of his instructor quipping that Gambit had a good ear, and perhaps he ought to join the local choir? Gambit grinned in spite of himself.It took a long time—longer than he would have liked—to crack the safe. The tumblers seemed to click in a way that stubbornly defied his attempts to crack the combination, always a little off from where he needed them to be. All the while, he was painfully aware that precious seconds were ticking by, bringing him ever-closer to the possibility of being discovered by someone unfriendly with a rather large armoury at his disposal.Then suddenly, success! The tumblers fell into place, culminating in a glorious clicking sequence that was absolute music to his ears. Gambit turned the safe's handle as quietly as he could, swung the door open and shone his torch inside. Solomon had been busy. There were stacks of files inside, along with a small number of lockboxes that signified an extra layer of security for whatever they hid within, plus several bundles of cash in various currencies and denominations, all there for the taking and utilisation in unsavoury doings. Gambit ignored them all and went searching for his prize, the papers that were the ticket out of this assignment and, hopefully, his military career. His instructions regarding exactly what he was looking for had been frustratingly vague, but he knew enough to be able to spot them. They consisted of a scientific treatise and accompanying formulae on what had euphemistically been called the 'ultimate means of national defence.' Gambit wasn't entirely sure what they meant by that, but he had a feeling it wasn't anything good. What they had been quite clear about in his brief was that Solomon intended to auction the papers off to the highest bidder, and that all the bidders were equally unsavoury candidates for possession of such a revolutionary innovation. It would be decidedly safer in their hands, Gambit was told. Gambit had always been rather sceptical about people in command telling him how things should be with the reasoning "because we said so" attached, but he was doubly so where the stakes were this high. All the same, he still didn't know what, exactly, he was looking for, and until he did, his best option was to try to follow his orders and take it from there.Rifling through the files took longer than he would have liked. Solomon clearly had his finger in a lot more pies than MOD thought, and Gambit half-considered pilfering the whole lot and figuring out which was the right one after the fact. But then he'd have to carry it all with him, and his over-the-fence trick had been hard enough as it was without a stack of paper strapped to his back like a ton of bricks. So even though he was sure that Solomon shouldn't really have custody of any of the things that were in his box of tricks, he set about relieving him only of his original target.Finally, after much searching, he came across a rather unassuming folder in an uninspiring shade of burnt orange with the name of the scientist in question on the front. Gambit quickly pulled it out of the stack and flipped it open, skimming the contents inside to ensure he did, in fact, have the right file. But as the treatise and the accompanying formulae slipped past his eyes in a seemingly-unending stream, Gambit felt his heart stop and drop like a stone into his stomach.It was worse than he'd feared. The pages outlined years of scientific research by a Professor Schaad into a piece of technology that would give the user a one-up on the arsenal currently at the fingertips of anyone with access to the red button. More sophisticated and more deadly, it had been developed outside of official channels, researched by Schaad using his own private sources of funding, and he had turned it over to Solomon for sale—or been persuaded to do so by force. Gambit didn't understand all the details behind the science, but he did understand that whoever had it could dole out a spectacular amount of damage to millions upon millions of people with less of the infrastructure, fuss, and consequences of the bomb, and do so with impunity. Gambit had to resist the urge to be quietly sick as he continued to skim the pages, felt sweat drip down his brow for reasons beyond the heat of the night. He quickly made the decision to take it with him as ordered. He wasn't certain anyone should have this kind of power, but he agreed that it didn't belong anywhere near Solomon or any of the people he might be planning to sell it to.Gambit quickly returned the various pages to their folder, then wrapped the same in a plastic bag he'd brought along for the purpose and sealed it, before slipping the package into his small satchel. Gathering up his tools and closing the safe once more, he quit the room and ducked back into the hallway, moving quickly but silently across the floor. He returned to the same room that had been his point of entry, deftly avoided the tripwire, and reemerged in the hot, sticky night air. Closing the window carefully behind him, he was about to take another running leap at the fence when an alarm sounded across the compound, quickly followed by several raised voices and a flurry of lights. Gambit swore as he realised the window had a pressure mechanism that only activated when the window was closed after being opened, a device to catch up the most careful of cat burglars. His cover well and truly blown, there was no need for stealth as the enemy closed in, and Gambit abandoned all pretence of subtlety by running full pelt toward the gate, gaining enough speed to launch himself heavenward just as the first shot cut through the close, humid night.Gambit tucked and rolled as he hit the ground and was instantly on his feet, weaving through the dense foliage of the jungle, branches whipping at his face and around his legs, threatening to trip him up as he ran for his life. Behind him, he could hear raised voices and the clump of boots on soil as Solomon's men rallied and took off in pursuit. Gambit took a detour to a path he knew that went through the undergrowth, hoping Solomon's people were less-familiar with it. The sounds of his pursuers faded somewhat into the distance, but remained firmly at his back, unshaken and undeterred. It was at that moment, running and gasping through the heat of the night, that Gambit had the sudden, horrifying realisation that he wasn't going to escape. Already in the space ahead of him, he could hear the sounds of a new set of pursuers, scrambling to cut him off, blocking his escape path even as his original tails continued to sprint toward him. It was then that Gambit made a snap decision, diving off the path, already removing the satchel from around his shoulders.Less than a minute later, he reemerged onto the path and resumed his flight, zigging and zagging in a vain hope that he might, somehow, evade his pursuers, but as anticipated they were soon closing in, a third group now in on the chase, executing a pincher movement to hem him in.And then there was the cliff, doing the job for them, sending him to the brink, arms windmilling to keep his balance. He stared down at the ground far, far below, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could survive the fall, with or without the kind of damage that would cut the chase short of his own accord. He knew it was futile even before his brain made the calculations, but he did them anyway. It was only when he'd come to the grim QED that he turned to face the music as his pursuers, all armed, all pointing their nasty-looking artillery in his face, materialised out of the dark jungle. As he raised his arms in surrender, a woman emerged from the crowd, which parted for her automatically, striding forward with confidence. She stepped in close to Gambit, arms behind her back, pointedly casual. She smiled icily at Gambit, a gesture that cut right to his bones. "Well, Major," she said in a voice that he would come to know well. "What are we going to do with you?"
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit broke off, voice hoarse and laced with pent-up emotion and exhaustion. He was shaking badly now, so much so that Purdey was worried he was going to topple over, and she reached a hand out to steady him lest he tremble right off the bed. “Sorry,” he managed after a moment, eyes squeezed shut, arms hugging his own body as though he were desperately cold. “I just…I need a minute before…before I get to the hard part.”“It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park so far,” Purdey pointed out, running a soothing hand over his forehead. “It sounds as though finding those papers alone was difficult. It’d make a very good spy thriller.” She tried to sound carefree in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Maybe you ought to write a novel. At least you’d make a little money off your misery.”Gambit shook his head and shuddered even more dramatically. “The last thing I want to do is put any of this in writing. I want to forget it, not record it for posterity.”Purdey winced, suitably chastened. “Sorry,” she murmured. “That was thoughtless of me, wasn’t it? I only wanted to make you smile again.”Gambit, eyes still closed against the nightmare playing out behind his lids, reached out blindly for her hand. “You do make me smile,” he assured, gripping her digits like the lifeline they were. “Just not now. Nothing can. Not tonight.” Purdey bit her lip, but despite his lack of vision, he seemed to sense her discomfort and added, “But thanks for trying.”Purdey sighed and squeezed his hand back. “Still, I wish I’d kept quiet this time. I do have a habit of being a little insensitive at times, I suppose. Some might call it tactless.” She smiled wanly, even though Gambit couldn’t see her. “You might have noticed.”“Maybe once or twice,” Gambit replied wryly, but without malice. “But it’s all water under the bridge. Your tact is the least of my problems just now.” He pulled his hand from hers, opened his eyes and made to stand up from the bed. “I need to move. I’m going mad sitting here. Well, madder. I’ll go mad tonight one way or another.” He stumbled to his feet, Purdey scrambling to follow.“Are you sure you should be up and walking around?” she queried worriedly. “You’ve had an awful lot of Scotch in the past hour or so.”Gambit laughed as he staggered unsteadily over to the bar and poured himself some more of the amber liquid. “Not my fault you kept plying me with the stuff.”“Me? You’re the one who told me to bring it over, and some for myself,” Purdey contradicted with a touch of annoyance, hurrying to his side just as he knocked back another glass. “You’re being particularly contrary today, along with everything else.”“Not according to my cousin,” Gambit rambled, slurring slightly as he turned and started to pace the floor. “She’s always said I was infuriating even before all this nastiness happened. Maybe you’re just noticing now. Ah!” Without warning, Gambit’s legs gave out beneath him, scotch and stress combining in a particularly potent mix, and he tumbled bodily to the carpet. Purdey rushed to his side, wrapped her arms around him as he started to sob.“Oh, Mike,” she soothed, cradling his head, fingers tangling in the dark curls as her other arm wrapped itself reassuringly around his shoulders. “I keep trying to distract you, but there’s no distracting you, is there?” She pursed her lips in frustration. “Not tonight. It’s in your head and it won’t leave.”Gambit managed to nod, somewhere in the recesses of her embrace. “It’s going to come out one way or another. No way out but through, Purdey-girl.”Purdey nodded in turn, more to herself than him. “Were those papers worth it? Were they as horrible as you said?” she wanted to know, giving him a less-personal window into his story while still enabling him to tell it.“Worse,” Gambit replied, disentangling himself from her embrace and trying, unsteadily, to get to his feet once more. “I’ve seen a lot of schemes that’d kickstart World War Three since I started working with Steed, but that one, that technology, if someone, a person, a state, an organisation, got ahold of it, they could do a massive amount of damage. And they’d use it, no matter how good their intentions were, because it’d be there just waiting to be used. It’d be too tempting to just leave it in the box.”“So you hid it,” Purdey reiterated, using the arm draped across his shoulders to aid his struggle upright. She walked him gingerly back to the bed. “And that’s when you were captured.”“Yes,” Gambit confirmed, settling back on the bed with a resigned sigh. “I suppose you want to know what happened next.”“Only if you’re up to it,” Purdey qualified, climbing onto the bed beside him.Gambit laughed grimly. “I’m going to feel like hell either way, but I want—I need—to tell you this part, more than any of the rest of it.” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “After they cornered me, they took me back to the compound…”vvvGambit was frogmarched back to the compound through the dark and the heat and the sweat, guns digging into his back every step of the way. His captors had seen fit to tie his hands in front of him, the ropes cutting painfully into his skin. The rest of the contingent were either leading the way, or bringing up the rear. They’d relieved him of his bag and his tools, and even his jacket. Of the three, the latter was the one Gambit missed most on the journey, the short-sleeved shirt he wore underneath providing him with no protection against the biting insects or scraping branches. They hadn’t found the papers on him, and their obvious annoyance at that fact had given him a small amount of satisfaction. They hadn’t bothered to ask him about them yet, or made any attempt to squeeze the information out of him. Gambit knew that would come later, when he was at their disposal, and was already steeling himself. The way the darkhaired woman, who he knew had to be Vanessa Thyme, kept looking at him made his blood run cold.The compound’s gate was open as he approached, his arrival expected, almost welcomed, and he entered by rather more orthodox means than he had before. It didn’t take long to work out that he was being taken to the squat concrete building he’d noticed earlier, the one that had made him shudder on sight. On closer inspection, he could see it had been deprived of windows in favour of a wall blessed with a few extra inches in thickness. The building was guarded, too, with men who snapped to attention when Thyme approached. “Open it,” she ordered, accent still vague and difficult to place, just as it had been when he first heard her speak. Just as the reports had described it. The guards did as they were told, scrambling to open the doors quickly, and admit Gambit and his armed posse.They led him down a long, dark corridor that reeked of bodily fluids and fear, all amplified by the hot, humid night. Gambit set his jaw and promised himself that he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of retching or being sick. Beside him, he could see Thyme was somewhat impressed by his fortitude, but the steely look in her eyes told him his resolve was going to be more than matched by hers.They led him into a small room with a single chair in the centre and nothing else. The guards forced him to sit down and then moved to the door, leaving Thyme to share centre stage with him. Gambit was surprised that they didn’t restrain him, but he also knew that Thyme was supposedly a capable force in and of herself. And even if he could outfight her, he wasn’t going to be able to take out the guards at the door and heaven knew how many more that littered the compound between the building and the gate.“Well, well, Major,” Thyme began, pacing up and down the room at a leisurely pace, shattering Gambit’s concentration as he weighed his chances of escapte. “You gave us quite a chase, and you got in and out without a hitch. Almost. Your reputation precedes you.” She caught the tiniest flicker of a reaction in his eyes, and smiled. “Oh yes, I know you, Major. We have files on all of your little crew, including your tenuous connections to the British government. Or supposedly tenuous, I should say. But I know better. And I know you, Michael Gambit. Major in the paras. Ex-racing driver, now drafted into this lot. Perhaps you should have stayed in the navy. Or back at home in Battersea. Do you regret your life choices? Ah, where you could be now if you’d only stayed where you belong and not gone and stuck your nose into our business.” Her voice suddenly turned harsh, hostile, angry. “And now you’re here, and you, Major, are in very, very deep trouble indeed.”Gambit sat ramrod straight in his chair, staring defiantly back at the woman with blazing, angry eyes. “If it means you lecturing me like my old maths teacher for the next 12 hours, then I guess I am.”That earned him a slap, hard enough to make his head snap sideways and leave his cheek stinging. No sooner had he blinked his eyes and shaken it off, than she’d grabbed him bodily by the chin and twisted him around to meet her eyes.“You might think you’re clever, Major. Make all the quips you want. I don’t mind. I’m patient. Very patient. I can wait you out, break you down layer by layer until there’s nothing left, and you’re a quivering wreck, begging me to put you out of your misery. I’ve done it before with men more seasoned than you, men who thought they were hard and would never be undone by anyone as inconsequential as a woman.” She spat the last word as though it were an insult. “I’ll take great pleasure in proving you wrong. But by all means, be stubborn. I have some new techniques to try. I like to keep things fresh.” She released him and straightened up, voice and expression suddenly conciliatory, almost reasonable. “Or you can save us all a lot of time and unpleasantness, and just tell me where you hid the papers you stole.”Gambit regarded her impassively. “What makes you think I took any papers?” he asked in a monotone.Vanessa wasn’t amused by his response. “Don’t play games, Major. Solomon keeps a very precise inventory. The safe was the first thing we checked when we heard the alarm. We know you took them.”“You know they’re missing,” Gambit clarified, a small, smug smile stretching his lips. “That doesn’t mean I took them. I could have had an accomplice, and just played decoy while he got away. Or you could have two burglars: me, and someone else who grabbed the papers. I might have heard the alarm and legged it without taking anything.”Vanessa folded her arms, looking decidedly unimpressed. “I know your people, Major. You have colleagues, though you normally work alone. You wouldn’t use one of them as a decoy because you wouldn’t risk your organisation being uncovered, and the odds of two burglars coincidentally visiting us at the same time are astronomical.” She leaned forward, hands gripping the arms of his chair, essentially boxing him in. “We know you disappeared for a period before my people caught up with you, and we know you took the papers. Tell us where they’re hidden and we can spare you a lot of pain.” Gambit snorted derisively. “Even if I had them, and I’m not saying I do, why should I tell you? You won’t let me go. You’ll kill me the second you have what you want. So there’s not much incentive for me to talk, is there?”“You’re right,” Vanessa replied, much to his surprise. “We will kill you. But it would be quick and painless, at least. I promise you that. But if you don’t tell us, it’ll be a very long, painful, drawn-out process, at the end of which you’ll tell me what I want to know anyway. But you’ll have suffered so much by then. Why would you put yourself through that, Major? What sort of masochist are you?”Gambit set his jaw. “Well, I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, because I have nothing to say to you.”Vanessa narrowed her eyes. “Right then,” she said simply. “We’ll do it the hard way.”VvvThey cut his hair. That was the first thing they—the men who dragged him into the dungeon-like depths of Solomon’s base of operations—did, under the watchful eye of the woman he would come to associate with pain. It was the first act of several meant to strip him of all identity, save that of ‘the prisoner’. He watched the dark curls, already short due to his military service, drift to the floor into a neat pile as he knelt, knees pressed into the concrete, shoulders held with unyielding hands. He found himself unconsciously thanking the officious military man who had forced him leave his St. Christopher and his ring behind in England, reasoning that anything too identifiable on his person could potentially blow the operation. Gambit had given in faster than he might have under normal circumstances, believing he’d be home sooner rather than later. He had to believe it—his initial misgivings about the entire operation had been confirmed with every day of training. He’d almost resigned more times than he could count, but his conscience had stopped him every time. If he’d thought reporting it to a higher up would make a difference or, even better, get the whole sorry business shut down before it could start, he would have done so in an instant, but everyone he felt out as a potential confidante had only confirmed his suspicions that speaking out would only get him sanctioned. If he couldn’t have it stopped from above, then the only way to keep it ‘decent’, as Thorburne and Carpenter had put it, was to try to do it from within, try to mitigate the damage and throw a wrench into the operation by not letting it unfold as planned. He’d given himself six months to do it, to either force their hand and make them shut the whole thing down, or at the very least kick him out, and he’d almost made it, too. He knew he was ruffling feathers far up the chain of command, so much so that he was hearing rumblings that they were reviewing the entire operation, and he’d taken that as an indication that his work was done. He’d already made his desire to leave apparent, and thought that they’d grant it eventually, despite their hemming and hawing. That was probably more for show than anything else—he’d been enough of a thorn in their side that they weren’t going to want to grant any request he made without a fight. Things had been looking up. He’d almost done what he’d set out to do, and he was almost out.And now this.After the involuntary haircut, it was to the cell, the place he would call home for the next three months. One door, no windows, only a tiny slit in the wall allowing in the tiniest sliver of light. Just the bare floors, and the bucket whose purpose he could ascertain only too well. He only had an opportunity to assess the ceiling height—tall enough for him to stand up straight, but not much more--in the brief moment the door opened and light from the corridor spilled in as they flung him inside, into hell.The first night had been filled with uncertainty, about his fate, about how long he would last under interrogation. He wondered how long it would take until they decided to cut their losses and string him up as an example to others. Then he tried to decide if it was worse for him if they did it quickly, or if they took their time. What little sleep he did manage was fitful and nightmare-ridden. But when Vanessa Thyme returned the next morning, he was fragile but still defiant.“Hello, Major. Shall I call keep calling you Major?” She moved the word around her mouth, as though trying it on for size. “I think I shall. Tell me, Major,” she whispered, almost cooed, eye level with his kneeling form.“Tell you what?” he snapped, jaw clenched stubbornly.“Where you hid the papers.” With her face so close to his, he could see she had grey eyes, almost silver, and they glinted as she spoke.“I’m not telling you a damn thing,” Gambit growled, stubbornly staring her down. “And I’m sure as hell not going to be intimidated by the likes of you.”She smiled, and then laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, Major. Solomon has no qualms about keeping you down here for as long as it takes. He’d much rather you suffered a bit in any case. And as I told you last night, this is going to be far from pleasant if you decide to be stubborn.”Gambit didn’t say anything, just stared straight ahead and waited for the first twinge of pain. Vanessa Thyme stopped laughing.“It’s your choice, Major,” she said coldly.And the pain started.vvv“They put me in a cell,” Gambit was telling the story very deliberately now, as though he had to concentrate very hard to string the words together in a way that made sense. His eyes were squeezed so tightly shut that his face crumpled around them. Purdey watched him with a mixture of anguish and intrigue. She could tell Gambit was narrating the scenes that were playing behind his eyelids as he re-experienced them. She’d listened, rapt, to his story thus far, particularly during his account of the break-in, which had held her attention in a way that few films could. If it wasn’t for the personal cost attached to the events, she would have quite enjoyed being kept breathless and on the edge of her seat as Gambit spun his yarn.But this was no tall tale or idle boasting. This was a tale of pain and sacrifice and lasting scars, and she could see the cost of every moment of what Gambit had gone through etched on his handsome face as he turned inward to confront his own private hell. She wished she could put a stop to it now, just by telling Gambit to forget about telling her his story, that she didn’t need to know all the gory details of his life, and that he could start fresh with her, a blank slate, without a care in the world. But that wouldn’t help Gambit. Not now, not ever. The nightmares were coming, and she would bear witness to them whether she knew the reason behind them or not. The least she could do was act as confidante, sharing his private pain in whatever small way she could, in hopes that it would bring him a modicum of solace. Even now, as he led her into the shadows, she was happy do it. Even if it brought her a few nightmares of her own.“It wasn’t a big cell,” Gambit went on, eyes still screwed shut. “I’d say it was 6’ by 6’, not long enough to lie down in properly. That was part of the treatment, never let you get comfortable, even in the worst possible surroundings. And they weren’t comfortable to begin with. There was a bucket in the corner for the unmentionable and nothing else, no cot, no chair, nothing. Not that you really needed blankets because it was so damned hot all the time. Hot and sweaty and humid and sticky. You were never cool. You had to wait for the water torture for that, but that came later.” Purdey winced involuntarily, and was suddenly grateful that Gambit’s eyes were closed and he couldn’t see her reaction. “All I wanted was to be cool and dry, but they’d never allow it. Probably also part of the service, but the guards were always clammy so maybe not. Maybe we were all suffering together.” His lips suddenly stretched in a grim smile. “They didn’t feed me enough, either. There was a slat in the door and they’d put the trays through, but not very often. Heat kills your appetite anyway, so it wasn’t so bad, but the weight fell off me and I didn’t have much to lose.” He licked his lips, as though tasting the salt of his own sweat could chase away the memories of the rancid food he’d been given, then carried on.“I probably would’ve traded half my rations in exchange for them offering to empty the bucket out a little more often, but they were never that generous. The heat being what it was, the smell was pretty foul. There was one little slit in the wall that was the window and fresh air source, and that just about kept your eyes from atrophying. You couldn’t see much, but then again you didn’t want to see much. But that meant you had no choice but to listen, and it was always the damn boots on concrete, up and down the corridor all day and all night. They might have played a recording of it or something—I don’t know. But they never seemed to stop and you’d tense up every time they got close, because that might be the time they opened the door and took you out and did things to you.” He swallowed hard and Purdey followed suit, eyes wide, breathing heavy. She could feel the darkness and the fear by proxy, had experienced some of it firsthand when she’d been held captive herself, but never had the conditions of her own detention been quite that inhumane or prolonged.“Somehow, one of the worst things they did was one of the most inconsequential. They shaved my head, over and over. Every time it started to grow, they’d do it again. You wouldn’t think you’d care with everything else going on, but it mattered somehow. Every time you started to feel a little human again, it’d be taken away. I nearly wept when I got out and it finally grew back. Good thing long hair was in style that year.” It was the first bit of humour in what felt like an eternity, and Purdey’s laugh came out more like a sob.“I have told you to never cut your hair,” she joked in a quavery voice. “I wondered why you never argued with me given how stubborn you are.”“I wish I had a nicer reason to be stubborn about it,” Gambit said ruefully, eyes cracking open a little to regard her. “Do yourself a favour. Don’t ever get held captive for any length of time. It plays merry hell with your fashion sense.”Purdey knew he intended there to be levity in his words, but the reminder of what he was telling her about his ordeal quickly sobered her up again. “They interrogated you, then? Actively?” She said it with trepidation and a grim sort of resignation. “I was hoping they might have thought leaving you in your little cell would be enough to break you.”“You weren’t the only one,” Gambit sighed. “But no, Thyme is nothing if not thorough. She tried every trick in the book to make me talk, including whatever nasty diversion she could think of when I wasn’t stewing in my cell.”Purdey swallowed hard, knowing that they had finally, at last, come to the clinch. “What did she do to you?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.Gambit took a very deep, very long, very shaky breath, and she could see he was mustering his strength for what was to come. “The usual nasty bag of tricks. There were the sessions of being held under water until you thought you might drown, or were half drowned, and then being taken out and put back in again before you properly got your breath back. There were the drugs, and the beatings, but I could handle those. There were the occasional fellow inmates they’d march in and execute in front of you, just as an example of what could happen to you. Always done close enough for you to really get the full experience. The splatter travels.”Purdey’s eyes screwed shut, colour draining from her face, and she shuddered dramatically. It took all her self-control to not let herself collapse onto the bed with sheer emotional exhaustion, as though it had been her that had been put through the wringer. When she opened her eyes again, she couldn’t help but gape at him, uncomprehending, unable to fathom how he could have gone through so much and still have a shred of sanity left. Gambit’s face was ashen, his eyes bleak, and he was shaking so badly she wasn’t certain how he was still sitting upright. “How?” she managed finally, when she could trust her voice to not be too shrill, or to crack under the strain. “How did you make it through all that and end up with only nightmares at the end of it all? You don’t even have many scars to speak of.”Gambit’s breathing was ragged now, nearly robbing him of his ability to speak, sweating as though recovering from physical exertion. “They were very good at getting the most unpleasantness from the least damage. There was the sleep deprivation, days of it, or at least it seemed that way, but I was too disoriented to tell. That was the point, I suppose. They had one bloke who was very good at dislocating things to order. The good thing about that from their point of view was that they could always pop them back in and do it again later. Thyme was very up on things that didn’t cause lasting damage. If your prisoner winds up full of holes, he’ll eventually be in no shape to tell you anything, even if he wants to. But she wasn’t above ordering a straightforward beating either, when it suited her. I think it was when she’d had a particularly bad day, or I was lippier than normal and pressed my luck too far. And sometimes it was psychological—they’d leave me alone for a few days and let the anticipation get to me, let me be my own worst enemy.” He swallowed, and she could see his Adam’s apple bobbing energetically, could see the lines around his mouth deepen into troughs. “Looking back, Solomon was probably at her all the time, tightening the screws to get a result. She was probably scared when it looked like I wasn’t going to break, no matter how much time went by.” “How much time did go by?” Purdey asked in horror, uncertain if she wanted to hear the answer.“Three months, give or take.” It was such an honest, unvarnished reply, delivered factually without hyperbole or understatement. The plainness of it made it all the more horrifying—there was nothing to hide the fact that Gambit had suffered for a very long time indeed.Purdey swore in a hiss, and leapt to her feet to pace as she digested the magnitude of it all, feeling as though she’d go mad if she sat still one second longer. It sunk in quicker than she would have liked, and she felt instantly sick. Gambit was so wrapped up in his story that he hardly seemed to notice that she’d moved. “It was hard not knowing how long I’d been missing after awhile, and whether anyone was looking, if anyone still thought I was alive, or if I’d been written off as gone for good.”“And no one tried to help you? No one came looking?” Purdey was angry now, angry that no one had tried to save the man she loved. She was even angry with herself, though she hadn’t even known him at the time. Somehow, as irrantional as it was, she thought she ought to have done something for the complete stranger who would come to mean so much. “Didn’t they send your unit out to find you? When you didn’t report in?”“They told me after the fact that some of my colleagues made inquiries and scoped out the compound,” Gambit replied. His eyes were dead now, as though he’d switched to autopilot out of sheer self-preservation. “I wasn’t really in a position to investigate whether it was true or not at the time. All I knew was that no one came for me. To be honest, I think if anyone did go looking it was because they felt they ought to, not because anyone higher up gave the order. It was an undercover unit, remember. It would’ve looked strange if all these supposedly unconnected mercenaries dropped everything to hunt down a member of the competition who’d gone AWOL.” “I wouldn’t care how it looked. I would’ve done it anyway,” Purdey said with a fierceness that surprised them both. She could tell it rattled Gambit in his agitated state and tried to smile it away. “I know how stubborn you can be, Mike Gambit, and if you disappear, I know better than to give up.”“I know you do,” Gambit said, with a ghost of a smile. “But not everyone’s loyalty overrides their desire to keep their jobs.”Purdey snorted spectacularly in disgust at the callousness of the profession, but also with the knowingness of a professional in a similar line of work where such lack of feeling was par for the course. “I should have known,” she said bitterly.“Steed’s been in the same position,” Gambit pointed out. “Worse, even, probably. So have lots of people in our line of work. Being captured is inevitable. That’s why I told Steed my story way back when. I knew he’d understand. But Purdey…I didn’t have the wherewithal to tell you last year, to face you when I talked about it. I needed to know where we were before I jeopardized something as important as our partnership.”“So you said,” Purdey murmured. “But this doesn’t change anything. All I know now is how much you’ve overcome, and I admire you for it.”Gambit’s smile was ever-so-slightly broader this time. “That’s encouraging. You might finally understand why I worry after you so much when you go missing. I know exactly what people are capable of, and if they did to you what they did to me…”“I understand,” Purdey cut in quickly, not wanting to dwell on the possibilities. “No wonder you have nightmares.”“Yeah,” Gambit agreed tiredly, “although it’s a good sign I only have to worry about them once a year. When I first got out, I had them every night.”Purdey nodded in sympathy. “Didn’t they send anyone after the papers, at least?” she wanted to know. “I mean, even if they didn’t care about you being captured, they must have wondered where the papers had gone.”Gambit looked thoughtful, in spite of his anguish. “I wondered about that. That was the one thing that I knew might encourage them to come after me, and I used to think about how I’d attract attention if someone else broke into the compound looking for me. I think they worked out that if I’d gone missing, the papers had too. They would have known the auction for them never went ahead, and Solomon was a businessman—he’d sell something and get his money rather than sit on it. So if he didn’t have them and he didn’t sell them, they would’ve worked out that I had them, and I was missing, presumed dead.” A wry smile stretched his features. “I think they may have thought I absconded with them and disappeared into the sunset. Maybe they did look for me after all, just not in the way you hoped.”Purdey’s disgust was mounting. “So you were captured and suspected of treason? How charming.” She folded her arms in a combination of anger and indignance. “I can’t believe they left you there all that time,” she muttered, almost breathless with ire, “and no one tried to find you.”“I didn’t say no one was looking for me,” Gambit corrected. “Just no one in my unit or back at base. My family received a vaguely worded letter about me going missing from the overseas posting that made up my cover story. They didn’t tell them where I was, of course. My cousin and my aunt spent the next three months arguing with MOD and trying to get someone to tell them what had happened to me and why no one was investigating it properly. I think they would’ve kept at it until they had some sort of answer, but after three months I was back so it didn’t really matter.”That seemed to pacify Purdey for the moment, and she finally quit pacing and returned to the bed to settle down beside him. “I’m glad someone was fighting for you,” she said softly. “If I’d known you then…”“I know,” Gambit cut in. “There’s a lot I would’ve done if I’d known you, too. But we can’t timetravel, so no sense in beating ourselves up over it, eh? We’ve done enough of that as it is.”Purdey threw her arms around him, embraced him tightly, trying to keep the tears out of her voice. “They shouldn’t have let you down,” she whispered in his ear. “They let them hurt you, and it wasn’t right, and I’m going to do everything I can to make up for it.”Gambit embraced her back, enjoying the solidness and security of having another human being to confide in and care about his plight.They stayed that way for a long moment, and then eventually Purdey pulled back, gifted him a reassuring smile. “We could stop now,” she told him gently. “If you’re tired. Maybe you’d feel better after a rest?”Gambit looked pale and drawn to her eyes, but he still declined her invitation for a reprieve, shaking his head in response. “If I rest, I might not have the strength to start again.”“Let me get you something to drink, then,” Purdey offered, slipping off the bed. “Something non-alcoholic,” she added pointedly. “You’ll lose your voice if you carry on at this rate.” She made for the kitchen and set about filling a glass of water, trying not admit to herself that she needed a task to busy herself with as much as he needed the hydration. His tale was emotionally draining, even for the listener, and she was amazed at how viscerally it was affecting her. She wondered if it had something to do with the fact that she was in a profession where it could just as easily have been her in that cell, having all manner of brutalities inflicted on her person. It made the reality of it all the more vivid, the pictures in her mind coming easily to her, the idea of herself in Gambit’s place an all-too-real possibility during any of their assignments. The fact that she knew Gambit, knew how he reacted in the face of pain and adversity, what he looked like when he was suffering, made the story affect her even more, and every new revelation was like a blade through her heart. She was seeing the ghosts of the agony on his face as he spoke, could still see them when she closed her eyes, could imagine what it would be like, the torment magnified a thousand-fold. She could smell the sweat gathering on his body as he sat on the bed, the same that would have appeared on his skin all those years ago, could imagine the contortion of his features, the stretching of the skin as his mouth opened in a wordless cry. She knew what it was like to watch Gambit suffer, hadn’t enjoyed bearing witness to it even before they were involved. She liked it even less now.She snapped out of her reverie just in time to notice that the glass was overflowing, cold water washing over her shaking hand. She turned it off quickly, grasped the glass with both hands, willing it to quit shaking, the water’s smooth surface betraying every tremor. Gambit was never going to keep talking to her about his ordeal if he knew she was quite so affected. The same self-sacrificing streak that had got him into the predicament in question in the first place would prevent him from sharing his angst even to his own detriment. But he needed to tell her about this, and she needed to hear it. Otherwise it’d only hang between them like the world’s ugliest, most distasteful, elephant known to man, festering until it resurfaced as something even nastier—a poisonous fight or dangerous isolationism. Purdey had seen secrets destroy relationships. She wasn’t about to let it happen to her and Gambit. Not if she had anything to say about it.It was with that fighting spirit that Purdey opened her eyes and willed the glass in her hands to stop shaking. She heard Gambit say, “Purdey?” behind her, sounding worried. That wouldn’t do at all. The vulnerability in his voice killed her tremors stone dead. She turned back to Gambit with an encouraging smile on her face, and returned to the bed to give him the water. “You okay?” he inquired, and Purdey noticed as he took the water from her that his hands didn’t shake, his own anguish temporarily banished and subsumed by his concern for her well-being. Purdey fell a little more in love with him instantly. “You took your time.”“If you must know, I was waiting for the tap to run cold,” Purdey bluffed. Gambit regarded her somewhat suspiciously over the rim of his glass as he drank, but elected not to pursue it. Clearly he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong and elected to trust her, as was so often his chosen course of action in their line of work. Trusting Purdey had always been second nature where Gambit was concerned. “Are you ready for me to continue?” he wanted to know, as he handed back the glass.“I’m ready if you are,” Purdey said confidently, taking the glass and setting it on the side table. “How did you get out?” “Bided my time,” Gambit said. “I knew I could take out one guard if I was alone. I wasn’t in good enough shape to take on two without raising the alarm, and definitely not to take on the whole lot. But they always showed up in pairs, or more. But Solomon had bigger fish to fry, and he started planning some sort of large operation. I never worked out exactly what it was, just caught bits and pieces from the guards. And I could tell Thyme was preoccupied. The last week or two, she didn’t have as much time to torment me. Just as well, because it let me save my strength. I don’t know if I would have had a chance otherwise. “A few days before I estimated it was all going to kick off, I started eating less, played at being in worse shape than I was. Not that I had to fake it too much. But anything that made them underestimate me was all too the good. I don’t know if I was particularly convincing, or they just needed the extra manpower, but one day I could hear them heading out, and there was only one man left on my door. I don’t think they thought I was even capable of making a run for it by that point. I played sick, corny as it was. Got him into the cell, and cracked his head against the wall, put his uniform on, took his gun. Took out two more on my way out of the building, but I was lucky that there was enough going on outside for me to blend in with the crowd.” A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. “I nicked one of their vehicles, too, and the bloke on the gate was too harried to really check me out. I’ll bet he paid for that. I drove as far as I could, then walked the rest of the way, how I don’t know. One of the men in my unit had an outpost in the jungle, and I was lucky that he was at home that day. I collapsed on his doorstep, and he was good enough to get me medical attention instead of putting me out of my misery on the spot.”“And Vanessa Thyme?”“I never saw her again,” Gambit said, sounding relieved. “Or at least, never outside my nightmares. I don’t know what became of her, if Solomon held her to account for losing me, or if she got out before the axe fell. As far as I know, no one ever caught her…” He swallowed hard, and Purdey could tell that that particular fact bothered him. “But at the time, all that mattered was that I was out…”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit’s envelope of darkness was fading. He couldn’t quite pin down how long he’d been enmired in it, but it felt like an eternity. An eternity in the dark, of one kind or another. After all that time, he knew he should be glad to return to the light. Trouble was, he wasn’t entirely certain that what was waiting for him on the other side was worth waking up for. His last memories had been of pain and fear and desperation. He didn’t know if he could take much more that. But in the end, it didn’t matter if he wanted to wake up or not. His body was already making the decision for him. Slowly, tentatively, he forced his eyelids back, wincing at the bright light, painful after so much time spent in his cell, but determined, in spite of his trepidation, to see where he was. If he stretched his mind back to before the black, he could just remember escaping, and collapsing on the doorstep of another member of his unit. The last thing he’d been conscious of was the man’s urgent voice sounding in his ear. After that, everything had faded to black. In spite of the rather sizeable gap in his memory, he was certain of one thing—he felt terrible. But at least that meant he was definitely, blessedly alive. Unfortunately, it didn’t mean that he was in any condition to celebrate that particular fact. He felt as though all the stuffing had been taken out of him, leaving only empty skin filled with nerves still capable of registering his various aches and pains. Despite his body’s protestations to the contrary, he tried to move, then groaned as the pain amplified. He slumped weakly to the bed, exhausted, even that minor exertion sapping what little strength he had left. His efforts were not entirely wasted, however, because someone stirred just outside of his line of vision and came to stand by his bed. His still unfocused eyes fought to identify the visitor, and he nearly fainted in relief when he realized it wasn’t a foe.“Sara,” he croaked, as his cousin put a hand to his forehead, smiling a tired smile.“Damn you, Michael,” Sara Lynley scolded without much conviction, settling carefully onto the edge of the bed, mindful of jostling his aching form. “You seem intent on getting yourself killed before you hit 35.”“Thanks for the warm welcome,” Gambit rasped, a tired grin creasing his pinched features. He’d never been happier to see this particular familiar face. Sara’s words, he knew, were nothing more than an indication of how much worry he’d put her through, a carefully constructed defence mechanism mounted for both their sakes. And if he was honest, he was glad she wasn’t coddling him. Normality was all he could pray for at this point. And if Sara was willing to tease him, even a little, that meant he was probably going to be all right, in spite of it all.“Oh, you know I don’t want to be rid of you just yet,” Sara protested, desperately trying to maintain the façade, before her smile crumpled with the rest of her face. “But hell, Michael, we’ve spent the past three months in limbo. ‘MIA,’ they’ve been telling us. ‘Presumed dead.’ Presumed. Never anything definite.” She bit her lip so hard he feared she’d draw blood. “I can’t say I wasn’t a little angry at one point--at them, at you for going off to do something that’s been hushed up to the point that it was almost as though you never existed to begin with.” She let out a long sigh, and the built-up tension with it. “Now I’m just relieved that you’re home in…one piece.” He didn’t miss the hesitation, and it didn’t surprise him. He knew he’d lost weight, and although he hadn’t had a chance to confirm, he thought it likely his body bore a few new scars. Not to mention what three months of no proper sunlight had done for the complexion.Wait…“Three months?” he repeated disbelievingly, unable to comprehend how his imprisonment felt both shorter and longer than his actual incarceration. “Was that how long I was…gone?” Sara nodded. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for the past week. All you’ve wanted to do is sleep. But when they found you, you’d been MIA for three months.” She swallowed anxiously. “Don’t you remember?”Gambit shook his head as much as he dared with every muscle screaming in protestation at the slightest twitch. “Lost track of time. Where they had me locked up…you couldn’t tell. And they made sure to pull the rug out from under me as soon as possible.” He managed a half-smile as Sara winced at his words. “You can guess what happened without me filling you in, can’t you? Because I’m sure I look like hell, and if you’ve seen any of my body…”“It’s not that bad,” Sara assured, pulling back the covers a little so he could see his chest. “See? And considering how well you heal, well, I’ll bet you’ll hardly be able to see a mark in a few months.” She reached a hand up to his head, and he could feel her running it over his skull. “Your hair is making a good recovery, too, but it’ll probably take longest. It looks best when the curl comes back.”“Thanks for the tip, but it’s hard to care about your looks when you feel like you’ve been steamrolled,” Gambit admitted flatly. “They didn’t feed me too well, either.”“Well, you’ve always been slim,” Sara mused as lightly as she could. “Knowing you, you’ll be back to fighting weight soon enough. And out of bed even quicker, whether the doctor advises it or not.” She laughed a troubled laugh that told him she was even more shaken than perhaps even she knew. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll get over it faster than me.”Gambit really looked at her for the first time, at the long dark curls pulled back into the untidy ponytail, thrown into sharp relief by her pale, drawn, tight features. Sara had been blessed with porcelain skin, but now she looked more washed-out than ethereal. He’d put her, and probably his Aunt Katie, through more than anyone should have to contend with, and felt terrible about it. He reached out a hand, desperate to offer a little solace to make up for the stress, and she squeezed it without hesitation.“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.She shook her head, not accepting the apology. “Something like this was bound to happen to one of us sooner or later. And of the two of us, you were never going to be happy wiling away your days in rural Basingstoke, Michael. You like adventure. We both do.” Tears started to form. “But I won’t lie and say I didn’t worry. Mum and me…we’ve been trying to come to terms with it since the letter arrived. They said you were probably dead, but I couldn’t believe it. You’re much too stubborn to let yourself be done in that easily.” She blotted away tears but her smile was triumphant. “And look--I was right! So I’ve been working every day to dig up leads whenever I’ve had the time. But I have to admit, these past few weeks, it was starting to look more and more like you really weren’t coming back.” “But you were right the first time,” Gambit pointed out, as though trying to convince himself that this was really happening. “I did come back.”She nodded tentatively. He suspected she didn’t quite believe the scene playing out was reality, either. “But you did.”They lapsed into silence as they considered the other alternative that had been the more likely outcome of the two, the one where Gambit didn’t come back. The one they both had resigned themselves to at some level. Then Gambit cleared his throat and tried to move the conversation onto other, less dismal things. “You said…Aunt Katie?”Sara took a fortifying breath. “Yes, she’s been here. We’ve been taking turns sitting with you. A few friends from the racing circuit and the navy have been by. And some army brass. And Spence, of course.” Sara smirked a little. “But the only time you stirred was whenever the nurse came around.”Gambit grinned in spite of himself. “I needed something to wake up for. Remember, it has been a few months…”“I don’t want to hear it,” Sara exclaimed, putting her hands quickly to her ears. “The one thing I haven’t missed about you is your love life.”“Suit yourself. I thought you’d be happy to see signs of recovery.” Gambit’s trademark wicked smile was weak, but at least it was a trace of his old spark, and Sara was happy to see it. Even if this wasn’t a line of conversation she was keen to pursue.“They want you to report in as soon as you can,” she told him, then elaborated at his bemused expression. “Your people. They want you to file a report about your…experience.” She picked irritably at his blanket. “I imagine they’ll be wanting you to talk to a therapist or something as well. I told them you’d be stubborn about it, but they’ll insist. Even I think it’s for your own good.”“Right,” Gambit muttered sarcastically, eyes drooping closed. “I’ll get on that right away. How long before they let me out?”“I don’t know,” Sara admitted, “but when they do, you’re staying with me.” “Don’t need to go to all that trouble,” Gambit protested, sleep already taking him. How could he still be so tired? He’d done nothing but sleep for days.“You’re not in any shape to argue,” Sara pointed out, accepting his body’s commands more easily than he. “Sleep now, Michael. We’ll talk later.”vvv“I had to build myself back up again,” Gambit went on, as Purdey propped her chin in her hand. “Put on weight. Go through a psychological assessment. But as soon as I was well enough, I made it known I wanted out, to resign from service. They’d already shut the unit down. Too much of an uproar over my not-so-stealthy non-completion of the Solomon assignment, and the mess I left behind me when I broke out. At least two of my colleagues had their cover blown getting me medical attention and out of the country. So I guess I did what I set out to do, in a roundabout way.” His smile was grimly humourous. “They did want to hang onto me, believe it or not. Keep me around for other postings, but I wanted out completely. Even going back to the Paras wasn’t going to be the same. Too many reminders. By late-1972, I was out.”“And that led you to the Ministry,” Purdey concluded.“Eventually,” Gambit replied, casting his mind back.vvv“Feeling better, are we?” Sara looked up from the boiling kettle as Gambit came sauntering into the kitchen, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, looking aimless and bored.Gambit regarded her blankly. “What makes you say that?”Sara gave him a look that warned him not to insult her intelligence. “Besides the fact that you’ve been prowling around restlessly, getting underfoot? You’re so starved for stimulation, you came in here looking for action because you heard the kettle boiling.”Gambit grinned sheepishly. “Maybe I wanted some cocoa.”“You want more than cocoa,” Sara said knowingly, waving at him to take a seat at the kitchen table. “You don’t even really like cocoa. You want action.”“I would’ve thought action was the last thing I needed,” he pointed out. He slid into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, watched Sara rifle through the cupboards.“It was,” Sara agreed, pulling out a pair of mugs and setting them on the counter next to the can of cocoa. “When you arrived, and you couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time, or hear a door slam without jumping a foot.” She spooned cocoa into the mugs with studied casualness, trying to banish the thoughts of Gambit’s state of mind had been like when he’d moved into her flat. “You needed time to heal. But now you have—or at least, you have enough of a semblance of normality that you need more. You’ve read all the paperbacks and done all the sketching and listened to all the records that you can. You need something more.” She poured hot water over the cocoa, and stirred rapidly. “And until you find it, you’ll keep driving yourself mad languishing around this flat all day. And you’ll drive me mad in the process.” She tossed the spoon in the sink and picked up both mugs. “Not to mention you’re killing my love life stone dead. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but having your cousin dossing on the couch kills the mood.”“Okay, okay, no need to get graphic.” Gambit cringed visibly as Sara turned to face him. “I get the point. I need to do something with myself. Any bright ideas?“You could join up,” Sara offered, settling down across the kitchen table from him and handing Gambit a cup of cocoa. Gambit shook his head. “I’ve had my fill of the military. And globe-trotting. I’d like to be based in England for a bit.”“Not the military,” Sara corrected, sipping her cocoa. “I was thinking something more along my line of work.”“Espionage?” Gambit arched a sceptical eyebrow. Sara shrugged. “Why not? With your skillset, they’d take you in a second. And I can guarantee you’d never be bored. Well, except for the report writing. But there’s always something, isn’t there?”Gambit still didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know if my ego would survive working with you day in and day out.”“I didn’t mean with me, Michael,” Sara contradicted, rolling her eyes. “Heaven knows how I’d get any work done. I just got promoted. I don’t need you slowing me down, any more than I want you as my lifelong roommate.” She shifted the previous day’s newspaper, sitting forlornly on the kitchen table, to reveal a file underneath. She slid it across the table, and Gambit stopped it with a finger, turned it to face him.“What’s ‘The Ministry’?” he wanted to know.“Something you should look into,” Sara said cryptically. “Read the file, and if you like what you see, ring the number inside. I think you can come to some sort of arrangement with them.”vvv“You never did tell me their names,” Purdey observed as Gambit snapped back to reality. “What?”“Your family,” Purdey clarified. “You just called them your aunt, cousin, whatever. You never named them.”“Yes, well, I don’t want you looking them up just yet. Not until I’ve had a chance to prepare myself,” Gambit explained wryly. “Otherwise next thing I know there’ll be a family reunion in my living room.”Purdey wrinkled her nose. “Do you think I’d do that?”“Yes,” Gambit confirmed, with a knowing smile that bore some resemblance to his old self. “I know you only too well, Purdey-girl. You’ll have to be patient.”Purdey pouted, and Gambit shook his head. Purdey was Purdey, no matter what you threw at her. There was something infinitely reassuring about the fact that she could still latch onto relative trivialities, seeded in amongst his tales of horror. But equally importantly, her ill-humour never lasted for long when it came to something so inconsequential. He let her pout and continued his story.vvv“You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Sara Lynley asked in concern, arms crossed tightly across her chest, protecting herself when she would have rather been protecting him. “Back there, where it happened, all on your own?”“I’ll be fine,” Gambit assured, adding some clothes to the black leather carry-on. “I’ll be back soon.”“‘Soon’ being the operative word,” Sara shot back. “It’s too soon. You’ve only been out of hospital five months. You’ve barely moved into this flat.” She gesticulated at the mounds of unopened boxes stacked around the living area, which currently contained a table with two chairs, a small cot, and television sitting on the floor. “Unless you’re going for some sort of minimalist, post-modern aesthetic I don’t know about.”“I’ll have lots of time to unpack when I get back,” Gambit resolved, picking up another small stack of clothes from the cot and depositing them in his bag.Sara arched a sceptical eyebrow. “You start training at the Ministry in three weeks. You’ve only just finished all the interviews and evaluations. Need I remind you that I’m the one who put you onto them in the first place?”“I know,” Gambit said calmly, crossing to his cousin and putting his hands on her shoulders. “And I’m grateful. I promise I won’t let you down.”“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Sara said bitterly. “The last time you went to that place, you disappeared for three months. Then you miraculously reappeared and I sat beside you while you laid half-dead in a hospital bed, wondering if you were a ghost.” There were tears in Sara’s eyes now. “I’m worried that you’ll go there and not come back this time. Those people who held you are still out there, and even if they aren’t, you can’t expect that when you get there you’ll have no ill-effects at all? No flashbacks?”Gambit sighed. “I’m not saying I’m going to enjoy it,” he admitted grudgingly. “But I’m making good progress. I’m sleeping better, I’m exercising, my appetite’s never been better.” Sara still looked unconvinced, so he added, “If you think I haven’t moved in, you should see the inside of the fridge.”But Sara was undeterred and unswerving in her concern. “Then why would you want to go back now, when you’re making such good progress? You risk undoing everything you’ve gained, and for what? Nothing.”Gambit shook his head. “It won’t be for nothing, Sara. You have to trust me.”“What’s that supposed to mean?”“I can’t explain,” Gambit said quickly. “But I need to go back. I have to. If I have any chance of moving on, I need what happened to me to mean something…” His eyes became distant, and for a moment it looked like he might say more, but then he shook his head as if dismissing the idea. “Look, I just have to go.”Sara looked at him resignedly. “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?”Gambit shook his head, smiled fondly at his cousin. “Sorry, Sara. I have to be stubborn this time.”“You’re stubborn every time,” Sara shot back wryly. “But I can tell you’re not going to be talked down. Promise me you’ll be careful, at least. And that you won’t stay a minute longer than you have to. And that you’ll come home immediately if you feel like it’s too much for you.”“I promise,” Gambit vowed, drawing her into a fierce hug. “And I don’t mind you worrying after me. Don’t know what I’d do without it, to be honest. But think of it this way—I did come back, even after all that happened. A quick visit is nothing in comparison. You won’t even have a chance to miss me.”“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Sara sighed, and hugged him back.vvvGambit took an indirect flight back to Africa, making a number of connections and layovers, calling in a few favours he’d chalked up during his navy and racing days to pick up some private flights that left his name off the flight lists. He wanted to avoid anyone other than Sara knowing where he’d gone, or even that he had gone, if he could help it. He knew that, given the chance, his old employers would go to great lengths to acquire the papers that had changed his life inalterably.He knew he’d feel something upon landing in the country that had borne witness to his living nightmare—a sense of foreboding, perhaps, or even just anxiety. But he thought he had managed to get his emotions under control enough in the intervening months that he’d be able to hold things together relatively well. That made it all the more upsetting when he found himself locked in the bathroom of a building not five miles from the airport, shaking and sweating and gasping for air. He wasn’t even anywhere near the jungle or the compound where his ordeal had taken place, and here he was, a complete wreck, a prime candidate to be shipped off for institutionalisation at the first opportunity. For a moment, Gambit considered what Sara had said about turning around and coming home at the first sign of emotional turbulence. But Sara didn’t know what was at stake, and Gambit didn’t know if he could live with himself if he left the papers where they were and they were found by someone who wouldn’t think twice about selling them to the highest bidder. He’d already put them at risk throughout the period of his confinement and recovery. So after an hour of permitting himself to be a complete mess, he took a deep breath, composed himself, drew on his years of martial arts training, and forced his mind to clear, his body to calm, his focus to return, and his resolve to strengthen. Then he left the bathroom and set out to do what had to be done.He stayed overnight in the nearest town before setting off in a vehicle he rented with cash, plus a little extra so the owner would conveniently lose his records on who, exactly, had taken his vehicle for the week. It took time to find his way back to the compound, the maps not logging all of the secret trails and back roads that the less-than-savoury people had carved out over the years. Eventually, he had to abandon the vehicle when the road became too narrow and rough for its rickety undercarriage. He slung his bag onto his back and set off on foot toward his destination. It was strange, retracing his steps to the compound, the same journey he’d made before his capture months earlier. It had been dark then, and he had been full of trepidation. It was light now, but he still found the whole journey daunting. He didn’t expect to find anyone at the compound now--they’d cleared out shortly after he was found by his people, he’d been reliably informed. No one knew he was here, on either side. He expected to be able to recover the papers without incident. But all the same, the memories were weighing him down further with every step, and he had to remind himself several times about why he was there, and how he could—must--be strong. He knew he could do it. He just had to put his head down and not let the background noise dissuade him.Eventually he stumbled onto the track that led to the compound, and got his bearings. A shudder running through his body made him thankful he didn’t have to go back to the compound itself, having hidden the papers a safe distance away.He hoped his memory hadn’t failed him. Closing his eyes, he pictured the scene: him running from the compound, Thyme and her people in hot pursuit. He remembered the chills he’d felt as he realised that he wouldn’t get away, that there was no escape. The only thing he could do was get the papers someplace safe, someplace no one would ever find them, regardless of whether he made it back. It had been dark then, but with his excellent memory, he managed to find his way back to the clearing where he’d hastily buried the package, albeit after a few wrong turns. He found the rock, overgrown with local fauna, that had served as his marker in the dark of the night. It didn’t take too much digging to uncover it. As he picked the package up and held it in his hands, ruminated on how much it had cost him, he wondered if he was relieved that he had found it, or resigned to the fact that it was still in his life. “What now?” he muttered to himself, before tucking the package away, and turning to make the long, secretive trek back through the jungle.vvv“What did you do with them?” Purdey wanted to know. “Did you bring the papers back with you?”Gambit studied the water in his glass. “I thought about leaving them where they were,” he confessed. “And about reburying them in a location where no one would ever look, or just destroying them.” His finger idly traced the rim of his glass. “I’ve thought about destroying them lots of times.”“Why haven’t you?”Gambit shrugged. “Didn’t think that was my choice to make. I felt like I was already putting my oar in more than I really should have, just hiding them. I wasn’t sure I wasn’t mad taking decisions about who should have the power to take out their enemies and potentially start World War Three. I was acting on gut instinct and not much else.”“The best kind of reason, as Steed keeps reminding us,” Purdey pointed out.Gambit smiled ruefully. “I didn’t know Steed then.”“No, but you still did the right thing, taking the papers out of the picture. Even if you didn’t destroy them.” Purdey met his eyes. “You must realise that. Something that powerful. You didn’t have a choice.”“I don’t know what I had or have or don’t have,” Gambit admitted with a sigh. “But either way, I did manage to bring them back without the full force of my old employers crashing down on me, so I must have done something right.”“So they’re here. In England.” Purdey surmised. “Hidden away. Are they safe?”Gambit took another sip of water and nodded. “Safe as they’ll ever be. Unless I find a good reason to move them. And I haven’t yet.”“And you’ve been keeping that secret all this time,” Purdey marvelled. “It must wear on you.”“I don’t think about it much,” Gambit admitted. “Or at least, I try not to. Usually I’m good at it, but today it all comes back.” He bit his lip. “If I don’t tell you where it is, will you hold it against me? Because if I die, I’d rather the hiding place went with me. I don’t want to make anyone else responsible for them.”Purdey shook her head, reached out to take his hand. “I don’t care where it is. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you are here, now, and you don’t have to handle it all alone. Not anymore. Do you understand? It’s over. You did what you have to do, and I am so very proud of you. You made it out and you did the right thing, and I admire you for it.” She squeezed his hand hard. “Thank you.”Gambit was smiling crookedly, not used to having quite so much praise being heaped on him, and from Purdey of all people. “For what?”“For telling me,” Purdey said simply. “I know it can’t have been easy, and I can understand why you wouldn’t want to talk about it. But thank you for trusting me enough to tell me, finally. It means so much.”“Thanks for listening. For being here.” He looked at her worriedly. “Do you still feel the way you did before? Are you going to look at me differently from now on?”“Mike Gambit,” Purdey chastised gently. “You should know me better than that by now. It’ll take more than tales of woe from your past to make me leave you, and I’m certainly not going to start treating you like a charity case.” She paused, then added, “But I will take care of you, when you need taking care of. And today—tonight—I can tell you need taking care of, because you can’t do it for yourself, and you shouldn’t have to. You have been alone in this for much, much too long, but that’s over now. You can relax.” She reconsidered her words. “Well, as much as you can relax while reliving a nightmare.”Gambit chuckled in spite of himself, but the chuckles turned into sobs, and before either of them knew it he was shaking so badly, shoulders heaving, that Purdey put her arms around him, partly to comfort him, and partly to keep him from shaking off of the bed. She held him tightly as he wept in relief, in pain, in gratitude for having her there, and she knew, somehow, that despite the tension that remained in his shoulders, that it had lessened a little, that even if the horrors still flickered behind his eyelids, he was, at least, no longer trying to shore himself up on his own, with nothing but his own will and his credo of self-reliance to see him through to the other side. It was then that she realised he must have done this so many times before, had no arms to hold him together. That made her want to cry, for him; for the past him locked up in his cell; for every scar on his poor, battered body; for everyone who was alone without anyone to help them in their time of great need. But the best thing she knew she could do now was what she had already done, what she was doing now. And she was glad to be there, with him, to make certain he was never, ever alone again and would never be without a balm for his soul. Maybe she couldn’t fix what had happened to him, maybe she couldn’t cleanse him of all of the torments that still haunted him, but she was damned if she wasn’t going to try, and she was going to keep trying as long as they both had breath in their bodies. Because that was what partners did. And Gambit was her partner, in every sense of the word.Eventually, Gambit lapsed into silence and pulled away from her, staring off into distance at things Purdey couldn’t imagine—and didn’t want to--both hands wrapped around his glass in a death grip. He’d spent the last of his strength telling his story, and now that it was finished, he had nothing left to give, mental and emotional reserves completely spent. Purdey watched him, heart breaking, wishing she had the power to go back and time, take the young Gambit by the hand, and tell him not to go to Africa, to follow her into a horizon and future that held no pain. But as there was no time machine in the offing, she was going to have to do the best she could with the present.Purdey leaned forward and gripped the rim of the glass with her fingertips. “Let’s get you to bed,” she said gently.Gambit continued to stare straight ahead, and for a moment Purdey thought he might not have heard her, but he shook his head an imperceptible amount. “No bed.” The words were clipped, staccato, all that he could muster. “Can’t sleep. Nightmares.”“Yes, but you’re exhausted,” Purdey cajoled. “You can’t sit up like that all night. You’ll tip over onto the floor and then where will we be?” She leaned in close, pressing her chest against his shoulder and stroking the back of his head. “At least lie down. You don’t have to sleep.”She could feel that he was still shaking. “Will you stay with me?” His voice sounded so timid, so fearful, hardly like him at all.“Of course I’ll stay,” Purdey said patiently, despite already having made that assurance. She got the impression that Gambit was cognizant of very little, including the recent past. “I’m not about to leave you alone with your demons, Mike Gambit. We’re partners, remember? We have to look out for one another.” She leaned in and lightly kissed his temple. “But let’s make you more comfortable. I’m liable to worry otherwise.” Gambit sighed, and she felt his weight shift as he leaned against her. She tightened the arm around his shoulders, holding him close, hand still on the glass. “I won’t let anything happen to you, and we won’t do anything you don’t want to do, all right?”There was a moment, and then, finally, Gambit nodded. His grip on the glass loosened, and Purdey took it from him, set it on the side table. She used her free hand to feel Gambit’s forehead, and her palm came away slick with sweat. “Gambit, you’re burning up!” she exclaimed in alarm.“Always happens,” Gambit managed. “The heat. I remember the heat.” He pulled away from her suddenly, stood up and ran a hand through his hair. “Too hot. I need to cool down.”“It’s all right,” Purdey soothed, leaping to her feet. “We’ll cool you down. Come on.” She reached out a hand, and he took it, gripped it like the lifeline it was. Purdey held tight and led the way to the bathroom.She cast her mind back to a year earlier, remembered her and Gambit’s disastrous trip to the disco, and finding him later that night huddled, fully clothed, in an ice-cold shower. He hadn’t been able to explain why he was there at the time, even after she climbed in after him, but it all made sense now. Purdey understood his reasoning, but planned to conduct herself a little differently this time.Once in the bathroom, she turned to face Gambit, brushed some hair back from his forehead, her fingers picking up beads of sweat, before setting to work on his buttons. Gambit looked down at her hands in mild disbelief, then back up at her. “I’m not really up for this much fun,” he commented, a hint of his usual spark permeating the fog of memory. Purdey grinned in spite of herself.“It’s not that. I’m going to put you in the shower to cool off. But unlike last time, I thought I’d do it in a way that was rather less punishing on our wardrobes.”“Oh.” Gambit looked back down at her hands. “I can do that myself.”“Can you?” Purdey eyed his shaking fingers. “It’s all right, Mike. I don’t mind.”Gambit mustered a tenuous grin. “Well, if you’re sure…”Purdey didn’t answer, just kept going, nimble fingers working quickly. She slid the shirt off, and only then did she see that his chest was flushed, too. She turned away and folded the shirt, set it on the toilet, not wanting Gambit to see her concern. The sooner she got him to cool off, the better. She knelt and helped him remove his boots and socks, then straightened up and set to work on his trousers. Unexpectedly, he put his arms around her and hugged her tight. “Thank you,” he whispered in her ear. “For being here.”“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” she assured, pulling back so he could see the sincerity of her smile. When she finished pushing down his trousers, she helped him into the tub, making sure he sat down carefully lest his legs give out. Then she turned on the shower, opting to make it lukewarm rather than ice cold, mindful that he could catch a chill. The water started flowing, and Gambit let out a long, relieved breath through his nose. But as Purdey reached out to draw the shower curtain across the tub, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t leave me,” he pleaded, alarm written all over his face. “Please.”Purdey stroked his cheek and smiled away his fears. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promised. “I don’t want your bathroom floor to get wet, that’s all.”“I don’t care if it gets wet.” Gambit was talking in a rush, water dripping down his arm and onto the floor. “Please, just don’t go.”Purdey relented. “All right,” she soothed. “I won’t.” His desperate grip loosened, but he watched her nervously as she took off her shoes and stockings. Eventually, he relaxed and closed his eyes, and Purdey watched his chest rise and fall as she shimmied out of her dress and underwear. She shook off the sense of déjà vu as she stepped into the tub and knelt facing him between his outstretched legs, just as she had that night a year ago. Only this time, the water wasn’t as cold, she wasn’t in the dark, and her dancing dress wasn’t going to need drying out in the morning. She drew the shower curtain closed, sealing them into their own little rainy world. The water quickly plastered her hair to her head, trickled down her body, but all she saw was Gambit, line between eyes that were squeezed tightly shut against the water, or his memories, or both. She rested a hand against his chest, felt the elevation of his heartbeat, wished she could do more than keep him cool and let her know she was here, but just being with him seemed to be what he needed, so she was happy to provide it. Gambit opened his eyes at her touch, and lifted the arms from where they were resting on his knees to wrap around her. She did the same, and they held each other, forehead to forehead, as the cleansing water poured over them.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey wasn’t sure how long they stayed in the shower, but eventually Gambit stopped shaking and she could feel some of the tension leave his muscles. She looked up from where her face was buried in Gambit’s chest to find his eyes shut tight, but the little crease between his eyebrows had faded considerably, suggesting a level of relaxation, or at the very least semi-consciousness, which at that point was a blessing.Purdey gently disentangled herself from Gambit, and switched off the tap. She looked to Gambit, but he didn’t react, just sat there, water dripping out of his sodden hair. She squeezed some of the liquid out of her own blonde strands and carefully climbed out of the tub, retrieved two towels off the rack. She wrapped one around herself and draped the other over her shoulder. It was only then that she bent and touched Gambit’s shoulder.He wasn’t quite as relaxed as she’d hoped, as evidenced by the way his eyes snapped open and his body jerked upright. “It’s all right,” she soothed, meeting his eyes, trying to quiet the pulse skipping along under her fingertips. “It’s only me. I thought we could try going to bed.”Gambit looked uncertain. “Bed means sleep. Sleep means nightmares.”“We don’t have to sleep,” Purdey pointed out. “We can sit up with the lights on all night, if you want. But you must admit it’ll be more comfortable than sitting in here all night.” She took his hand, squeezed it reassuringly. “I’ll be there the whole time, I promise. You won’t be alone.”Gambit thought about this for a moment, but Purdey could feel by the way that he gripped her hand that her presence was an anchor in his otherwise-swirling mind. Eventually, he managed a small nod. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay. I’ll try.”Purdey smiled encouragingly, and helped him stand, his trembling limbs sapped of his usual strength. She guided him carefully out of the bath, making sure he didn’t trip as he stepped over the side, and wrapped the towel around him as if he were only a small child. Which, at that moment, he practically was.She guided him out into the living area, never breaking eye contact, certain that if she did he’d see something horrible in her place. She felt blindly behind her for the bed, not looking away from him for a moment. Eventually she found the sheet, drew it back. “You can sit down. I’ll take care of everything else.”He swallowed hard at the sight of the bed, but she beckoned to him, trying to convince him there was nothing sinister hiding under the covers, and eventually managed to manoeuvre him between the sheets. But when she moved to step away, his hand was suddenly on her arm, eyes begging her not to go. “You said you wouldn’t leave,” he said in a panicked rush, the words tumbling out one after another.“I’m just going to find something to wear,” she explained patiently. “I can’t very well sit in this towel all night. Much as you might want me to.”That got a small smile out of him, much to her relief. If he responded even a little bit to flirting, that meant some of the ghosts were being held at bay. “I’ll just be in the next room, and only for a moment. And I’ll leave all the lights on. Do you think you can handle that?” She was starting to wonder if leaving him alone at all, even for something as simple as getting clothes, was wise. She could see Gambit’s uncertainty, too, but then he seemed to strengthen his resolve. The muscles in his jaw tightened stubbornly, and he nodded. “I’ll be okay,” he vowed, and released her arm. It was a promise to her, and Gambit prided himself on never breaking a promise, especially to her. He was promising to make an effort to be strong, for her. Purdey nodded once to show him she understood, even if his making the gesture broke her heart a little, but hurried to the closet nonetheless. She surveyed the small selection of clothes she kept at Gambit’s flat, briefly considered choosing a pair of pajamas from the multitude sent to him by his aunt, but in the end opted for a short nightgown. Something told her that of Gambit was able to feel her skin against his, it might be a comfort, a sign that there was someone nearby, that he wasn’t alone.She slipped the nightgown on, then retreated to the bathroom to hang up her towel, clean her teeth, and comb her damp hair into something resembling a hairstyle. Then she almost dashed for the living room, suddenly conscious of how long she was taking. It had probably been only a few minutes, but to Gambit she knew it could easily feel like an eternity, and in his state of mind that was much too long for him to do something unwise.Her heart was in her mouth when she entered the living room, but to her relief Gambit was all right, sitting up in bed with the sheet pooled around his waist, looking pale but still physically intact. Purdey sighed in relief and moved to lay her hand on his shoulder. He started a little in surprise, but when he saw it was her, he grasped her arm like the lifeline it was. “You’re back.” He didn’t bother trying to hide the relief in his voice, or to make a joke about his dependence on her, which told her how frightened he really was. This was Gambit stripped of all his defences, not because he chose to be vulnerable, or because the situation warranted it. This was out of his control, which was devastating for a man who put so much stock in his own self-discipline. He was relying on her entirely, and Purdey was determined not to let him down.“Yes,” she confirmed. “I said I would be.”Gambit bit his lip and nodded a little. “Yes. Sorry. I…I don’t know what I thought would happen.”“You thought I might disappear,” Purdey supplied, not unkindly. “Or that I was never real to begin with. But I didn’t and I am. And I’m not going to leave you again. I’m just going to get some things from the kitchen, but you can watch me so you know I’ve not disappeared into thin air.”Gambit nodded again, eyes unbelievably wide, almost childlike. “Okay.”“Good.” Purdey kissed his temple, then moved to the open concept kitchen that backed onto the living room. She cast around for what she might need during the night, collecting items as she went, welcoming the distraction of slipping into brisk, businesslike efficiency mode. A bowl of water, with ice, and a tea towel, to cool his brow, since he had a habit of overheating when he was dreaming or having flashbacks. A glass of water to make up for everything he sweated out. Some sleeping pills, though she wasn’t sure she could convince him to take them. Gambit hated any kind of medication—it dulled his senses and his reflexes, two things he relied on to keep himself—and his partners--safe. But if he was desperate enough, and she was there to keep watch over him, then maybe he could persuade him to take them. She carried her bag of tricks to the side table in stages, then paused and moved to readjust the television so it could be seen from the now-extended bed. It might be a good distraction, she thought, though she wasn’t sure how much Gambit would be able to appreciate anything he might watch. After much debate, she also poured a small measure of scotch into a glass, and added it to the table. Gambit had already quaffed a certain amount while he told his story, and she wasn’t certain getting him drunk would help his already frazzled mind, but maybe it would be useful later on, if she was desperate. Finally, she found his Mozart record and put it on the turntable, needle down, but didn’t switch it on. Music was a common stress-reliever for her, and because Gambit’s flat was automated she could activate the player without having to leave the bed, just as she could switch on the television or the lights at will. She sometimes teased Gambit about his love of gadgets, but she knew they might prove a lifesaver that night, perhaps literally, even if she was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.Her preparations finished, she went back to the bed, where Gambit was still sitting, cross-legged, beneath the sheets, staring off into space with a haunted look in his eye that made her want to cry. She forced herself to remain impassive. If Gambit thought he was upsetting her, it’d only upset him more, and that was the opposite of what she wanted to do. So she braced herself and got into bed beside him, forced her tone to be breezy rather than overwrought. She laid her hands flat on the mattress behind her for support and leaned back. “So,” she said gently to Gambit, who flinched a little at the sound of her voice. “What happens now?”Gambit blinked at her for a moment, disoriented, clearly lost in unpleasant memories of the past. “Uh, I don’t know to be honest. It doesn’t really follow a schedule.”Purdey nodded, as if that made sense to her. “All right. What do you want to do next?”“Not go through the rest of tonight,” Gambit answered bluntly, and Purdey could see how frightened he was. It was disconcerting to say the least. Gambit wasn’t one to show fear easily—he knew how to slip the mask into place, knew how to trust his training and instincts to see him through, had the discipline to fight panic and doubt and uncertainty. Even when he was scared, he still managed to suppress the worst of it long enough to make sure everyone made it through the crisis intact, or as much as that was possible. But to see Gambit this frightened, completely at the mercy of whatever he was facing and unable to resist it, let alone fight back, was a new and unwelcome sight. She was so used to leaning on Gambit when things turned serious, so certain that she could trust him as both friend and partner to lend his strength to her cause and help her through whatever troubles she might encounter. She’d done the same for him both professionally and personally before, of course. But never like this. Never had he been quite so raw, so vulnerable, so completely dependent on her to hold him together mentally and emotionally. She was strong, but she was going to have to be doubly strong tonight, to see them both through the long, lonely hours to come, with not even him recounting his horror story to distract them. But she was determined to do everything she could to help him on a minute-by-minute basis. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she let Gambit down. “If I had a time machine,” Purdey opined, watching Gambit’s forehead crinkle slightly in puzzlement, “I’d take you into the middle of next week, and you could skip all this.” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “But since mine’s still in the planning stages, tell me, what can I do tonight?”Gambit bit his lip, and she couldn’t help but be disappointed that her joke failed to raise a smile. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never had anyone to help me through before. Never let anyone.” He cast his eyes downward. “I don’t know what to say, other than just be here. With me.”“I think I’ve already made it quite clear that I plan to do that,” Purdey pointed out. “Why don’t we try lying down?”She felt Gambit tense up immediately, the muscles in his arms turning wiry. “Lying down means sleep. I don’t want to sleep. Please.” He was pleading with her again, helpless with fear.“Shh.” Purdey placed her hands on either side of his head, turned it so he had to look at her. “We don’t have to sleep. Just lie down. We’ll leave the light on and we can look at each other. You don’t have to close your eyes. But you’ll get awfully tired if you sit like this all night, and I don’t think wearing yourself out will help. And if you do get frightened, we can always sit up again.”Gambit thought about this for a moment, then sighed. “Okay. I’ll try.”Purdey smiled encouragingly, and supported his form so he could settle down onto the mattress on his left side. When she thought he looked comfortable enough, she did the same, stretching out on her right side so they were face to face. She met his eyes, reassuring him that she was here, unwilling to let that distant expression he’d been wearing throughout the night re-emerge. Gambit was looking back at her uncertainly, but at least he was looking at her.“Would talking distract you?” she asked him. “Or does that only make it worse?”Gambit considered. “Anything’s better than thinking about it,” he decided. “If we can think of something to talk about.”“Mike Gambit, you ought to know by now that I always have something to talk about,” Purdey scolded gently, and Gambit laughed a little in spite of his current misery, which told Purdey that whatever she was doing, it was working.“All right, I’ll leave the topic up to you,” he relented, happy to surrender to Purdey’s irrepressible will. “Just nothing too strenuous. I’m not at my best.”“Well, all right, but a little healthy mental exertion might be just what you need.” She considered for a moment. “For example, have you ever wondered which one Steed would choose if he was only allowed to have either his bowler or his brolly?”That made Gambit chuckle again, and Purdey carried out both sides of the debate, admirably, all on her own, until he fell asleep.vvvIt was hot and dark. Gambit couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, but he could feel the sweat trickling down his back, stinging open wounds he hoped weren’t as bad as he imagined. He was so tired, desperately needed to sleep. He’d lost track of time awhile ago, shortly after the last time they’d dragged him out of the room to force his head into a trough of water until he almost passed out. He didn’t exactly look forward to that ordeal, but at least it was better than being in the dark, cramped room with the bucket that no one emptied often enough. Being out of his cell reminded him of the existence of things like sun and breeze and sky, even if they were only glimpsed briefly.But that didn’t stop him from starting at the sound of footsteps outside his door, his body trained to associate them with pain and questions and the effort required to keep from giving in. He was tired, so tired, but as the steps got nearer the adrenaline kicked in, and he was wired, eyes opening wide, even as the door creaked and the light streamed in, blinding him. His heart raced, sweat broke out across his body, drenching him even more. It was so hot, so stuffy. He was suffocating, drowning, and yet they were still somehow going to take him and make him suffer more. He didn’t want to, couldn’t take any more. Not again!vvvGambit sat bolt upright with a cry, body drenched with sweat, scrabbling around frantically in the dark for something to hang onto, to make it harder for them to take him away, even if it only bought him a second or two. And then there was light--from the door! It had to be from the door!“Mike!” The voice came from over his left shoulder, and there were hands on his arms, holding him tight, the touch tender, not rough. “Mike, it’s me. It’s Purdey.”Gambit swung around in surprise, came face to face with a pair of familiar blue eyes worriedly meeting his. He looked below them and saw the rest of Purdey’s face. Purdey’s. Not anyone else’s. Just Purdey’s. “Are you real?” he asked, voice shaking.“I’m very real,” Purdey assured, rubbing his back. “You were having a nightmare. Wherever you thought you were, you aren’t there anymore.”Gambit looked hard at Purdey, expecting her to dissolve into nothing at any moment. “Purdey.”She nodded in confirmation. “Purdey.”He swallowed hard, then looked beyond her. The light that he had been so sure was an opening cell door was, in fact, the lamp on his side table, which Purdey had undoubtedly turned on the moment he’d begun thrashing about. He started to feel himself relax.“Purdey,” he repeated, sagging against her. “I’m sorry.”“Don’t apologise,” she chastised gently. “You had a nightmare, that’s all, but it’s all right now.”He wanted to cry in relief at her words, and in spite of himself, he did. A little. “Right, right.”“Shh,” she soothed, wrapping her arms around him and holding him until the sobs subsided.“How long have I been asleep?” he asked eventually, when he could trust his voice to stay steady enough to speak.“A little over an hour and a half,” she told him. “Maybe closer to two. How long does it usually take the nightmares to start?”“They usually come on sooner than that,” Gambit replied, taking the glass of water she offered him. It was blessedly cool, passing over his parched lips like a soothing balm. He handed it back to her when he was finished, and she quickly swapped it for a cloth dipped in ice water, applied it to his brow to try to staunch the sweat that was trickling down his temples. Gambit sighed in relief as he felt his body begin to cool and calm.“What does that mean?” Purdey wanted to know, and Gambit looked at her in confusion for a moment, until she clarified what she meant. “That it took longer than usual. Is that a good sign?”Gambit took the hand not currently occupied with the cloth and squeezed it gratefully. “I’ve never slept that long before the nightmares started. Not once. So yes, I think it’s a good sign. And it’s all down to you.” “Well, it’s not all me,” Purdey demurred, but looked quite pleased with herself nonetheless. “If you hadn’t quit paying attention to my scintillating line of reasoning about why Steed would definitely choose his bowler over his brolly, you wouldn’t have fallen asleep.”“You’ll have to catch me up some other time, when I’m in better shape to appreciate it.”“I intend to,” Purdey assured, removing the cloth. “Better?”“Much. Thanks, Purdey-girl.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. The nightmares were still there, lurking in the back of his mind, but they felt more distant than they had a few moments ago. “I think I might try going back to sleep.” Purdey looked surprised. “Already? I thought you’d take some time to calm down after that.”“So did I. But it seems like I’ve found the best way to recover from nightmares is a chat with you.” Gambit settled back down under the covers. “So long as you don’t abandon me, I think I’ll be all right.”“Well, I was planning on going out to dinner later, but if you insist.” Purdey rearranged the cloth so that it would drape over his forehead without her assistance. “Just wait a moment while I pay a visit to the facilities.”vvvGambit slumped forward as far as his bindings would let him. The chair was bolted to the floor and kept him from tipping over, not that he would have felt much if he hit the concrete. Parts of him had gone blessedly numb from the bindings, his wrists where they were restrained to hold his arms in place behind his back. The pins and needles were almost a relief after the pain that had been doled out for the past three hours.His mouth was bone dry—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any water—and tasted terrible, a mixture of blood and vomit and the aftertaste of whatever truth serum drug they’d pumped him full of this time. He’d been surprised by that, the recourse to drugs. They didn’t seem like Thyme’s style. In their brief but intense acquaintance, he’d pegged her as a far more psychological adversary, one more likely to play with your mind to get what she wanted, leavened with the odd bit of pain for good measure. Gambit knew how to fight the drugs, had been trained in it before he was deployed, but he still found it rather odd that they were only being used now, after something like two to three months—by his count; it was hard to keep track of time in the cell—into his interrogation. Still, whatever reason was behind it, Gambit knew it couldn’t be good. Which was why he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the floor as he heard the scrape of a chair being pulled closer and saw a pair of army boots enter his field of vision.“Well, Major?” The voice still made his blood run cold, even after all this time. But he didn’t let on, keeping his gaze fixed on the floor, and the dark curls that were littering it. They’d obviously cut his hair again a few hours earlier. He felt his brow crease in minor bemusement. How had he forgotten that? He knew intuitively that that couldn’t be a good sign. His mind was starting to go. Who knew how long it would be before he lost any semblance of sanity?“You know that waiting me out is never going to work,” came the voice again.“I don’t believe that,” Gambit said flatly, with just a touch of sarcasm. “I’m bound to make you late for a meeting or something at some point. May as well keep at it. I’ve got time to kill.”There was a rustle of clothes as the feet rearranged themselves, and Gambit could tell she’d leaned forward. “I have things to kill, too.”“I’m sure you do, but could you start with the rats in my cell? It’s getting a bit crowded in there.”He heard a short, sharp intake of breath that he recognised as the infuriated inhalation of someone whose temper was wearing thin, followed by deep breaths that revealed a brave attempt to calm oneself. “All right. Have it your way, Major,” she growled, rising from her chair and walking past him toward the door. In spite of himself, Gambit relaxed the tiniest fraction of an inch. Another round of inquisition over for the day. Another hurdle surmounted, however small, however insignificant in the grand scheme of things.But he should have known better. He should have known Vanessa wouldn’t leave him alone that easily. Without warning, hands were gripping his shorn scalp, fingernails digging sharply into his flesh newly-revealed flesh. His head was forced back, tipping over the back of the chair, eyes meeting Vanessa’s own as she bent over him, lips parted in a snarl. She looked half-crazed, and Gambit wondered seriously, for the first time, if she was going to kill him. If he’d finally worn her patience too thin. Dully, he realised that this intelligence didn’t do much for him, that he was somehow, not suicidal, not resigned, but accepting. If this was how it ended, so be it. He’d had so much of his autonomy taken from him long before he’d found himself in Vanessa’s cell. One thing he could choose was to not be forced to give up on something he believed in so strongly. And if, by some miracle, he ever did find a way out of there, he was going to hold out just as much with his so-called commanding officers about the whereabout as he was with his torturer. A manipulator was a manipulator, and Gambit had had his fill of them for life.“You can hold out as long as you like, Major,” Vanessa was snarling into his upturned features. “But no one’s coming for you. Everyone thinks you’re dead. And no one cares. One day you’ll beg to give me the papers, just so I’ll put you out of your misery.”“We’ll see about that,” Gambit shot back. “But you shouldn’t try to take away all my hope. Give me only my principles and convictions to hang onto, and I’ll cling to them twice as hard. And then we’ll both be in for a battle.” He matched Vanessa’s feral grin with one of his own. “So I’m up for outlasting you out of sheer grit, or stubbornness. But I’m not going to be your puppet. And if my people do happen to come for me, you can tell them the same thing. I’ve had my fill of the lot of you.” With that, he wrenched his head from her grasp, and commenced glowering at the nearest wall. Much to his satisfied surprise, he thought he caught a glimpse of a disgruntled Vanessa just before he did so. He was going to need every victory he could get in the days to come, and heaven knew they were going to be few and far between. May as well savour them.vvvPurdey awoke with a start, and instantly knew something was wrong. Turning on the light and sitting up only confirmed it. Gambit was gone, the sheet pushed aside, the cloth she’d put on his forehead lying limp and forlorn on the side table. “Mike?” Purdey called, throwing back the bedclothes in a frenzy of long legs and nightdress. She quickly registered that Gambit’s trousers were missing from the pile of clothes she’d laid carefully on a chair. She’d gotten up for a glass of water not an hour ago. Gambit had been sleeping soundly then. Had she woken him up when she’d gone back to bed? She cursed herself for falling asleep. She should have stayed awake, kept a vigil. One night without her beauty sleep was a small price to pay for Gambit’s well-being and her peace of mind. The idea of Gambit getting up in the night and wandering off half-clothed and not in his right mind made her stomach twist into the most diabolical of knots. “Mike?” she cried again, a little more desperately this time, padding around the flat to search for any other clues of where he’d gone. She checked that the front door was still closed and locked, and felt a brief flutter of relief, then set about searching the flat, heading toward the guest room, bare feet slapping against the tile near the closet. “Mike?” On instinct she tried the bathroom door, flung it open just in time to catch the full effect of Gambit being loudly sick in the loo, muscles in his naked back straining violently as he emptied his already-hollow stomach into the basin.“Mike,” Purdey repeated, softer this time, voice laced with sympathy, felt her legs go rubbery with relief. She snagged a towel off the rack, one that hadn’t been used to dry them off after their shared shower, and knelt down beside him as he half-sat, half-fell, back onto the tiles, the strength of throwing up costing more than he could afford. “Here,” she said gently, draping the towel over his bare shoulders before stretching to pick up the glass he kept in the medicine cabinet. She filled it at the sink, a difficult stretch on her knees, but she managed it. She didn’t want to stand lest Gambit think he was being abandoned. She settled back on her knees with the full glass and handed it to Gambit, keeping one hand on it as she did so. “Rinse your mouth,” she instructed, like a mother to a sick child. “You’ll feel better.” Gambit drank without comment, swirled and spat it in the bath before settling back against her. Purdey left the half-full glass on the tiles beside her in case she needed it again, then set about cradling Gambit’s shaking form against her. She felt his forehead and found he was burning up again, her palm coming away slick with sweat, and there was a deep line between his eyes and a general pallor to his skin that made him look more ill than traumatised. “Sick with trauma,” she remembered her Uncle Elly saying on those few occasions he’d been serious about his time in service, and the men he’d seen suffer in the aftermath. Gambit was among their number that night, unquestionably.“Do you want to go back in the shower?” she asked after a moment, as she stroked his hair absently. “Cool down again?”“No,” Gambit croaked, eyes still shut tight, whether from pain or nausea or bad memories she didn’t know. “I just—can we just sit here for awhile?”“Of course we can,” Purdey assured. “What did you do when you were alone, and didn’t have anyone to care for you?”“Sat here on my own,” Gambit said simply, blearily. “I’ve been here before, lots of times, but not with good company.” Purdey felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth at the compliment, a bright spot in this awful night, and kept up stroking his hair. Gambit shifted suddenly, uneasily, pulling away from her. “What’s wrong?” she wanted to know, even as he fell forward onto his hands and knees, crawling away from her. “What happened?”“I need to lie down,” he croaked, settling down on his side against the tiles. He noticed her looking at him with alarm, and smiled crookedly, apologetically. “I’m feeling sick again. Probably all that scotch from earlier coming back to haunt me. Besides, I can’t relax if I can feel you but can’t see you. Knowing that there’s someone behind me, someone I can’t see, it’s—““Too much like the cell,” Purdey finished, mouth pressed into a thin, grim line. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”“You couldn’t have known,” Gambit murmured tiredly, curling up on the tiles, towel sliding off his bare shoulders. “You can go back to bed, if you like. I know it’s not comfortable, but the tile’s cool at least. It feels better than the bed.”“I’d rather keep you company,” Purdey asserted, pulling the towel back over his shoulders before taking another one off the rack for herself. She spread it over her body like a blanket, lay down facing him. “Is this okay?”“Everything about you is okay,” Gambit murmured thickly. “Sure you don’t want to get a pillow or something? I know it’s not exactly the Ritz down here.”“And leave you alone? No, thank you. You gave me the fright of my life when I woke up and found you missing,” Purdey said with feeling. “Anyway, I’ve slept in my share of uncomfortable places. When we were rehearsing a show at the ballet, I used to sleep on the floor backstage all the time.”Gambit was watching her with slightly-glazed eyes, and she could tell he was torn between a nightmare from the past and the reality of the here and now. He was desperately trying to focus on the latter, and Purdey made it her personal mission to help his cause as much as possible. “Couldn’t the Royal Ballet spring for a couch?” he wanted to know, a question stretching across the expanse of space and time between them.“One or two,” Purdey acknowledged. “But we had a whole troupe to accommodate and the hours were long. Everyone was competing for the good napping spots. It was all I could do to curl up on a sandbag under a shawl in a corner somewhere.”Gambit slanted a sceptical eyebrow at her. “You’re sure this was the ballet? Not a scene out of ‘The Little Match Girl’?”“Gambit!” It was an automatic cry of outrage, one without much force behind it. She was more grateful that he was talking. “It’s not all glamour in the arts, you know. It’s mostly hard work—blood, sweat, and tears, and lots of competition to be at the top. It only looks pretty and fairylike when we’re onstage. We worked long hours for very little pay, and we were always bruised, our toes were always bleeding, and everyone was always exhausted.”“But you loved it.” Gambit’s lips were tense, but somehow he managed a smile.“But I loved it,” Purdey confirmed with a wistful sigh. “I do wish that I’d been able to stay a little longer. Sometimes.”“Only sometimes?” Gambit sounded surprised.Purdey shrugged. “Well, if I had stayed, I might never have ended up at the Ministry. Might never have met you.” She reached out and stroked the curve of his jaw. “And that would have been much, much worse than never dancing Odette.”Gambit laughed softly. “You’re sure about that? Lying here on a bathroom floor with a man having a nervous breakdown?”“Very sure,” Purdey said sincerely, smiling away his fears. “I always knew you were mad,” Gambit quipped, but she could tell he was barely fending off tears of gratitude and love at her devotion, here and now, in the depths of his despair.“Then we make a good pair,” she pointed out, shifting closer to him so she could curl her arm around his waist, maintaining physical contact.He nodded almost too earnestly, eyes still flickering with ghosts. “Tell me more about the ballet,” he almost pleaded.“What, now?”“I’ve always wanted to know more about your dancing days. Now seems as good a time as any.”“What do you want to know?”“Anything. Everything.”So she told him. Told him about rehearsals and classes and costume fittings, about the smell of the theatre and the thrill of applause, about friendships that had since drifted into Christmas cards and the odd telegram from overseas. About how dance had always been the one thing she could hold onto in good times and bad. Very bad.He didn’t fall asleep, but he did drift into a half-somnolent state, just when her throat had gone raw from talking, and then she was finally able to pull him to his feet and sleepwalk him to bed, where he collapsed without comment into a deep slumber.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit awoke the next morning, slowly, blearily, so disoriented that he felt as though he were emerging from a coma. The crick in his neck and the lines stamped into his flesh by the creases in the sheets told him that he’d been lying in one position for some time, the best indicator of a long, undisturbed period of sleep. Gambit squinted uncomprehendingly at this evidence of an extended period of slumber, not quite able to believe he’d managed to stay unconscious for that long without being rudely interrupted by his own brain. But there had definitely been no pounding heart in his chest when his eyes had opened a moment ago, no sheets drenched in sweat, no cry of fear on his lips. Just his eyes slowly sliding open and squinting at the sunlight streaming into his living room. It was the morning after the night before, but a completely different kind than the sort he usually associated with that term. And it was definitely different than the type of mornings he normally enjoyed after awful anniversary nights. His well-honed instincts sensed movement over his shoulder, spurring him to react before his brain had even twigged that something of interest was happening. He rolled over and looked blearily up at Purdey, who was perched on one of his bar stools, dragged into position by the bed, sipping a cup of tea and reading one of his weaponry magazines. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said brightly, treating him to a radiant smile. “I was starting to wonder if you’d slipped into a coma, but I didn’t want to wake you. You needed all the sleep you could get.”Gambit blinked disbelievingly at her. “So I slept through part of the night?” he hazarded. Even though the evidence was there, creased into his flesh, he still felt unsure of his ground. “Well, yes,” Purdey acknowledged, eyebrows knitting worriedly. “Don’t you remember?”“I remember you putting me to bed,” Gambit said slowly, eyes focussed as though he was concentrating hard. “I remember waking up screaming once. And again to be sick…” He started working his jaw, trying to unpick the quilt of nightmares and old memories from the new ones. “We fell asleep on the bathroom floor, didn’t we?”“You might have. Briefly,” Purdey said wearily, rotating her shoulders to ease the crimp in her back. “I still have the tile pattern dug into the skin all the way down my right arm. I talked until you settled down and then brought you back to bed. Don’t you remember?”Gambit shook his head. “No,” he admitted.“Not surprising, I suppose,” Purdey sighed. “You were half-out before you even hit the pillows.”“And I didn’t wake up after that?” Gambit looked incredulous. He knew Purdey had to be right. He’d come to the same conclusion before she said a word. But it still seemed impossible. Too much to hope for.“Oh, you did,” Purdey replied. “You woke up twice more. Once around three, muttering something about wanting to be let go, and then again at six. But you fell asleep so quickly again both times that I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”“I don’t,” Gambit confirmed, finally rising into a sitting position. “Which is saying something.”Purdey cocked her head in interest. “Do you usually remember waking up?”Gambit nodded. “And then some. I remember what I’ve been dreaming about a little too well, and then I can’t get it out of my head long enough to go back to sleep. And when I do it’s not for long. To wake up only, what, four times, and only remember two…” He shook his head. “That’s unheard of in all the time I’ve been dealing with this.”“Is that a good thing?” Purdey wanted to know, looking unsettled by the possibility that it might not be.“That’s definitely a good thing.” Gambit shook his head in mild disbelief. “And I slept undisturbed after that?” “For the last three hours or so, yes.”Gambit’s head snapped up in surprise. Even according to his own calculations, he hadn’t thought it could be that long. “Three hours? Are you sure?”“Just about,” Purdey replied in mild alarm, still looking concerned. “I didn’t enter it in your chart or anything. I’m only impersonating a night nurse, not auditioning for the actual part.”“You ought to,” Gambit recommended, a careworn but very real smile spreading across his features. “I’ve never slept that long undisturbed since I started dealing with all of this.”“And that’s good?” Purdey reiterated, setting her cup, saucer, and magazine down so she could take Gambit’s hand and help him struggle out of the bedclothes.“Good? It’s brilliant,” Gambit enthused as he got to his feet, feeling elation override disbelief. “It means I did better. I felt better during…well, maybe not all of it, but bits of it. I had some peace, despite the nightmares.” His crooked smile was endearingly boyish, as was the hopeful light in his eyes. “Maybe it’ll get to the point, someday, where I don’t have to dread that day when it comes around. It gives me hope, at least. And it’s all because of you.” He grasped her hands in his. “Just like last year. I was with you and I felt better. I coped better.”Purdey was looking at him incredulously. “But I didn’t do very much,” she demurred. “Other than mop your fevered brow and make soothing noises and sit here--”“That’s right,” Gambit interrupted. “You were here. You held me together. You got me through the night. And you kept calming me down. And it was exactly what I needed. I always knew you were the best thing I’d ever seen.” He pressed grateful kisses to her palms. “Did I mention I love you?”“You may have, once or twice.” Purdey’s smile at the compliment was quickly interrupted by a yawn, and Gambit’s face fell instantly. “Sorry, I didn’t think—did you get any sleep at all?”“A little,” Purdey replied, smiling to take some of the sting away. “I didn’t do too badly until you disappeared to the bathroom on me, and then I didn’t want to wake up and find you gone for good.”Gambit ducked his head and flushed. “Sorry,” he apologised. “But I did warn you it wouldn’t be a good night. You didn’t have to—““I wanted to,” Purdey cut in, feeling his forehead. “And I’ll survive. It’s no worse than spending all night on surveillance.” She smiled bravely. “I am made of stern stuff, you know.”“Don’t I know it,” Gambit acknowledged, as Purdey moved her hand to press the back to his cheek.“How are you feeling?” Purdey wanted to know. His temperature was back to normal, he wasn’t sweating, and his eyes weren’t glassy, but he still looked grey and tired and generally worn out.“Like you, I’ll survive,” Gambit told her wearily, elation ebbing away as his body remembered just how fatigued he was. “I’m just tired. Wrung out. Feel like a piece of dried cod, and about as lively.”Purdey nodded and dropped her hand, satisfied that he was tired, but not ill. “Sounds about right. I made some coffee, if that’ll help.”“You’re a saint. And a psychic.” Gambit kissed her forehead and made for the kitchen, extracting a cup and saucer of his own from the cupboard into which to pour the life-giving brew.“Are you fit to go into work today?” Purdey wondered, trailing in his wake. “I rang Steed, and he wants us to meet at the stud farm, but if you’re not well enough, we could take some time off and I could stay with you.”Gambit poured the coffee and took a sip before shaking his head. “No, I’ll go in. It’s better than hanging about here and thinking about whatever my mind threw up last night.”Purdey bit her lip and regarded him with concern, second-guessing her earlier diagnosis. “Are you sure? Only you still look awfully peaked.”Gambit set the coffee cup on the counter, and rested his hands, palms down, on either side of the vessel. “I’m not saying I’m up to running a marathon,” he admitted. “The aftershocks tend to linger on after the fact. I’ll still get flashbacks today if things hold true to course.” He shrugged resignedly. “At least at the farm there’ll be fewer people to see me if I break down. You and Steed won’t just think I’m hungover or coming off a bender.”Purdey still didn’t look convinced, but she knew there was no point in arguing. Gambit could be as stubborn as her, and just as resolute. “I suppose you could always go upstairs and have a rest in one of Steed’s guest rooms if you had to,” she said finally, reluctantly. “And you won’t be doing anything dangerous.”“You don’t know that,” Gambit teased. “Maybe Steed wants us to re-roof his house.”“At this point, that might actually be a relief,” Purdey said softly. Gambit was trying to be light-hearted, but the lines around his mouth and the deep creases between his eyes told her that the ghosts of the fight he’d waged the night before were still haunting his consciousness. “If we’re going to go, we’d better get ready,” she went on, switching to business when the consequences of looking into Gambit’s eyes got to be too much. She’d spent enough time surveying the pain in them to last a lifetime “You can have the shower first. I’ll tell Steed we’re coming.”vvvGambit shed the trousers he’d spent half the night in, now so permeated with dried sweat that he threw them directly into the laundry basket as a complete lost cause, and stepped into the shower. He turned the tap to hot this time, allowing himself water that was a more humane temperature than what he and Purdey had bathed in the night before, and pressed his palms to the wall in front of him for support as he lent forward and bowed his head under the stream. The water washed over him like a cleansing wave, banishing some of the lingering fog of fear of the night, but as he’d told Purdey, there were still echoes of nightmares and old memories banging around in his skull. The proof, as if any were needed, was evident in the involuntary shuddering and tremors that he was still exhibiting, though he’d been trying to keep them hidden from Purdey in the kitchen—how successfully, he didn’t know. He shook his head to clear it, droplets of water flying outward, slapping against the shower curtain like violent rain. He wasn’t fine, not really, but he was better—much better than he had been the morning after his ordeal in previous years, even better than the previous year, when Purdey had been there and provided some of the solace that had been missing from the evenings he’d struggled through alone. Because she’d had the full story this year, and the wall between them--that emotional wall that had kept him from confiding in her because she still wasn’t close enough, because he couldn’t burden her with the story and the questions and the awfulness of it unless he knew she wanted to be in that deep, that she was so invested in him that it would hurt her more not to tell her than to tell her--was no longer there. And now he had and she’d risen to the occasion magnificently. The fact that she’d accepted him and all of his messy backstory unconditionally had only deepened his love for her, and his admiration. He hated to worry her more in the light of day, after having done so much of that during the night, but then again, he worried about Purdey all the time. He supposed that was what you did when you loved someone—you cared, even when it hurt to care. That meant a few shakes weren’t going deter Purdey, after everything else that they’d gone through, professionally and personally. And given her own personal history, Gambit knew she wouldn’t expect him to be completely rehabilitated after one night.He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, rinsing off the memories as best he could, but eventually there was the sound of the shower curtain being drawn aside and bare feet slapping against the slick shower floor. Gambit smiled knowingly. “Worried I’d use all the hot water?” he quipped, with genuine humour, but he couldn’t quite keep the edge of relief out of his voice.“Worried you’d collapsed and hit your head, and I’d find you half-drowned,” Purdey replied diffidently. She wrapped her arms around his waist, hands resting flat on his stomach. He could feel the side of her nose on his shoulderblade as she pressed her cheek gently against his back. “Until I’m convinced you’re all right, I feel better when you’re where I can see you.”“I’ll be all right,” Gambit reassured softly, taking one of his hands from the wall and using it to cover both of hers. “But I appreciate the thought.”Purdey nodded against his back, letting her cheek caress the skin there. Now that she wasn’t preoccupied with other things, she was noticing his diminished physicality again, could feel every muscle and bone was more pronounced beneath his flesh, as though a layer of padding she hadn’t even realised was there in the first place had been stripped away. Gambit had never been what could be described as ‘heavy’. At least not in the time she’d known him, though she had trouble picturing him chubby at any age. But he’d never been alarmingly thin, either, not under ideal circumstances. She’d come to the conclusion that Gambit had a tendency to lose weight under stress, something she’d witnessed firsthand, she realised in retrospect, after the awful business with Doomer, which had taken almost as much of a toll on him as it had on her. They’d been so busy working overseas in France at the time that she’d never really had a chance to sit and look at him objectively. Not that she’d wanted to, feeling as uncomfortable as she did about what had transpired between them in the aftermath of Gambit killing Doomer to save her own life. The slight prickliness in their relationship meant their usual camaraderie had been temporarily put on ice. But when she called up mental images from that time, she realised that his face had been thinner, and tireder too. And if he hadn’t been wearing a bomber jacket cut to disguise the width of his waist, she somehow had the feeling she’d have realised the rest of him had whittled away as well. In retrospect, it alarmed her that she hadn’t noticed a physical change in him. But Gambit had always been very good at distracting her, and at internalizing his pain while he dealt with it himself. She suddenly had a sense that Gambit had not only been dreading the approach of this most horrific day on his own personal calendar, but also confiding in her about it, for quite some time, and had been quietly letting it eat away at him. She vowed to keep an eye on his physical state the next time she was worried about him. Gambit never liked to let on that he was worried, but Purdey was determined not to let him deal with any more things on his own, not now that she was here. Gambit had always looked out for her, and she was determined not to do the same, for this man she loved above all else.Eventually they got out of the shower, and crowded one another in the mirror while he shaved and she did her hair and make-up, she unwilling to let him out of her sight even for a moment. Gambit didn’t protest, which told her more than any protestations about his well-being ever could.They dressed in companionable silence. Purdey caught Gambit’s hands shaking a little on occasion, but he managed well enough until he got to his tie. Purdey stepped in to help him with the knot without comment. It was a simple case of seeing a need and filling it, but it earned her a grateful, relieved smile, and Purdey felt her heart swell in response.She decided, without consultation, that she ought to drive, and Gambit took the passenger seat of the TR7 without so much as a peep. The only consequence was that Purdey couldn’t keep her eyes on Gambit and the road at the same time, but at least in the car there weren’t too many places he could go or much he could do, and when he did cross his arms and close his eyes, at least she knew she’d be there for him when he woke up—if he slept at all. But Purdey thought Gambit could use all the rest could get after the night he’d had, whatever form it came in. Purdey knew she could use a nap herself, but she’d snuck some of Gambit’s coffee before she’d gone in the shower. She’d pulled a face at the taste and made a sort of retching sound that was decidedly unattractive. She didn’t like coffee, even if she knew it had its uses in their profession, one that came with a lot of late nights followed by early mornings. But that didn’t make it more palatable. Still, as she changed lanes, she had to acknowledge that it would at least keep her from falling asleep at the wheel and killing them both.She knew that Gambit must have slept a little, because when she pulled into Steed’s driveway, the crunch of the gravel under the TR7’s tyres failed to alert him to their nearness to their destination, and he didn’t stir at all, not even when she switched off the engine. She sat and looked at Gambit’s sleeping features for a moment, reluctant to wake him. Some of the lines on his face had smoothed out in sleep, but he was still pale and careworn, complexion alabaster in the morning light, mouth pressed into a grim line as a defence against things only he could see. His hands were pulled into fists within his crossed arms, and the dark circles under his eyes looked worse under natural light. But he was sleeping again, for another spell that was obviously longer than his usual annual ordeal, and she didn’t think she was flattering herself to think that it was her presence that was once again allowing him to get a little shuteye, no matter how tense he was.She thought she hadn’t been sitting there long, but eventually the front door opened and Steed appeared, clearly having heard the car and wondered who had arrived and why they weren’t announcing themselves. She waved to let him know it was her, and indicated the sleeping Gambit in the passenger seat. Steed squinted against the morning light and seemed to understand what she meant, nodded and gestured for her to come in when they were ready. Purdey gave him a thumbs up and watched him retreat into the building, before undoing her safety belt. She bit her lip, took one last look at the sleeping Gambit, and then sighed and gently shook his arm. “Mike…”Gambit jerked awake, banging his elbow on the car door in the process, and it was only Purdey’s reassuring repetition of his name that kept him from doing himself a real damage. He blinked disorientedly at her, seemed to realise where he was for the first time. “What’s going on?”“We’re at Steed’s,” Purdey told him, pointing at the manor house to illustrate her point. “He’s waiting. Do you need a moment?”Gambit sat up a little straighter, looking self-conscious. “I’m okay,” he said, a little too quickly, pulling down the sunvisor to get a quick look at the state he was in. He wasn’t dishevelled, but Purdey knew from the way he winced at his appearance that he could see the same telltale signs of strain she could. He folded the visor back up with unseemly haste. “Let’s go,” he said to Purdey, with a certain amount of resignation that told her he knew he wasn’t going to be able to fool Steed anymore than he could her.Steed was seated in the living room when they entered, poring over a stack of files. He looked up as they approached, smiled cheerily. Purdey smiled back, feeling a little tightness leave her shoulders. There was something infinitely reassuring about Steed, and it was a relief to have another person to keep an eye on Gambit. “Good morning!” he greeted, rising to his feet to welcome them inside. “I appreciate your driving all the way out to the country this morning. I couldn’t see myelf arriving in London before noon, I’m afraid.” Purdey’s smile turned conspiratorial. She suspected Steed’s request to have the meeting at the stud farm had less to with accommodating his schedule, and more to do with accommodating the fragile Gambit, sparing him the necessity of fobbing off curious comments from fellow agents. Her theory was all but confirmed as the next words left Steed’s mouth, “As you can see, we’ve rather a lot of files to work our way through if we’re to untangle Martin’s movements over the last decade. Gambit!” Gambit snapped to attention, dragged back from the darkness of the past into the present. “You’ve had rather a lot of experience combing through the files. Why don’t you make a start while I make us some coffee? Purdey.” He turned to her, eyes serious above the fixed smile. “Would you assist me?”“Of course,” Purdey agreed, flashing Gambit a reassuring smile as she followed Steed to the kitchen. She was reluctant to leave Gambit alone, but Steed’s invitation had had the inflexibility of an order behind it. All the same, she waited until Gambit was ensconced in the couch with a file in his lap before slipping into the kitchen.Steed was already busily making the coffee when she entered. He looked up from his preparations as Purdey leaned against the counter beside him. “How is he?” he inquired.“He’ll be all right,” Purdey sighed, crossing her arms self-consciously. “Or so he says.”“You don’t believe him?” Steed set the coffee brewing.“I do,” Purdey decided, after a moment. “But I think it’ll take longer for him to be okay than he wants me to believe. He had a rough night.”“I’ve a shrewd suspicion he wasn’t the only one.” Steed was looking at her with the same concerned, evaluative expression she suspected she was using on Gambit. “How are you feeling?”“I didn’t get my beauty sleep, but I’ll survive,” Purdey confessed, then added, softly, “He told me the whole story, Steed. I knew we must have a past, but I had no idea he’d been through anything so…terrible.” She shook her head in stunned disbelief, glad to be vocalising her feelings to someone she didn’t have to protect. “I couldn’t leave him after he told me about it, even though he kept telling me I could. I sat with him all night, watching him sleep and trying to calm him down when the nightmares hit.” She chose her words carefully, not letting on that she’d been in the bed with Gambit, nor that her sleeping with him was a common occurrence. She thought that the extenuating circumstances more than justified extra intimacy without necessarily admitting it went further. “I’ve never seen him quite like that, Steed. He came apart completely.”Steed nodded sombrely. “We all have our dark nights full of ghosts,” he said, and Purdey knew they weren’t just talking about Gambit, knew that Steed had countless stories like Gambit’s that he had elected not to share. “What surprises me is that he let you stay.”Purdey frowned in disbelief. “I wondered that he didn’t let you. You knew all about Africa. I thought you must have sat with him at some point. But he kept saying he’d always been on his own…” She trailed off, the unasked question still making itself known, even without the words to give it substance.Steed shook his head as he retrieved the coffee cups. “Gambit told me his story under duress. We were locked up in a cell-like space, and he started having flashbacks. I was there, and there was nothing to do to ward off the fear and keep him together but to tell me the whole tale.” He turned the cups over on the saucers with a sigh. “I did offer to sit with him in 1975, but we’d hit rather a rough patch at that point, and I don’t think he felt he could trust me to let me see him at his weakest.” He sighed. “I don’t entirely blame him, but I did what I could. I let him leave early the day before, and assigned him to the sort of work we’re doing today—undemanding—the next day. I might also have sat outside his flat for a period, just to make sure he was all right.” He transferred the cup to a tray with practised ease. “I think my attempts to help him might have been the first step to our eventual reconciliation, although your arrival undoubtedly sped things up a bit.” He flashed a brief, appreciative smile in Purdey’s direction. “It’s a measure of the esteem that he holds you in that he both confided in you willingly and without forcing you to leave after the fact.”“Yes,” Purdey acknowledged with a sigh. “It’s one of the few times he let himself be taken care of without a fight, which says something.”“I thought the same when he didn’t object to my treating him with kid gloves,” Steed agreed.“ ‘He’ can hear you, you know.” Gambit was suddenly stood in the doorway, looking weary, file in hand. Purdey and Steed shifted guiltily, realising they’d been well and truly caught out. “I know you mean well, but I’ll be all right. I’m not a complete basketcase. I’m tired, that’s all.”“And distracted,” Steed pointed out mildly.“And on edge,” Purdey put in, arms still crossed, this time defiantly. “You don’t have to pretend that everything’s all right just because it’s the morning after, you know. You admitted needing my help last night. You’re not fooling anyone by switching back to your usual stubborn, ‘I’m always fine’ mantra. It does get old after awhile.”Gambit deflated a little at her words, slumping against the doorway as though he needed the support. “I just want to go back to normal,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sooner I do, sooner I quit thinking about—““I know,” Purdey cut in quickly. She was well-aware from her own experiences that vocalising what happened only made it all the more real. Gambit needed his memories to fade away like the nightmares they were. “And they will. But if you keep pushing yourself so hard, you’ll only wind up exhausted and less able to cope than you are already.” She looked to Steed, who nodded slightly in encouragement. “So why don’t we go back to the living room and spend a very boring day looking through files?” She moved to Gambit’s side, looped her arm though his. “Steed’ll bring the coffee. And if you’re very good, I might make you an omelette for lunch.” She nudged his shoulder conspiratorially. “I’ll even leave out the marshmallows from yours.”Gambit’s mouth quirked up slightly on one side. “Okay,” he said with obvious relief. The effort to shore himself up had already added a line or two to his face. “But I’m holding you to that promise on the marshmallows.”Purdey patted his arm reassuringly. “That’s the spirit. More for me and Steed.” She caught Steed’s alarmed, arched eyebrow and shrugged carelessly. “Well, you’re not the one with the personal crisis.”“I’ll bear that in mind for future omelettes,” Steed said wryly, shooing his two younger compatriots from the kitchen. “I’ll be there with the coffee in a moment. And Gambit?” Gambit turned expectantly from where Purdey was trying to steer him out the door. “I know you need something to take your mind off everything, but the work will go much faster if you don’t look for my name in every report.”“Come on, Steed,” Gambit said, with a little of his usual mischief sparkling in his eye. “I need all the distractions I can get. And you always make for good reading—or at least a laugh.”“You need help all right,” Purdey said in mild exasperation, practically dragging Gambit from the room, leaving Steed to smile and shake his head.vvv“That was a boring day,” Purdey sighed, as they pulled out of Steed’s driveway to start the journey back to London.Gambit was seated serenely in the passenger seat. “Yeah,” he conceded. “Nicely boring, though. Peaceful. And the omelette was good.” “I did tell you,” Purdey said triumphantly.“About what? The omelette or the boring day?”“Both.” Purdey changed gears. “I told you it was what you needed. You’re so stubborn about not accepting help and being stoic all the time. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you’re not all right, you know.”“I know, I know,” Gambit conceded. “You’re not going to let me forget about admitting needing a break, are you?’“Would I be a very good partner if I did?” Purdey pointed out, flashing him a brilliant smile.“I never said you weren’t,” Gambit pointed out. “You’re a brilliant partner in every sense of the word. And that’s why I think you ought to sleep in your own flat tonight.”“What?” Purdey nearly swerved off the road, head whipping around in outrage. “I should have known your flattery came with a price. What ridiculous reason are you going to come up with this time?”“The road!” Gambit pointed through the windscreen, and Purdey straightened the car out impatiently.“Oh, don’t be a mother hen,” she snapped. “You need me with you tonight. Someone has to keep you from falling apart at the seams.”“And you did that last night,” Gambit allowed, tearing his eyes away from the road by sheer force of will. “But you didn’t get much sleep, either. And if you stay with me, you won’t get any tonight, either. So for your sake, you need me to be out sight and out of mind.”Purdey’s mouth twisted angrily. “I don’t think that that’s going to be possible, whether I can see you or not. I’m still going to worry.”“You shouldn’t,” Gambit soothed. “I’ll be all right, Purdey. The next night is always easier. I’ve come out the other side. I’ll sleep better, and you deserve to, too. But if you’re with me, I know you’ll be lying there waiting for me to start screaming bloody murder.” He tilted his head, eyes beseechingly persuasive. “Come on, Purdey-girl. You took good care of me. Let me at least try to return the favour.”Purdey looked uncertain, but the yawn she tried to stifle only served to reinforce his point. “You’re certain you’ll be all right?”Gambit smiled reassuringly. “I’ll be all right.”“Do you promise?” Purdey was looking hard at him now.“I promise,” Gambit vowed. “And you know I always keep my promises.”“Well, all right,” Purdey relented after a moment. “If you promise. But if I find you in pieces tomorrow morning, I’ll never forgive you.”“I’ll try to stay intact,” Gambit assured, settling back to enjoy the rest of the ride back to the city, satisfied he’d seen to Purdey and gone some small way toward thanking her for her forbearance in the past 24 hours.But when Purdey pulled up in front of his building and switched off the motor, and she was still regarding him with a measure of her earlier uncertainty. “You’re sure you’ll be all right? It’s not too late for me to come with you.”“I’m going to be fine,” Gambit promised. “And so are you. But it’s best for both of us if we get some sleep.”“If you say so,” Purdey sighed, accepting Gambit’s kiss as he leaned across the console. “Of course, if we didn’t sleep, it might not be an entirely bad thing. We could always find another way to fill the time.”Gambit chuckled throatily. “I’d take you up on that if I thought we both wouldn’t collapse from exhaustion halfway through,” he said truthfully. “But ask me again when we’ve both had some kip, and I’ll make it up to you.”“Do you promise?” Purdey’s eyes were glittering wickedly.“I promise. And I’ll definitely keep that one sooner rather than later.” He leaned in and kissed her once more, this time longer, deeper, then broke away. “I’d better go before you charm your way into my bed.”“I’m very persuasive,” Purdey said cheekily.“Yes.” Gambit was remembering something, but judging from the look on his face, it was a good memory, more pleasant than those he’d been revisiting up to that point. She also had a sneaking suspicion it involved her. “Sleep well, love.”Purdey’s grin turned fond. “You, too,” she said softly, watching him go almost wistfully. She waited until he disappeared into his building before starting up the engine. “Sweet dreams, Mike Gambit. Heaven knows you could use them.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Four days later, Gambit opened his front door, and was immediately overwhelmed with cooking odours. “Purdey,” he identified, even before the blonde’s head appeared above the counter from where she’d been rummaging in one of the cupboards. “What a surprise. Or it would be, if you hadn’t made dinner here the last three nights.”Purdey put her hands on her hips. “You don’t have to sound so unhappy about it,” she accused, as Gambit closed the door behind him and crossed to her.“I’m not unhappy,” Gambit corrected, leaving his keys on the end of the counter and stepping in to give her a quick kiss. “You know I’m always happy to see you,” he added, voice dropping in pitch, eyes ever-so-slightly hooded. “But you don’t have to bring a three course meal with you every time,” he went on, surveying the scones cooling on the windowsill. “We’ve been working flat out all week, and you’ve been cooking up a storm every evening.” He moved one of his hands from where they rested on her waist to the small of her back, rubbed it sympathetically. “You must be exhausted.”“I’ve been sleeping quite well, thank you,” Purdey stated pertly, breaking out of his embrace and turning her attention to a pot on the stove. “And I have excellent stamina. You should know that by now.”“I do,” Gambit allowed, dipping a finger in the pot and sucking the contents from his skin appreciatively. “Doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to a break.”“I’ll take one. Eventually,” Purdey said firmly, prodding him in the stomach with the end of her wooden spoon. “Once I’m sure that you’ve put on some of the weight that you lost.” Gambit ducked his head apologetically, rubbing the spot she’d jabbed, and her hostility ebbed away. “Did you eat anything at all when you were in Scotland?” she asked softly, as though almost afraid of the question itself, let alone the answer. Gambit could see the worry in her eyes as she bit her lip anxiously, and sighed.“Well, I admit didn’t overindulge. Or indulge at all, really. But you’re more than making up for it,” he told her, trying to smile away her fears. “At this rate, there’s going to be too much of me to love. I’ll have to step up my workouts.”“Better than nothing at all,” Purdey said tartly, shoulders tense as she turned to the cutting board and commenced violently chopping vegetables.Gambit’s face, which had been doing a remarkable job of keeping itself uplifted, fell as it surveyed the muscles gathered in her back. “You’ve never been worried about my waistline before,” he said diffidently. “No reason to start now.” Purdey ignored him, kept chopping. “Why don’t we go out, at least?” he tried. “I’m not sure we’re up to that,” Purdey replied, chopping unceasing.“We’re not,” Gambit asked knowingly. “Or I’m not?”“It doesn’t matter.” Purdey scraped the diced vegetables to one side, grabbed a carrot and started in on it with murderous intent. “I’ve already started. We can go out some other time.”“We could always order in. Let you relax.”“I don’t mind.”“Purdey…” Gambit stepped in close behind her, rested both hands on her waist, buried his face in her hair, murmured the pleading words, “Purdey, please. Stop.”He could feel her take a shaky breath, but she still dragged the knife across the board, clearing it for more vegetables to follow in its wake. “Purdey.” Gambit gently stilled her chopping hand with his, while his other hand rested, warm and reassuring, on her hip. “Can we talk for a minute?” His hand gently guided hers to rest the implement, carefully, beside the cutting board. Without the chopping to attend to, there was no excuse to avoid his gaze, and she turned around reluctantly in his arms, eyes big, saucer-sized. “Now,” he said gently, patiently. “What’s going on?”She took a deep breath. “I’m making dinner,” she tried.Gambit smiled a little at her ability to deflect and make the other side seem as though they were the ones behaving oddly, even in a serious moment such as this. “I can see that. But I think there’s a little more to it than you just wanting to feed me up.” Purdey, uncharacteristically, didn’t say anything, so Gambit carried on. “I know you’re only trying to take care of me,” he murmured, not unkindly. “Feeding me up and keeping an eye on me, not leaving me on my own or making any demands. You’ve even been taking on more than your share of the work at the Ministry, even though I keep telling you and Steed that I can manage.” He sighed. “I know you mean well, but you’re treating me like I’m made of glass, and I’m not.” He looked intently into her eyes. “I’m okay, Purdey. Really I am.”Purdey was searching his face, anxiety tugging the corners of her mouth down. “Are you?” she pressed, before she bowed her head, hiding her eyes beneath her fringe.Gambit regarded her blonde crown with a mixture of grim anxiety and pain. “Purdey, one of the reasons—the main reason—I was afraid to tell you about what happened to me was because I was worried that it would change how you looked at me. That you’d only ever see me as some damaged, broken man that need taking care of, and nothing more.” He paused a moment, working his jaw, choosing his next words carefully. “Is that how you feel now?”Purdey’s head shot up in surprise. “No!” she exclaimed in outrage, eyes burning with offence.But Gambit wasn’t about to be frightened into submission. “Then why cook all the dinners, then sit here watching me eat every night?” His eyebrows slanted downward, making him look for all the world like a sad little boy. “And why won’t you touch me?” he wanted to know, in a voice close to cracking. “And I don’t mean when you check my temperature or try to work out if my suit’s fitting too loose. You’re always looking at me, assessing, but I feel like you’re doing it at a distance. You’ve cut me off.”Purdey looked horrified. “I haven’t!”“Then what’s going on, because it sure as hell feels like it.” Gambit hadn’t meant that last bit to sound so harsh, but the emotions had been building in what was already an emotional week, and he was having trouble keeping them all in check. Usually he’d just bear it all stoically, but that inevitably led to the walls coming up. He didn’t want there to be walls between him and Purdey, but he felt as though she were building one of her own volition.Purdey looked as though she were ready to cry. “I haven’t,” she protested again, eyes bright. “How could you ever accuse me of that?” she demanded angrily. “I love you!”“And I believe you,” Gambit tried to soothe. He didn’t want to make her cry, but he was feeling ragged around the edges himself. “But I’m also worried that all you see when you look at me is a broken invalid.”Purdey’s eyes flashed angrily. “Don’t you dare accuse me of seeing you as nothing but a charity case, Mike Gambit!” she snapped, almost incandescent with indignation. “What I’m doing is no different than what you’ve done for me, heaven knows how many times when I’ve been hurt, which is to take care of you until you’re back up to full strength. The only difference is that you’ve been very good about giving, but not very good at being at the receiving end, self-sacrificing idiot that you are.”Gambit looked uncertain. “So you don’t see me as irretrievably broken?”Purdey shook her head impatiently. “I see you as hurt,” she specified. “And when you’ve been hurt, you need to time to recover. It doesn’t mean you’re damaged for life, just temporarily not up to full strength.” She arched a sceptical eyebrow. “Or do you always see me as a lost cause every time I have some sort of personal disaster?”“No!” It was Gambit’s turn to look outraged, but his expression softened as fast as it had appeared as he realised that Purdey’s logic was irrefutably sound, and he’d been beaten at his own game. “I, uh, guess I’m not good at being taken care of,” he admitted. “Not a lot of practice.”“And I’m trying to change that,” Purdey said gently, laying a hand aside his face. She took a sanity-inducing breath, aware that she was as emotionally raw as he was. “Like when you get hurt on the job, and you need a little looking after. It doesn’t define how I see you. But for a little while, until you’re back on your feet, I want to do what I can to help yourecover.”“Oh, Purdey,” Gambit said tenderly. “You’ve already done that.”“Have I?” Purdey’s lip was trembling. “Because if I didn’t do absolutely everything I could to make you better, Mike Gambit, I’d never forgive myself.” She sighed and dropped her hands to his chest. “I’m sorry if I’ve seemed…distant. I didn’t want you to feel pressured to give anything emotionally or physically until you were up to it. I thought you’d tell me when you were feeling better.” She smiled, a little crookedly. “And now I suppose you are. I didn’t want to rush you, that’s all.” She looked him hard in the eye. “But I don’t only see you as broken, Mike Gambit. I know how strong you are—and how stubborn. I always knew you’d recover, and then we could carry on. But I didn’t want you to have to be strong for me.” “Sorry,” Gambit apologised, mouth quirking up on one side, feeling more like a fool by the minute. “Now I feel like a prize idiot.”“My prize idiot,” Purdey qualified. “But yes.”Gambit gave her one of those rueful looks that said, ‘Thanks ever so,’ but said instead, “But I am feeling better. Really. You don’t have to do all this.” He gestured vaguely at the half-finished dinner, including the cutting board that bore more than a few extra marks from Purdey’s violent assault.Purdey smiled bravely. “I hope so. Because I don’t like to see you hurting, Mike Gambit.”“I’m not,” Gambit insisted, leaning into her gently, running a finger along the curve of her jaw. “And you’re not definitely not hurting me by touching me.” He smiled crookedly. “I’m still not made of glass.”“I’ll remind you that you said that,” Purdey promised, smile relieved as well as wry, “the next time you fuss over me.”“Fuss? Me?” Gambit said with self-mocking knowingness. His hands wended their way around her waist. “I don’t know what you mean.”Purdey threw her head back and laughed. “Mike Gambit,” she said with knowing fondness. “You really are irrepressible, and I’ve never been more grateful for it.”“And I’ve never been more grateful to see you smile,” Gambit admitted, not bothering to hide his relief, ducking his head to touch noses with her. “Oh, Purdey, Purdey, I’ve missed having you in my arms. Without me being a trembling wreck, that is.”“That makes two of us,” Purdey agreed, taking a deep cleansing breath in through her nose, eyes sliding closed as she let his body take her weight for the first time in what felt like forever. Gambit seemed to sense her weariness. “Have you slept proerply since that night?”Purdey hesitated, and Gambit could tell she was considering whether or not to edit her response to prevent him from feeling guilty about it. Then she seemed to remember what Gambit had said about not being fragile, and relented. “Well, I’ve not been lying awake around the clock, but I haven’t exactly been getting my beauty sleep, either.”Gambit pulled away slightly so he could assess her visage. “You could have fooled me.”Purdey preened slightly under the flattery. “Mike Gambit, you do know how to charm a woman, don’t you?”“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Gambit replied with a wink, taking a step back but hanging onto her hands. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a break. Forget dinner. Put your feet up.”“If I leave dinner to you, we really will forget about,” Purdey predicted, but let Gambit lead her to the couch anyway. “Or are you going to finish it?”“I’m not completely hopeless when it comes to cooking, you know,” Gambit defended, touching the button to activate the couch mechanism. “I had to cook aboardship, remember. And clean. I’m very domesticated. So I’m actually good in the kitchen.”“Yes, I know,” Purdey parried, a wicked smile tugging at her lips. “Particularly when I’m up on the counter.”“Now that was an afternoon to remember,” Gambit said wistfully, clearly delighted by her cheekiness. “I hope I’m not only good in the kitchen, but I am interested in where your mind is.” He settled onto the edge of the bed, beckoned Purdey to join him. She did so gratefully, never releasing his hand, flushing a little as she did so. “And I think it’s in the same place as mine.”Purdey ducked her head as she sat down, avoiding his gaze. “I wouldn’t want to make you do anything you didn’t feel up to,” she demurred, feeling her earlier anxiety resurface.Gambit put a finger under her chin and gently raised her head to meet his eyes. “I’m definitely interested,” he told her, quite seriously. And then, not as seriously, “And definitely up for it.”Purdey snorted slightly at the bad joke, but her eyes were shining in a cautious, hopeful way, her lips parting slightly, as though anticipating a kiss. Gambit’s eyes flicked down to her pout, then back up to her eyes. “May I?” he queried, voice dropping an octave. Purdey shuddered deliciously, eyes fluttering shut. “Please,” she said, with a voice suddenly hoarse with longing. “But you take the lead. So I’ll know what you’re up for.”Gambit’s lips curled into a sly smile. “That’s a dangerous licence to grant.”Purdey’s breath caught in her throat. “I don’t mind living dangerously,” she managed. “As long as you’re all right.”“Yes, well, we’re both coming off being a bit rattled,” he pointed out, “so let’s give each other a lot of leeway, okay?”She nodded a little too frantically in agreement, then smiled ruefully at her own eagerness. “This feels rather like our first night together. Taking it slow, I mean.”“Nothing wrong with taking it slow,” Gambit said reasonably. “And I don’t mind reliving our first night together at all…” He ducked his head to meet her lips, but she was already coming up to meet him, and their mouths sealed together in a passionate kiss, one born of bruised souls and a need to heal.They carried on for a moment, embrace gradually becoming tighter and more entwined, until Purdey drew Gambit further onto the bed, and he responded by pressing her gently to the mattress. As she parted her legs automatically to allow Gambit’s hips to cradle between them, she sensed a certain hesitation as her thighs moulded to his form.“How do I feel?” he asked softly, pulling his lips from hers long enough to ask.Purdey arched a reproving eyebrow. “Mike Gambit, if you’re fishing for compliments…”“Not that,” Gambit sighed in mild exasperation. “Although feel free to comment. But I meant my hips. Or are you not trying to work out how bony they are?”“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Purdey protested, then, catching Gambit’s sceptical expression, added, “Well, I wasn’t only thinking of that.”“Mmm-hmm,” Gambit replied sceptically, sitting up on his knees and shrugging off his suit jacket. “The sooner I get naked, the better, then. Then you can satisfy yourself that I’m not about to perish of malnourishment.”“I’m sure that’s your only motivation,” Purdey said wryly, eyes hooded sceptically. She caught his tie and tugged to bring him back down to her. “And quit shedding layers on your own. That’s my job.”“Then I promise not to spoil your fun,” Gambit vowed, pushing her skirt up her thighs so he could grasp the bare flesh and better the fit between their bodies. “Anyway, I haven’t been only been looking at you like I’m worried about you,” Purdey went on, loosening his tie as she did so.Gambit cocked his head inquisitively. “Meaning?” he inquired, as Purdey pulled the tie up and over his head, laughing a little at the way it caught on Gambit’s nose in the process and sent it twitching.“I mean,” she explicated, turning her attention to the buttons on his waistcoat, “that you’ve been assuming that you telling me what happened to you could only change the way I looked at you in a negative way.” She pushed the garment off his shoulders, hands skimming deliciously over the silk lining the back as she went. “I know that negative thinking is your default mindset,” she went on, as between them they managed to maneuver Gambit’s arms out of the armholes, “but did it ever occur to you that it might make me admire you even more?”Gambit’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline in pleasant surprise. “Admire? Are you feeling all right?”“Possibly not. Normally I try to keep your ego in check, not pump it up,” Purdey pointed out wryly, concentrating on pulling his shirt from his trousers while taking great care not to reveal any flesh. She was going to have to work her way up to seeing him shirtless. She’d somehow contrived to not see Gambit unclothed since the morning after he’d told her his story. It pained her to see him so thin, so fragile, literally consumed by his torment. Even though she’d spent every night at his flat since, sat beside him until he fell asleep, they’d always wound up talking so late into the evening that they fell asleep in their clothes. The next morning, Gambit would confine his changes of clothes to the bathroom or bedroom at the back of the flat, while Purdey either busied herself with making coffee until he reemerged or, if she was feeling particularly fragile, fled to her flat. She suspected Gambit was somewhat compliant in keeping himself clad around her, sensitive to the distress his dimished physicality caused her, even if she hadn’t said as much, and he hadn’t asked. But Gambit doing what was needed without comment or complaint was hardly unusual—the man would do anything within his power to save those he cared about from anguish. “But as these are exceptional circumstances, I’ll make an exception.”“This should be good.” Gambit was regarding her expectantly, pulling away slightly to undo his shirt cuffs before they posed an obstacle. “I’m listening.” Purdey left the shirt aside for a moment in favour of cupping his face in her hands and just looking at him, really looking. At the blue-green eyes that shifted in the lamplight, sparkling beneath the enviably long eyelashses, the fond curve of the lips, the curls tumbling onto his forehead where she’d disturbed them, the undeniable look of tenderness and love written across his features, even as he waited in anticipation of what she would say.“I was in awe,” she breathed, almost more to herself than to him. “In admiration,” she added, as though the sentiment wasn’t clear enough. “That you could go through such terrible things, and still be so kind.” She stroked her thumbs over his cheeks, touch so gentle he nearly melted then and there. “So strong.” Her fingers crept down to his lips, thumbing over their pouted contours. “So loyal. So committed to doing the right thing, and to serving something bigger, even though the last time you tried to serve, they betrayed your trust so badly. It could have made you selfish, or cruel, or uncaring. But you came out of it still funny, still warm, still loving, still kind. Still a good friend, a good partner…” Her mouth quirked up on one side. “A good man…”“That’s a lot of praise to heap on bloke at once,” Gambit said softly, mouth canting up on one side to mirror hers. He felt her hands slide down his jaw, over his neck, to his collar. “Probably not all of it deserved.”“Oh?” Purdey queried, eyes temporarily leaving his as she undid the top button of his shirt. “Where do you think I went wrong?”“You know as well as I do that I can be cold,” Gambit pointed out, eyes fluttering close as Purdey worked her way down his torso, one button at a time, exposing flesh without ever touching it. “Clinical. Professional. A killer.”He expected the laundry list to at least rattle Purdey, but the steady progress down his shirt never so much as stuttered. “So can I,” she said simply. “And don’t bother saying that it’s different, because it isn’t. We need to be that way when the situation calls for it. Otherwise we’d be terrible at our jobs.”Gambit popped an eye open, but Purdey was focussed on her work and didn’t meet his gaze. “I think I’ve had a bit more practice,” he pointed out.“You’ve gone through more…extreme situations, yes,” Purdey agreed, reaching the bottom of his shirt, but holding the two halves of the fabric closed and away from his body, so she couldn’t see or feel the contours of his frame. “But it isn’t the years of experience that matter, Mike. It’s how you reacted. You’ve been put in impossible situations, and you’ve done the best you could. But you’re not a sadist. You don’t enjoy killing or inflicting pain. You don’t seek it out. But what you don’t have is a tolerance for evil, and those that do hurt and kill for their own pleasure. Even then, you won’t kill them unless you have to, unless there aren’t any other options. But if that’s all there is, you’ll do what has to be done.” She shrugged with a casualness that belied the topic of conversation. “I think I’m much the same. So is Steed. It’s a moral code we all live with. But it comes through being a good man. And I know you’re a good man, Mike Gambit, when you strip all the layers away.” With that, she threw his shirt open, pushing it down his arms in one smooth motion, laying his body as bare to her as his heart and soul. Gambit drew in a ragged breath at the act, then another as Purdey pressed her palms to his chest, sought out the beat of his heart. “You fought them, Mike,” she whispered, tenderly, gently. “You fought what they tried to make you do. You fought what they tried to turn you into. Everyone was against you, and you never let them change you, never let them force you to do something for anything but the right reasons.” She smiled up at him, eyes shining. “You think that story made me think you were weak. But it only reaffirmed how strong you are.” She finally looked down at his body, felt her smile turn to one of relief. “And you’re getting stronger all the time.” He was, too. His body revealed that he’d been eating, and she knew he was training properly again, something she suspected had gone by the wayside when he was in Scotland. She thought back to the year before, hadn’t noticed him losing quite so much weight then. But then she suspected that he’d worked himself into more of a lather this year as he tried to work out when—how—to tell her, all while trying to maintain the façade of normality as their increased closeness left him fewer places to hide. She batted the thoughts away—Gambit had been frightened, understandably so, to tell her about what had happened, but next year he’d have no such fears, and she could guide him through the process with much more equanimity. She’d already vowed to herself that it would be so. The best thing she could do now was to continue to show him how much she loved him.“Much stronger,” she repeated, running her hands over his body appreciatively as he savoured her touch. He was still a little thinner than normal, she could tell, but his ribs were more obscured than they had been, and his muscles were strong and supple, fed rather than deprived. She looked up just as his eyes opened, and smiled up into them. “How do you feel?” she inquired, fingers drawing delicious patterns across his skin.She was rewarded by that familiar glint in his eyes that had seemingly been absent for an eternity. “Like I said,” he rumbled, shifting meaningfully above her. “I’m feeling better.”Purdey felt her breath catch in her throat as she allowed the first flickers of desire to course through her, untemepered by the fear that she might be asking more than he could give. “Well, then, Mike Gambit,” she said breathily. “Why don’t you show me?”She knew he was okay, regardless of what he’d said, when his hands went to work, and they were confident, not shaky. By the way he pulled her gently upright and drew the zipper at the back of her dress down with excruciating slowness. By the way he slid the garment off her shoulders and took full advantage of the fall of the cloth by putting his hands and his mouth anywhere and everywhere. By the way he drew the stockings slowly down her legs, one at a time, while she laid sprawled on the bed, content to watch him at work and luxuriate in the sensations he was eliciting. By the quick, dextrous movements he used to relieve of her undergarments, coupled with the ghosting of clever fingers against her flesh as he went. By the easy way he stretched comfortably out beneath her to give her room to work as she did the honours of removing his trousers, socks, and boots. And if what followed was any indication, then Purdey was quite certain that Gambit was, unquestionably, feeling like himself.vvv“All right,” she sighed contentedly sometime later, curling up against Gambit with her head resting on his chest. “I believe you. You do feel better.”Gambit’s chest vibrated beneath her cheek with his hoarse, passion-scratched laugh. “Any part of me in particular, or are you talking about the whole package?”“Mike,” Purdey groaned, but without much vitriol. She reached down and gently pushed the sheet, which had settled around his waist, a little farther down until she could see his hip, the same one that she’d found the mystery scar on sometime ago that he wouldn’t talk about. She understood his reticence now. She idly traced his hipbone—also less prominent than it had been, but still visible. But then Gambit’s hips never completely hid away, being something of a work of art in Purdey’s eyes, perfectly sculpted to be exquisite in shape when seen in all their glory, and devastingly slim in silhouette. They were a treat for the eyes and the fingertips, she decided, as she came to the end of one curve and started to slowly, leisurely trace a different path. “It’s good to have you back.”Gambit’s eyes were closed, torn between the tranquil doze that was settling over him, and the path of Purdey’s fingers that were urging his pelvis to jerk upward a fraction of an inch in response to her touch. “Good to be back,” he murmured huskily. He opened one eye and regarded her hopefully. “I think we’re going to be okay.”“More than okay,” Purdey opined, leaving off his hip in favour of tending to the other end of him, drawing lazy lines across his jaw. “I think we’re going to be maginificent. As usual.”“At least one of us is,” Gambit concurred, hugging her a little closer, jaw muscles shifting her fingers slightly with his smile. “Sorry about your dinner, though,” he added, trying to twist slightly to see the state of the abandoned meal. “Is it a total loss?”“My cooking? Never,” Purdey asserted grandly. “Just be grateful that I remembered to turn off the stove. Otherwise you’d have worse things to worry about than a spoiled dinner. Your flat burning down, for one.”“I could always move in with you,” Gambit suggested, looking quite cheerful at the prospect. “Doesn’t sound so bad.”“You say that now,” Purdey countered, amused. “But when you see how much space you’d have in my closet, you might change your mind.”“Not much of a problem if all my clothes go up with it,” Gambit teased. “Those things I have at yours might end up being the sum total of my worldly possessions.”“In that case, I suppose it could be worse,” Purdey mused. “At the very least, it’d get rid of some of your terrible statuary.”“I thought you liked my art!”“Just because I don’t yank it off the wall wheneve I’m here, it doesn’t mean that I love it,” Purdey countered, sitting up and moving to straddle him. Gambit watched her curiously.“Is this where you seduce me to get me to throw away all my artworks?”“No,” Purdey said simply, bending to kiss him. “This is where I seduce you and hope you come to your senses on your own.”“Not a good strategy.” Gambit’s eyes were dancing. “Even you’re not that good.”“We’ll see about that,” Purdey challenged, settling more squarely on Gambit’s lithe frame. “I can be very persuasive.”“And no one knows that better than I,” Gambit said confidently, enjoying the natural ease with which the words tripped down his tongue, following the well-worn path where they had been quoted before. “This feels good.”Purdey arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re feeling, Mike Gambit, but I haven’t done anything yet.”“You’ve done plenty,” Gambit contradicted gently. “And now that we’re here, being us, I’ve never been so grateful for it.”Purdey put her head to one side. “If by us, you mean carrying on about anything and everything, then so have I.” She leaned down and whispered, almost conspiratorially, “There are very few things I’d rather do than have a conversation with you, Mike Gambit.”Gambit glowed at the compliment, but his lips couldn’t help but say, “Now I want to know what the few things are that top me.”“Oh, honestly, your ego,” Purdey sighed, looking heavenward. “I’ll rephrase. There are some things that tie having a conversation with you, and yes, some of them involve you.” She shook her head in self-reporach. “I sometimes think that you dreamt up this whole scenario, just to get me to say nice things about you.”“Even I’m not that desperate,” Gambit said with a shudder that rattled through her as well as him, and Purdey instantly regretted bringing up his trauma. He seemed to sense her trepidation, and added quickly, “I’ll bet one of those things is a good meal. Want to try to salvage your dinner?”She smiled lovingly down at him. “Yes,” she agreed. “Eventually.” She reached down and drew back the sheet. “But I’d rather do something else first.”“I really must be at the top of your list if you’re willing to put food on hold for me,” Gambit opined, as Purdey revealed the whole of his naked body.“I am rather fond of a well-cooked meal,” Purdey concurred, leaning down so she could brush his hair back from his forehead. “But I know that there are some things that are even more important.” Gambit was regarding her with an almost shy half-smile. “Are you sure about that?”“Very sure,” Purdey said softly, but with an underlying conviction that brooked no argument. Not that Gambit had any intention of making one, but Purdey proceeded to prove her point anyway, and quite successfully, as the food on the stovetop cooled beyond even the rehabilitative qualities of her culinary prowess.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The phone rang.No one stirred.Another ring punctured the tranquility of the flat.There was a soft groan.Three times. That did it. The lump beneath the blankets came to drowsy life. Well, half of it did. The half closer to the phone. The other half remained stubbornly still.“Mike,” Purdey mumbled, voice thick with sleep. “Move your arm. I can’t reach the phone.”Gambit opened one blue-green eye and fixed it upon her face, which she had pulled away from the pleasantly warm sanctuary of his chest. She was squinting at him blearily, and he couldn’t tell if the way she had her face scrunched up was due to his uncooperative attitude or her eyes not focusing very well in the early light of the day. “Good morning to you, too,” he told the pillow.“Mike, the phone,” Purdey reminded impatiently.“Probably not important,” he dismissed.Purdey really did scowl this time. “I didn’t know you’d acquired mind-reading powers,” she said sarcastically. “It might be important.”“If it is, they’ll call back,” Gambit reasoned, “at a humane time, not—“ He lifted his arm out from beneath the covers, glanced at his watch, and screwed up his face in annoyance when his sleep-deprived brain registered the time. “--6:30. What sort of sadist calls at 6:30?”“One of our official Ministry sadists, no doubt,” Purdey said knowingly. “I’m answering one way or another. Whether or not your arm is in one piece or three when I do is up to you.”“And you say I’m not a morning person,” Gambit muttered, but obliged her by lifting his arm so she could squirm out from under it. The ringing was grating on him, anyway. And he hadn’t had his coffee yet. Neither of those facts was doing much for his mood. He felt Purdey disentangle herself from him with vague regret and rolled over onto his stomach, grabbing his pillow and clamping it over the dark curls in an attempt to block out the ringing and go back to sleep.Purdey shook her head at his stubbornness. She wasn’t going to accept Gambit’s assessment of her mood in the early hours—not without a fight, anyway—but Gambit definitely wasn’t a morning person, that much was certain. She couldn’t help but grin at the pair of hands clutching the pillow, hands she was quite fond of, particularly when she could feel them in action. She pulled her gaze away from what she could see of Gambit with difficulty and finally lifted the shrilling telephone’s receiver from its cradle.“Hello?”“Purdey? I was about to give up and try again in a quarter of an hour.” The voice was familiar and entirely too chipper for how Purdey was feeling at that moment.“Steed,” Purdey sighed knowingly, and watched in amusement as Gambit lifted his makeshift barrier and arched an eyebrow at hearing the identity of their rouser. “Tell him his years in the service have made him cruel,” he hissed, and Purdey waved an arm to urge him to be quiet. She was still trying to keep Steed in the dark about their relationship, and so far they seemed to be succeeding. Steed hadn’t intimated to either of them that he had any suspicions, and she was hopeful that meant he was still oblivious to their new dynamic—or at the very least didn’t have any hard evidence to back up whatever hypothesis he might be constructing. She sometimes wondered if Steed had actually figured it all out ages ago, and was just letting them stew until the suspense of wondering what he knew got the best of them and they cracked under the strain and confessed all. It would be a very Steed plan, leaving them guessing while he did nothing at all. The fact that it sometimes felt as if it was working was all the more worrying. Still, Purdey was very good at digging her heels in and waiting people out when she was in the mood, and Gambit had turned being effortlessly impenetrable into an art form. Not to mention they’d both had their fill of heartfelt confessionals for the timebeing. But if Steed heard Gambit in her flat while she was still in bed, it would be very difficult to persuade him that there was nothing going on. All the same, Purdey felt herself blush involuntarily at her compromising position, despite the fact that Steed couldn’t see them. Gambit must have noticed because he grinned at her wickedly and propped himself up on an elbow, gesturing for her to move closer so he could eavesdrop on the conversation. “It’s just as well you called me instead of Gambit. You know what he’s like before noon,” Purdey quipped pointedly, earning a wry twist of a smile from Gambit in response to the slight, “and without his caffeine. His telephone voice might have been rather hostile.”She could almost hear Steed smile on the othe end of the line. “I can imagine,” he chuckled. “But whatever mood our errant colleague may be in, I do have a job for you two this morning.”“Oh?” Purdey sat up a little straighter, letting her back rest against the headboard, and she could feel Gambit snap to attention beside her. “Withers. He’s making a pick-up around ten. We’re to be there to cut off his escape route.” “And catch him red-handed,” Purdey finished, eyes meeting Gambit’s as they relayed their mutual comprehension, both mentally calling up Withers’ file from the dozen or so they were attached to as easily as if it were any of the physical ones populating Finder’s dominion. She settled back onto the bed in a more relaxed position. “Where do you want us?”Steed went on to describe just where the pick-up was meant to take place, but she missed one or two of the pertinent details because of Gambit, who was suddenly very awake and whose lips had sought out a particularly sensitive spot on her neck. She inhaled sharply, loud enough that Steed halted his monologue about where the two of them should park, and inquired if everything was all right.“Fine,” Purdey told him, trying her best to keep her voice steady as Gambit’s lips followed a path down onto her shoulder, with a definite intent to go lower. “Sorry, I’m a little drowsy. Could you repeat that last part?”“Never mind. We’ll have an official briefing in an hour and go over the details then.” There was a pause, and then Steed added, pointedly it seemed to Purdey’s ears, “Unless there’s something else detaining you?”“Of course not,” Purdey exclaimed, a little too sharply, the probing edge to Steed’s words hinting at a certain amount of suspicion forming at his end, reminding her that they were treading dangerously close to the edge of being discovered. “Nothing else that needs seeing to?” Steed pressed. “Another obligation that you’ve forgotten?”“Nothing at all,” Purdey reassured, gently swatting at Gambit, who seemed determined to blow their cover in the most pleasurable way possible. He grinned unrepentantly up at her, much to her annoyance, but she had to admit that her attempts to dissuade him were rather desultory. Judging from the looks he was giving her, he knew she didn’t particularly want him to leave off, either, which was just as annoying. Mike Gambit was very good at reading her like the proverbial open book, which, at moments like this, proved rather inconvenient.“You’re quite certain of that?” Steed didn’t sound convinced, and Purdey could tell he was torn between concern for her wellbeing, and suspicion that there was something else of note that she wasn’t telling him. Purdey knew she had to assure him that there was no reason for him to worry about the former, and throw him off the scent regarding the latter.“I—we,” she corrected, a neat reversal of the sort of slip-up that would normally give the game away, “we’ll be there. I’ll let Gambit know what’s happening. He knows better than to take his early morning hostilities out on me.”That seemed to assuage both Steed’s concerns and his (potential) suspicions, if the merry laugh he gifted her in return was any indication, and she felt herself relax. “Good. I’ll see you soon.”“Good-bye, Steed,” Purdey said hurriedly, while she still had some modicum of control over her own voice. She somehow managed to find the telephone’s cradle, and after a few tries clicked the receiver into it, preventing Steed from hearing anything else incriminating should he still be suspicious enough to hang on the line. Then she let her phone hand join the other one in grasping Gambit by the shoulders, to try and pull him back from where he’d ventured, even though she didn’t particularly want to.“Mike Gambit…” But she was too breathy to sound threatening.Gambit left off from his ministrations and grinned up at her. “Something wrong?”“No. That’s the problem,” she retorted, trying not to think about how attractive he looked in the morning with his hair mussed, how warm his body was on this particular morning, when autumn was starting to chill the land. She gave in to her feelings of affection and smiled back at him, toyed with the St. Christopher that dangled around his neck. “But we have business to attend to.”“I thought I’d made a good start,” Gambit quipped, taking the hand entangled in the chain and kissing it gently.“Work, Mike,” Purdey reminded, eyes flickering shut with pleasure in spite of herself. “Honestly, I thought after last night you’d be satisfied.”“I was,” Gambit agreed cheerfully. “But it’s morning now, and since we’re both up, we may as well enjoy ourselves.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “I’m a firm believer in starting the day off right.”Purdey pulled the chain until their foreheads touched. “We have to be at the Ministry in less than an hour,” she told him, quite firmly.“I heard.”“Well?”There was a pause.“How long does it take you to get ready?” Gambit asked wickedly.Purdey moved so fast Gambit didn’t know what hit him. All he knew was that suddenly Purdey was on top of him and smiling in that secretive way of hers. She leaned down and kissed him, once, properly. When she pulled away she replied, “I can just imagine what you have planned, Mike Gambit, but I need more than ten minutes to make myself presentable. So we’re going to have to show some restraint. Business before pleasure.” Gambit pouted endearingly. “Spoilsport. What am I meant to do while you make yourself more beautiful? Assuming that was possible.”Purdey preened at the compliment, but didn’t relent. “Go make yourself some coffee while I’m in the shower.” She climbed off of him, and the bed, and made for the bathroom, turned to look back at him just as she reached the door. “If we can’t start the day off right, there’s nothing to say we can’t end it that way.”Gambit’s grin came back. “Is that a promise?”Purdey just smiled, subtly coquettish, and stepped inside the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Gambit shook his head and rubbed his face with both hands to wake himself up further, resigning himself to rising early. But it was hard to be too upset about anything when he felt so good. As the pitter-patter of falling water reached his ears, he sat up and climbed out from under the covers, wandering into the living area of Purdey’s flat. He found his trousers where they’d been discarded on the couch the night before, and tugged them on unhurriedly, yawning as he went. All the curtains were still drawn, and it was a basement flat, which meant, unlike his own abode, there were no voyeuristic neighbours in the block across the street to worry about catching him in a state of undress. Before he made his way to the kitchen, he spared half a glance at the coffee table. It was covered with dozens of pieces of paper, all laid out in an order that would only make sense to the people who had spent the evening poring over them, making little notations in the margin in red ink. They were accompanied by a pair of wine glasses, both of which were empty. They’d finished them off right before they’d decided that that was enough work for the evening, and the trail of clothes leading to the bed, of which the trousers were but one small part, was a good indicator of where the night had gone from there.Gambit found the coffee in Purdey’s cupboard, and switched on the coffeemaker he had purchased for her a month or so back, for reasons that were less-than-selfless. But since he’d cleared out a more than generous space in his closet for her, he figured she could spare a spot on her countertop for the appliance that produced his much-needed lifegiving brew.It had been two weeks since he had told her about the anniversary, had finished his exposition about that dark period of his life. Ever since he’d reassured Purdey that he had recovered from his ordeal and no longer needed to be under constant surveillance lest he fall apart at the seams, she hadn’t treated him any differently, hadn’t backed away from him or tried to compensate for his past wounds. She was just Purdey, and she was wonderful.Gambit closed his eyes, savoured just being here, in Purdey’s flat, waiting for the coffee to brew, listening to her in the shower, feeling the coolness of the counter as he rested his palms atop it. Soaked up the perfect serenity of being there, at that moment, in the domain of the woman he loved and who loved him in turn. He truly was a lucky man, a remarkable sentiment for him to have given his recent reliving of his previous traumas, but one he believed in wholeheartedly.He was so busy drinking the morning in that he didn’t hear Purdey approach, not until he felt the hands slide onto his sides, and the kiss on his shoulder blade.“All yours,” she told him, and he turned to face her, a smile playing on his lips. He was sure he’d smiled more these past few months than in his entire life.“Thanks,” he murmured, leaning in to kiss her again. She put a finger to his lips and stopped him.“I meant the shower,” she clarified.“Oh.” Gambit was slightly disappointed, and it showed.“There’s no point in looking like that,” Purdey said primly. “We’ve got work to do. If you go now, I’ll use my culinary expertise and make you breakfast.” “Omelette?”“Cornflakes.”“Of course. Pulling out all the stops. Don’t tire yourself out.”Purdey smirked. “I’ll try my best.”“Leave me some coffee.” He was already retreating to the bedroom.Purdey rolled her eyes expansively. “You can have the whole pot. I’m not becoming an addict.”“Suit yourself.” He treated her to a saucy wink. “Don’t go away.”“Without breakfast?” Purdey sounded shocked by the idea. “Mike, you should know me better than that.”“I do,” Gambit confirmed wryly. “But it’s nice to know I can count on you to stick around for the food at least.”“Not only the food.” They shared a long look. Then Purdey said, “Have your shower, Mike, before I start coming around to your idea of how to start the day.”His grin of understanding was priceless. “Aye, aye, ma’am.”vvvPurdey and Gambit arrived at the Ministry in good spirits, happy with their lot in life. Which made it all the more chilling when they found a black cloud waiting for them at their destination. As they headed down the corridor, they came across McKay loitering at his office door, gaze fixed so pointedly on their approaching figures that there was no doubt that he was waiting for them. Providing support for that unwelcome conclusion was the presence of Steed at his side. They wore matching grim expressions, completing the unsettling effect.“Gambit,” was the sum total of McKay’s gruff greeting. He nodded at his office door, ignoring Purdey entirely. “Inside. We need to have a chat.”Purdey and Gambit exchanged worried glances. “Steed, what’s going on?” Purdey wanted to know, looking to the senior agent for reassurance, her concern overriding her usual chagrin at being so obviously excluded.“Something has come to our attention,” Steed said evasively. “We think Gambit may be able to help us with it.”“He’s not in trouble?” Purdey pressed, looking to Gambit, who had lapsed into a stony silence the second he’d laid eyes on the morose pair. But Purdey didn’t need him to say a word. The set of Gambit’s jaw told her volumes about how worried he was, and so did the unconscious bracing of his body, as though he were readying himself for battle. “Gambit, do you know what’s going on?” she tried, though she couldn’t imagine how he could. Gambit was good at hiding his emotions, even from her, but she knew she would have sensed even the edges of his unease if he’d been worried about something that morning. He certainly wouldn’t have been so endearingly languid, including over breakfast, and he definitely wouldn’t have squeezed in that light-hearted preview of future intimacies just before they left her flat.Gambit’s expression remained grimly impassive, and Purdey could tell he was already bearing down and bracing for the worst. “No, but I have a feeling I will soon. What’s this about?”“We’ll discuss it inside,” McKay said flatly. “Purdey, if you’ll excuse us.”Purdey’s hands went to her hips, and the previously foregone indignation finally surfaced. “Why should Steed go in and not me? We’re a team, aren’t we?”“Yes,” Steed agreed, with a slight smile at his old friend’s expense, turning expectantly to McKay. “Why shouldn’t she?”McKay regarded Steed sourly. “Gambit’s entitled to a certain level of privacy about his past, isn’t he?”“Then why is Steed allowed to stay?” Purdey pressed, with her usual indefatiguable logic.“Because he’s already privy to this particular section of Gambit’s file,” McKay explained tetchily. He clearly wanted to get on with whatever it was, and he definitely looked displeased to still be having this conversation out in the hallway, where every agent who passed them by was looking at them out of the corner of their eyes.“If this is what I think it’s about, so does Purdey,” Gambit cut in, and Purdey registered a flicker of surprise on McKay’s normally-inscrutable, battle-weary features. “And even if she doesn’t, she’ll probably find out one way or another.” He looked at Purdey for a long moment, then back at McKay. “Anyway, I’d like her to be there. Knowing Purdey, she’ll probably have more of an idea of what to do than any of us.”Steed looked quite pleased by this turn of events, and turned to his old friend with the air of someone who had won a recently-made argument. “Well, Tommy, I did warn you. It seems we come as a set.”McKay’s expression was decidedly unenthusiastic, but he didn’t press the issue. “It’s his past, not mine,” he grumbled, turning brusquely on his bad leg and swinging his stick almost aggressively in the process. “If he wants to share it around, I’m not going to stop him. But it’s on your head, not mine.”He led them into his office, locking the door behind them. There was a projector set up on a table in the centre of the room, and a screen pulled down at the other end. McKay settled himself into the chair behind his desk and nodded at Steed to turn off the lights and play the film already threaded into the projector. “I’ll explain the details in a moment, but I think you ought to see this first,” he told Gambit and Purdey, and nodded to the already-whirring projector. Purdey and Gambit exchanged one last look of confusion before turning to face the screen.The footage had obviously been shot by hand and at some distance, standard for surveillance detail. To Purdey, it was decidedly underwhelming given all of the secrecy. It showed a woman in her thirties, dark-haired, coldly beautiful, walking down a street, seemingly without a care in the world. Purdey didn’t recognise her, but from the way Gambit had snapped to attention beside her, he certainly did.“Gambit?” she hissed, feeling worry wash over her as she caught sight of his gently working jaw, wondering if he looked paler or if it was just the way the light from the projector was playing over his face. “What is it?”Gambit swallowed hard, mouth dry, eyes never leaving the screen. “That’s Vanessa Thyme,” he managed, voice scratching out of a throat suddenly gone painfully dry.“What?!” Purdey whipped round and looked at the woman on the screen, then back again. “Are you sure?”“She tortured me for three months. Not the kind of face you forget,” Gambit said bitterly, turning away to look at Steed and McKay, rather than spend a second longer looking at the woman who had nearly broken him. “When was this taken?”“Two days ago,” McKay replied, nodding at Steed to switch off the projector and turn on the lights. “We received word that she’d entered the country, and put eyes on her immediately. So far she hasn’t done much of interest, but we’re staying on her.”“She’ll spot them a mile away,” Gambit predicted darkly, eyes distant, the way they had been on the night he’d told her about his horrible ordeal. She didn’t need to ask to know that he was reliving those same awful moments once more. “And if she wants to lose them, she will. Any idea why she’s here?”“We were hoping you might be able to help with that,” Steed answered. “You know her better than any of our people. She hasn’t been in the country for six years. She must have a reason to come back now.”“She works for a fee, not loyalty, so whatever is, someone’s paying her for it,” Gambit said flatly, obviously keen to be out of the room, and the conversation, as quickly as possible. “But that could be anyone, for any reason.”“But you haven’t any idea what that might be?” McKay pressed, leaning intently over the desk. “She never said anything about having an employer here?”Gambit shook his head. “The questions tended to go one way when I talked to her.”“And you haven’t seen or heard from her since?” McKay went on, regarding Gambit intently. “She hasn’t tried to contact you since she arrived?”“No!” Gambit looked horrified at the suggestion. “I don’t want anything to do with her. She nearly killed me. Do you think I’d keep it under my hat if she turned up on my doorstep?”“No one’s accusing you of anything,” McKay said calmly. Purdey scowled. “I hope not. Why on earth would Gambit want anything to do with her? And anyway, just because she’s here doesn’t mean it’s because of him. If she’s as good as everyone says, she must know hundreds of people in London who’d want to employ her.”“As I said, no one’s accusing Gambit of anything. But you will let us know if she does make contact?” McKay was watching Gambit carefully, evaluatively, and it was making Purdey’s hair stand on end.“Of course,” Gambit said levelly. “If you can catch her and put her away for a million years, I’ll sleep better at night.”“Excellent,” McKay replied, equally levelly. “Do let us know if we can do anything for you. Surveillance, protection, that sort of thing.”Gambit was already getting to his feet, clearly eager to be out of the room, as though afraid Vanessa might leap out of the projector at any moment. “Thanks for the offer, but I survived her once before. I don’t think a car parked in front of my flat will make much difference in the long run.”McKay’s expression was tellingly neutral. “Understood. That’ll be all, Gambit.”Gambit nodded once, curtly, and quit the room. Purdey’s glance at McKay lingered a little longer before she followed him out. She caught up with him in the corridor, where he appeared to be trying to put as much distance between himself and McKay’s office as possible. “Did you know about this?” she hissed, glancing around to make sure no one was listening.“Of course not,” Gambit said sharply, on edge. “I wish they’d left me out of it. It would have saved me looking over my shoulder.”“I’d rather know what I’m dealing with than be left in the dark.” It was Steed, suddenly appearing at Gambit’s shoulder, speaking sotto voce. Purdey regarded him intently. “Steed, you haven’t been keeping this under your hat, have you?” she wanted to know, her annoyance at the possibility he had plain for all to see. “If we’d known earlier, we at least would have been on the lookout for anything odd.”“I give you my word that McKay only told me when I came in this morning,” Steed vowed. “Tommy was considering whether to say anything to Gambit until we had more information, but I thought Gambit deserved to know, whether he wanted to or not.”Purdey nodded, satisfied with that answer. “Well, now that we all know, what are we going to do about it?”“Go to work,” Gambit said brusquely, not keen to dwell on the darker corners of his past. “And try not to think about it.” He looked to Steed. “We do still have an assignment, don’t we?”Steed nodded. “We do, though I understand if you’d rather take some time to collect your thoughts.”“No,” Gambit said firmly, squaring his shoulders. “The last thing I want to do is sit around wondering if the roof is about to fall in. Let’s go.” He quickened his pace down the corridor. Purdey and Steed exchanged glances.“He’ll need looking after,” Steed told the girl. “By both of us. If something does happen, he’ll need help.”Purdey nodded smartly. “I’ve become quite good at saving Mike Gambit from himself. I don’t intend to stop now.”Steed beamed. “That makes two of us. Shall we?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit wished he was bored.Very bored.The assignment had necessitated that Purdey drive her own car, so Gambit was now sitting alone in his Jaguar just off the motorway, watching cars pass, and waiting for any sign of Withers, whom they had seen driving to his rendez-vous about half an hour ago. There were three possible exits the man could take, and Steed, Purdey, and Gambit had each stationed themselves at one, maintaing radio contact while they waited to keep each other apprised of any developments. Gambit wished he had something to say, or at least the desire to shoot the breeze, but he was bereft of both. He really wished the reason behind his silence was down to something as benign as boredom. He knew how to deal with boredom. He’d had plenty of practice learning how to deal with it. When he was a kid, and there was nothing interesting going on in the neighbourhood, there was always the option of wandering around the bomb sites of London with abandon, seeing what secrets they contained. Or he might sneak off somewhere on his own with a book from the library, because heaven knew he couldn’t afford to buy one, and snatch a few quiet hours to himself, away from the other distractions of his particular corner of London, some of whom had no qualms about giving him a pounding if they decided he’d looked at them the wrong way. Not that he always lost those fights, but some days the trouble was more than it was worth, win or lose, and Gambit, ironically given his choice of professions over the years, had never been one to go looking for trouble. He’d found other ways of alleviating the boredom, other ways of entertaining himself, that didn’t involve bloodying anyone’s noses, including his own.He’d put that particular skill to the test when he enlisted in the navy. Not that there were many opportunities to be bored there, either. He was working most of the time, in one capacity or another, and when he wasn’t it usually meant he was in his hammock sleeping, the sleep of the dead tired, so there wasn’t much of an opportunity to be bored then, either. Then there was shore leave, and there was always plenty to see, to explore, to experience in a new corner of the world, seen through the eyes of a boy whose mose exotic travel destination before that had been to visit relatives on the Isle of Man. But every once in awhile, there’d be the odd hour or two where Gambit would be at his own disposal, rather than someone else’s, and it was easy to be bored then, with not much to do but swing in one’s hammock. He used to read in those stolen hours, too. And think. He’d thought a lot about a lot of things, staring up at the ceiling above where he lay, somehow completely oblivious to the way the ship rocked back and forth around him. When he started in the navy, he thought a lot about home, about family, what they were doing without him, what he might be missing. But the longer he was gone, the more he thought about the future. The next port, the next country, the next continent. But then he’d started looking further, pondering what life would hold in store for him. He never seriously considered that he might stay in the navy for the rest of his natural life, but that left the very important question of what he would do, what he might be good at, what might interest him. He’d thought a lot about that, about what kind of life he wanted, what kind of work he wanted to do. That had come part and parcel with what he wanted to see, to experience, because with every port his eyes were being opened up to more and more of the possibilities of what the world had to offer to a young man who’d foregone formal schooling for another kind of education entirely, and he was hungry for more of that knowledge. Hungry for life. He started to keep a mental list of everything he wanted to cram into his existence, which grew exponentially with every new discovery. There was so much to learn, so much to do, so much to experience, it was almost dizzying for a young man just starting to spread his wings.Those thoughts about what he wanted to do and learn came part and parcel with who he might want to live his life with, and what that life might look like. Visions of love, partnership, trust, connection had drifted through his mind starting in his teens, gradually becoming more sophisticated with each passing year, but the core, the essence, remained the same. He’d always hoped he could find that connection, somehow, and until he did, thinking about it had kept him occupied whenever boredom threatened.He still thought about those things, even now. Gambit had learned patience and discipline from his martial arts training, had drawn on it when spending hours on end on surveillance, sitting in a car just as he was at that moment. But his own internal world had always been just as good at keeping him from going mad. He rather liked sitting on his own and having the chance to be alone with his thoughts. Recently a lot of them had to do with Purdey, and their relationship, which opened up all sorts of new questions and possibilities that needed thinking on. And he did think. Even if Purdey wasn’t around, thoughts about her helped to keep the boredom at bay. But right at that moment, Gambit would have happily given up all of his internal musings, all of his discipline, all of his training, just to be able to sit there and be bored, with nothing to occupy his mind at all, and enjoy the emptiness.Of course, there would undoubtedly be plenty of action eventually, plenty to occupy his brain, but until then, Gambit would have been happy to be bored. Stiff. Because sitting there with only his thoughts was proving to be a curse rather than a blessing on this particular occasion. The lack of distraction meant there was nothing to keep his mind from drifting back to the information he’d received that morning: Vanessa Thyme was in London. Somewhere out there was the woman who had caused him untold misery, wandering around with impunity. He kept trying to tell himself that she wasn’t there for him, that there were a hundred reasons someone with her skillset would come to a city as big as London. Logic dictated that her presence had nothing to do with him. And yet, Gambit’s instincts, the stock and trade of a man in his line of work, told him that Vanessa intended to make trouble for him. He swallowed hard and tried to quell the flutter of butterflies in his stomach. He cast around for a distraction, but the only entertainment to be had was talking to his colleagues on the radio. As he returned his attention to their conversation, he found that Purdey was monopolizing the airwaves.“I was sorry when the sun went,” she was saying. “The sunbathing’s all but over for the year.”“So was I,” Gambit bemoaned, willing himself to quip rather than dwell on dark things, breaking his self-imposed silence. “No chance of catching you in the act.”“Gambit!” He could hear the outrage and vague embarrassment, coupled with a hint of flirtatiousness, and smiled at the mental image of Purdey’s cheeks colouring a vibrant red even as her lips stretched in a wicked smile.“I can picture you now…thanks Purdey, you made my day.”Purdey ignored him, pointedly directing her next comment to Steed. “How long do you think the meeting will take?”Gambit, watching the steady stream of cars, didn’t hear Steed’s response. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, a little alarm bell had sounded, and Mike found himself sitting bolt upright in his seat, eyes scanning the motorway. He’d seen…what? No, nothing, just cars, whizzing back and forth on the motorway. Dozens of them. But Gambit’s pulse was racing and his blood was pounding in his ears, and he knew that his reaction had to be attributable to something. He felt sick, sick to the pit of his stomach. And hot. He slumped against the steering wheel, gasping for air. It felt, felt like…Oh hell, I’m having a panic attack. His chest tightened. Get a grip on yourself, Mike, he thought angrily. You can’t let yourself fall apart. Not now. It’s happening, with or without your permission, came the grim response from his subconscious. What are you going to do about it?Gambit clenched his teeth and swore, with feeling, under his breath, for a good half a minute. It wasn’t a technique that his karate master would approve of, that much was certain, but it made him feel better. After another moment or two of deep breathing, he became aware of the squawking from the radio. He pulled his fevered, madly racing brain back to reality in time to pick up Purdey’s worried voice. “Gambit?” she queried, trying to sound lighthearted but not quite succeeding. An edge of anxiety was creeping into her voice, whether she was aware of it or not. “That was very informative, if rather impolite. I hadn’t heard some of those phrases until now. What did you do? Spill your coffee on your lap?”“That would have been my first guess,” came Steed’s cheery reply. “Nothing new for me on the vocabulary front, I’m afraid, but I’m sure Gambit will be glad to fill any gaps in your knowledge.”Gambit blinked in surprise, fumbled with the radio. “You heard that?”Purdey snorted. “Of course I heard. So would anyone else who happened to tune in on this frequency. You’ve had the transmit button held down for the past minute.”Gambit looked down at his radio, realized that he had clenched it so tightly in his hand that the metal was cutting into his skin and his knuckles were white, one finger forcing the radio’s button down.“Where did you learn all that? Not one of your girlfriends, I hope,” Purdey went on, still feigning unconcern, but sounding increasingly anxious about Gambit’s well-being. “I thought you had slightly better taste than that.”“Navy,” Gambit muttered distractedly in response, his voice shaking madly. And he still didn’t know what had set him off.“Mike?” Purdey was really concerned now, no semblance of flippancy left in her voice. “Are you all right?”“I’m…” What? What was he? Having a nervous breakdown? For no reason? Two minutes ago he’d been praying for boredom, or at least a diversion from his anxious train of thought. Now, he would have given anything to go back to being simply worried.“Purdey! Gambit!” Steed said urgently, cutting Gambit’s off before he could respond. “Withers is on the move. Gambit, he’s heading your way!”Gambit didn’t hear him. He was staring at the traffic. Something had just set off a fresh set of tremors.“Purdey, flank him!”“I’m on my way.”Vaguely, he was aware of the sound of tyres screeching on asphalt as Withers gunned his car straight toward him, not showing any indication of being put off by his presence.“Gambit, what the devil are you waiting for?!” Steed’s normal composure had slipped, and now he was in full-on command mode. “Gambit, are you there?”Meanwhile, Purdey, gaining on Withers in her TR7 with every passing second, risked a worried glance down at her radio. Gambit still hadn’t responded. She could see the XJS parked up ahead, but Gambit hadn’t even switched the engine on, let alone moved to intercept their quarry. She could just about see Gambit, a faint outline through the car window. But he was looking the wrong way, not at Withers but out into the passing traffic. She felt her brow furrow, groped around blindly for her own radio where it was sitting on the passenger seat while trying to keep her gaze on Withers. Her fingers brushed the unit, but a sudden swerve to keep Withers boxed in caused it to slide off to the right and drop into the void beneath her seat. Purdey cursed under her breath, temporarily cut off from contacting either of colleagues. In last minute desperation, she leaned on the horn, desperately hoping Gambit would wake up and do his job.Mike heard the urgent honking in a daze. He blinked, whipped around to see the miniature convoy of Withers and Purdey bearing down upon him, and swore. His aunt would be furious with the way he was going on today. He hadn’t muttered so many words from his seaman’s vocabulary in a single day since he was aboard ship. Kicking himself for letting the situation become so dire, he turned the key in the ignition, changed gears, and gunned the XJS to block Withers’ escape route. He executed a quick handbrake turn, and the Jaguar swerved to effectively forestall Withers from going anywhere by car. He could see the man through the windscreen giving him a dirty look. Then their quarry opened his car door, climbed out with an envelope tucked under his arm, leapt a fence, and sprinted across the open field bordering the road. Gambit scrambled out of his own car in pursuit, but Purdey, coming in from behind, had already vaulted from her TR7 and taken off after him, long legs eating up the ground. Gambit watched her with his usual touch of admiration, before he noticed he was being watched himself. Steed was looking at him pointedly from where he stood next to his own car. Gambit felt his cheeks heat, knowing that he’d nearly dropped the ball on this one. Letting Withers go would have been a costly mistake. He tried to ignore the penetrating stare of Steed’s grayish-blue eyes, and took off after Purdey and Withers. The girl was more than making up for Withers’ head start. Withers was fast, but Purdey was faster, and as she neared him, she left the ground and dived gracefully through the air to catch the man around the waist. They hit the ground in a heap, but Withers wasn’t going down without a fight. He rolled onto his back, crushing Purdey, who was still clinging to his waist, beneath him. She squirmed out from underneath the man’s body and stuck one elegant foot out to trip him up as he tried to stand. He went down again, but somehow managed to get his hands around Purdey’s neck. That was a mistake, Gambit knew immediately. If Purdey didn’t get him for that, then Gambit would. Either way, Withers had quashed whatever mercy either of them would have deigned to show the man who had chosen to buy and sell information that had cost many agents their lives. But Gambit was saved from being the one to exact revenge by Purdey, who somehow managed, using the flexibility Gambit had come to appreciate, to maneuver one of those long legs under and up to kick the man hard in the stomach, causing him to collapse and lie gasping on the ground. That was Gambit’s cue to hurry over and pin the man down, lest he try to make another dash for freedom. But then that feeling, the rising panic that had distracted him in the first place, resurfaced, and Gambit found his attention suddenly, inexplicably, drawn toward the road. What was it? What had he seen?“Gambit!”Gambit snapped from his reverie and realised that he’d loosened his grip on his captive. Withers, seemingly recognising that this was his chance to escape, wrenched his left wrist from Gambit’s grasp, and drove his fist violently into Gambit’s stomach. Gambit’s lungs emptied with a ‘whoosh’, and Withers sprang up, knocking Gambit over and making a break for it. Luckily, Purdey was still on the case, springing upright and into action like a greyhound charging after a particularly panicked rabbit. Withers had a head start, but no one could outrun Purdey in a drag race. Her long legs again quickly cut the distance between them, and a flying tackle sent them both crashing into the leaves. There was a brief struggle, one which Gambit recovered enough to rush to her side to assist with, but by the time he arrived, Purdey had the upper hand, pinning the man face down on the ground with his hands behind his back. Gambit took in the scene with a measure of admiration, grinning as he reached her side. “You could have given him more of a head start. It was hardly a fair fight.”Purdey, for one, was not in a joking mood. “Cuffs,” she said brusquely, reaching one hand out for the requested articles, using her knee to hold down Withers’ arm. Gambit extracted the pair from his back pocket and handed them over, Purdey nearly taking his fingers with them in the process. She cuffed Withers with a little more force than was strictly necessary, but Gambit had the feeling she wasn’t in the mood to be scolded about it. “Call Steed,” she ordered, face like thunder. “I can hold him until then.”Gambit did as he was told, pulling the radio from his pocket and calling the senior agent. Steed arrived a few moments later, looking eminently pleased with the state of affairs, despite Gambit’s earlier blunder. Gambit watched the woman stand with a certain degree of wariness. Purdey was picking dead leaves and the odd twig out of her hair when Steed sauntered up. He prodded Withers with his brolly. The man scowled but didn’t say anything. “What happened to the envelope?” the senior agent wanted to know.Purdey retrieved it from where it had landed in the leaves during the tackle, and handed it to Steed. He opened it and rifled through the contents quickly, then smiled in satisfaction.“Thank you. Excellent work,” he praised, as Purdey shoved the struggling Withers back into the ground as he attempted to stand. Gambit, in the process of standing himself, looked stricken. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, focussing on his boots. “I know I got distracted and just about botched the whole thing. But if you’re going to ream me out, do we have to do it in front of him?” He pointed his chin at Withers, who scowled back.Steed cocked his head to one side. “I’m not annoyed with you, Gambit. You’re a good agent, and what happened today doesn’t change that. But I am concerned. Particularly about the swearing.”Gambit’s head jerked up in surprise. “What about it?”“There were ladies present—or listening, rather,” Steed said lightly. Gambit knew that he was being let off easy because Steed was less concerned about sparing Purdey’s blushes than about Gambit having a potential breakdown. Somehow, that made it even worse than a full-on session of shouting, even one that happened in front of the downed Withers.Purdey seemed to have as little time for Steed’s positivity as Gambit’s jokes. “Could you take him, Steed?” she asked the senior agent, then turned burning eyes on Gambit. “I need a word with Gambit.”“Of course,” Steed agreed, some of his sunniness sapping away to be replaced by a measure of suspicion. He strode over and hooked his brolly under Withers’ elbow to drag him upright. “Come along, then, Withers. It’s your lucky day. You get to ride in the Big Cat.” He nodded at his colleagues. “I’ll drive him to the Ministry. You two can meet me there.”Gambit watched them go, then turned to Purdey and tried to smile. “Well, we got him in the end, eh?”In a flash, Purdey launched herself forward, grabbed a handful of his jacket, and pressed him into the nearest tree. Gambit winced at the harsh glint in the bright blue pools. Here it comes…“Mike Gambit, what the hell were you thinking?” Purdey scolded, face a mask of anger. Gambit didn’t know when he’d last seen her so annoyed.Gambit was temporarily speechless in the face of her ire. “Look, I’m--”“You were off in another world completely,” Purdey berated, cutting him off. “There we were, mid-assignment, with a man to bring into custody, and suddenly you were gazing off into the distance and almost letting him go. And to be particularly infuriating, you caught up with him only to let it happen again!” Purdey’s eyes were searching his face for an explanation. “If I hadn’t caught him, where would we be?”“I…”“On top of everything else, you seemed to have also gone deaf, or at the very least quit listening to your radio. The least you could have done was call in. We couldn’t even contact you. If it weren’t for me honking the horn, I think you would have let him drive straight past you.” She searched his face, demanding, expectant. “Well, don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”“I...don’t,” Gambit admitted, so softly Purdey had to strain to hear him. Gambit did look away now, and she thought she could feel a slight quiver in the handful of fabric she still had clutched in her first. She let him go, felt the rage drain out of her, leaving her empty inside. In truth, her anger was a front. She was worried. Something had been wrong long before Withers had interrupted their dialogue. Gambit’s string of expletives for one. Something must have happened to make him curse like that. But part of her was angry that he had let whatever it was interfere with his work. Gambit was the consummate professional. He’d never let his personal feelings botch a job so badly before. “Mike,” she prodded, a little gentler this time. “You can’t afford to make silly mistakes. McKay will split us up if he finds out about us and thinks I’m distracting you from the job at hand.”“I know. I’m sorry.” Gambit raised his hands in surrender. “I got it wrong.”Purdey crossed her arms, mounting confusion filling up the void left by her ire. “I know you are. So tell me, what happened?” She cocked her head to one side knowingly. “It’s about this morning, isn’t it?” Gambit sighed, worked his jaw. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think…my gut tells me I thought I saw something.” He froze as the problem of identifying what had upset him suddenly resolved itself in a shudder of recognition. “I thought I saw Vanessa,” he murmured in surprise, more to himself than to her, and saw Purdey go pale. “In a car on the motorway. I can’t be sure I did. Hell, maybe it was just someone who vaguely looked like her, driving by out of the corner of my eye. But ever since I heard about her being back in the country, she’s been in the back of my mind, and I let her crawl out of whatever cupboard she lives in. I’m looking for her.” He sagged in defeat. He thought he was good at keeping Vanessa out of his head outside of anniversary time, but this revelation put paid to that theory. “I let her distract me. That’s no excuse, I know.”Purdey sighed and laid a hand aside his face. “I understand,” she said softly. “But you’ll wind up driving a desk if you keep making those sorts of mistakes. Not to mention the possibility it’ll get us both killed.”“I know, I know,” Gambit agreed, covering her hand with his. “I let us both down. And Steed. I’ll try to do better, I promise.”“No more distractions?” Purdey asked worriedly.“No more distractions,” Gambit confirmed smiling away her fears. “Not on the job, anyway.”“I’ll hold you to that,” Purdey vowed. Gambit nodded, happy to have Purdey at his back, holding him to account, making sure he didn’t get complacent. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”“Good.” Purdey leaned forward and kissed him tenderly. “You were very, very lucky,” she pointed out when she pulled away, brushing aside a stray curl. “Steed could have had your head on a platter.”“I know,” Gambit murmured, jaw working madly. “He still might, not that I blame him.” He gifted her a crooked, apologetic smile. “I really am sorry, you know. Last thing I want to do is bring you, me, us, down. I don’t know what happened. One minute I was fine, and the next…” He shrugged pathetically. “If you hadn’t snapped me out of it, Withers might have been halfway to Scotland by now.”Purdey grimaced at the downcast look on his face. “Don’t make a habit of it is all I ask,” she told him gently, regretting that she’d been so hard on him. Gambit always came through for her. One slip-up didn’t change that. And he’d been through so much recently. “I shouldn’t have done Steed’s job and reamed you out myself. That didn’t help anyone.”Gambit shook his head. “No, you were both right. Steed’s going to have some more of his linguistic observations when we get back, but I’ll take my lumps. Only way to knock some sense into my thick skull, eh?” He tried to smile at the joke, but Purdey shook her head.“There are other, better, ways,” she told him, and then gave him another quick kiss, needing to touch him, for him to know she still loved him, still cared, that that was why she was so angry to begin with. “Try to keep your mind on the road on the way back, if you can.”“You shouldn’t have kissed me, then,” Gambit quipped, with some of his usual cheekiness, and treated her to a saucy wink before making his way back to the XJS.vvvvGambit looked out over the London skyline, hand tapping the window frame above his head contemplatively. Steed had taken him aside back at the Ministry, had asked him what the matter was in that wonderfully roundabout way of his that asked the question without really touching it. But Gambit’s answer had been fairly inconclusive, and Steed had sent him and Purdey home after they had finished their reports. Now it was afternoon, and Gambit was more certain than ever that his supposed glimpse of Vanessa was what was bothering him, which bothered him even more. Not only that, but the sickening sense of foreboding hadn’t faded away. He’d convinced himself earlier that there was nothing for him to worry about but his own thoughts. But now he was equally convinced that something terrible was out in that bustling metropolis, something with consequences for him alone. If he was lucky. If he wasn’t…“I know I’m late, but there were awful queues everywhere, including at the Ministry,” Purdey announced suddenly, striding into Gambit’s flat without bothering to knock, laden with brown paper bags stapled shut. “And besides all that, I ran into Marshall on the way out, and he was in a very talkative mood.” She set the bags on the kitchen counter and shrugged off her coat. “But I did manage to pick up some takeaway. I thought you wouldn’t want to go out, but I’m not in the mood for cooking and heaven knows you’re not.” She tossed the coat on the couch and frowned. “Gambit, are you listening?”Gambit turned his head slowly to look at her, as though coming out of a fog. “Sorry, I was miles away,” he apologised.“Gambit,” Purdey chastised gently, moving to join him at the window. “Don’t tell me you’ve been sitting in here brooding about Vanessa Thyme.”“All right, I won’t tell you.”Purdey pursed her lips into a thin line. “Mike, you know that won’t help. And anyway, we’ve been through all this. There are a million reasons why she could be in London, none of them to do with you.”“I saw her.”Purdey froze, then said, very carefully, “I thought you weren’t sure?”“I saw her,” Gambit repeated firmly, turning away from the window. “While I was waiting for Withers. That’s what triggered a panic attack. It wasn’t my imagination. I’ve thought about and thought about it and I not only think I saw her, I think I saw her more than once.” Purdey was vibrating with anxiety and the urge to barricade the doors. “You do?”“When I was sitting in my car, waiting for Withers,” Gambit explained, “I was watching the traffic go by, not really paying attention. But looking back, there was this one car that kept driving past, over and over again. And sitting in the driver’s seat was Vanessa. I’m sure of it. I didn’t register at first because she had a hat covering her hair, but thinking back to it now, I know it was her.”Purdey shook her head. “Mike, that sounds like your imagination playing tricks on you. You were thinking about her because of what McKay told us this morning.” Gambit opened his mouth to respond, but Purdey ploughed on with relentless logic. “Then you sat in the car stewing while waiting for Withers. You got so worried you made yourself sick, and now you’ve convinced yourself you saw her.” “No,” Gambit said firmly, shaking his head vehemently. “No, I didn’t imagine it. I’m not saying I’m not paranoid, or that I wasn’t thinking about her. But I didn’t imagine the same car going by over and over, and I definitely didn’t imagine it slowing down every time it was near me. She was looking at me, Purdey. I don’t know if she was scoping me out or wanted me to see her, but either way she’s here, and she has her eye on me.” Purdey felt her blood run cold. “You still don’t know for sure,” she protested, a little desperately. “You were sure this morning that you hadn’t seen her. And you can’t have gotten a clear look at her, not from that distance. And you must admit you were preoccupied at the time. It could’ve been someone who just looked like her. And anyway, even if was her, she’s under surveillance.”Gambit shook his head. “She’ll spot them a mile away, and lose them just as fast as she picks them up. Chances are they thought they had eyes on wherever she was, and she gave them the slip. They’ll never know she was gone.” “Well, I can see you have a very high opinion of our intelligence services,” Purdey said flatly, crossing her arms in annoyance.“I know her,” Gambit countered. “She’s good, and she doesn’t have a rulebook to follow. Which puts our people at a disadvantage.” He looked at Purdey, features grim. “I wish I could say that someone will grab her and they’ll have her boxed up by Monday, but I can’t. Not with a straight face.”Purdey’s eyes flickered downward momentarily in resignation, then back up once more. “Well, it doesn’t matter if they catch her or not,” she declared, much to Gambit’s surprise. “As long as she leaves you alone, it’s nothing to do with you, and that’s all that matters.”Gambit shook his head again. “We don’t know that she will leave me alone. She was watching me, after all.”“Mike Gambit, I know that ego of yours can be remarkably resilient, but this is going a bit far even for you,” Purdey exclaimed in frustration. “She must have associated with hundreds of people in her time. She might have been doing another job and seen you and wanted to make sure you weren’t going to cause her any trouble. If she was going to do something to you, wouldn’t she have done it then? And anyway, why on earth would she still be after you? It’s been so long since you had anything to do with her. And we still can’t be sure it even was her.”Gambit sighed and looked out the window at the skyline once more. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the odds are against it. I’d bet against it, if it were anyone else, especially after all this time. But still…” He let a long breath out through his nose. “My instinct tells me otherwise. I feel it, right down in my gut.”“But that can be wrong,” Purdey tried, still unwilling to believe it. “We all read things wrong sometimes, don’t we?”“Yeah,” Gambit said, without much conviction. “Sometimes.”They stood in silence for a moment, Gambit brooding and Purdey unsure of where to go from there. Steed always told them to cultivate their instincts, and it was true that they were seldom wrong. Doubting Gambit’s instincts felt as wrong to Purdey as going against her own, and in their line of work they did so at their peril. But today, for once, she was praying for them to be off, and not just because she was feeling the same niggle of doubt at the back of her own mind that Gambit was. After finally breaking down a major barrier between her and Gambit, and getting past the strain of him telling her about that awful chapter of his past, they were closer than ever. Now, just as quickly, she felt him slipping away again, into the recesses of the past and his own mind.“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now,” Purdey said, as brightly as possible under the circumstances. “We should eat before it gets cold.”Gambit crossed his arms and hugged himself. “I’m not really hungry, Purdey-girl,” he said absently, trying to smile to reassure her. “But you probably are, so go ahead without me.”“If I wanted to eat on my own, I would have gone home,” Purdey huffed. “I came here to be with you, Mike Gambit, not stare at your back all evening.”Gambit bowed his head in contrition. “I’m sorry, Purdey,” he apologised again. “I’m just…distracted. And not very good company. I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay.”“I didn’t say I wanted to go,” Purdey shot back, putting her hands on her hips. “But I refuse to stand by and watch you drive yourself to distraction.”“I don’t need to drive. I’m already there,” Gambit quipped tiredly, causing Purdey to tsk in response.“Well, you’re clearly not distracted enough to make terrible puns,” she observed.“It’s all part of the distraction package.”“Along with egotism, masochism, and negative thinking, I see,” Purdey summarised. “So much going on in that brain of yours, and none of it to do with me.”“You know you’re always on my mind, Purdey-girl,” Gambit objected. “There’s just a lot of…”“Distractions?” Gambit smiled wryly. “Right. Distractions, fighting with you for dominance.”“Well, that will never do,” Purdey declared. “I refuse to compete for a small portion of your faculties. What you need, Mike Gambit, is a little diversion.”“From my distraction?”“Exactly.” She stepped in front of him and wrapped her arms around his waist, tucked her head against his shoulder. It was so comfortable there, just resting against him, and it only improved when he drew his arms around her. “Do you know, I’ve been distracted by you rather more than I’ve let on since we met.”She could sense his eyebrows rising with interest. “Is this your way of getting my attention?”“Is it working?”“I’m listening, aren’t I?”Purdey grinned wickedly into his shoulder, and continued. “When I first met you, I thought you were attractive, but I was also wary of you. There were so many rumours floating around the department, and I wanted to make my own way, not become a notch on some other agent’s belt.”“Funny. I felt the same way about you.”“Oh!” Purdey nudged him gently in the ribs. “That’s the sort of talk, Mike Gambit, that made me leery of you in the first place.”“That was before you discovered my winning personality.”“How could that be? I’m still looking for it now.”“Hilarious. Is this comedy routine for me alone, or are you taking it on the road?”“It’s a private performance.” Purdey rested her chin on his shoulder. “You pushed me in all the right ways, and none of the wrong ones. The more time I spent with you, the more I trusted you. And the more I trusted you, the more I could be myself with you, and the more I thought of you as a friend. And that meant I’d admitted to myself that I liked you, and once I’d admitted that, it was much more difficult to tell myself that I didn’t love you, and definitely difficult to pretend that I wasn’t attracted to you.”“You did better than me,” Gambit admitted, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I could never pretend to be anything but besotted with you.”“I noticed,” Purdey said with a smile, nuzzling his neck with her nose. “The way I noticed the bow of your top lip, and the slimness of your hips, and the colour of your eyes, and the great, great hair.” Her hands started to fist his shirt unconsciously. “And I wanted to touch you. Or kiss you. Or just hang on to you. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t let myself, because that would make me vulnerable, and I was so afraid. So afraid. Until I thought I was never going to have the chance to touch you at all, and that frightened me more.” She pulled away and looked up at him, eyes worried. “I held you at arm’s length for so long, and now I have to keep reminding myself that I’m allowed to touch you, and that if I do, the whole world won’t fall down. And now I feel like you’re pulling away from me, and I’m losing you, and that frightens me more than anything.”Gambit smiled down at her, brushed her hair away from her face. “I’m not pulling away from you,” he promised. “That’s the last thing I want to do. I’m still getting used to being allowed to touch you, and I don’t want to stop just when things are getting interesting.” “Well?” Purdey queried. “What are you going to do, then? Because you’re not going to be doing much of that if you’re going to spend all your time staring out windows looking for ghosts.”Gambit sighed. “I can’t say I won’t ever get distracted. I do. You know me well enough by now to know I go into my head sometimes and don’t come out again for awhile. Sometimes I need to. But I trust that if I ever go away for too long, you’ll find a way to bring me back again. And I’ll come back to you.”“Even this time? With Vanessa Thyme lurking out there somewhere?”“Yes.”“Do you promise?” Purdey looked serious, and he could tell this meant more to her than he realised. She really was worried.“I promise,” he vowed, “and you know I always keep my promises.”Purdey searched his face for a moment, then nodded. “All right, Mike Gambit. I’ll hold you to that.”“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Gambit agreed, and leaned in to kiss her. She kissed back, and when he pulled back, there was light in his eyes for the first time since she arrived. “Are you still hungry?”“Yes.” But Purdey’s eyes were sparkling in a way that told him she didn’t necessarily mean for food. “Are you sufficiently distracted now?”“Nearly.” Gambit let himself lean against her. “I’ll let you know when I’m there.”“Well then, maybe food will carry you the rest of the way.” Purdey’s appetite had gotten the better of her, and the takeaway was calling. Gambit followed her to the kitchen counter, where the unopened bags sat, beckoning. Purdey opened the bags and began unpacking the cartons, lining up the various delicacies on the countertop. Gambit watched them accumulate with interest.“Who are we feeding? The secretary pool?”“Well,” Purdey defended. “I couldn’t decide between Indian or Chinese…”“So you got both?” Gambit inferred, smiling at Purdey’s prodigious appetite. “I like a nice curry,” Purdey was saying as she opened one of the containers and inhaled deeply. “But I know you’re not acclimatized, so the Chinese is there for back-up.’“I don’t see how anyone gets used to that stuff,” Gambit muttered, remembering the last time Purdey foisted the dish on him. “You must have guts of steel.”Purdey shrugged, already seeking out dishware and cutlery. “You could’ve been a bit more open-minded,” she opined, “when you first tried it.”“You could’ve started me out with something a bit milder than the stuff listed next to the little flammable icon on the menu,” Gambit remarked ruefully. “I nearly died. I swore I was going to wake up in the hospital with my stomach pumped.”“Oh, you were fine eventually,” Purdey dismissed. “Although I don’t know if I’ve ever watched anyone drink that much water in one sitting.” “For all the good it did,” Gambit grumbled.“I told you. It’s the oils that make it so hot. Water doesn’t do the slightest bit of good.” She smiled at the memory, scooping some curry onto a plate. “It was quite funny to watch, though.”“For you maybe,” was all Gambit had to say, poking about in the other boxes. “Anything here that won’t peel all the skin off the inside of my mouth?”“Egg rolls.” Purdey pointed with her fork, before helping herself to the curry. She closed her eyes and savoured the various flavours as they danced on her tongue. “Just like in India,” she said dreamily.“I’ll bet,” Gambit said distractedly, unable to keep his mind on the food. He left Purdey for the couch and collapsed on it tiredly. Purdey opened her eyes, and realized Gambit had moved on. “Aren’t you having anything?” she queried.“Don’t let me stop you,” Gambit replied, leaning back and staring straight ahead at one of the various pieces of illusionary art lining his wall. “I still don’t have much of an appetite.”Purdey frowned, swallowed a second bite before abandoning her meal on the counter and taking a seat next to Gambit. “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking about that Thyme woman?”“All right, I won’t tell you.”“Let me guess. You need another diversion,” Purdey decided.“To distract me from the original diversion?” Gambit said with a grin. “I’m going to need a map to keep track of all these distractions at this rate. Any suggestions?”“One or two,” Purdey said with a glint in her eye, leaning into his slouched form until her mouth found his. He responded almost immediately, one of his hands finding its way to her waist, and he sat up a bit straighter. She leaned into him, feeling herself being drawn in. They parted briefly, Gambit raised an eyebrow.“You’re spicy,” he observed.Purdey realized she still tasted of curry. She passed her tongue over her teeth. “Sorry.”Gambit shook his head. “Don’t be. I think this is the best way to get me, uh, acclimatized to the spiciness.” Purdey grinned. “In that case...seconds?”“Always.” He could feel her pulling him forward, against her body as she lay back on the couch, taking him with her, marveled once again at how their bodies, trained to work as one in the field, had followed suit in the bedroom. The first time he’d made love to Purdey, Gambit had discovered the depth of the connection they had nurtured over the nearly two years since they’d met. He’d known how to touch her, how to hold her, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. As though they’d been made to fit. He knew her body as well as his own now, from the scar on her upper thigh where the tarantula had left its mark, to the curve of her hips beneath his questing hands. She was something else, and he never wanted to lose her…The thought squelched him, and he broke away with a sigh. Purdey, who had been enjoying herself, and was just about to choose between working on Gambit’s shirt or his trousers, found herself suddenly left in the lurch. “Does this mean you’re not in the mood?” she asked wryly. “Because if you’re not, you only have to say so. Although, you’ve always struck me as the type who’s always in the mood.” “I would be,” Gambit protested. “I’m just—““Distracted. Yes, you said.” Purdey sighed, settling into a more relaxed posture next to him on the couch. “The question is, what are we going to do about it? Because you can’t go on like this, and I’m not enjoying it very much either.”Gambit rubbed his face. “I don’t know Purdey,” he admitted quietly. “I honestly don’t know. Wait for the other shoe to drop, I guess. Not much we can do until then.” He sighed, consulted the watchface on the inside of his wrist. “May as well start on those egg rolls.” He smiled unconvincingly and left Purdey for the kitchen. She followed him worriedly, put a hand on his shoulder.“Anything I can do?” she wanted to know.“Just…stick about for a bit,” he replied, rummaging among the cartons on the countertop. His motives for keeping her closer weren’t for his comfort alone. If Purdey was with him, he could keep an eye on her, keep her from falling victim to something—someone--that was his fault.Purdey smiled slightly. “I’ll do one better,” she told him. “I still have a clean nightgown here, don’t I?”By the way his eyebrows quirked up, she deduced the answer was ‘yes’.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Steed!” Purdey exclaimed in surprise the next morning, upon opening Gambit’s flat door to find the senior agent on the other side. She resisted the urge to give herself a quick onceover, to check if there was anything about her appearance that might give away that she had spent the night in Gambit’s flat—and bed. Squirming around in a tizzy would have been rather obvious, so Purdey had to content herself with a quick mental inventory of what she had done that morning, reassuring herself that her clothes were, indeed, clean and pressed, her hair was impeccably groomed, her makeup flawlessly applied. She’d driven her own car over the day before, so there wasn’t a lack of a vehicle to raise suspicions. So long as Steed didn’t question the earliness of her ‘visit’ to her partner, she thought they were probably safe. “Gambit and I were just about to come in together,” she began, hoping her voice sounded more level than it did in her head. She tamped down any residual panic and forced herself to appear nonchalant. “We’re not late for a meeting or anything, are we?”“I can confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are not late for anything, Purdey,” Steed assured, removing his bowler as he stepped inside. “But I’m afraid this isn’t a social visit.” He looked meaningfully at Gambit, who was standing at the counter, sipping his coffee. “Although you know that already, don’t you?”Purdey was looking from one man to the other in frustration. “You two and your telepathy! Gambit, what’s he talking about?”Gambit set his coffee cup down with a sigh, met Steed’s eyes. “It’s Vanessa, isn’t it?” he surmised.Steed nodded in confirmation. “She’s slipped the net.”Purdey blanched. “What?”Steed regarded her grimly. “Surveillance lost track of her two hours ago, and they haven’t as yet been able to pick up her trail.”“They won’t,” Gambit asserted, hands tightly gripping the edge of the counter until the knuckles went white. “Not until she’s done whatever it is she wants to do, anyway. They’ve only stayed on her this long because she let them.”“Then we need to find her ourselves,” Purdey said with feeling. “If they can’t do it, it’s up to us. She can’t be left free to wander the city.”“I’m afraid that might prove rather difficult,” Steed said, regret lining his features. “Informing you of Vanessa’s status was a courtesy on my part. The real reason for my visit is to tell Gambit in person what McKay could have told him over the phone.” He met Gambit’s eyes. “Given recent events, you’ve been placed on indefinite leave, effective immediately.”“What?!” Purdey’s eyes were flashing with outrage. “They can’t do that. He hasn’t done anything wrong. There was that slip-up during the assignment yesterday, but it wasn’t serious enough to warrant being taken off duty.”“It’s not what I’ve done,” Gambit said tiredly, surprisingly unfazed by the revelation. “It’s what I might do.” He looked to Steed. “They’re worried I might be a liability. If Vanessa targets someone else to get to me.”“That’s ridiculous!” Purdey exclaimed. “Steed, you can’t let them do this. It isn’t fair. We don’t even know that she’s here for Gambit. You have to talk to McKay.”“I already have. All morning, in fact. But it hasn’t changed the outcome. Gambit’s lucky that he’s not being imposed upon further—McKay could have been much less lenient.”“It’s not right,” Purdey fumed. “Mike, are you going to let them do this?”“I don’t have much of a choice,” Gambit replied pragmatically. “And they’re right.”“What?”“I am a liability,” he said flatly. “It’s my past, and mine alone. No one else should have to suffer for it.”Purdey shook her head. “That shouldn’t matter. Not after everything you’ve done for the Ministry. I could name half a dozen agents who are still alive because of you without even trying. How can they be willing to turn on you with your service record?”“It’s one of the less admirable features of the profession, I agree,” Steed concurred. “You’re useful until you’re not, no matter how much goodwill you’ve stored away over the years.”Purdey crossed her arms, still incredibly displeased. “What are we meant to do in the meantime?“Well, hopefully they’ll find her soon and put her away, and Gambit will be restored to his rightful place at our sides,” Steed offered optimistically. “But in the meantime, you and I are expected to carry on as normal.”Purdey snorted derisively. “I’ll do no such thing.”“Please, Purdey,” Gambit pleaded. “It’s not your problem. Making life hard for yourself won’t help me, but it’ll hurt you. I don’t want that.”“What about what I want?” Purdey shot back. “They discredit my partner and I’m supposed to carry on as normal?”“Gambit does have a point,” Steed said gently. “And to be honest, Purdey, you’re rather more involved in all of this than you might think.”Purdey frowned. “What do you mean?”Steed sighed, looked from one of his colleagues to the other with a certain amount of trepidation. “I wasn’t going to ask about this unless it interfered with the job, and so far it hasn’t. But I rather think we’ve crossed that line now.”Purdey’s patience had worn thin. “What line?”“The personal one.” Steed regarded them both seriously. “I realise this is highly indiscreet, but events beyond my control have contrived to make it necessary for me to ask, so—“ His expression shifted, and he regarded Purdey and Gambit cheerily. “—is there anything I ought to know about what’s transpired between the pair of you recently? I don’t need details, just a basic grasp of the facts.” Purdey and Gambit exchanged resigned glances. “Well, it was nice while it lasted,” Gambit said with an accepting shrug. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”Purdey bit her lip. “We were going to tell you, Steed. Eventually.”“Tell me what, exactly?” the senior agent wanted to know. “Oh really, Steed,” Purdey sighed, crossing her arms in exasperation. “You already know, don’t you?”Steed bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement. “I have had my suspicions,” he confirmed, “but I’d prefer to hear it from you. A gentleman should never presume.”“Then you shouldn’t have a problem,” Gambit said with a grin, earning a hissed reproach from Purdey, and a chuckle from Steed.“I shouldn’t like to dig myself a bigger hole than I already have,” Steed demurred. “If you can save me that indignity, I think it’ll save a great deal of embarrassment on all our parts.”Purdey dropped her hands to her sides, but the way they were curled into fists betrayed her anxiety. “It was after Gambit turned up alive, when I’d been certain I’d seen him killed.”Steed’s ears pricked up. “Go on.”Purdey’s cheeks were reddening, but her voice remained remarkably steady. “It made me reconsider a lot of things,” she said carefully. “About Gambit. And me. And I realised I’d almost lost my chance to be with him. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.” She shrugged. “So I told him how I felt and what I wanted.”“And just about everyone knew what I wanted,” Gambit put in, with a knowing smile and a fond look toward Purdey. His eyes were soft when they met hers, and the look was returned in kind. “Coming back from the dead gives you a new perspective on lots of things. And when we’d worked out that our wants coincided, there wasn’t much to stop us. So now we’re—““Involved,” Purdey offered.“Very involved,” Gambit emphasised, grin broad enough to almost split his face wide open. “Although we’ve always been involved, haven’t we, Purdey-girl? We’ve just finally caught up with ourselves.”Purdey held Gambit’s gaze rather longer than she’d intended, and for a moment Steed thought they’d forgotten he was there. Eventually, Purdey tore her eyes from Gambit’s with great effort, and said, with a certain amount of defiance, “And that’s how it is. We’ve been trying to keep it under our hats, but I’m surprised you didn’t work it out earlier.”“As I said, I’ve had my suspicions,” Steed admitted, looking rather pleased with himself.Gambit raised his eyebrows. “Only suspicions? I’d say that counts as a victory on our part.”Steed laughed his quick, two-note laugh. “I must confess that it wasn’t the first time I suspected that something might be going on—always wrongly, it seemed. Hence why I could never be completely certain. But as long as it wasn’t affecting the job, I thought you’d work it out between you, one way or another.”Purdey’s eyes widened almost comically. “Steed, you mean you thought that we—that Gambit and I—were—were...? Even before it happened?”Gambit chuckled. “You don’t have to sound so offended, Purdey-girl.”Steed wagged a finger. “Again, a gentleman doesn’t like to presume.”“But that didn’t stop you,” Gambit said with a wicked smile. “What tipped you off? Did you catch me floating ten feet off the ground one morning?”“Something like that,” Steed agreed. “Although, in my defence, I suspect you’ve kept rather a lot of people guessing as to what, exactly, might be going on.”“Including us,” Gambit said wryly, shooting Purdey an encouraging smile. “Cheer up, Purdey-girl. If we’ve been keeping everyone guessing this long, they’re not liable to find out any time soon. If even Steed couldn’t work it out for sure, we must be doing something right.”Purdey turned to Steed, suddenly concerned. “It isn’t that I didn’t want to tell you, Steed. I’ve been trying to keep it quiet to give us some time to let things evolve without anyone looking over our shoulders. It was easier for everyone that way.” Steed treated her to a slight bow. “Purdey, I’d like to think the three of us are the sort of friends who have the sense to know when something isn’t our business, and to not be offended when we’re kept in the dark as a result. And unless you disagree, I’d hazard that this was one of those times.”Purdey’s relief was obvious. “I’m not sure the department will be quite as forgiving. Do you think they’ll find out?” she added, with a certain amount of anxiety.Steed turned serious. “Even if they don’t, Purdey, you may wind up in the line of fire regardless if Thyme is planning to come after Gambit, so you really must take care. And if this does go down a rather more unpleasant path in the future, you may find yourself being asked some unpalatable questions by someone other than me. Others may develop their own suspicions, depending on how deep they dig. If they do, it might be in your best interests to come clean about your relationship. That gives you a modicum of control over the situation.” He nodded at them both. “At the very least, the pair of you ought to discuss your strategy concerning what you might do, and when.”Gambit turned grim. “If it comes to that, and they have a problem with it, I don’t care if they want to sink my career. I’ll go. But I don’t want Purdey to have to pay for my past.”“If Gambit goes, I’m going with him. As it is, I have half a mind to go on leave myself, just on principle,” Purdey said curtly, crossing her arms defiantly. “But then they’d question me anyway, wouldn’t they? It’s not as if I’m known for being objective where Gambit is concerned, regardless of what’s going on between us. If they think I’m somehow involved, lying about where I sleep isn’t exactly going to protect me, is it?”“I’m loath to agree with you, but I’m afraid you’re right,” Steed lamented. “You’re involved by association, regardless of what happens. So am I, if it comes to it. We’ll all have to tread carefully. But if you were to go on leave now, out of solidarity, I’m afraid it’ll draw the sort of attention neither you nor Gambit can afford at the moment.” He smiled conspiratorially. “Not to mention that you’ll be able to learn infinitely more to help Gambit if you stay ‘on the inside’, so to speak.”“Spying on the spies,” Purdey surmised. “It would be corny if it wasn’t so horribly fatalistic.”“Oh, come now, it’s not that bad,” Steed soothed. “We don’t know that things are going to carry on as they are, or that they’ll get worse. Gambit will bide his time, and we’ll keep our eyes and ears open, and stay on the alert.” He glanced from one to the other reassuringly. “It’s a less than ideal situation, but not a hopeless one. And the first thing to do is go in this morning and not cause a fuss.”Purdey sighed. “Oh, all right. But I’m not happy about it.”Steed canted an eyebrow at Gambit. “I was expecting her to protest rather more vehemently. She really does care about you.”“Steed!” Purdey huffed, but she was blushing slightly. Gambit’s smile was tender. “The feeling’s mutual.”“But you won’t tell anyone?” Purdey pressed, regarding Steed intently. “Will you, Steed?”Steed’s smile was warm. “I won’t say a word. As I said, unless it impinges on the job in some way that I can’t condone, it’s none of my concern, though others will undoubtedly disagree.” He gifted them both a bright smile. “And as it stands, I’m rather pleased for you both. I wish you every happiness and all the luck in the world.”“Steed!” Purdey flung herself forward and hugged him tight, earning a delighted laugh from the senior agent. She’d only just pulled away when she felt Gambit step in behind her, and released him so Steed could shake Gambit’s extended hand.“Not the first time you’ve played matchmaker, I’ll bet,” Gambit said knowingly.“Oh, I think you’re giving me too much credit,” Steed demurred. “All I did was spot two people I thought might work well together. The pair of you did the rest.”“He’s preparing his defence in case it all goes south, and McKay wants someone to blame,” Gambit quipped to Purdey, earning a nudge in the ribs.“You are happy, then.” Steed was regarding them curiously now, observing their dynamic and realising how much had changed, and how much it had stayed the same.“What do you think?” Gambit murmured, gaze drifting back to Purdey. “My feet haven’t touched the ground in weeks.”“And as much as I hate to inflate that ego any further,” Purdey chipped in, eyes shining when they met Gambit’s, “yes, I’m quite happy, thank you.”“Excellent!” Steed enthused. “It’s better to have something positive to hold onto, particularly if things go rather pear-shaped in this investigation.”Purdey looked worried again, Steed’s words chasing away her smile. “Do you really think they will? Are the odds against us so terrible?”“I think we have to be prepared for every eventuality,” Steed said frankly. “And from the way Gambit’s looking at me, I suspect he agrees.”Purdey wheeled around to look at the man in question, and was rewarded with a rueful smile. “We’ve got to be realistic, Purdey-girl. There’s a good chance I won’t have a single secret left by the time this is over, and that includes you.”Purdey pondered this particular quandary for a moment, then tilted her chin up defiantly. “Then they’ll find out,” she said simply. “Because I’d rather have you than a secret any day.”“It may well come to that,” Steed warned. “So it’s just as well we know the stakes going in.” He arched an eyebrow at Gambit. “I don’t suppose I’d be presuming too much if I said you felt the same?”“I don’t think you can overpresume when it comes to Purdey where I’m concerned,” Gambit murmured, wearing that same fond, soft, lovelorn expression Steed had noted in the early days after Purdey had joined the team. “Anyway, of all the secrets that I’ve had to carry over the years, Purdey’s definitely the best one.”“Good,” Steed said smartly. “Now that we all know where we stand, let’s get back to business. Gambit, you’ll be all right while we’re gone?”“I’ll entertain myself somehow,” Gambit assured, with a certain amount of weariness.“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Purdey say dryly, moving to rest a hand alongside his cheek. “You will tell us if you see or hear anything at all, about Vanessa or otherwise?”Gambit covered her hand with his, smiled reassuringly. “I promise.”Purdey glanced at Steed, seemed to consider for a moment, then threw discretion to the winds and kissed Gambit in full view of the senior agent, this time without a modicum of embarrassment. “I’ll check on you at lunch,” she pronounced.“I’m looking forward to it,” Gambit replied, following the well-worn script, but Steed had the sense that he was going to feel her absence more than he was letting on.“Look after yourself,” Steed advised with a nod, ushering Purdey out the door. When they were gone, Gambit sighed. Things were definitely less-than-ideal, but at least he and Purdey had an ally now, in more ways than one. He turned to the dishes in the sink, and started to think of ways to distract himself for the day.vvvMike Gambit awoke the next morning to light streaming in his window from a crack in the curtains. He eased an eye open and swivelled it around, slowly coming to terms with his return to consciousness. He turned his head and looked blearily at the watch face on the inside of his wrist. It was later than he normally woke up on a work day, but that wasn’t particularly problematic because he didn’t have to go to work. He let his arm flop back onto the bed with little grace. Normally getting the chance to have a lie-in was a bonus, but somehow being forced off-duty indefinitely due to past connections with a murderous gun-for-hire cast rather a pall over a few extra hours of shuteye. He stared at the ceiling and tried to put a positive spin on it. Purdey was always scolding him about negative thinking, after all. There had to be something good about being forced to take time off. There were always lots of other things he could be doing rather than getting shot at while saving the country from diabolical masterminds. Surely he could think of some way to use this unexpected extra time off to his advantage?What did he usually do with time off? It had been awhile since he’d had any that he hadn’t spent with Purdey, their sudden bid for romance having been accompanied by an equally-fervent desire to make up for lost time by enjoying each other’s company in as full and meaningful a way as possible. He hadn’t spent many days or nights alone that hadn’t been more or less absorbed by the job since. But there had to be something he could be doing, if he reached his mind back far enough and recalled what life was like before Purdey had her romantic epiphany.Spending a day, or an evening, with a pretty girl leapt immediately to mind as one way he had spent his time quite pleasantly in the past, but, of course, Purdey was the only woman in his life now, and she was, quite rightly, currently off fighting diabolical masterminds with Steed, rather than gracing his bed. It wasn’t Purdey being off in the thick of the action that bothered him—he just rather enjoyed being there with her. But Purdey wasn’t there, and wouldn’t be there until she was finished for the day, when inevitably she would come by to ensure that he wasn’t sinking into a deep depression or crawling the walls or turning into the sort of recluse his building definitely wouldn’t hold with when it came time to renew his lease. Which was why it was his job to figure out some other way to while away the hours without brooding on how Vanessa Thyme was still finding ways to ruin his life, even after he’d escaped from his cell back in 1973.Hobbies! He had hobbies that he’d been neglecting. There were others that he did with Purdey, and those were the ones that had been getting all the attention of late, namely dancing, playing board games, watching old movies, playing the odd game of tennis or squash, and engaging in esoteric and/or philosophical debates at every opportunity. But there were just as many, or more, that he couldn’t do with Purdey. He had books he’d been meaning to read for months now, gathering dust on the shelf. There were a few DIY projects around the flat that he’d never gotten around to taking care of. There were a couple of crossbows he’d been looking for in the stores to add to his collection. And when was the last time he’d sat and sketched? He’d been looking at his drafting board for weeks now, thinking about how he hadn’t picked up a pencil properly in ages, and now here was his chance!It was a plan, at least. A way to distract himself from what he was strongly suspected he couldn’t be distracted from. But at least he could try.First things first. He sighed and propped himself up on his elbows, regarded the darkened room with practiced bleariness, then set about unwinding himself from his customary cocoon of covers. Finally free, he slid off the bed and onto the floor, settling cross-legged onto the carpet and closing his eyes, hands resting loose and open on his thighs. He breathed deep, letting peace and tranquility wash over him. He’d learned meditation through his karate training, and had come to value it just as much as the fighting skills. He needed that calmness now, that ability to shut down and retreat from the world, be at peace without demands or distractions, let his mind go somewhere else and unwind. These were things his personality demanded for his own sanity, and his job and his past had only made more necessary. He never timed how long he sat there, because that would defeat the purpose, but fifteen minutes went by and felt like hours. When he opened his eyes again, he felt more refreshed than he had when he’d woken up, and his worries had washed away, at least for the moment.He got to his feet and quickly made the bed so he could retract it and clear the space, then commenced his morning workout, going through the motions of one of his favourite katas. The physicality of the routine cleared his head in a different way than the mediation, but it was just as satisfying, the sheer physicality of moving his body with expert precision never failing to bring him joy, even in stressful times. Sweat appeared on his skin, glistening in the light, and he let it trickle off of him, cleansing him, washing away the tremors of memory that tugged at his consciousness.He finished and stood, shoulders heaving, in the middle of his flat, slowly returning to reality as if from a dream, his workout never failing to be consciousness altering. He considered showering, but he had no plans to go out. Not knowing who might be out there waiting for him, coupled with his own tendency to withdraw in times of stress, made the outside world seem decidedly unappealing. So, since Gambit knew that he was only going to wind up sweaty and dirty again anyway, he dug out a pair of jeans and a paintstained shirt and tugged them over his naked frame. He eschewed shaving as well, deciding to embrace the scruffy look in its entirety, and set about finding the paint to finish off that small corner of wall that he’d been meaning to get to for the past three months. vvvPurdey strode through the Ministry corridors, pointedly ignoring the curious looks people gave her as she passed. News of Gambit’s enforced leave of absence had spread like wildfire, and since the man himself was, understandably, not available to be gawked at, his partner in crimefighting was serving as substitute. The day before she had worked with Steed at the stud farm, which had shielded them both from the madness of their place of work. But today Steed had made it clear that they had to make an appearance, that they couldn’t hide out forever. Better to face the music and dance, even if Purdey had never felt less like dancing in her life. Purdey flashed some of the less-subtle observers a quick, carefree smile and resisted the urge to pick up the pace. If they thought she was running from them, the rumour mill would kick into overdrive even faster.Thankfully, no one had actually tried to talk to her about the whole mess, and Purdey was counting her blessings for that small mercy when McBain fell into step beside her. “Purdey,” he greeted officiously. “I’m surprised to see you here.”“That’s odd,” Purdey replied acridly, “since I’ve been working here since 1975.”“You know what I mean,” McBain murmured surreptitiously, refusing to validate Purdey’s sarcasm. “McBain, I don’t claim to be telepathic at the best of times, let alone today,” Purdey said sharply. It wasn’t that she hated McBain. He was a good agent and a good man, but his rigid adherence to the rules and protocol, at the expense of loyalty and doing what needed to be done in the moment, often put him at loggerheads with her and Steed and Gambit. The reappearance of Vanessa Thyme had undoubtedly put Gambit in his crosshairs as potentially guilty of violating some rule or other, and she wasn’t in the mood to listen to any more conspiracy theories. There were enough of those already floating around the corridors.McBain, to his credit, seemed to understand this, and changed his approach. “Please don’t misunderstand my intentions, Purdey. I realise Gambit’s suspension must put you in a difficult position.”“Why would it?” Purdey countered, never breaking her stride. “It’s Gambit who’s been suspended, not me, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. He hasn’t even been accused of anything. I don’t like it, but I know he’ll be back as soon as everyone stops being so idoitic. And until he comes back, I plan to keep doing my job.”McBain sighed in minor exasperation. “Yes, but you must know you’re tainted by association, regardless of whether you or Gambit have done anything wrong. They don’t suspend people for no reason, and just because you haven’t been suspended as well doesn’t mean they won’t if you give them a reason.”“And do you think they will?” Purdey wanted to know, looking at him hard. “Suspend me? Because I am not going to turn my back on Gambit, whatever they threaten me with. I refuse.”McBain held up his hands defensively. “I meant no offence. Purdey, I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, especially after that business with Steed and the psychic. I think it’s admirable that you’re staying loyal to your partner, and I don’t believe there’s any evidence that Gambit has done anything wrong, either. At least, not at the moment. But that might change, and I wanted to warn you. You may find yourself faced with some very damning evidence, and some very tough decisions.”Purdey furrowed her brow. “What sort of evidence? They’re not actually investigating Gambit for anything, are they?”McBain looked at her meaningfully. “As I said, they don’t suspend people for no reason. I advise you to tread carefully, that’s all. Think of it as friendly advice.”“‘Friendly’ doesn’t describe most of what’s happened in the past twenty-four hours,” Purdey observed tartly. “But thank you for the warning, McBain.”McBain bowed his head slightly, a formality befitting a man who adhered closely to every other code of conduct, both written and unwritten. “I do hope anything that comes to light is in Gambit’s favour, for your sake as much as his.” Then he broke away and headed down another corridor before Purdey could press him further. She watched his retreating back with more than a modicum of foreboding, leavened with an equal measure of annoyance, then picked up the pace. She was through trying to put on a brave face—she wanted away from prying ears and eyes.She reached her ultimate destination—Steed’s office—in a few minutes, and hurried inside without bothering to knock. The senior agent was on the telephone when she entered, and raised a staying hand to ensure her silence as he concluded his call. Purdey watched him carefully as she closed the office door quietly behind her. She’d known Steed long enough to detect the firm set of his mouth, a sure sign that whatever he was hearing on the other end of the line wasn’t something he was particularly pleased about.“Right. Thank you for letting me know, Tommy. Of course I’ll tell him. And Purdey. Leave it with me.”Purdey’s eyebrows shot up at the mention of their names. “Are we in trouble?” she asked Steed, settling gracefully into the chair across from his as he returned the receiver to its cradle.“‘We’ aren’t. Not at the moment, anyway. But the top brass have launched an investigation into Gambit and his connections to Vanessa Thyme. They think it might have something to do with why she’s here.”Purdey sank back into the chair in exasperation. “So it’s true,” she said bitterly.Steed arched a bemused eyebrow. “What is?”“That Gambit’s being investigated,” Purdey fumed, launching herself onto her feet in disgust. “I just received a not-too-subtle hint from McBain that someone was looking into Gambit. But I hoped it was going to be a little farther down the road than this.”“I suspect he heard something this morning and this was his first opportunity to warn you,” Steed surmised. “Did he say anything else?”“Just that I might be next on their list,” Purdey said, not bothering to hide her disgruntlement. “Guilt by association. Only Gambit hasn’t done anything wrong. If anything, he’s the victim. After all that woman did to him, they’re treating him like he’s some sort of reprobate.” She gripped the back of her chair angrily, turned pleading eyes on Steed. “Steed, can’t you do something? Put a good word in? There must be some strings you can pull.”“If there were, I would have pulled them,” Steed pointed out, lacing his fingers on his desk. “Starting with Tommy, but he’s proving remarkably stubborn, and I doubt I’ll have better luck further up the chain. Until we have something concrete to fight against, we may have to sit tight and let nature take its course.”Purdey slumped resignedly back into her chair. “It isn’t fair,” she grumbled, crossing her arms. “After everything that Gambit’s done for this department, they’re treating him like a common criminal.”“That’s the nature of the business.”“Not for everyone,” Purdey countered. “If it were you, they’d show you a little more courtesy.”“I think you’re rather forgetting the fact that I’ve been placed under investigation several times this past year,” Steed pointed out with a small, ironic smile. “No one’s above suspicion, Purdey. Not in this line of work. We must be very careful about erecting idols, and eternally willing to tear them down.”Purdey’s expression turned thoughtful. “Hideous the work we do.”“Eh?”“Something Gambit told me you said once.” Purdey smiled tautly. “I suppose no one can say we weren’t warned.”Steed smiled back, with a touch more cheer. “And speaking of warning, shall I pay a visit to Gambit and let him know the hideousness of the job has suddenly turned its ugly gaze on him?”“No, I’ll do it,” Purdey said with a sigh. “After work. We’ll let him have one day away from it, at least. He’s already brooding about Vanessa Thyme being in town as it is. Do you have something for me?”“Yes, as it happens.” Steed picked up a file from his desk and handed it over. “Research. Should take you all day. I thought it would be best if we didn’t stray too far afield for the moment. In case we’re needed.”Purdey smiled conspiratorially. “Well, we are already guilty by association.”Steed nodded mock-seriously agreement. “And it would be a shame to disappoint them. I’ll see you later, shall I?”vvvPurdey took the little-used back stairwell downstairs to the file room, in hopes of avoiding any more probing glances and whispered asides. As she hoped, no one was using that route, which had long ago been eclipsed by the newer, rejuvenated main staircase that had been added to the building during its last renovation. As she made her way to Files, Purdey was optimistic that she might be able to avoid people for the rest of the day, tucked up in a corner with only her dossiers for company. Sadly, her hopes were dashed the moment she set foot inside the inner records sanctum and saw Larry Carrington, one-time victim of the brain-draining machine, waiting at Sandy the file clerk’s desk. Before she had a chance to turn around and leave, he caught sight of her and waved, and Purdey slunk resignedly over to join him. She’d enjoyed flirting with Larry in the past, particularly when she could use it to get a rise out of Gambit. But Gambit wasn’t there, and Purdey knew that Larry’s ongoing game of one-upmanship with her partner meant that he was going to want to discuss Gambit’s recent fall from grace, the one thing she was hoping to avoid discussing with anyone after her encounter with McBain. She didn’t feel much like flirting, either. Hopefully she could steer the conversation away from both.“Purdey!” Larry greeted, clearly delighted that she was joining him. “What brings you down here?” “I don’t know about you,” Purdey said dryly, “but I often find the urge to do some work during the day. You?”Larry laughed at her sarcasm, but didn’t appear particularly put off by it. “I’m following your example. Research. For an investigation I’ve been assigned.”“Here we are, Larry,” Sandy, the man in charge of this particular records room, announced, carrying over a rather thick sheath of files. “Everything we have on the books. I’ll, uh, need that form you promised me before I can sign them out.”“Of course.” Larry retrieved a piece of paper from his inside-breast pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Sandy, who set his burden on the desktop to receive it. Acting out of idle curiousity, Purdey tilted her head and read the labels on the stack of files Sandy had just retrieved.“That’s Gambit’s personal file!” she exclaimed, head whipping up in surprise.“The very same,” Larry confirmed, patting the pile of dossiers proprietarily. “Let’s hope he’s had as exciting a life as he’s led us to believe. Otherwise I’m going to be falling asleep on the job.”“But you’re not allowed to read other agents’ personal files,” Purdey protested, looking from Larry to Sandy and back again. “Not without special permission.”“Which I have,” Larry cut in, with a nod at the piece of paper he’d given to Sandy. “Straight from McKay himself.”Purdey felt her heart stop as realisation dawned. “You’re the one investigating Gambit?”“Well, not only me. I have a couple of assistants. But yes, I’ve been put in charge of looking into Gambit’s history with Thyme.”Purdey shook her head vehemently. “But that isn’t fair. You’ve never liked him.”“That’s the point. Unbiased perspective.” Larry looked smug. “They know I won’t be soft on him.”“So they chose someone who’d condemn him instead?” Purdey shot back, seething.“Come on, Purdey. I’m willing to give him as much of a chance as he’d give me,” Larry quipped, treating her to a sickly smile.“That’s the difference between you and him,” Purdey corrected, jaw tightening almost painfully. “Gambit would give you the benefit of the doubt, no matter what he thought of you. He wouldn’t put you down as a traitor, not out of spite. He has more integrity than that.”Larry’s eyes narrowed. “Then I’m sorry you have such a low opinion of me,” he snapped, grabbing the files off the desk and tucking them under his arm. “Because I’m going to do my job whether you like it or not, and I’m not going to let whatever idealised notion you have about your partner cloud my judgment.” He stepped in close, locked his gaze with hers. “Mike Gambit is hiding something. From all of us. And I’m going to find out what it is.”“We’re all hiding something,” Purdey countered, meeting Larry’s glare with one of her own. “Everyone in this business is. Even you, Larry.” “Maybe,” Larry allowed. “But not all of our secrets are treasonous. And if I were a betting man, I’d say whatever Gambit is hiding leads straight back to Vanessa Thyme.” He searched her face and a thought seemed to occur to him. “And if I wanted to up the ante, I’d say you already knew what it is, in which case, let me give you some advice. Come clean before he drags you down with him. Because whatever it is, I promise you, I’ll find it. Then you’ll want me to be biased, for your sake, but it’ll be too late for me to go easy on you then.” He turned and started to walk away. “Think about it, Purdey,” he called back, leaving her standing there, fuming and alone. “Before it’s too late.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Exhausted, Gambit let himself slump to the floor, legs bending at the knee as he settled against the wall to admire his handiwork. He’d finished painting the wall and it was drying nicely. He’d found a roll of film taken several months ago that hadn’t been developed and killed a few hours in the dark room. He’d read one of the shorter books on his formidable ‘to read’ pile cover to cover over a lunch he’d cobbled together from whatever he could find in his fridge and pantry, which had kept him from thinking of other, less-palatable things while he ate. He’d spent most of the afternoon sketching, and, once he’d noticed the state of his flat after his activity-filled day, capped it all off with a rather vigourous cleaning session. If he hadn’t completely distracted himself from his woes, then no one could accuse him of not making a very good effort.“I see you’ve been busy.”Purdey’s voice came as a welcome surprise, and he shifted around to find her leaning against his doorframe, keys still dangling from elegant fingers. “This is all very domestic Will you do my flat next?” she asked airly. “I’ve been meaning to clean the oven for ages.”“That all depends on how you’ll pay me for my services,” Gambit quipped back, looking up at her with eyes dancing.“Oh, I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement,” Purdey said primly, as she sauntered over to where he sat and slid to the floor next to him. “I’ve heard about this,” she mused, stretching her long legs out and crossing them at the ankle. She surveyed the state of the flat, then the state of the man himself. “A man gets into a committed relationship, and then lets himself go.” “I have not let myself go,” Gambit retorted flatly.“Haven’t you?” Purdey looked him over with a sceptical eye. “Then it’s worse than I thought.”“Don’t you have something else to do?” Gambit asked sardonically. “Rotate your tyres? Rearrange your record collection? Return all those casserole dishes you’ve stolen from Steed?”“I borrowed them.”“For two years?”“He hasn’t even noticed they’re gone.”“Except when he had that dinner party,” Gambit pointed out. “Do you know, I think that’s only one of three times I’ve actually heard him swear.”“Four,” Purdey corrected, then added at his bemused look, “but you were out of your head on cooking sherry at the time. I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”Gambit arched an eyebrow. “Cooking sherry?”“Well, we were all out of gin and those cocktails weren’t going to mix themselves,” Purdey said nonchalantly.Gambit blanched. “I thought I’d been poisoned that night!”“You nearly were, insisting on having that awful pie at three in the morning on the way home.” Purdey shivered dramatically. “If I hadn’t been there, you might not have survived.”Gambit looked at her long and hard. “There are things I need to ask you one of these days.”Purdey smiled secretively. “And I just might tell you. If you’re good.”“Now I’m not sure I want to know.” Gambit feigned suppressing a shudder. They considered the now-sparkling flat once more for a moment in silence. “Anything interesting happen at the Ministry today?” Gambit asked eventually, almost too casually. Purdey chanced a sidelong glance at him, and noticed he was looking pointedly at his dining room table with studied disinterest. He was making a great effort at pretending not to care, as attested to by the fact that he’d refrained from asking her about what was going on the second she’d arrived.Purdey had rather hoped to avoid having that particular conversation for awhile yet. For a moment, sitting there, bantering with Gambit about nothing of consequence, it had been wonderfully ordinary, a respite from all the nastiness out in the real world. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about what she’d found out that day from McBain, Steed, and, worst of all, Larry. “Steed’s put me on research,” she said nonchalantly, keeping her expression as neutral as possible. “I spent all day going through dusty old files, so you didn’t miss very much.” She paused and considered. “Then again, given how much time you spend in the file room, that probably makes you feel more left out than you would if you missed taking down a double agent, doesn’t it?”Gambit snorted in amusement. “First you accuse me of letting myself go, now you’re calling me boring. Are you trying to tell me something?”“Only that I know you better than you do, Mike Gambit,” Purdey quipped, earning a grin from Gambit, but it was short-lived.“There’s something else,” he said quietly, eyes searching her face. Purdey cursed internally. She wanted to delay bringing up the investigation for as long as possible. Gambit had enough on his mind as it was, and if there was any good to be found in his suspension, it was the protection it afforded him from all the gossip and innuendo buzzing around the Ministry’s corridors. She knew Steed had left her with the responsibility of informing Gambit about the investigation, and at the time she’d thought she was the best person to tell him. But sitting there, face to face with him, she suddenly found it wasn’t as easy a task as she’d first thought.“What do you mean?” she tried, delaying the inevitable for as long as possible.Gambit pursed his lips. “Come on, Purdey-girl. I know you better than that. Whatever it is, let’s get it over with. It can’t make things much worse.”“This is why you shouldn’t bet on the horses,” Purdey sighed, letting her head fall back against the wall, deflated. She could feel Gambit tense beside her, but keeping him in the dark was no longer a kindness. “Apparently, your being suspended isn’t enough for the top brass. You’re also being investigated.”Gambit started in surprise, and Purdey knew whatever bleak situation he’d been envisioning, he hadn’t been expecting that. “Investigated? For what?”“In relation to your connection with Vanessa Thyme.”“Connection?” Gambit’s outrage was palpable. “What connection? She tortured me for three months. She’s not on my bloody Christmas card list.”“Maybe not. But apparently, the time you spent together warrants them digging through your past as though you were a common criminal.” Purdey couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her own voice. “I don’t understand it, either, but it’s happening. And it gets worse.”Gambit groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Do I want to know?”“Probably not, but you’ll go mad if I don’t tell you,” Purdey said matter-of-factly. “They’ve put Larry in charge of the investigation.”Gambit dropped his hands and looked at her incredulously. “Larry?” he repeated sceptically. “Brain-drained Larry?”“The very same.”“Brilliant.” Gambit squeezed his eyes shut. “Heaven knows what he’ll find, but he’ll do his damnedest to make his report as incriminating as possible. They may as well arrest me now.”“I did come to that conclusion all on my own,” Purdey agreed glumly. “Apparently they think it’s better if the investigator is biased against you.”“For who? The firing squad?”Purdey pulled the corners of her mouth back as she sucked her teeth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. Steed was going to do the honours, but I said I would. I could have kept quiet, and neither you or Steed would have known if I hadn’t.”“I can see you have a high opinion of both of our deductive skills,” Gambit said dryly. “You know we would’ve worked it out sooner or later. No, you were right to tell me. None of this is your fault. This is my mess.” He rubbed his temples as though staving off a headache. “And I thought this whole thing couldn’t get any worse.”“Never mind,” Purdey replied, springing into action and slinging one leg over him so she could straddle his lap. “We’ll just have to find a way to make things better,” she asserted, before covering his mouth with hers.“Is this another attempt to distract me?” Gambit managed between kisses.“No. It’s my way of trying to distract both of us,” Purdey corrected, unbuttoning her coat and slipping it off her shoulders so she could cast it aside. “Is it working?”“More than it should,” Gambit admitted, voice slightly muffled as his hands dropped to her waist. He groaned as Purdey ground her hips against his. “You should have tried this when I asked you what was going on at work. I would’ve forgotten all about it.”Purdey’s mouth stretched into a smile mid-kiss. “I’ll remember that for next time,” she promised, and started working the button on his jeans. “I thought I’d let myself go,” Gambit reminded teasingly between kisses.“You have,” Purdey confirmed, unzipping the garment and working both it down his hips. “But in a very attractive way.”“I’ll have to remember that for next time,” Gambit quipped, hands sliding her dress up her thighs and out of the way.“I certainly will,” Purdey murmured appreciatively, temporarily banishing all thoughts of the investigation and everything else. She leaned forward, braced a hand against the wall and the other on his shoulder. Gambit cupped the back of her head, drew her into another kiss, savoured the sensation of her body against his. Despite recent developments, Purdey was still here, still on his side, and whatever other travails were coming his way, he knew he wasn’t alone in this mess. Not this time. Purdey wasn’t going to go back to work and leave him to his fate, and that realisation alone was almost enough to make him weep.That sentiment mingled with a multitude of others, all pleasurable, and lasted well past the point when Purdey sagged against him as her body went deliciously limp. “Are you sufficiently distracted, Mike Gambit?” she whispered in his ear after a moment, as they lay panting in the aftermath.“For now,” Gambit managed, cradling her against him like the precious cargo she was. “Although you might have to distract me again later.”Purdey laughed, a real, genuine, merry laugh, in spite of the odds facing them, and he loved her for it. “I’ll see what I can do.”vvvHaving finished the washing up from dinner, Purdey twitched the curtain covering Gambit’s kitchen window aside, peered down into the street below, and grimaced. Even with the full compliment of cars of all shapes and sizes that crowded the curb in this busy neighbourhood, the grey four door sedan stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. She narrowed her eyes, both in anger, and in an to attempt to identify the figure occupying the driver’s seat.“How’s my watcher?” Gambit asked casually, from where he was seated on the couch. Purdey hurriedly let the curtain fall back into place. “What watcher?” she asked innocently.“The one outside. You should give him a wave. He might be lonely.” “Gambit!” Purdey was outraged at his flippancy.Gambit paid her no heed. “He was on this side of the street last time I checked, but he might have moved.” He looked up at Purdey expectantly. “Well?”“He’s relocated to across the street,” Purdey said briskly, grateful that the whistle of the kettle gave her an excuse to turn her back on him. “Not that I was looking for him.”“Of course you were,” Gambit said knowingly, rearranging the Scrabble tiles on the stand in front of him. “So was I. He moved in last night, probably thought I wouldn’t notice him in the dark. At first he thought he was just looking out for Vanessa, but now, given what you’ve told me, I know he’s keeping a close eye on what I’m up to.” He scratched his stubble thoughtfully. “I guess I should be flattered.”“You shouldn’t. It’s a terrible compliment,” Purdey said, with a modicum of venom in her voice, picturing herself dumping the boiling water in the kettle onto the watcher’s head rather than pouring it into her cup. “It’s insulting, offensive, degrading--”“And expected,” Gambit finished, plucking a tile up and stretching to put it on the board, then frowning when he realised the word in question wouldn’t work. “How many times have we given someone else the same treatment?” he went on, returning the tile resignedly to join its cohorts.“Yes, but that’s different,” Purdey argued, carrying her tea cup from the kitchen to the couch, where she set it on the coffee table beside the Scrabble board. “It wasn’t—”“Me?” There was nothing to stop her from meeting Gambit’s eyes this time, as he looked up from beneath heavy lids and those ridiculous crinkly brows that were so completely him, and therefore completely lovable. “Sorry, Purdey-girl. I don’t get special treatment on your say so.”“You ought to,” Purdey huffed, crossing her legs and arms in a double expression of her annoyance. “It’s all so ridiculous. If they put all the resources they’re pouring into investigating you into looking for Vanessa, it’d make more sense and it wouldn’t be an insult to every agent who’s loyally served his country.”“As far as they’re concerned, all those resources are going toward the same cause,” Gambit pointed out. “And if they can’t hang her, they’ll settle for me, provided the evidence lines up the way they’d like.”“Larry will make it line up,” Purdey said sourly, rearranging her own tiles more for something to do than any real attempt to make a word. Gambit chuckled morosely. “He can always find an angle. That’s one thing you can say for good old Larry.”“I could say a few things,” Purdey said darkly. “And I wish you would, too. At least on this board. It’s been your turn for ages.”Gambit grinned ruefully at her over the crisscrossing lines of letters. “You’re the linguist. Is ‘gxblt’ valid in any language?”“Knowing you, it’s probably something intolerably offensive in Polish,” Purdey opined, picking up her tea cup and taking a sip. Gambit brightened. “If I’d known rude words were fair game, I would’ve spelled something different three turns ago.”“I’m not going to do you the favour of asking what it was,” Purdey declared, leaning back against the couch’s arm. “Think of something fast, before I decide to go outside and throttle that watcher.”“That doesn’t give me much incentive,” Gambit said wryly, but he turned his weary eyes back to the tiles nonetheless.“Maybe if you see them in a new light,” Purdey suggested, switching on the lamp on the side table.“I thought bad jokes were my line?”“I can’t be expected to be effortlessly witty at all hours. I’ve had a very trying day.” Purdey’s gaze had been drawn by a brown envelope next to the lamp. “What’s this?” Gambit glanced up briefly as she picked the packet up and opened it. “Oh, that. I had a roll of film I hadn’t developed yet. Thought I might as well do it now.”Purdey tipped the photos onto her lap and started to go through them. “When were these taken?”“Uh, last summer sometime,” Gambit murmured distractedly. “Early July, I think.”“July,” Purdey repeated, somewhat darkly. “That was an awful month. I felt like one massive raw nerve because it was right after that awful business with—“ She caught herself before she said ‘Larry’, but she knew she didn’t have to say the name for Gambit to know who she meant. She looked worriedly at Gambit, but he was staring resolutely at his Scrabble tiles with a heartbreaking expression that put all the aggravation about being investigated to shame.“Yeah,” he said softly. “I know we made amends after you were drugged, but it was still a relief to go to France, to be honest.”“Yes,” Purdey agreed sadly, wishing she’d left the pictures alone, but somehow compelled to keep looking at them. “I suppose that’s why Steed forced us to go to that party before we left. We barely knew those people as it was.”“That’s why I brought the camera,” Gambit volunteered unenthusiastically. “Gave me something to do, but I wasn’t really bothered about the results.”“Still, they’re quite good,” Purdey tried, wanting to banish the shadows from his features. “You’ve always had an eye for a good angle.”“Or curve,” came the automatic quip, and for once, Purdey let it slide.“Steed looks very dapper, as always,” Purdey went on, flicking through several shots of the senior agent with guests. “Everyone else looks like they’re trying too hard to enjoy themselves. Oh.” She held up one photo. “You couldn’t have taken this one. You’re in it.”“I let Steed hold the camera for a few minutes while I got a drink,” Gambit recalled. “It’s probably one of his. What about it?”Purdey was suddenly transfixed by the picture. It had been shot through a gap in the crowd, with Purdey and Gambit framed in the middle, her looking away and off to the side, him looking at…her. “The way you’re looking at me.” She looked up from the picture, met his eyes. “After what happened, I didn’t think you’d ever look at me the same way again. I half-expected you to hate me. I certainly didn’t think, so soon after, that you’d look at me like, like…”“Like I loved you?” Gambit finished simply, smile a little crooked. “Come on, Purdey. My heart might have been broken a little, and maybe we were a bit awkward around one another for awhile. But that didn’t mean I suddenly stopped loving you.”“Not even for a second?” Purdey said softly, eyes twinkling merrily.The look in Gambit’s eye was in danger of reducing her to a pile of goo. “Not even for a second.”Purdey put the pictures aside and crawled across the couch to curl up beside him. “That’s enough of the game,” she decided, when they were almost nose to nose.“But I haven’t thought of a word,” Gambit murmured, as Purdey leaned in closer. “Never mind,” she said softly, laying a hand aside his cheek. “That photo’s already said several for you.”vvvvA little while later, when the shadows were starting to steal across the ceiling, Gambit sighed resignedly. “You should go,” he murmured reluctantly, though the way the arm he had wrapped around her waist tightened revealed that his own desires ran counter to his words.Purdey raised her head from his chest and scowled in bemusement. “What on earth for?”“If they’re investigating me, and they have my place under surveillance,” Gambit reasoned, sounding mildly annoyed with himself coming up with this argument, despite the perfectly sound logic at its base. “And if we’re still keeping what’s going on between us a secret from everyone other than Steed, we can only push our luck so far. You checking in on me after work? Okay. You staying on after dinner to keep me company? Plausible. You staying the night?” He shook his head wryly. “I think even given our unconventional track record that they might jump to conclusions.”“All right,” Purdey accepted, settling her head back down on his chest. “But why not let them find out? I’m starting to wonder if it matters who knows what by this point. After all, Larry’s already decided I’m not objective when it comes to you.”“There’s a difference between you being not being objective because I’m your partner, and you not being objective because we’re sleeping together,” Gambit pointed out with relentless logic. “Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but as soon as you add sex to the equation, everyone reads a relationship differently. I hate to say it, but your instinct about how getting involved with your partner would reflect on you professionally was dead on.” He could almost hear Purdey brooding at the notion, but pressed on anyway. “It’s not fair, but you know I’m right, and I still don’t want you to lose your job because of me.”“Given the circumstances, I’m not sure I’d mind,” Purdey said blithely, molding her form to his. “But it would make it rather difficult for me to act as your inside woman. So--” She sat upright, sheet draping elegantly over her frame. “—I will go, but only because it’ll help you.”Gambit raised an eyebrow. “So you’re going to leave me all alone in my bed for my own good?”“Isn’t that what you asked me to do?” Purdey pointed out sweetly.Gambit played the conversation back in his head. “I suppose I did. Not my smartest move, eh?”“Oh, I don’t know,” Purdey murmured, leaning in to give him a kiss. “I think you just proved, not for the first time, that you’re a self-sacrificing idiot. And that self-sacrificing idiocy is one of the many reasons why I’m going to continue being your woman on the inside.” Her expression turned serious, and she ran a comfortlingly cool hand over his forehead. “We’re going to find a way through this,” she promised, “somehow.”Gambit looked up into her eyes, regarded her with a mixture of love and admiration. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Purdey-girl,” he admitted.“Luckily for you, you won’t have to find out,” Purdey declared, slipping out of the bed. “Now I really had better get dressed, or they’ll have something else to talk about in the break room tomorrow.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Two weeks passed. Gambit went about his day-to-day life as best he could. He worked out. He read. He drew. He worked his way through the textbook on advanced mathematics lent to him by a certain ‘E. Knight’, as the owner had identified herself on the inside of the front cover. He made more trips to the grocery store than he’d had time for in the past six months, all in aid of ever more elaborate recipes that he suddenly had all the time in the world to try. His flat had never been in better nick. Both the XJS and the Range Rover were almost ridiculously well-serviced. Purdey came by every day after work with any news of the investigation she had been able to glean from the rumour mill and her own inquiries. They had dinner, played Scrabble, watched the telly, talked about anything and everything, and danced to practically every record Gambit owned, fast or slow. Neither of them had the heart to venture to a restaurant or to the disco or anywhere at all, not with the spectre of Vanessa Thyme possibly lurking in the background, watching them, at the back of both their minds. The idea was so unpalatable that it quashed any possible enjoyment that they might have been able to glean from an evening out. Steed had, by mutual agreement, kept his distance so at least one of them could maintain some pretence of objectivity in the Ministry’s eyes. Purdey, on the other hand, was firmly in Larry’s crosshairs as in sympathy with the enemy, and could see no downside to continuing to contact Gambit, both for her own sake and to pass on messages from Steed. To either agent’s knowledge, there had been no further sightings of Vanessa Thyme, and no indication as to what her reasons for visiting London were. Status reports on the progress of the investigation into Gambit’s past were ominously absent, but Gambit wasn’t naïve enough to believe that that meant nothing incriminating had been found—or something innocuous wasn’t being spun to look as damning as possible. But for the moment, at least, Gambit’s life had settled into an uneventful sort of monotony.It was driving Gambit quietly mad.It wasn’t the domesticity itself that was getting to him. Gambit’s introverted personality meant he could amuse himself quite happily for hours on end. But being forced to sit by while his colleagues carried on in the high-action world of espionage was starting to grate. The fact that Steed and Purdey were electing to take on less-glamorous assignments to stay close to the investigation and any intel that might trickle through the cracks only made him feel worse, like the proverbial albatross around their necks, weighing them down and preventing them from getting on with their lives. His current professional limbo, coupled with his own self-imposed limits—no visits to family or friends lest they, too, find themselves tangled up in the web of vague threats and potential danger that currently constituted his life—meant that Gambit found himself in what felt increasingly like a prison of his own making. Who needed Larry and his accusations when he was perfectly capable of making himself miserable all on his own?For that reason, when he returned home after an uneventful morning at the local Tesco’s for what he hoped would be a slap-up lunch, he checked the mailbox in his building’s lobby expecting nothing particularly remarkable. Setting his bag of groceries on the floor, he inserted the key in the lock and opened the door to find a small stack of letters, and one large manila envelope. Gambit picked them up and gave the envelopes a cursory glance as he relocked the box. He operated under the assumption that someone was going through his mail before it reached him, something he himself had done when investigating others in the past. But as he wasn’t expecting anything particularly remarkable to come through the post, he doubted they’d find anything to incriminate him on that front, at least. As he picked up the grocery bag and flipped through the stack, catching sight of what looked suspiciously like a letter from his aunt, he came upon the manila envelope and frowned. Unlike the rest of the mail, it was blank, with no name, address, or postmark. Gambit’s jaw tightened grimly. Whatever was inside hadn’t been sent to him through the post. That meant someone had broken into his box and planted it there, and since Purdey and Steed were perfectly capable of handing over anything they might want to give him in person, he had a sneaking suspicion that whoever had gone to all that trouble hadn’t done it because it was in his best interest.He certainly wasn’t going to open it on the spot, with his building’s glass front doors providing an unfettered view into the lobby for any watchers who might be stationed outside. So he gathered his groceries and his mail as casually as possible and made for the lifts.It seemed to take an absolute age to travel up to the top floor, and Gambit found himself jittering impatiently at each stop, smiling tightly at his fellow building occupants when they shot him nervous glances. Finally, after an agonisingly long trip, he reached his floor and made for his flat as quickly as he could without looking conspicuous, already snatching his keys from his pocket so he would be ready by the time he reached his door. Once inside, he dumped the grocery bags unceremoniously on the kitchen counter, letting the mail fan out untidily across the surface. He tore the manila envelope open without hesitation and tipped it over. A single roll of film slid out and deposited itself in his palm. Gambit frowned, pinching the envelope open and looking inside, but there was nothing else—no note, no explanation, nothing. Gambit laid the envelope on the table, vowing to dust it for prints, if he hadn’t already mucked up whatever was there with his own, and returned his attention to the film. It was a perfectly innocuous roll, not labelled or altered in any way. He shook it but the rattle it emitted was nothing he hadn’t heard before from his holiday snaps. He set it on the kitchen counter, then went to the bar and poured himself a scotch. He stared at the offending article as he drank, wondering if he ought to call it in, then immediately decided against it. Whatever was on the film, if it was incriminating, could do him more harm than good. Better to see what was on it first, then decide where to go from there. Gambit set his glass down with resolve, gathered the groceries, and proceeded to shove them hastily into his pantry and fridge. He’d lost his appetite.vvvSome time later, Gambit found himself staring down at dozens of black and white photographs fanned out across his dining room table, sleeves still rolled up, the acrid stench of chemicals stinging his eyes as the fumes curled their way out of his darkroom and wafted off the rag he’d used to clean his hands. The photos had been taken at some distance, but there was no mistaking the subjects. Gambit felt sick.There he was, standing on the sidewalk in front of his block of flats. And there was Purdey, with her hand on his chest, reassuring him one final time before she left him for the evening. With a terrible sinking feeling he looked at the next picture. Purdey, at the Ministry now, climbing out of her car. Purdey meeting Steed on the steps to the building. Purdey leaving again at the end of the day. Gambit felt his heart speed up as he glanced at each shot, but the last one was the clincher. It showed Purdey, striding across the street from her car to her flat. And the time stamp on the photo: that day at 12:43 p.m. Gambit checked his watch. 2:45. Two hours ago. He rubbed a hand over his face in horror, pondering the obvious implications of the photos. Not only did Vanessa—and Gambit was as certain as he could be without the woman handing the snaps over to him herself that they were from her--know about Purdey, she knew they were involved. And she was showing him that she could gain access to the blonde at any time. Gambit snatched up the envelope, registered once more that there was no stamp, no postmark. She’d wangled it into his box, somehow, proving that he was as vulnerable as Purdey. Vulnerable…Oh hell, Purdey…Gambit raced to his phone, frantically dialled Purdey’s number. The phone rang once, twice, thrice. “Come on, Purdey,” Gambit urged. “Pick up the phone.”The incessant burring was all that greeted him. Cursing under his breath, Gambit slammed the receiver down and snatched up the pictures and envelope, before racing out the door.Gunning the Jaguar, he tossed the pictures on the seat, narrowly missing a young couple trying to cross the street in his haste as he peeled out. Purdey’s flat wasn’t far, but the drive was long enough, even at top speed, for Gambit to curse himself. If only he’d looked at the mail earlier instead of going for groceries first. Vanessa could have done anything since she’d taken the photos. Gambit tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that Purdey was trained, that she could handle herself. But that didn’t stop unspeakable images from flashing through his mind. If something happened to Purdey because of him… Gambit wasn’t sure what he’d do, but he knew he’d never be the same.Everything looked peaceful at Purdey’s flat when he arrived, but then again, it had looked just as peaceful when the half-Cybernaut Felix Kane had smashed his way in, and Purdey had nearly met her end that time. Parking the Jag illegally, he rushed down the 21 steps two or three at a time, jumping the last five, praying all the way. Her door was intact, at least, and Gambit hammered on it for all he was worth. “Purdey! Purdey, are you there? Purdey, please, open the door!” There was no response. Gambit considered kicking it in, then thought better of it. They’d need the door intact if Purdey was going to have any sort of security. If she was still there…Gambit delved in his pocket for his keys, found his spare, somehow managed to get the door unlocked with shaking hands. Pushing it open cautiously, he peeked into the flat. Everything seemed to be in order. Creeping in, he closed the door behind him, scanning the room for any sign of a struggle, anything out of the ordinary. When he’d established that no one was there, he headed for the bedroom, calling her name. He’d just made it through the beaded curtains when he ran smack into someone coming the other way. There was a muffled “Oof,” and Gambit looked down to see a mop of damp blonde hair. Purdey brushed some of it out of her eyes and stared up at him.“Mike, what—?“ she began, but Gambit had already seized her by the shoulders.“Purdey!” he exclaimed, feeling a wash of relief as he pulled the girl to him. “Oh, Purdey, Purdey-girl, am I glad to see you!”“I can tell,” Purdey commented, voice muffled from Gambit’s chest. “Honestly, Mike, it’s only been a few hours since I saw you. I’ve heard of not wanting to spend a moment apart, but this is ridiculous.”“I’m just relieved to find you alive,” Gambit murmured into her hair, happy to feel her in his arms, and Purdey started at his words.“What are you going on about?” she wanted to know, pulling away to search his face. Were those tears she detected in the blue-green eyes? She suddenly noticed a tremor in the arms encircling her. “Mike, you’re shaking! What’s happened?”“You’ve been compromised,” Gambit answered cryptically, scanning the flat. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”Purdey pointed to her damp hair. “I’ve been in the bath for the past half hour, submerged up to my nose. I only heard the door because I surfaced for soap. I was on my way to let you in...” She trailed off and seemed to consider Gambit’s hasty entrance. “You did use the key I gave you? Because I don’t relish those trips to the locksmith for all the latches you seem so fond of ignoring.”“I did,” Gambit confirmed absently. “Are you alone?”Purdey frowned. “Of course not.”Gambit jerked in surprise. “Who else is here?”“You,” Purdey pointed out.Gambit sighed in exasperation. “Besides me.”“No one,” Purdey confirmed, frown deepening. “Mike, what’s this all about?”“This.” Gambit extracted the envelope of photos from his inside breast pocket and handed it to her, then set about the flat closing windows and drawing curtains.Purdey surveyed the photographs with dismay. She glanced up at Gambit as he drew the bedroom curtains. “Vanessa?” she asked knowingly.“Yeah,” Gambit replied, working his jaw as his eyes darted about the room, seeking out any other gaps in security. “Why do you think I’m worried?”“You really did see her, then,” Purdey said quietly. “It wasn’t your imagination.”“And she’s not planning on leaving us alone,” Gambit concluded, coming to stand beside her once more. “She’s letting me know that she can get you, me, both of us, any time she wants. And I’m inclined to believe her.” He fixed her with serious blue-green eyes, intent on taking in every detail of her face. “You didn’t see anything out of the ordinary today, did you? Tails, a car, anything?”Purdey shook her head. “I wasn’t looking for anything,” she muttered angrily, cursing herself for letting her guard down. “I thought since our people were watching both you and her—well, I didn’t think there was anything to worry about.” She looked at the last picture, taken that day. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”Gambit waved her off. “Don’t be. I’m just happy to find you alive and intact. And I aim to keep it that way.”Purdey nodded in agreement. “What’s our next move?”Gambit was about to answer when the phone shrilled, shattering the late afternoon silence of the flat. Purdey and Gambit started, then exchanged rueful glances over their shared raw nerves.“Phone,” Gambit observed.“Phone,” Purdey confirmed, and wandered into the living room to answer it. “Hello?”“May I speak to the Major, please?” The voice was confident, and most definitely female. Purdey felt her blood run cold.“Who is this?” she queried, although she was fairly certain she knew the answer. Gambit, lost in his thoughts, looked her way at the question, and Purdey’s eyes communicated a wealth of information. He was already halfway across the room when the voice replied.“I think you know exactly who I am, Miss Bryde. Put Major Gambit on, please.” Purdey moved the receiver away from her face, handed it to Gambit. “Her?” he mouthed, and she nodded. Gambit’s face lost the remainder of its colour, but he squared his jaw and put the receiver to his ear. “Gambit.”“Major.” And three months of hell came flashing back in an instant, threatening to smother him, drown him, overwhelm his senses, all with one word spoken in that unmistakable voice that sounded entirely too friendly considering the circumstances. “I thought I’d find you there. Naturally you’d want to rush to her side. I’m glad I didn’t misjudge you.” There was a pause. “I trust you found the photographs?”“I did. You’ve made your point. What the devil do you want?” Gambit snapped, in no mood for pleasantries. “No need to get tetchy, Major. I simply want to schedule a meeting, talk, catch up on old times.”Gambit felt his whole body tense with anticipation. This was the nub of the matter. He swallowed, asked the question that was expected of him. “When?”“Tomorrow. Seven p.m. The Arlington Club. I’d tell you to come alone, but I doubt you’d listen. I’ll settle for the guard dogs waiting outside.”“And if I don’t?” Gambit had a pretty good idea of what might happen, but he wanted to hear it for himself.“Well, she’s safe for the moment, Major, but you can’t spend every waking moment together, despite what you may think. Sooner or later, she’ll be on her own, and even a girl that can take care of herself can only beat the odds so many times. And I think you’d agree that it would be a terrible shame if something happened to her, particularly since she’s only guilty by association.” She paused meaningfully. “Do we understand one another?”Gambit worked his jaw. She had him there, easily, and she knew it. And she knew he knew it. He resigned himself to his fate. “Fine,” he told her. “I’ll be there.”“Good.” She sounded quite pleased. “I’m looking forward to it. That is your line, isn’t it? I’m sure Miss Bryde will confirm, since she’s listening.” Gambit spun around, and saw that Purdey was indeed on the bedroom line, eyes meeting his through the beaded curtains. The voice continued in his ear. “I imagine she’ll be one of your watchers. Be sure to keep an eye on him, Miss Bryde. I’ve a feeling you’re his best chance of making it back alive.”Purdey was about to form a retort, but a click informed them both that the connection had been terminated. Purdey hung up her phone carefully, and Gambit did the same. She pushed her way through the curtain, stood before him, large blue eyes searching his face. “You’re going to that meeting.” It was a statement, not a question. “I don’t have a choice, Purdey,” Gambit murmured, brushing a stray strand of still-damp blonde hair out of her eyes. “If I don’t go, she’ll just push harder, go from you to my family. And I can’t let that happen. Best to give her what she wants now.” Purdey crossed her arms defiantly. “Well, if you insist on stepping into the line of fire, I’ll obviously have to be there to keep you out of trouble. Even she knows that.” She bit her lip. “She’s obviously gotten access to our files. And she knows me by name. That was meant to shake me, wasn’t it?”Gambit nodded. “Did it work?”“Not as much as her knowing I was listening. But it’s made me angry, too.” Purdey’s hackles were rising now, anger overcoming fear. “She’s not going to get away with it.”Gambit pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly. “Get away with what? You don’t even know what the meeting’s about.”“I don’t care,” Purdey replied flatly, tightening the belt of her robe as though it were a karate gi. “But whatever it’s about, you’ll have back-up and like it, Mike Gambit.”“I would like it, as it happens,” Gambit confessed. He had no energy left to even pretend to put up a fight about wanting to make the rendezvous solo. “I don’t relish going anywhere near her without someone watching. But the more people we have keeping an eye out, the better. I’ll call Steed while you change. Unless you want to get back in the bath.”Purdey shook her head. “It’s gone cold,” she told him darkly, before turning to head back into the bedroom.vvvBy the time Purdey had dressed, Steed was at the door, having received Gambit’s call and driven the short distance from the Ministry. The senior agent listened carefully, but quietly, as Purdey and Gambit explained the situation. “I can go in alone,” Gambit offered when they’d finished. “With just you and Purdey as back-up. This is my problem, not the Ministry’s.”“On the contrary. It’s everyone’s problem,” Steed disagreed. “As you well know, Miss Thyme is a person of interest for the Ministry and most every department involved in espionage. No, if we’ve a chance to lure her out and potentially capture her, I think you should take it. Especially since, in doing so, you might be able to put an end to the investigation into your own past. Unless you’re particularly relishing your status as a shut-in.”Gambit winced noticeably. “Point taken.”Purdey grinned. “You’ll help keep watch, then? When Mike goes in?”“Myself, and a few others,” Steed confirmed. “I think Larry ought to be there, since he’s the one intent on smearing Gambit’s good name. And a few other people to watch Gambit’s back, as well as our own, cover the exits…”“She might get away,” Gambit murmured, “no matter how much security you bring in, and she’ll cut her way through if she has to. And I don’t want anyone dead on my account.”“I think that who’s on security is my decision, isn’t it, if I’m running the operation?” Steed said conversationally, smile friendly but steely underneath. “And I will run it, even if Larry’s name is on the paperwork. No, I’ll make some calls, and we’ll meet tonight. There’s much to be done.” Steed glanced idly around Purdey’s flat. “And I think it ought to be done at the farm. If she’s watching you two, I’d just as soon not leave you alone. Purdey, pack some things, then I’ll escort you two to Gambit’s for the same. Then we’ll head out to the farm together. I’ve plenty of rooms—you can spend the night. I can make all the calls I need from your flats.”Purdey looked to Gambit. “Thank you, Steed,” the latter said.Steed smiled. “All in a day’s work.”vvv Later, at the stud farm, while waiting for Larry to arrive, Purdey slipped upstairs. She found Gambit, who had taken his leave after eating a dinner so small it hardly qualified as a meal, in his room, gazing out the window at the sunset. She closed the door softly, crossed the room so she was standing behind him, and rested her chin on his shoulder so she, too, could enjoy the view, looking out over Steed’s grounds at the peacefully grazing horses, dark shapes thrown into sharp relief by the green grass in the field. Gambit turned his head ever-so-slightly her way, then returned his gaze to the sunset, slipping an arm around her waist as he did so. They stood that way for a moment, neither willing to break the silence, both aware of what the conversation would entail. Gambit probably could have stayed that way all evening, but Purdey was never able to stay quiet for long, particularly when there was so much at stake. She coaxed a deep breath into her body, felt the words flow out.“It’s quite nice, isn’t it?”Gambit started slightly, as though she had pulled him back from some faraway destination. He nodded in agreement.“I thought I’d indulge. Haven’t watched a sunset since my navy days, and, well, you never know if you’ll get another chance.” His eyes flicked nervously to the grounds spread out before them, checking for enemies hidden in the shadows. “I don’t think Vanessa will try anything tonight, so standing at the window should be safe.” He seemed to reconsider that hypothesis. “Then again.” He pulled away and drew the curtains. Purdey watched him with a heavy heart.“You shouldn’t talk like that. Makes it sound as though you’re not coming back.”Gambit, still turned toward the window, bowed his head. “Purdey, we need to talk about that.” There was a catch in his voice, but he didn’t care, pushed on regardless. “Starting with the possibility that I might not be coming back.”He’d known that that comment wasn’t going to go over well, and Purdey didn’t disappoint. He could almost hear the anger and hurt bubble up inside her slim frame before the words spilled out forcefully. “You don’t need to be so damned melodramatic, Mike! You know as well as I do that you’ll be back here at this time tomorrow, with me.”Gambit turned to face her, and Purdey felt her heart break as he shook his head sadly. “You know that’s not true, Purdey. I’m not sure of anything where Thyme is concerned. All I have to go by is past experience, and you have to admit that the odds aren’t too promising.”Purdey crossed her arms defiantly. “Well, I’m not prepared to give in before we’ve even started, Mike Gambit. I never took you for a pessimist.”“I’m a realist, Purdey,” Gambit contradicted. “I know what happened last time. Even if we take precautions, there’s still a good chance she’ll pull the rug out from under me again, and if that’s the case...” He let the sentence hang, tried to soothe her instead. “Look, it’s not as though I’m happy about it. I don’t relish the idea of going through...what she did to me...again, but if she comes for you instead…well, I like the idea of you taking my place even less.”Purdey stepped closer, so that her face was inches from his, anger etched into every feature. “I don’t need you to sacrifice yourself, Mike. I’m perfectly capable—““I don’t doubt you could give her something to think about,” Gambit interrupted. “But Purdey, try to understand. Remember, every time they capture you, I can’t help but wonder if this is the time I don’t make it there before they do something to you. And experience has made my imagination pretty damn vivid. I know I can make it through, if I have to. But my worst nightmare is coming too late to save you. The job’s risky, we both know that. But this is different. This is my past coming back to haunt us. And if something happens to you because of me...” He sighed. “I couldn’t handle that, Purdey. Don’t put me in that position. Please.” He brushed some hair from her eyes. “Please let me do what I have to do for both of us.”Purdey looked at the sincerity of his features, felt fear rise up beneath the anger. She fixed him with those huge blue eyes, asked him the question she had asked herself every day since she had met him.“Where does that leave me, then?” she wanted to know, voice quavering. “Where am I going to be while you put your life on the line on some damnfool suicide mission? On the sidelines, waiting for the body? Because I’ve already buried one man I loved, Mike Gambit, because of this job. And I don’t know that I can accept another. Not without a fight.”Gambit looked suitably chastened. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I forgot about your father.”“I never do,” Purdey replied with feeling, jabbing her index finger into his chest. “I saw my mother. I watched her that day, when those men told her the news. I remember running away and ending up in my dance studio all on my own, because that was the only safe place I could think of to go. I remember her face at the funeral. She looked like a statue, all cold and stony. And I remember promising myself that would never happen to me, and when I joined the Ministry I was so sure it wouldn’t, because I was the operative, not the bystander. I could keep myself alive. I wouldn’t feel helpless again, especially not after Larry.” She smiled bitterly. “But I didn’t make any plans for dashing fellow agents. And there you were, and I knew, I knew nothing I said or did was going to keep you from getting just that much closer. I tried fending you off, but that didn’t make things any easier.” She gestured at him helplessly. “But now here we are, and things seem worse for it. I’m back in the observer role, on the sidelines, watching you walk into the lion’s den.” She smiled sadly. “What do I do?”Gambit drew her into his arms, whispered into her hair, “What you do best. Try to keep me out of trouble.”“I don’t know that I can. Not this time,” she said quietly. “You have to go into this meeting on your own. And I can’t help you if I’m not with you.”“You will,” Gambit said, with confidence. “Even if we’re outmatched and can’t control the outcome, you’ll do something more than sit on the sidelines. Whatever happens to me in there, I know you’ll be looking out for me. And if she does try something, you’ll find a way to strike back. You always do.” He looked down at her, smiled slightly. “I almost feel sorry for her, going toe to toe with you.” She grinned at that, and Gambit felt a little better. “I don’t want to fight with you, Purdey. Not tonight. I wish…” he began, then seemed to reconsider.“What?” Purdey wanted to know, every thought that entered his mind so precious to her given that they potentially had so little time left together. No, don’t think like that. He’ll come back. He has to.“I wish I could promise you that I’ll come through this all right,” he finished. “I wish I could give you something solid to hang onto.”Purdey shook her head, setting her jaw determinedly. “You already have. Me,” she said confidently, but Gambit’s sad smile, coupled with the look in his eyes, chased away her shakily-constructed bravado. “Mike Gambit, you’re the ‘never-say-die’ type. What happened to the man who used to walk into loaded guns and jump onto the wings of airplanes without a second thought?”“His past caught up with him,” Gambit said ruefully. “And he fell in love.”Purdey felt tears threatening, but that would only make Gambit’s grim face grimmer. “It’s the past that’s the real problem,” she murmured. “Not you. And you can’t hold that against yourself.”“I can and I will,” Gambit muttered stubbornly, but then his eyes softened and met her large blue ones once more. “But I can promise you one thing,” he went on, and there was hope in his voice for the first time in what felt like millennia. “I promise that if it all goes pear-shaped, I’ll do everything in my power to find my way back to you. Maybe not right away, but I’ll damn well try.” Purdey didn’t know why, but for some reason the promise made the tears flow unbidden, which, in turn, made Gambit’s face fall more than it already had. “Oh, Purdey, Purdey,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. “Purdey-girl, don’t cry. That’s the last thing I wanted to make you do.” “You’re not making me do anything,” Purdey said, with a fierceness that surprised him. “I am a woman, Mike. I think you and Steed forget that sometimes.”Gambit shook his head, tilting her chin upward so that he could look in her eyes. “I promise that’s one thing that I never, ever forget. Your figure makes it hard to think otherwise.”She smiled sadly at the joke. “I mean, to do this job I have to be tough, have to prove I can handle anything this job throws at me as well as any man.”“You don’t have to prove anything,” Gambit said with conviction. “You’re a damn good agent, and anyone who hasn’t taken too many blows to the head knows it.”“That may be true,” Purdey allowed, “but when I’m an agent, it’s like I’m a different person. But Mike, when I’m with you...” She tried to hold back tears, but they came anyway. “When we’re here, like this, I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to wear the armour, not anymore, not after all those years trying to get past Larry. Because everyone, sometimes, wants to be vulnerable, and I know that with you, I can.” She smiled sadly. “Do you see? When we step out of that door, you’re going to be my colleague, and I’m going to call you ‘Gambit’ and try to think of you as my partner, because that’s what you’ll need—someone with a clear head to watch out for you. But now, now I can be Purdey-girl, and she’s afraid, and if she wants to indulge and cry and make a fool of herself, then that’s what she’s going to do. Because I love you, Mike Gambit, and it’s not fair to ask me to feel otherwise.”“I’m sorry,” Gambit said quietly. “But I hate seeing you hurt, and when it’s my fault—““It’s not,” Purdey countered. “Stop saying that. It’s no more your fault than Larry coming back was mine.”“I made a choice.”“So did I. Several terrible ones. I should have reported Larry when he made the assassination attempt, should have had him charged, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have shot out Steed’s tyres, or stopped you from keeping the missile from going off, but I did. But it’s done now, and I can’t change it, any more than you can change what you did. There’s no sense in tormenting yourself.”“I’m still sorry for putting you through all this,” Gambit sighed.Purdey turned her tear-stained face up to his. “I’d rather hurt now than be in the same situation knowing I could very well lose you without ever letting myself tell you how I felt. No one can take the time we’ve had together from us, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. Mike, it’s because of you that I’m willing to let myself be vulnerable again. A little part of me died when Larry slapped me, and a lot of who I was disappeared—the fairy princess, he used to call it. I think—no, I know—that I’m that you brought me back. Back to life.”Gambit felt his chest tighten at her words. It wasn’t fair. The first time he had felt certain about where his life was going. The first time he’d had someone to come home to, who cared. The first time he had found someone he loved. And now, not long after she had decided to return that love, it was at risk of being taken away, and if worst came to worst he was almost certainly going to have to leave her behind. He felt anger bubble up inside, at himself, at his past, at Vanessa. When was the world going to leave him alone in his happiness? Nothing you can do about it now, the logical part of his brain pointed out. All you can do is try to make it back to Purdey.So he smiled. “Thank you.”Purdey blinked. “For what?”“For letting me in. For everything.”She was choking back fresh sobs. “You do know I love you, don’t you, Mike Gambit?”“Never doubted it,” he reassured, smiling bravely, even though he didn’t feel it. “I love you, too.”The sound of the front door opening and closing echoed through the house. Purdey wiped away the tears and set about making herself presentable. “We should go downstairs, shouldn’t we?”He nodded. “We should.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Steed returned to the living room from ushering Larry out the front door bearing a small crease between his eyes that betrayed his ill-humour at the other man’s demands. It was bad enough that Larry had insisted on surveillance detail being posted outside the house. Steed could swallow the Ministry’s heavy-handedness if the circumstances necessitated it. What he didn’t care for were Larry’s attempts to dress the watchers up as being a necessary security precaution, protection for Gambit from Thyme and, by default, protection for Purdey and Steed as well. But Steed knew an insurance policy when he saw one, and he wasn’t sure what he was most offended by: the idea that Gambit would scarper rather than face Vanessa Thyme, or the possibility that Steed would let him do it. If Larry wanted to question either man’s professionalism, Steed would have rather Larry do it to his face. But Larry had always had a chip on his shoulder where Steed and Gambit were concerned, had always had something to prove, and seemed to think now was the opportunity to make up for the way the whole Juventor affair had gone south when Larry had been left to his own devices to run that particular assignment--and botched it, badly. This time, Larry was going to show them up and throw his weight around as much as possible. This was his chance to save face, and he was going to seize it with both hands. If it allowed him to posture in front of Purdey, all the better. Steed had never been quite able to work out how Larry had determined that attempting to make fools out of Purdey’s two closest colleagues—and Purdey herself, by proxy—was meant to endear him to her. He couldn’t even put it down as a side-effect to the brain-draining machine, as he’d been just as obnoxious beforehand. Steed shook his head in mild disbelief. Well, Larry certainly wasn’t going to get in Purdey’s good books by trying to persecute Gambit this time around. Her face had been like thunder all through the strategy meeting that had monopolised the rest of the afternoon and much of evening, and she’d swept upstairs before all the players had even left their seats the moment the meeting had concluded. She was clearly under no illusions that Larry’s desire to catch Vanessa Thyme had as much to do with Larry getting the chance to put the screws to Gambit as it did with capturing a dangerous criminal.Gambit himself was still bent over Steed’s dining room table when Steed re-entered, studying the photos and plans of the club where Vanessa had arranged the meet with the same morose expression he’d worn throughout the briefing. He glanced up as Steed strode past, making for the decanter on the sideboard. “Did you finally get Larry over the threshold?” he inquired wearily.“Practically shoved him would be more accurate,” Steed replied, in a tone that revealed Larry’s behaviour still rankled. He poured two brandies and carried them back to where Gambit stood. “Although he’s still with us in spirit.”“Eh?” Gambit looked heavenward, as though expecting to see a spectral Larry floating ominously over his head.Steed pointed over his shoulder in the general direction of the front door, taking care not to spill the brandy. “Guard dogs. Two. Parked out front.”“Oh,” Gambit said faintly, before pressing his lips into a thin line as understanding dawned. “In case I get cold feet.”“I know. Ridiculous. But I have something to warm those extremities up.” Steed handed over the balloon glass.“My feet are already roasting thanks,” Gambit said wryly, raising his glass to Steed. “Along with the rest of me. I feel like I’ve charbroiled. Sooner we get this over with the better. Cheers.”“Cheers.” They both drank, then turned their attention back to the plans.“Do you think this is going to work?” Gambit sighed, tapping the fingers of his left hand on the wooden surface of Steed’s dining room table.“Miss Thyme did say that all the she wanted to do was talk,” Steed pointed out. “And we’ll be outside waiting in case there’s any trouble. “Gambit’s lips pursed until they were almost white. “Yeah, but I have a good idea of what she’s going to want to talk about, and when I’m not in the mood to give her what she wants, it’ll go south fast.”“We’ll be there if it does,” Steed reassured. “The point is to take her into custody, remember. If we catch her, she can’t ask for anything from you ever again.”Gambit shook his head. “She’ll spot our people a mile away, and gone before anyone knows what’s happening,” he said bitterly, then treated Steed to a wry smile. “I know that doesn’t sound like much of a vote of confidence in Larry and company, but I know her. She’s going to be expecting me to come with reinforcements.”“She will,” Steed agreed, “but we’ll have to play it as it unfolds. What else can we do?”“What else…?” Gambit took another sip of brandy and smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry, Steed. I know you’re doing your best to look after me, keep Larry happy, and McKay in the loop. You have enough to wrangle with on a normal day without adding me and all my problems to the mix, and I appreciate it, I really do. I couldn’t ask for better people than you and Purdey as back-up. And I don’t just mean at the club tomorrow.”Steed patted Gambit’s shoulder reassuringly. “My pleasure, on all counts. We all know how unpredictable these situations are. But we’ll find a way through, I’m sure.” “Thanks, Steed.” Gambit did look genuinely reassured by the older man’s words. “Good thing Purdey wasn’t around to hear that pep talk. She’s already unhappy that I’m agreeing to meet Vanessa in the first place. My pessimism isn’t doing her mood much good.” He sighed and watched the brandy swirl around his glass. “Then again, she’s always talking about my negative thinking, so she knew what she was getting into.” He smiled wryly, making an effort to improve his mood, as if Purdey herself had interceded via some sort of psychic link and told him to perk up. “How long have you known?” he asked conversationally, but from beneath hooded eyes that were feigning nonchalance. “About Purdey and me?”Steed’s eyes widened slightly in dismay. “A gentleman would never presume to entertain the idea that something might be happening, let alone to claim to know that it was.”“But you’re no gentleman,” Gambit said knowingly, regarding Steed with a friendly eye that didn’t conceal his lack of illusion on certain matters where Steed was concerned. “Ha ha!” Steed laughed his staccato laugh almost directly into the brandy balloon. “All right, so I don’t claim that all my thoughts are unimpeachable. But ‘know’ is a strong word, and contains another presumption entirely.”“Suspected, then,” Gambit allowed. “You’re not a fool, either. I’ve been wondering from the start whether we were going to be able pull the wool over your eyes, and I thought we were lucky to manage it this long. Now I’m wondering whether we were lucky at all.” He tilted his head inquisitively, and his eyes narrowed slightly, as though he were trying to see straight into Steed’s brain and divine his thought processes. “Did you know all along?”“As I said, ‘know’ is a strong word,” Steed repeated, sipping his brandy. “But I will admit to having an inkling that something was going on.”Gambit’s face broke into a huge grin, luxuriating in the small triumph of sussing out Steed. “I knew it,” he said, unquestionably pleased. “When did the penny drop?”“When you resumed your aborted run on the training course, shortly after we resolved that nasty business where you were presumed dead,” Steed informed. “I dropped by to observe how you were making out, and was told you and Purdey were collaborating more beautifully than you ever had.”A wicked smile stole across Gambit’s lips. “That’s one way of putting it. So that’s what tipped you off?” “Amongst other things,” Steed confirmed. “I knew that things had been rather fragile between you ever since that unfortunate business with Doomer.” The name alone was enough to wipe every bit of smugness and delight from Gambit’s face, and Steed could tell that that particular wound, despite the positive developments that had followed it, was still raw. “I was beginning to have serious concerns about whether your partnership would ever return to as it had been. On occasion I worried that it might dissolve entirely, which saddened me greatly.”Gambit looked slightly taken aback by his boss’ expression. “You never said anything to either of us,” he murmured.Steed shook his head. “There are some situations where even I know better than to try to put a word in. It was something you had to work out between you of your own accord, or not at all. You both had your hands forced, and my trying to force them further was only going to make me part of the problem. So I watched and waited, but I could see the cracks forming at the edges. And then, the moment you started working together not only as you had done, but more in simpatico that ever, I knew that something had changed for the better. I didn’t necessarily know it was a romance, but I knew something was happening between you that ought to be allowed to play out of its own accord. So I let it be.”“It was the right call. As usual.” Gambit shook his head in admiring disbelief. “I can’t believe it. Even when you don’t interfere, it’s still the right call.” “Speaking of Purdey,” Steed said carefully, studying the plans on the table with sudden interest. “And making decisions, what are your intentions?”Gambit tilted his head quizzically. “Purdey’s father’s dead, but if and when I have that conversation, I think it’ll be with her uncle or step-father. But I’m sure she’ll appreciate your efforts at paternal role-playing.”“I don’t mean those sorts of intentions,” Steed said with a laugh. “I’ve no fears for Purdey where you’re concerned. You’ve been utterly devoted to her from the moment you clapped eyes on her.”“Probably before,” Gambit said with a wistful sigh.“And I’m very happy for both of you,” Steed assured. “What I am curious about is whether I should start looking for new partners.”Gambit choked on his brandy and regarded Steed in mild disbelief. “You think that we’re leaving?”“I think that things can change. People change,” Steed said mildly. “For the better in this case, but I would appreciate some notice if they do.”Gambit shook his head. “Purdey and I aren’t planning on going anywhere. It took us this long to get where we are now. We haven’t even told anyone about us yet, not even our families, let alone talked about serious life plans.”“All in good time,” Steed predicted confidently.“You’re very sure of yourself,” Gambit observed in mild amusement.Steed rose a questioning eyebrow. “Aren’t you?”“I’m just happy to have what I have,” Gambit said frankly. “I’m not going to get greedy and start pushing my luck by asking for too much too fast.”“But you do want more.” Steed eyed Gambit knowingly over the rim of his glass and took another sip.Gambit, much to Steed’s disbelieving bemusement, actually blushed a little. “Yes. Eventually,” he admitted. “If I’m very, very lucky, and Purdey’s onboard. But I’m not going to push it, or her. Not without good reason.”“Which means there’s a chance,” Steed said, circling back to his original point. “Things could change.”“Maybe,” Gambit allowed, cheeks still a little red. “Eventually.”“Eventually,” Steed echoed, smiling more to himself than Gambit. “I’ll bear that in mind. But you should know that if things do change, I don’t want either you or Purdey to be held back from living your lives. Not by the Ministry, and definitely not by me.” He gazed out the window, into the fields where the horses were still grazing in the early evening light. “This job is very rewarding and very important, but I’m not entirely certain that it’s worth sacrificing your happiness for. At least, not when the path of contentment is placed at your feet.” Gambit watched Steed’s eyes go unfocussed, and he knew that the senior agent was looking at a crossroads moment in his own past, when he’d let a similar opportunity for personal happiness slip through his fingers. Gambit didn’t think he was flattering himself that he knew what—or rather, who—was the object of Steed’s retroactive gaze, and wondered if he ought to ask. But that was crossing a line Gambit knew would only earn him a witty retort and a dressed-up warning to mind his own business. And it wasn’t his business. But Gambit hoped at least some of that happiness was still salvageable for his friend’s sake.“Thanks, Steed,” Gambit said instead, sincerely. “I won’t forget that. And I’m sure Purdey will appreciate it, too. Speaking of whom—“ Gambit finished his brandy. “I’d better go and see what she’s up to, and then call it an early night. I’m going to need all the rest I can get to make it through tomorrow.”Steed nodded in agreement. “Good idea. I’ll stay up a little while and review a few things before I turn in. Say good-night to Purdey for me.”“Will do,” Gambit promised. “Good-night, Steed. And thanks. Whatever happens.”“My pleasure,” Steed said, with a smile, watching Gambit retreat up the stairs. Then he turned back to the plans and tried to banish the image of sweeping auburn hair from his mind.vvvPurdey was going through her suitcase when she heard the knock. “Come in,” she said automatically, not bothering to look up to see who was entering. Gambit’s rocking gait had given him away partway down the corridor. “Are they gone?” she inquired.Gambit eased the door shut behind him before he answered. “Yes. Even Larry. Though he spent a few minutes arguing with Steed about whether I ought to be locked up until morning so I don’t scarper after you left.”That last comment finally made Purdey whirl around. “That’s ridiculous! He’s using this whole mess as a way to push his own personal agenda.” She flung herself around the room angrily, tossing clothes into the dresser as she went, while Gambit watched impassively, hands behind his back. Purdey shot him an incredulous look. “I hope you argued, too, and didn’t leave it all to Steed?”Gambit grinned wickedly. “What do you think I’ve been doing since you came up here? Well, that and having a chat with Steed. But since I’m the one everyone’s looking sideways at, I don’t think anything I say to anyone but him counts for much. The sight of me’s enough to rile Larry most days.” Purdey could tell from the expression on Gambit’s face that he’d taken some perverse pleasure in riling Larry, even if it ultimately worked against him. “Anyway, Steed’s sorted it out for the time being. They’ve left some guard dogs out front to keep an eye on anyone going in or out. If Larry was going to drag me off in chains, he would have done it by now.”Purdey shook her head, both at Larry’s behaviour and Gambit’s perverseness about the whole affair. “You should be taking this seriously.”Gambit’s grin disappeared instantly, mouth forming a thin line, and Purdey suddenly realised that she’d gotten it very wrong, that the jauntiness was a way of coping with the situation, of keeping them both sane. “If I took it anymore seriously, I’d be cowering in the cellar,” he said darkly, moving to the bedroom window, peering suspiciously out at the darkening grounds. “I keep expecting to see her somewhere, just watching and waiting.” His jaw was working madly now, the mask well and truly off. He turned away from the window and regarded Purdey with a face like granite, pale and grim. “The sooner we get this over with, the better.”Purdey crossed her arms as though trying to hug some warmth into her body. “Do you think it’ll go as planned? Now that you know how much back-up we have?”Gambit snorted. “A meeting with Vanessa? On her choice of ground? I’d think something was wrong if it didn’t go sideways.” He smiled wanly. “We’ll just have to go in with our wits about us and try to keep her in line.”“That’s not very encouraging,” Purdey pointed out, with vague annoyance.“No, it isn’t,” Gambit agreed, voice distant. Then he seemed to snap back to reality, and the smile reappeared. “Not much we can do about it until we’re there. Let’s talk about something else.”Purdey raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”Gambit’s smile turned wicked. “What about why Steed gave us separate rooms?”Purdey smiled in spite of herself, grateful to see Gambit find the lighter side of anything at that point. “I imagine he didn’t want to presume.”“Trying to protect your womanly virtue?” Gambit quipped, with a waggle of the eyebrows. “Funny. I’ve never thought of Steed as a prude.”“A realist. He knows you too well,” Purdey replied, tongue-in-cheek.“Me? Maybe he was trying to protect me from you. We all know how insatiable you are. And I don’t just mean for marshmallows.”“Mike!” Purdey exclaimed, but her eyes were sparkling.“Well, you had to work up that appetite somehow—ouch!” Gambit sprang back as Purdey jabbed him in the ribs. “And people wonder why I’m battered up all the time. You’ve been wearing my body out no end.”“I don’t think you’re up to clandestine meetings. You’re clearly not thinking straight,” Purdey tutted, stroking the spot she’d just jabbed.“No, just thinking about you, love. As always.” Gambit winked saucily at her, his essential cockney both endearing and an endearment.Purdey blushed in spite of herself. “Well, I can’t say I blame you, even if you ought to be thinking of other things.” She paused, then added, “So should I.”Gambit perked up visibly. “Got a bloke on your mind, do you?”“Yes, infuriatingly,” Purdey said, then added, “He happens to be worth the bother, though.”Gambit smiled at the compliment—a warm, gentle smile. “Now I know why Steed put us in separate rooms.”Purdey looked quizzical. “Oh? Why?”“For appearances’ sake. If we’re carrying on like this and looking at each other like that, then Larry and everyone else will know what’s going on between us in a second.”“Neon lights ten feet tall,” Purdey agreed knowingly. “I’m surprised we kept it from Steed as long as we did.”Gambit made a moue and shook his head. “I asked him about that. He’s known something’s up for awhile, in that devious mind of his. He was just too much of a gentleman to ask until it mattered. And now it matters.” He regarded her carefully. “Are we going to stick to separate rooms tonight? Because I don’t think Steed’ll mind if we only dirty half as many sheets.”Purdey flushed and smiled. “It might be for the best if we didn’t.”“Propriety?”“Distraction. We need our sleep,” Purdey said primly, pulling the curtains shut with the efficiency of a nurse on a hospital ward as a way of avoiding Gambit’s gaze, and its affect on her resolve. “And we’re not going to get it if we’re lying there looking at each other and worrying about tomorrow.”Gambit cocked his head. “Do you think it’ll make a difference?”Purdey swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she admitted with a shrug. “But it might help for us to be a little more objective tomorrow, with everything else going on, and this is the only way I can think of to do it.”Gambit nodded once, curtly. “Right,” he said crisply, straightening up, obviously trying to be professional. “I’ll just, uh, say goodnight then.”Purdey nodded with renewed purpose. “Right. Goodnight, Mike. Sleep well, if you can.”“Goodnight, Purdey-girl.” He leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed back, holding back tears she refused to shed. With one last look, Gambit left the room.Two hours later, Gambit was lying in bed when he heard the door open, and the sound of footsteps padding their way to his side. The sheets were pulled back, and he felt Purdey’s body slide in beside him, mould to his own reclined form. Gambit grinned in the dark. “What happened to objectivity?”“Oh, be quiet and hold me,” came the response.Gambit turned over and did as he was told. Happily.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The next morning, Purdey stirred and turned over, reaching blearily for Gambit. He wasn’t there. She frowned and opened her eyes, surveyed the room, only to find it empty. She felt a twinge of annoyance as she threw back the blankets. Gambit had wandered off, without so much as a quick word to tell her where he was going. Given the current threats to his well-being coming from both Larry and Vanessa Thyme, the professional agent in her balked at the irresponsibility of not alerting his partner to his whereabouts. As his partner of a more romantic nature, one who had serious fears about losing him for good during what she perceived as an ill-advised rendezvous, she didn’t appreciate being deprived of his company any sooner than she had to be. Purdey sat up and brooded for a moment, tried not to let anger be her driving emotion first thing in the morning. Gambit was going to need all the support he could get in the course of the day, and her tearing a strip off him wasn’t going to help. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to spend what might be their last few hours together doing, either. Anyway, she wasn’t angry, not really. Just afraid for Gambit, and what might happen to him. She took a deep, cleansing breath, and forced herself to calm down, using logic as a touchstone. The house was guarded by Larry’s watchers. Steed was also around somewhere. Gambit couldn’t have gone far without someone noticing. And even if he could, theoretically, slip the net, she knew he would never leave her behind without a word, wouldn’t abandon her and leave her wondering what had happened to him. He was somewhere nearby. She just had to find him. Remembering that she’d left her own bed--and therefore all her clothes--in the next room, she slipped out of Gambit’s bed and padded down the hall to her own quarters as quickly as she could, then set about finding something to wear. She came up with a sweater, a pair of trousers, and boots, mindful of the autumn chill that was hanging in the air most days at this time of year. A quick glance at the clock on the bedside table told her she’d slept in and that it was half-past eight. She eased the door open quietly and tiptoed down the hall, hoping she hadn’t woken Steed if he hadn’t risen yet.She knew she needn’t have bothered with stealth the moment she opened the door leading to the main floor and started down the stairs. Steed was at the dining room table, reading The Times over coffee. He gifted Purdey with a friendly smile in greeting. “Good morning, Purdey. Looking for Gambit?” he asked knowingly.Purdey nodded in mild relief. Steed wouldn’t be smiling if Gambit had gone AWOL. “Along with everyone else, it seems. Where’s he gotten to this time?”Steed nodded toward the patio doors. “Just out in the grounds. The bench out back.”“I’m glad he told someone,” Purdey commented, unable to keep the acrid note of annoyance out of her voice, helping herself to a slice of toast from the toast rack in the middle of the table.“He said he didn’t want to wake you,” Steed replied in Gambit’s defense. “I’ve a feeling he wanted some time to think.”“He’s been thinking on this too much,” Purdey said around a mouthful of crispy bread covered with marmalade. “I think he’s convinced he’s not going to make it out of this meeting.”“Considering his past experience with this woman, that’s an entirely understandable sentiment,” Steed pointed out.“But he seems so sure of it,” Purdey said quietly, eyes downcast. “I get the distinct impression he’s trying to say good-bye. And I don’t want to. I won’t.” She looked back at Steed, seeking reassurance. “Should I?”“I sincerely hope not,” Steed said seriously. “We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure he comes back. But Gambit’s very resilient, even if something should go wrong.”Purdey’s eyes flashed defiantly. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”“That makes two of us.” There was a moment of silence as the two agents regarded one another, deadly serious. Then Steed broke the tension with another bright smile. “Tell him breakfast is ready, won’t you?”“I will.” With that, Purdey slipped out the French doors and onto the grounds.vvvShe found Gambit on the bench, just as Steed had said, one long arm stretched over the back of the structure, the other gripping the ankle he’d crossed over his knee. He was looking up at the sky, clearly miles away, a distant expression arranged over his handsome features. She took a seat next to him and followed his eyeline, watched the birds, chirping their early morning song, flutter from tree to tree. It was a beautiful morning, cool and brisk, fresh with promise. Serene. Nothing like the anxiety and edginess eating them up inside. But Gambit, at least, appeared outwardly relaxed. He hadn’t acknowledged her when she sat down, hadn’t looked her way, and she knew that his composure had a lot to do with him not facing her--and all he had to lose. But Purdey was Purdey, and she could never stay quiet when something needed to be said. So, without looking his way, she said the words she knew he was expecting.“You were gone this morning.”She felt him sigh, and that did make her look at him. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, voice rough from lack of use. “I knew I should have stuck around, but you looked so peaceful and I didn’t want to wake you. And I would’ve, if I’d stayed in bed. Too restless.”Purdey shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not even a very good lie, Mike. You know perfectly well I’ll sleep through you moving about. You’re just trying to get me used to the idea, aren’t you? Of waking up alone? Because you’re under the mistaken impression that it will make things easier.” She ran a hand through her hair, stirred by the morning breeze. “But all it does is make me mad, because you’re trying to protect me again. And regardless of what you might think, I don’t think it’s helping you, either.”Gambit took a deep breath. “It helps me if you’re so used to doing without me that she can’t hurt you through me. It’s not your fight, after all.”“It is my fight!” Purdey exclaimed, loud enough that some of the birds were startled from the trees and took flight in a panicked cloud as Purdey’s words echoed across Steed’s grounds. “That’s the point of having a partner. When I threw my lot in with you, professionally and personally, all your problems became mine, too. And don’t say that’s not true, because you’ve been shouldering my burdens for years. When will you stop being so damned stubborn and let me do the same?”Gambit swallowed hard. He knew she was right, but pushing her away was all he could think to do to protect her from what might happen to him, the only way to cushion the blow, if it came. And I’m damn sure it will. He sighed again, heavier this time, acknowledging to himself that there was no way to make the idea of him not coming back easier for either of them, or to make Purdey care less about his well-being. And that made him want to soak up as much of her as possible, to treasure what little time they had left. He could feel Purdey shift beside him, knew he couldn’t avoid looking into those eyes much longer, but terrified that he’d break down completely if he did.Purdey seemed to sense this, anger draining out of her as she laid a hand on his shoulder, kneaded the knotted muscles beneath his shirt. The hollow of his throat, visible through the unbuttoned collar, looked vulnerable, exposed. The way she felt inside. The way she had felt when she had awoken to find him gone. But he was still here, now, and that meant she could still support him, reassure him that it was possible for him to return to her unscathed.“Mike,” she said with a softness that made him tremble. “Look at me.”Gambit’s face wasn’t serene anymore. Now it was strained, trying to rein in the fear and sadness that threatened to overtake it. His lower lip trembled a little as he took a shaky breath. Purdey felt her heart breaking all over again. He was clearly afraid, and Gambit didn’t betray fear easily. The only way she knew how to give him courage was to have him look her in the eye and reestablish the connection that they had both felt an eternity ago when she had walked through a door and first locked those blue-green eyes with her own. She thought that it would help him to do the same now, too. If only he’d look my way.“Mike, please.”He must have heard the pleading note in her voice, because he did as she asked and turned slowly to look her in the eye. “Believe me, I want to let you let help,” he confessed, with more composure than either of them had suspected he was capable of. “Hell, I don’t even want to go to this damned rendezvous.”Purdey, relieved that he was making eye contact and that she was seemingly getting through to him, put a hand to his cheek, smiled encouragingly. “That’s understandable. Who in their right mind would?””But I feel selfish for it,” Gambit went on, mouth twisting in annoyance. “I know I have to do this. It’s my responsibility, and if I don’t take it on, then someone will pay for it—you, Steed, my family, the department. There’ll be trouble. I know there will. So it has to be me that does it. But I don’t want to.” He shook his head, pulled Purdey’s hand from his face and contemplated it as he held it in his own. “I actually wish that you, or Steed, or someone could shoulder more of this burden than you can. And that bothers me. It’s not as though I’ve ever really wanted to go through something like this, but this time it feels…different. Somehow.” He looked hard at her hand in his, as though seeking inspiration. “I don’t know how to explain it.”“I do,” Purdey said serenely, and Gambit looked up in surprise. “Mike, it’s simple. You’ve put your life on the line more times than I can count. But this time you have something—someone--to come back to. It’s understandable that you don’t want to sacrifice that. It doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you human.”Gambit’s mouth quirked up slightly on one side. “Got all that from ‘I don’t want to’? Did you take psychology at Sorbonne?”Purdey shook her head. “Drama. But if I couldn’t read people, I’d make a terrible agent, wouldn’t I?”“Yes. But I can’t imagine you being a terrible agent in any universe.” Gambit smiled a little crookedly. “Drama, eh? I didn’t know that.”“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Purdey said wistfully. “There’s a lot both of us still don’t know about each other, people in our lives we’ve never met. My mother, for one. I was hoping to introduce you in the next few months.”Gambit looked surprised. “You were?”Purdey nodded matter-of-factly. “And to Uncle Elly. Although he’ll probably give you a hard time just for appearances sake, so you might want to work your way up to him by meeting the more obliging relations first.” “I’ve met your Uncle,” Gambit pointed out. “After that business with Colonel Miller. And your step-father. We seemed to get on all right.” Purdey shrugged carelessly. “I’m sure you were very charming. But it’s rather a different kettle of fish when you’re face to face with Colonel Elroyd Foster and he knows you’ve been sleeping with his niece.” She grinned wickedly. “He’s very protective of me, you know.”Gambit paled slightly. “Thanks for the warning. I thought this was meant to be a pep talk.”“It is,” Purdey assured, patting his shoulder reassuringly. “Because facing off with Vanessa Thyme is a breeze compared to wrangling Uncle Elly. If you think you can charm him, you have nothing to worry about today.”Gambit slanted a skeptical eyebrow. “I wish that was true.”“It is,” Purdey asserted, quite frankly. “And it’s also true that I’ll meet your family, too, someday.”“At my funeral,” Gambit muttered somberly. “No, you’ll be there, and very much alive,” Purdey said with certainty. “I’m not giving up on you yet.”“Glad at least one of us has faith in me,” Gambit replied, eyes drifting back up to the trees. Purdey scowled and turned her gaze to the vast lawn that stretched out before them, a small portion of the countless acres that made up Steed’s grounds. “Back to this again. You’re still trying to prepare me for the possibility that you might not be coming back,” she accused sourly.Gambit’s emotional reserves were too low to muster up anything but weariness in the face of her outrage. “And you’re trying to get me to make promises that I don’t know if I can keep.”“I’m not that unreasonable!” Purdey defended, whirling around, eyes flashing, but met with Gambit’s heavy-lidded, skeptical gaze. “Well, not always. Anyway, I’m not asking you to promise to come back. I’m asking you to try, that’s all, instead of acting so fatalistic, as though it’s a foregone conclusion.”Gambit tilted his head to one side, scepetical expression augmented by a pair of incredulous creases between the eyebrows. “Purdey, after everything we’ve been through, you must know by now that I’ll always do everything in my power to come back to you.”“Yes,” Purdey conceded, voice soft now, anger ebbing away to reveal the fear that it was attempting to mask. His hands were laced and hanging loosely between his legs, and Purdey slipped her own hand into the space between them, fingers weaving their way into his. “But I also know that you’ll do anything in your power to protect me, and I don’t want you to succumb to your penchant for self-sarcrificing idiocy.” She leaned in close, pressed her nose to his temple, eyes sliding closed. “I know you can’t predict what will happen, Mike. I’m only asking that you remember to fight for the future, not concentrate on trying to atone for the past.”“I think about the future all the time,” Gambit protested mildly, folding Purdey’s hand in his and studying it thoughtfully. “Mostly about a future with you.”“I’m flattered, if not very surprised. You’re nothing if not predictable,” Purdey teased, allowing herself a small smile as she nuzzled his temple, breathing deep of the scent of Gambit’s hair and skin. “And what do you have in mind for me, Mike Gambit? Marriage, kids, a cottage in Wales?”“I thought you didn’t want kids,” Gambit said, a small, puzzled, slightly melancholy frown marring his features.Purdey looked at him with a frown every bit as bemused. “Whatever gave you that idea?”“You did,” Gambit informed softly, knowing he was digging up painful memories for her on more than one front. But if they were going to talk about this, he couldn’t very well ignore what she’d said the last time they’d had this conversation, and it wasn’t fair for her to pretend it had never happened. “When we were pretending to be that married couple, just before I supposedly died.”Purdey looked pained--at the mention of Gambit’s supposed demise, the topic of children, and their previous conversation. “I didn’t say I didn’t want kids,” she corrected, with a tinge of recrimination in her voice. “I said I wasn’t sure what I wanted.”“Right,” Gambit confirmed, shifting uncomfortably. “Because of what happened with—with your engagement.” He purposefully omitted mentioning Larry Doomer by name, something they both tried to avoid if they could help it. His name dredged up nothing but pain on both sides, and Purdey had acknowledged that the spectre of him had been the main barrier to her taking Gambit up on his offers of romance earlier than she had. He was dead and gone now, and the world was a better place for it, so Purdey and Gambit had made a concerted effort to not let him impinge on their lives, on their happiness, their future. But even buried, Doomer had still left certain legacies that continued to be felt moving forward. Some were actually good. The one thing both Purdey and Gambit had to thank Larry for was the unintentional push he had given Purdey to take a new path in life, to reevaluate what she wanted and how she could feel fulfilled. That path had taken her to the Ministry and then, eventually, to Gambit, and their meeting was something both of them would be forever grateful for. But some of Doomer’s legacies were less-than-positive, and the black mark he’d left on Purdey’s once-pristine dream of a happy family life was one of them. She hadn’t been able to revisit the concept of domestic bliss without that blight clouding her judgment, and thefore couldn’t clearly work out how she felt about it. She’d told Gambit as much that grey, awful day in the car.“Yes,” Purdey confirmed softly, ducking her head for a moment as the emotions washed over her, and she willed herself to remain unaffected. The content of that particular conversation had been bad enough, but the context had only made it worse. Their partnership had been particularly strained at that point, and was on its way to perhaps becoming irredeemingly so, weighed down by Doomer’s death at Gambit’s hand a few months earlier, followed by a period of tentativeness as they tried to work out how they could carry on from there, both professionally and personally. They’d retreated into their work roles to a certain extent, and that had kept them safe for a little while. Then, miraculously, in Canada, they’d reemerged, and found themselves able to pick up where they left off. But that had only added the weight of their long-running flirtation, their nascent hints at romance, their shared secrets and meaningful moments, to the momentous emotional reckoning that Doomer had spurred. And that had found Purdey reconsidering just why she was holding Gambit at arm’s length, and led her to make intimations in a romantic direction, including one, very potent conversation that had seen her more or less push Gambit to admit that he loved her, and then almost take him to bed as a consequence. But then, as ever, she’d reverted to her old, cowardly ways and pushed him away, after pulling him closer than she ever had. She’d bruised—maybe broken—Gambit’s heart badly, and, coupled with the pressure of opening up to a man posing as a marriage counsellor as part of their cover as a married couple on assignment, Gambit had been unable to keep the pain of being strung along emotionally hidden any longer. It had bubbled to the surface in what had been a bitter exchange between two hurt people who loved each other, but whose relationship only seemed to be garnering more pain. It had ended with Gambit leaving the car, and the next time she’d seen him had been during their meeting with the counsellor, who had promptly drugged and conditioned Purdey into thinking Gambit was dead. It was a low point in their professional and personal relationship that Purdey had no desire to revisit, but their only previous conversation about children had, unfortunately, happened right smack in the middle of the whole messy business.“Kids,” Gambit repeated almost wistfully, gaze distant, but with a dreamy smile stretching his features. With a jolt, he seemed to remember himself and paled slightly as he met Purdey’s gaze. “Not that we have to—or you have to—it’s just idle whimsy.”Purdey put a finger to his lips to calm him. “It’s all right,” she soothed, smiling away his fears, even if that smile was a bit shaky. “You don’t have to cosset me. We’ll talk it through properly, one of these days. Preferably on a day when we’re not worried about what’s going to become of you in a few hours’ time.”Behind her finger, Gambit’s lips stretched into a crooked smile. “It’s probably a mad idea, anyway. Given how many times I’ve risked my neck, I’m not the safest choice for a parent, am I? You said as much last night. You already lost your father to this job. And here I am, walking straight into the lion’s den.” His next words were laced with bitterness. “Not the most reliable man in the world.”“Yes, you are,” Purdey contradicted. “Because if you weren’t, I quite literally wouldn’t be here. You’ve saved my life more times than I can count. And as for deserving better, I’ve learned the hard way to recognise that I’ve found the best man there is.” Gambit actually blushed a little at the praise, much to Purdey’s amusement, and she added, “If anything, you deserved more than a woman who spent two years toying with your emotions while she tried to work out what was going on in her own mind.”Gambit grinned unrepetently. “I guess we’re condemned to each other, eh?”“I imagine we’ll survive somehow,” Purdey said lightly. “And as for being unreliable, that, Mike Gambit, is a notion I disagree with vehemently. You’re self-sacrificing to a fault. What better credential for being a parent is there?”Gambit scratched his neck in that self-conscious way of his. “Well, it’s not only that. There’s a few other things that make me think I might not be cut out for the job.”Purdey tilted her head inquisitively. “Such as?”Gambit looked at the ground between his feet. “Didn’t have much of a childhood. Left home young. I don’t know that you can be a good parent to a kid if you never had much of a chance to be a kid yourself.”“I’m not entirely sure that’s true,” Purdey disagreed. “I mean, as far as I can tell, you’ve never grown up, so you should have no trouble relating to a child’s mentality.”Gambit pulled a face. “Thanks ever so.”“My pleasure.” Purdey patted his knee patronisingly. “And anyway, the fact that you remember the ways you felt deprived means that you’d know what to do to keep it from happening again. And I know you wouldn’t let it happen again. You’d do everything in your power to make sure that your children got what they needed. I may be uncertain about having children, but it has absolutely nothing to do with your fitness for fatherhood. I think—no, I know—that you’d be an excellent father. You have so much love rumbling around in you that even I can’t take it all. Any child would be lucky to have you as a father.”Gambit’s crooked smile turned shyly hopeful. “Do you think so?”“I know so. And you should know better than to second guess me by now, Mike Gambit.” Purdey bopped him playfully on the nose for good measure. “I won’t hear another word about you being ill-suited for parenthood. It’s simply ridiculous.”“All right, so I might make a good dad,” Gambit allowed, and grinned at Purdey’s huff at the word ‘might’. “But if you know that, you also know as well as I do that you’d make a good mum.”Purdey sighed and smiled wanly. “I suppose,” she allowed. “But it’s not about that. Or not only about that. I used to be certain I wanted children, a long time ago, when I was certain I wanted a lot of things.” She drew thoughtful figures with her fingertip on Gambit’s thigh as she tried to pick out the words that would convey what she felt. “Then, after everything that happened, I wasn’t certain what I’d wanted and what I thought I wanted. What I thought I should want. What I thought would make things better, when really only I could fix them.” She bit her lip. “It’s taken longer than I’d like to untangle what I really want from old fears and associations. I only recently achieved the clarity to know that I want to be with you.” She squeezed Gambit’s leg affectionately. “Untangling what I actually want when it comes to having children, without all the baggage attached, is something that will take a little longer. But I can tell you that if I’m ever going to have any children, they are definitely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, going to be yours, Mike Gambit.”“That’s more than I could ask for,” Gambit said genuinely, raising her hand to his lips and kissing it with feeling.Purdey was grinning when his lips left her skin, suddenly in better humour. “Anyway, there’s always the possibility we might have the decision made for us. Suppose I fell pregnant?”Gambit snorted. “I’d feel like a cad,” he said with a frankness that surprised her, lips pursed as though the situation was a reality, and he was actively annoyed at himself for it. “I mean, if you and I ever went the family route, I think you deserve better than me getting you up the duff before we tied the knot.”Purdey laughed in amusement. “Mike, how old-fashioned. I wouldn’t have thought the social niceties would matter to you.”“It’s not the niceties I’m worried about. It’s putting you in a situation that has more consequences for me than for you.” Gambit raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’d be sanguine about it?”Purdey shrugged carelessly. “It’d make for good gossip, I suppose. But if it happened, and I knew the man was trustworthy, that he’d stay, and I wanted him to stay, the actual order doesn’t matter so much as the event.” She met his gaze. “Because no man would up and leave a woman, not if he really cared about her.”Gambit laughed in recognition at his own words. “I thought you didn’t agree with that pearl of wisdom.”“Yes, well, I’ve had some time to think on it, and I think the author has some good points.”“He appreciates the sentiment,” Gambit assured, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “They should give you a medal for extreme bravery for even considering to have kids with me. They’d probably be a bunch of little hellions, too, if they took after me at all.”Purdey started to laugh at the image of a pint-sized Gambit wreaking havoc. “Were you really? Terrible twos, and all that?”“Terrible fourteens, more like,” Gambit corrected. “Nothing too horrible, but enough schoolboy mischief that I ended up the wrong end of a lot of reprimanding fingers.” He demonstrated by waggling his own index at her in a ‘naughty, naughty’ fashion. “Amongst other things.”“I can imagine,” Purdey chortled. “You haven’t changed much. I imagine you felt the sting of a lot of rulers.”“And beyond. I still feel the pains on cold winter nights,” Gambit quipped, quite enjoying this particular trip down memory lane. “What about you? I’ll bet all the teachers were eating out of your hand.”Purdey shook her head. “I wasn’t a saint. The headmistress and I had one or two talks.”“Only one or two?”“Only because I hardly ever got caught,” Purdey revealed mysteriously. “And they knew it. But they did find out about the mice I was keeping in my sock drawer. And three of us were caught sneaking back in late at night after going to a film with some boys.”Gambit feigned horror. “Purdey, I’m surprised. And here I thought you were a nice girl.”“I was corrupted long before you came along, Mike Gambit,” Purdey said with a secretive smile.“If only I’d known. There you were, just waiting at the Sorbonne for someone to corrupt you further.” Gambit shook his head sadly at the missed opportunity. “I would’ve dropped in on you while I was on the racing circuit.”“I would’ve appreciated the visit,” Purdey admitted. “There were lots of nice boys about, but they didn’t have that je ne sais quoi. But you must have known loads of girls when you were young.”“Never for very long,” Gambit clarified with a grin. “Navy made that a bit hard, going from port to port. My relationships were pretty brief. Not that I minded particularly.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.“I’d rather remain ignorant on that front,” Purdey retorted.“Suits me fine,” Gambit agreed, then added, quite seriously. “If we do ever have kids, I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. I want you to know that you won’t be alone in it.” He was almost painfully sincere about it, and Purdey smiled. She’d taken his mind off the events of the day for awhile, at least. And from the sounds of the things, if she ever did get pregnant by Mike, she was going to be treated like a queen. But Gambit would naturally fuss over her. She’d always known that. Hearing him say it just made her love him a little bit more.“I’ll hold you to that,” she warned, curling her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth.“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he told her, kissing her back. “Hungry?”“Famished. I had a piece of toast on the way out, but that was all. Steed told me to bring you in for breakfast.”“Then we’d better get back while there’s still something left.” He offered her an arm, and she took it, before they both strode off down the lawn back toward the house.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After breakfast, showers, and a change of clothes, there were inevitably more briefings with Larry and company, but Purdey’s concentration was fractured to say the least. Her gaze inevitably kept drifting toward Gambit, the desire to soak up as much of his presence as possible bordering on an unquenchable craving. From where she was sitting, she could only see him in profile. His features looked like they were carved from granite, he was so stony-faced. She didn’t want her last glimpses of him before he walked into lion’s den to be so irredeemably grim, but she also knew that his expression was evidence that he was doing what he needed to to steel himself for the ordeals to come. Gambit the stony-faced professional was nothing new to her, but the reason for his sombre demeanor was rarely so personal, though often just as deadly. She tried to remember that Gambit was very deadly himself, but her mind kept betraying her, reminding her that the woman he was meeting, Vanessa Thyme, had successfully kept him under lock and key and tortured him for three months. That piece of intelligence evened the odds in a way she didn’t like. Just as she felt her breakfast suddenly attempt to swim back up her throat, Gambit, sensing, as always, when she was ill-at-ease, glanced her way and…winked. Purdey wasn’t entirely certain how he knew she needed to see that little spark of Gambit charm and jauntiness right at that moment, but he did, and she loved him for it. It quieted her churning stomach for the time being, and got her through the preparations, the set-up of the cordon, the whirlwind of activity that accompanied the beginning of every operation, and suddenly, breathlessly, she found herself stood next to Gambit stood outside the club, waiting for the hour of the rendezvous to arrive. In the distance, she could see Larry and his colleagues getting into position. Gambit caught the man’s eye over Purdey’s shoulder and resisted the urge to gift him with a rude salute. He settled with a cheery smile instead, which, even from her distant vantage point, Purdey could tell actually infuriated Larry more than open hostility. “Don’t bait him,” Purdey chastised knowingly, catching sight of Gambit’s look of smug satisfaction even as she fiddled with her radio. “You need him on your side, not looking for more reasons to hate you.”“I don’t think I can fall much lower in his eyes than I already have,” Gambit replied, unrepentant, still grinning infuriatingly at Larry. “But that’s all right. The feeling’s mutual.”Purdey shook her head in mild, yet fond, rebuke. “And you wonder why I call you infuriating.”Gambit leaned in close, and Purdey resisted the urge to let her gaze setlle on his mouth. “That’s all right. You call me lots of other things, and that’s all that matters.”Purdey gave him a look, crossed her arms in a gesture that went from annoyance to vulnerability. “Do you think this’ll work?”“What, do you mean me coming out of there, unharmed, without some sort of price on my head?” Gambit pursed his lips sceptically. “I doubt it. Even if Vanessa doesn’t want something—and it’s a good bet she does—then Larry will still have me in his crosshairs.”Purdey drew her lips back tightly. “That’s not very encouraging.”“Sorry,” Gambit apologised, but Purdey knew that didn’t make his words any less true. “I’m trying to be realistic.”Purdey looked annoyed now. “What’s the point of this, then? Other than to put yourself in the line of fire to spare us all like the self-sacrificing idiot you are?”Gambit grinned at her in a way that told her she’d read him like the proverbial book. “Ideally? Larry actually puts his money where his mouth is and takes Vanessa into custody, and I don’t ever have to think about her again. Failing that, find out what she wants and get her to let me go under the pretence that I’ll give it to her. Then find a way to take care of her that’ll leave us all breathing.”“That’s a very modest wishlist.”“I’m trying not to press my luck,” Gambit told her, cupping his hands and blowing into them to ward off the unseasonal chill in the air.“There’s a first time for everything,” Purdey quipped, earning herself a look this time. They stood that way for a moment, just looking at each other. Then Purdey rested both hands on his shoulders. “Promise me you’ll be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Not at this stage.”Gambit squeezed her upper arm reassuringly. “I’ll do my best, but I might not have a choice. Once I get in there, anything could happen. You know that.”Purdey nodded, ever-so-slightly. “Just be careful.”Gambit smiled encouragingly. “I will.” There was a sudden burst of static near Gambit’s ear, and he realised that Purdey’s radio, clutched in one hand, had sparked to life. “Right, positions everyone. Purdey, are you there?” It was Steed’s voice. Gambit looked back into Purdey’s blue eyes, then at where she had suddenly clutched at the fabric of his jacket sleeve.“Time to let me go, Purdey-girl,” he announced softly. She shook her head, the blonde hair flying free. “I’ve only just let myself hold on.”“I know.” But he pulled her free regardless, putting one hand briefly to his lips briefly, before starting to back away from her, still holding onto her fingers it, letting her arm stretch as far as it could reach until his fingers slipped through hers. She watched him go, felt a flush of bittersweet joy when he treated her to another saucy wink. Then he turned and all she could see was his retreating back. Mike Gambit....Another burst of static reached her ear. “Purdey?”She sighed and put the radio to her lips. “Yes, Steed?”“Are you in position?”“Just about.” She paused, then added. “Gambit’s gone.”“But not forgotten.” Purdey smiled sadly. Steed. Good old Steed. “He’ll be all right. We’ll see to that.”Purdey smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Steed. Purdey out.”vvvThe club wasn’t particularly high-class, but Gambit had been to worse. Clean enough, if not one of London’s more stylish haunts. The same could be said of the clientele, huddled around tables while they nursed their drinks in the dim lounge area, trying their best to fade into the background. It didn’t take long to spot her, the instigator of the whole ordeal. She was seated at the bar. Gambit pursed his lips and fought down the urge to panic as he took in the wash of dark hair, cascading freely down her back, and the well-toned legs crossed beneath the dark blue dress. She was looking down at her drink, right hand turning the glass slowly in a well-controlled dance that reminded him of other, less-innocuous pasttimes, her left resting palm down on the counter-top. She looked relaxed, but Gambit knew better than to fall for the carefully curated pose. He knew she was ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice, knew she could kill just about anyone in the room in seconds without so much as batting an eye, and, most importantly, he knew she knew he was there, even if she was pretending not to. She was going to force him make the first move, let him be his own tormenter, knowing he’d extend his own discomfort through his instinctive desire to delay the rendezvous. But Gambit wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of stewing. He took a deep, cleansing breath, drew on the strength of every single type of training, all the discipline he’d acquired in his long and varied career, squared his shoulders, and strode toward her.She looked up just as he reached her side and tossed her dark locks. And there, suddenly, were the eyes, locking with his, as grey and cold as they were in every nightmare, every flashback, he’d ever had. It was frightening that the mere sight of them threatened to reduce him to the trembling wreck he had been in the cell, hanging by a thread, kept afloat only by fading hopes of escape. She smiled malevolently up at him, and he felt his heart pound violently, as though trying to burst free from his chest and escape. He wished he could do the same. With great force of will, he sat down next to her with as much dignity as he could muster.“Major,” she greeted, using her favourite form of address—dehumanising, juxtaposing his supposed authority with his feelings of helplessness--voice feigning friendliness, just as it had always done all those years ago. She’d lost none of her twisted surface charm, nor her seemingly innocuous, conversational style that could be replaced by the clipped tones of a professional at a moment’s notice if she was riled. “Major Michael Gambit, retired. How nice of you to come.”“Didn’t have much of a choice, did I?” Gambit snapped back, resting one elbow on the bar and letting his hand dangle languidly over the edge in what he hoped was the epitome of relaxation.“There’s always a choice, Major,” Vanessa said with a smile, sipping her drink. She was clearly enjoying tormenting him. “I see you dyed your hair,” Gambit observed, not bothering to dignify her taunting with a response. “Hiding from the law or having trouble looking at yourself in the mirror?” She ignored him. “It’s been awhile, Major.” He’d never been able to place the accent—for all he knew, it wasn’t really hers. She could have been from any corner of the world: Australia, South Africa, England. The woman was a cipher, which made it even harder to get over what she’d done to him. There was no way of working out her motivations or her feelings. It was as though he’d been brutalised by a ghost.“Not long enough,” he spat. It felt better to channel anger than fear.She nodded at her drink, ignoring the barb. “Can I get you something?”“What? Poison? Chloroform? A knife between the ribs?” Gambit said knowingly, never taking his eyes off her, mindful that she might strike at any time. “I’m not here to catch up on old times. Get to the point. What do you want?”Her smile was sickeningly coy. “What makes you think I want something?”“You were the one who made the call and set up this damn meeting.” His jaw tightened angrily, rage bubbling his blood as he added, “And you threatened Purdey.”Vanessa shrugged artlessly. “That was a means to an end.”“It always is with you,” Gambit growled menacingly. “Well, now I’m here, and I’m not in the mood for small talk. So is there a reason you asked me to come, or were you just feeling lonely?”“Oh, there’s a point, I assure you, Major,” Vanessa said airly, swirling her drink in the glass. “There’s always a point.” “Then make it.”Vanessa tsked. “So impatient, Major. You weren’t in such a hurry the last time we were together. We’ll have to cure you of that.”“Why? Are you launching a new career as a self-help guru?” Gambit quipped grimly. “Do they know your weight-loss program involves being thrown in a cell for three months?”“You always were quick with a joke, Major,” Vanessa observed, with a touch of annoyance, brow creasing slightly, and Gambit took some grim pleasure from riling her. “A defence mechanism, no doubt.”“And it worked pretty damn well,” Gambit pointed out, sensing a raw nerve and pressing hard. “Or don’t you remember?”“I remember lots of things,” Vanessa said carefully, definitely on edge. “Including how stubborn you were.”“I have it on good authority that that hasn’t changed,” Gambit shot back. “If anything, it’s gotten worse.”“I hope not, for your sake.” Vanessa’s voice was low and menacing. “Where are the papers, Major?”Ah, there it is. Gambit cursed internally. He knew that was the likeliest reason for the meet, but he’d been hoping against hope that it might be something else. Even garden variety revenge would have been easier to cope with. People who wanted revenge were always prone to letting their emotions get the best of them, and wound up making mistakes. Asking for a specific thing left much less leeway to wriggle around and find a new solution. Still, at least he was prepared, which was more than he could say for last time he’d been in her clutches. Gambit feigned innocence. “What makes you think I still have them?”“Don’t play games with me, Major,” Vanessa snarled, all pretence of cordiality thrown out the window. “I’ve done my research. I know you went back to Africa, and there’s nothing for you there except those papers. None of your security organisations has them. They weren’t taken from you when you were found, and I know you fancy yourself too noble to sell them.”“Maybe I destroyed them,” Gambit said levelly. “Maybe I burned the damned things. All they ever did was cause me grief.”Vanessa canted her head to one side, trying to look straight through his eyes and into his soul. “Maybe you did,” she allowed. “But if that is true, I’ll deduce that for myself, after we’ve spent some time together.”“I’ve already spent enough time with you today to last a lifetime,” Gambit countered, rising to his feet. Vanessa nodded ever so slightly, and Gambit, sensing trouble, reached for his gun in his holster. Another hand appeared out of his line of vision and stayed it. Gambit looked up into the eyes of a standard issue heavy, felt his lips twitch toward a wry smile.“I thought you travelled alone,” he said ruefully, as the man relieved him of his Smith and Wesson.“Oh, Mark’s just a little added security,” Vanessa demurred. “I was hoping that we might be able to settle this quickly, once and for all. You could have just been honest with me about the papers, and I would have been on my way. But now I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere until I’m satisfied.”“That’s what all the girls say,” Gambit quipped, and Mark shoved him hard forward into the bar, the solid wood bruising his flesh. Gambit’s good-humour faded instantly, expression turning deadly. “Try that again and see where it gets you,” he said to Mark, voice dangerously level.“Play nice, Major,” Vanessa warned, sliding off the stool with an economy of movement that betrayed her combat training. “You don’t want anyone to get hurt, do you?”Gambit pulled an incredulous face. “I didn’t know you and Mark were that close.”“Oh, we’re not,” Vanessa assured. “But you have all those colleagues of yours out there.” She nodded toward the window. “I’m perfectly aware that this place is surrounded, but if they can see us, I can assure you we can see them, too. And I wouldn’t want any of them to get hurt on your account.” She smiled secretively. “If you behave, I’ll show you what I mean.”Gambit desperately wanted to take down Mark and make a run for it, but instinct told him to play along for the time being. He nodded at Vanessa without comment. She led the way, with Mark bringing up the rear, sandwiching Gambit in-between. They took a flight of stairs up to a private room. It was appointed with a few tables and chairs, situated around a patch of floor ideally suited to small, private dance parties, and a bar that likely would’ve been staffed if their meet-up was a little more sociable. There were some windows overlooking the back of the club stretched along one wall. Two more heavies stood guard on either side of the door like sentries, one of whom closed the door behind their less-than-happy little party of four. On one, small table in the middle of the room, a pair of binoculars sat innocuously. Vanessa nodded at them, then at the window set into the wall opposite. “Have a look through those, Major,” she suggested, with studied casualness. “I think you might be interested in the view.”“The only thing I’m interested in looking at is you behind bars,” Gambit snapped. “Whatever game you’re playing, I don’t want any part of it.”“Oh, I know how you feel about games, Major,” Vanessa said, with the strangest look on her face. “And I know how you respond to them. But I promise you this is no game. I’m being very, very serious.” She nodded once more at the binoculars. “Have a look, and then you’ll understand.”Gambit considered for a moment, not bothering to hide how suspicious he was. He really didn’t like to do what Vanessa said under any circumstances, but something told him he ought to this time. Jaw set and eyes dangerously narrow slits, he stepped forward and snatched the binoculars off the table, then strode over to the window with quick, efficient strides. He glared at Vanessa over his shoulder once more, just to make his displeasure known, before turning and raising the binoculars to his eyes.It took a moment to work out what he was meant to see that was so special. There was the street outside the front of the club, as expected. There were pavements and cars and people and—Purdey.Gambit felt his blood run cold.Vanessa’s voice was suddenly in his ear, hissing unpleasantly with the satisfaction of one who had just called ‘checkmate’. “I have a man with a sniper rifle trained on her pretty little head as we speak. He’s an excellent shot. She wouldn’t stand a chance. I’m proposing a simple trade, Major. You give me the papers or, failing that, yourself, and I let her live.”“You kill her, and my people will be in here so fast they’ll make your head spin,” Gambit warned. “And you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison.”Vanessa clucked her tongue. “You disappoint me, Major. You ought to know by now that I always have an exit strategy. We’ll be long gone before they’re in the door.”Gambit lowered the binoculars, but didn’t turn around, lest the sight of Vanessa’s smug features cause him to do something he’d regret. “You won’t kill her,” he said confidently, taking a different tack, managing to match Vanessa’s smugness with his own. “She’s your leverage. You kill her, and I won’t have any reason to tell you a damned thing. You already know you can’t beat answers out of me.”“True,” Vanessa conceded airily, as though they were having a friendly debate over a cup of coffee in a cosy café. “I learned the hard way that you’ll endure pain, and that you have a seemingly limitless penchant for self-sacrifice. No, saving others is the key to your personality.”“Right,” Gambit agreed, but with less confidence than he would have liked. He had the unsettling feeling that the other shoe was hovering just over his head, preparing to drop. “And if you kill Purdey, you’ll have nothing left to bargain with.”“Perhaps,” Vanessa conceded. “But that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Killing Purdey will make you hate me even more, of that I have no doubt. But what I’m betting on is that, even with her dead, you won’t stop caring about everyone else.” She leaned in closer, lips almost touching his ear now, and he fought down the urge to recoil so he wouldn’t miss the words she whispered into it. “Because if you still don’t give me the papers, even after I kill her, then I’ll move on to everyone else. Steed. Your cousin. Your aunt. Maybe even Purdey’s family, just to put them out of their misery after her demise.” Gambit felt his chest tighten, felt the breath catch in his throat, the world closing in around him, suffocating him. “Purdey’s death may break you, but will it be enough to make Mike Gambit turn his back on the suffering of the rest of the world? How many people will have to die before you give in?” She paused to let it sink in, the idea of dozens of deaths weighing on his conscience. “It’ll be the most exquisite torture. And I won’t have to lay a finger on you.” As if to illustrate her point, she rested her index finger lightly on the shoulder of his jacket, where Purdey’s own fingers had been not ten minutes before. The idea of Vanessa’s touch actually displacing whatever trace of Purdey that had been left behind added extra heft to her threat “And then, when the guilt becomes too much, when you are haunted by too many faces when you close your eyes, too many people you could have saved, and you give in, all you’ll be able to think is how you could have saved them all, and most importantly, could have saved her, if you’d only done what I asked in the first place. And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. It will be you who hastened her demise. And how does that make you any better than Larry Doomer?”It was the wrong—or maybe the right—thing to say. Gambit did whirl around now, karate training forgotten in favour of the satisfying blunt force of a perfectly-executed right hook to Vanessa’s jaw. Her head snapped back with the force of the impact, but Gambit didn’t let up, bringing his forearm up and thrusting it against her neck, slamming her bodily into the wall. The heavies sprang to life, intent on dragging him off, but Vanessa stilled them with a wave of her hand, even as Gambit pressed hard on her throat.“Purdey’s not anyone’s victim,” he spat, vitriol bubbling forth. “Not Doomer’s, and definitely not yours. And when she’s heard what you just said, you’d better pray she doesn’t come after you and finish you herself.”Vanessa, for her part, merely smiled, baring teeth stained red, mouth bloodied from Gambit’s punch. “Welcome back, Major,” she drawled. “I was worried your time in the service had made you soft.”“Oh, I still know how to kill people,” Gambit said, voice low, level, and deadly. “I don’t enjoy it, and I’m never doing to order again. But don’t think I won’t do what needs to be done.”Vanessa sneered her scarlet smile. “And you think you can protect Purdey?” she wheezed, Gambit’s arm applying harder pressure to her windpipe.“Purdey can protect herself,” Gambit snapped back. “She’s the best. For all you know, she’s already spotted your sniper and got out of range.”“Maybe,” Vanessa croaked. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t try again, later, when she’s not on her guard.”Gambit allowed himself a dark smile. “If you can get close enough.” “I didn’t say it would be easy,” Vanessa countered. “But I’m a patient woman, as you well know. I’ll wait, for however long it takes. Years, even, when she’s tending the garden outside your cottage in Wales.”Gambit felt his blood run cold. “What did you say?” he murmured faintly.Vanessa’s grin broadened, causing a thin stream of blood to trickle out of the corner of her mouth. “I didn’t know if I’d ever pick up anything useful from that microphone I planted on Steed’s grounds,” she gasped. “I planted it a week ago. It was hard to get it there to begin with. But then, this morning, you and Purdey went outside to have a little chat. Nothing about the papers, but it was interesting to hear about your life plans. Very touching.” Her eyes turned cold. “If I can get there, into Steed’s inner sanctum, I can find a way to her. And if you want Purdey to have anyone’s children, let alone yours, you’ll take my offer, before I put her out of commission for good.”Gambit felt all his fight drain away, and Vanessa knew it before he dropped his forearm from her throat. Even the strangled breath Vanessa emitted as she rubbed her bruised neck failed to bring him any pleasure. “Very sensible, Major,” she rasped.Gambit was looking at the floor, jaw working madly. “Just tell me what I have to do,” he muttered, sounding tired and defeated.“Nothing,” Vanessa said simply, wiping away the blood with the back of her hand. “Just come quietly, without a fight, so we can have a little talk. Or a long one. Depends on whether we can cure you of that stubborn streak.”Gambit raised his head, fixed her with a piercing gaze. “And Purdey will be safe?”“I promise,” Vanessa vowed. “As long as you keep to your part of the bargain. You wouldn’t want her to miss her thirtieth birthday on your account, would you?” She took in Gambit’s poisonous glare with remarkable sangfrois, though one of the henchmen took a step back. “We’ll even divert her, take her out of the line of fire as a gesture of goodwill, so you’ll know she can’t have been shot.”Gambit returned to the window, picked up the binoculars from where he’d dropped them, and looked out at Purdey one last time. Oh, Purdey, Purdey…I’m sorry. “All right,” he said resignedly. “You’ve got a deal. I’ll go with you, but no one gets hurt, not only Purdey. Or I won’t tell you a damn thing.”Vanessa smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said brightly. She turned to Mark, who stepped forward smartly. “Mark, relieve the Major of the keys to his Range Rover. Take it for a spin to the Major’s flat, lead them off.”“Right.” Mark rummaged about in Gambit’s pockets before finding the keys. Gambit’s face was twisted into a scowl. He didn’t like it, but what else could he do?Vanessa slid her skirt up her thigh and retrieved a pistol from her garter, prodded Gambit in the ribs. “Just like old times, Major.”“Sadly,” was Gambit’s reply. He raised his hands in surrender. “Where do you want me?”Vanessa’s smile was one of satisfaction. “Follow my lead, Major. We have our own special exit.”vvvPurdey had her gaze fixed on the front of the club when she saw Gambit’s Rover, parked more than a block from the club, suddenly peel away, seemingly of its own accord, with no small amount of surprise. She thumbed the radio urgently. “Steed, what’s going on? Gambit hasn’t left, has he?” Steed’s reply was equally urgent. “Our eyes suggest someone with his build and another man got in. We’re still trying to work out where they came from.”“Are they certain it was Gambit?” Purdey wanted to know, well-aware that it could be a swap meant to throw them off the scent.“No positive identification on either face, I’m afraid. Get after them. We’ll keep watch here.”Purdey broke cover before Steed’s order to pursue had even finished buzzing through the static. Her skirt swished around her legs as she sprinted, flat out, for the TR7, almost leaving the ground as she swung round the bonnet and yanked open the driver’s door. Within moments she was in gear and gunning the car out of the carpark in a handbrake turn that Gambit would have appreciated, had he been in the position to offer up commendation.As it was, Gambit could only watch the yellow car tear after the Rover with more than a hint of despair. Sadly, he wasn’t in it. He worked his jaw, conflicting emotions coursing through him. On the one hand, he felt his heart twisting at the sight of Purdey disappearing from his life, perhaps forever. He’d watched her sprint, longs legs pumping gracefully, blonde hair flying, with the same amount of awe he’d had when he’d first seen her run. She was something else, something wonderful. He knew that might be the last time he laid eyes on her. There was no guarantee he’d ever get away from Vanessa once she had him where she wanted him, especially when he refused to give her what she wanted. But if it was his last glimpse of Purdey, it was a hell of a last glimpse.The other part of him, the part that cared more about Purdey’s well-being, that part was glad Vanessa was letting her go, leaving her be as per their agreement. He could feel the woman’s breath on the back of his neck even as his thoughts tumbled over one another. The gun was still jabbed into his ribs, which seemed unnecessary. It wasn’t as if he had any intention of escaping—not yet, anyway. Vanessa’s voice echoed in his ear as if from far away, but the words were directed at one of her henchmen. “The girl’s in pursuit. Tell Mark to wait for Robertson until he deals with her?”Gambit stiffened. He thought he’d saved Purdey. That was the reason he’d agreed to go along with the whole thing.“Now just a minute,” he growled, whirling to face her. “We had a deal!”There was a sharp pain in his side, and he glanced down just in time to see Vanessa withdraw a syringe. He tried to reach for her, but his movements were slow and clumsy.“If you hurt her,” he slurred, “then you’re all dead, and damned if I’ll tell you anything.”Vanessa smiled that unflappable smile, the one that he could still see in his nightmares. “Don’t worry, Major,” she soothed. “I didn’t know she’d be the one to give chase, but the man at your flat has orders to distract anyone who disturbs him, not kill them.” She reached out and turned Gambit’s head so his glassy eyes to meet hers. “But if she’s as good as they say, there’s nothing to worry about. Is there?”Gambit tried to reply, but his head was too muzzy to put the words together. He felt his legs give way, saw the world spin around him. Then everything went black, and he knew no more.vvvPurdey followed the Range Rover, matching its reckless speed. The driver—she couldn’t be certain Gambit was even in the car, let alone driving—was obviously eager to get to his destination. She considered her quarry as best she could while executing highspeed turns and watching out for pedestrians. The driving style wasn’t Gambit’s, she decided—too out-of-control for a man who knew how to manipulate his vehicle to the point that it was an extension of himself, a skill honed by his years on the racetrack. But if he had been drugged first, or worse still, injured, his reflexes would obviously be dulled, blunted. In which case, Purdey thought it could be him. She could picture him barely holding on, biding his time until he reached his destination. That worried her. But there was someone else with him. Wasn’t that what Steed had said? A heavy, she assumed. But if that was the case, why would the heavy let Gambit drive drugged or injured? If he wound up crashing, it wouldn’t do either of them any good. It didn’t make sense. That left Gambit as the passenger, or no Gambit at all, which meant this was a diversion. Which meant he was back at the club somewhere. She hoped Steed and the others were keeping their eyes peeled, because there were more unknown variables than she liked.Without warning, the Rover swerved dangerously into the other lane, and Purdey felt her heart skip a beat involuntarily. It might not be him at all, she reminded herself. A fake, a trap. But deep down, she didn’t want to believe that. She wanted to believe Gambit was in that Rover, and that she could get him out, unharmed, bring him back from the edge. And wouldn’t have to face the night alone.The Rover disappeared around a corner, and Purdey cursed under her breath as she sped up. She had been so busy watching the Rover, so lost in her thoughts, that she hadn’t bothered to take note of its ultimate destination. Now, as she, too, rounded the corner, she registered the familiar sights of Gambit’s street. Home. The Rover was going home. Her heart leaped hopefully. Maybe whoever was driving had brought Gambit back to his flat. As she approached his building, she could see the Rover parked at the curb in front of Mike’s block of flats. Parking hurriedly behind the white vehicle, she vaulted out of the TR7 and dashed over to the driver’s side. The door of the Rover was gaping open, but the interior was empty. No sign of Gambit at all, or an unwelcome passenger. Purdey bit her lip, tipped her head back and looked up at one of the windows that belonged to Mike’s flat. If he had been taken up there, it would likely be at gunpoint, she knew. There was no sign of anyone in the immediate vicinity. She glanced up and down the street, darkened by this point in the evening, searching for some other place they might have gone. But there was no one.She closed the Rover’s door absently, and made for the front door of the block of flats. Across the street, a non-descript white car hid Mark and another man from Purdey’s questing gaze. Mark leaned back in his seat and smiled as Purdey disappeared inside the building. Now there was nothing to do but wait.Purdey jittered impatiently while she waited for the lift to reach Gambit’s floor. The indicator seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace. She braced herself in the narrow confines of the space, and shot out as soon as the doors opened, nearly colliding with the middle-aged woman who was waiting outside. Purdey distractedly recognised her as Mrs. Dorchester, one of Gambit’s neighbours on his floor. Purdey had attempted to strike up a friendly conversation with her on more than one occasion, but the woman was less than impressed with Mike Gambit, who always seemed to be crawling home at all hours with cuts and bruises she rather uncharitably presumed were due to one too many pub brawls. The number of young women she had seen exiting his flat at one time or another hadn’t helped matters, and even though, in recent months, Purdey had been his only female visitor, she still refused to amend her assessment of the man down the hall. Purdey had the sneaking suspicion that she was rather annoyed about Purdey’s staying power, as though she were ruining a perfectly good excuse for the woman to be judgmental. Purdey gave her a fleeting smile, but didn’t linger to chat. She had more important things to attend to than Mrs. Dorchester’s disapproval. Hopefully, Gambit was in his flat. Alive, if not alone.The door to the flat was ominously ajar when she rounded the corner of the corridor. Purdey skidded to a stop, and approached cautiously, suddenly struck with a healthy dose of wariness. The door was open about halfway, and Purdey manoeuvred herself until she could just peer through the opening. The narrow view it permitted didn’t provide much comfort. She could make out scattered books on the floor, and at least one piece of overturned furniture, but whoever had taken it upon themselves to violently redecorate Gambit’s flat, she couldn’t see them. Taking a deep breath, she prodded the door, watched it swing open all the way. Nothing happened. After a moment, she stepped inside, eyes darting about, searching for Gambit, for anyone at all. Still nothing. She checked behind the door, aware that was a favourite hiding place for people planning to jump someone, but found it disappointingly unoccupied.The flat itself, however, was a disaster area. The scattering of the books was only the beginning. Everywhere she looked, there was evidence of what looked suspiciously like a search. The sketches from Gambit’s portfolio were scattered everywhere, the drafting board sitting askew on its stand. The pictures on the wall were crooked, where they hadn’t been pulled off and cast aside completely. The weapons in the display case had been shoved to one side, some toppled over onto the shelves below. None of this was Gambit’s doing. He would never have treated such treasured personal possessions so carelessly. Someone else had been there. Or still was.Purdey sighed and put her hands on her hips. Stealth was getting her nowhere, and her raw nerves weren’t going to be able to take much more suspense. She gave up on being quiet and called out. “Mike?” she asked hopefully. “Are you there?”Someone heard her, because there was a clatter from the bedroom. Purdey stepped toward it, praying that it was Gambit. “Mike? It’s me. Are you all right?”She heard approaching footsteps, and backed halfway to the door before the heavy came into view. She knew Gambit’s rocking gait as well as her own, and the wrongness of the rhythm of the shoes on the floor tipped her off immediately. The man eyed her up. Purdey did the same.“Where’s Gambit?” she demanded, feeling anger rush through her, brushing aside the fear. The man didn’t say anything, just continued his advance. Purdey watched him warily, judging the distance between them, biding her time until he was within striking distance. The man didn’t seem interested in keeping up his end of the conversation. In fact, considering the way he was holding his hands out in front of him, the only thing he was interested in was snapping Purdey’s neck like a twig.That’s what he thinks, Purdey thought with a certain degree of smugness. Just a bit closer...He obliged, and she let loose with two of her best high-kicks. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to faze him much. She leapt back before his grasping hands could find a hold around her throat, then circled around to plant her foot in his lower back, pushing hard enough to make him lose his balance and tip forward. He caught himself on the couch, and wheeled around with eyes blazing and the obvious intention of doing her a damage, but Purdey was on the move, vaulting nimbly over the bar, skirt flying. She made a split-second decision and hefted the decorative Buddha head that usually graced the surface. She’d never been particularly fond of it, and it was with hardly a twinge of regret that she rounded the bar and brought it down hard on the man’s head with a certain amount of satisfaction as he rushed up to intercept her. Mercifully, that dazed him, and this time she used her fist instead of her foot to deal the follow-up blow. His nose appeared to be particularly sensitive, because the blow elicited the first cry he’d emitted in their bout, and he fell back against the wall clutching at it. Purdey smiled slightly to herself, confidence growing, and decided to deliver another kick as the coup de grace, intending to show off a little. It was the wrong thing to do. The man had obviously anticipated her signature move, because he ceased nursing his damaged nose long enough to grab her leg, and heaved. Purdey flew backward through the air, slamming into the couch before somersaulting over the back and landing on the floor in an untidy heap. All the air was knocked out of her lungs upon impact, and Purdey lay gasping on the floor, temporarily out of commission. She desperately tried to coax air back into her burning lungs, fighting the blackness creeping into the edges of her vision, listening out for her attacker’s advance over the dull ringing in her ears. She could do nothing but wait for him to come for her, and hope she was capable of fending off another attack. But none came. Slowly, tortuously, she rolled from her back onto her side, feeling a dozen or so fresh bruises along her spine and various other parts of her body that had taken the brunt of the impact makes themselves forcefully known. With great effort, she managed to get onto her hands and knees, using the back of the couch for support, and dragged herself up off the floor. Peering over the couch, she scanned the flat, but it appeared that her opponent had turned tail and made a run for it. Purdey groaned and stood up the rest of the way, brushing a few strands of blonde hair out of her eyes in bemusement. She had been lying there, helpless. The heavy must have known that. Why leave rather than finish the job? Then she remembered the ringing. Come to think of it, it hadn’t sounded much like the type of ringing that accompanied a blow to the head. On the contrary, it had sounded suspiciously like a telephone. Purdey whirled around and located Gambit’s phone on the small table beside her, askew but with the receiver still in place. She straightened its position out of habit and considered the facts. Someone had obviously rung the flat and signalled her opponent to retreat. She decduced that his orders were to find something in Gambit’s flat, not to kill anyone who interrupted him.Purdey sat on the arm of the couch and took a moment to recover herself, now that she could afford the luxury of a rest. After a few minutes, she heard more footsteps, and she jerked her head up in time to see Steed appear in the doorway, brolly held point up at the ready.“Are you alone?” he asked quietly.Purdey nodded, then regretted it. Her head still hurt a bit, and she remembered thumping it on the floor slightly when she landed. “Yes,” she clarified, as Steed entered and took in their surroundings. “Although I wasn’t a moment ago.”Steed looked alarmed, and moved to her side. “Are you all right?” he queried with obvious concern, eyes scanning her quickly and efficiently for any sign of injury.“Bit bruised, that’s all,” Purdey sighed ruefully, rubbing at her aching back. “I think I broke his nose, but he got his revenge and tipped me over the couch.”Steed’s expression betrayed his relief. “Did you recognise him?”“No,” Purdey grumbled, standing gingerly. “Standard issue thug. But I could probably pick him out if I saw him again. He was searching the bedroom when I got here. How he managed to make such a mess in such a short space of time...” She gestured at the ransacked flat.“I doubt he was the man you chased,” Steed hypothesised, bending to retrieve a pair of books from where they were scattered on the floor to set them on the coffee table. “There were skid marks across from where the Rover was parked. I’ve a feeling the men you chased switched cars and waited for the one up here. I suspect he was taking advantage of Gambit’s absence to look around.”Purdey nodded carefully, remembering to protect her sore head. “That makes sense. He must have seen enough, because I certainly wasn’t in any shape to fend him off.”Steed sucked his teeth. “Is there anything missing?” “I haven’t exactly had time to check,” Purdey pointed out irritably. She felt a jolt as her brain reminded her of more important things. “Steed…if Mike wasn’t in the Rover, where is he? Did he...did he come out of the club again?”Steed looked downcast. “We had all the exits covered, but when we went in, there was no sign of him, or Miss Thyme. I was rather hoping I’d find him here with you.”“Nothing at this end,” Purdey said miserably, thumping the couch angrily. “I should have let the Rover go and stayed with you. We knew it might be a decoy.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “I failed him.”“We all did,” Steed corrected, “to an extent, but I think Gambit expected that. He knew the risks better than anyone, and he’s been trying to warn us about them since the moment Miss Thyme made the rendezvous. What’s important is that we don’t give up on him. That was his primary concern. That and your safety.” He eyed Purdey meaningfully.“You mean...you think he was the reason the goon left?” It made sense, and it gave her hope. If Gambit was capable of striking bargains, nothing too terrible could have happened to him. Yet.Steed was exuding that particular Steed brand of confidence. “I know it,” he said robustly. “Now, do you think there’s any chance of finding fingerprints?”Purdey shook her head, thinking back to her attacker. “No, he was wearing gloves. And I don’t think his search was going very well. He’d resorted to looking in the bedroom, and there’s hardly anything to go through in there.” She bent to gather up some more of Mike’s books, returned them to their home on the shelf. Steed did the same. “But I’ll check to see if anything’s missing in any case.”“Now?” Steed inquired. Purdey nodded.“I’m going to stay the night,” she told Steed simply. “It’ll be easier to sleep if I know someone’s here to look after him if he does manage to find his way back. And I’ll clean things up here before I go to bed.” She shrugged, then added, a little shyly, “This is the only place I can protect him right now, at least a little. And it’ll make me feel useful,” she added, hoping Steed would understand, but there was never any real fear of that. Not where Steed was concerned. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder.“You’re sure you’ll be all right here, all alone?” he asked kindly.She smiled sadly. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. And if you want me to sleep...”Steed nodded. “I do. If you take care of things here, I’ll have Larry and the others investigate other possible angles.” He squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he promised.“Thank you, Steed,” Purdey said gratefully.“Not at all.” He gave her one of his trademark Steed smiles. “And don’t worry too much about Gambit. He has too much to lose to give up the ghost. And he’s very good at taking care of himself. Don’t forget that.”Purdey nodded. “I won’t. Good night, Steed.” He doffed his bowler, and was gone.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey spent the next hour or so righting furniture and straightening out the weapons in the display case. Then she turned her attention to the small, elevated alcove where the display case and the rest of Gambit’s weapons made their home, and knelt to gather up the scattered pieces of paper that had been thrown into disarray when the thug had dashed Gambit’s portfolio to the floor. As she set about reuniting the pages, she was suddenly struck by the variety of subjects Gambit had sketched over the years: here, under the drafting board, the London skyline from his flat’s window; there, draped on the stairs, a landscape. And kicked beneath the display case, a series of sketches fastened together with a paper clip. Plans, from different angles, for a dream flat that he always dismissed as just that—a dream. But Purdey knew better. He liked his bachelor pad, she knew, but she also knew he had been working at the design for nearly two years now; a place, he said, for a more settled life, when he knew where he was meant to be. In his current position at the Ministry, Gambit never knew when he was going to be sent off on assignment, or where in the country (or world) he would wind up if he was. Even before he had taken on his current line of work, his life had been decidedly peripatetic, between the navy and the army and the race car driving. But Purdey believed that, one day, he would have his flat. Although, if she were honest with herself, she had come to think of it as their flat, ever since he’d shown her the drawings and, rather endearingly, shyly given her a virtual tour of the residence, explaining how he meant to do the work himself. She’d spent many a happy hour over the past few months, chin resting on Gambit’s shoulder, watching his hand trace quick, precise lines over the paper, and offering the odd suggestion of her own. She was worried he’d take offence at first, that he’d think that she was somehow critiquing his vision. But Gambit had welcomed her input, weaving her ideas seamlessly into his to create a coherent whole. It was the first tangible thing that had been uniquely theirs. Not his. Not hers. Theirs. Even if it only existed on paper. Certainly there were echoes of planning her dreamhouse with Larry, but this was different somehow, she mused as she flipped through the pages, turning to the margins to read the scribbled notes in Gambit’s somewhat untidy hand that gave so many typing pool secretaries a headache when it came to reading his paperwork. Because with Larry, it hadn’t been a partnership, with equal input. Larry had planned the house with the implication that she might get to choose a piece of furniture here and there when they moved in, but when it came to any major decisions, the project was undoubtedly his. With Gambit, it was a collaborative effort—he had made a start of the project, but over time she had come to mould his vision in ways Gambit never would have dreamt. They complimented one another. Now it was Purdey’s dream too, and she hoped, one day, that it would become a reality, that she would see the flat come to life before her very eyes, would pick out paint chips and push furniture about. With Gambit. Together. As partners.And we will, Purdey vowed firmly. I promise you...She found one last sketch, resting on the chair pushed in front of the drafting board as she moved to return the portfolio to its rightful place. She reached out and picked it up, her hands shaking as she did so, and fought back the tears that threatened to spill.Gambit had told her he wanted to try his hand at drawing her. Purdey, after much gentle persuasion and flattery, had succumbed to Gambit’s charm and agreed to be his subject. (She drew the line at posing nude, which Gambit had suggested with one of his trademark wicked grins.) She remembered watching him as she tried her best to keep still, marvelling at how he managed to transfer the detail of life into art. It had come as a surprise to her, back in February of 1976, that Gambit had an artistic side, even if he seemed happy to keep it a secret. She’d resisted the temptation to snoop through his sketches back then, and she was glad she had exercised restraint when he had finally consented to her casting an eye over his work. Gambit was surprisingly self-conscious about it, nervous in exposing his labours to another for fear of criticism. But when it became clear that Purdey’s “oohs” and “ahs” stemmed from genuine appreciation rather than her simply humouring him, his confidence soared, and his explanations of his pieces became more intimate and detailed. He started pointing out particular touches of which he was particularly proud, or that had special significance. Purdey, who had only ever drawn casually, found his descriptions fascinating from both a practical perspective, and as a road into Gambit’s psyche, an insight into the man himself. She had come to love the drawings, and, as a fellow purveyor of the arts, admired the skill. She now found the sight of Gambit’s shapely hands smudged with ink and graphite endearing, even erotic. Purdey smiled sadly down at the portrait. Despite Gambit’s protestations that it was a first effort, and therefore rough, she thought he’d captured her perfectly. “I’ll do better next time,” he’d vowed, revealing a perfectionist streak.“You did well this time,” she’d assured, and advised him to get it framed. He’d actually blushed before mumbling something about it needing to be ‘cleaned-up.’Purdey sighed and added the sketch to the others, zipped up the portfolio with a finality that frightened her. Gambit would be back to finish it. He had to. Portfolio back in place, she left the alcove hurriedly in search of something else to clear up before the tears threatened.vvvGambit came to slowly, letting consciousness flow back while keeping still, unwilling to alert any watchers to the fact that he was waking up. He kept his head bowed and eyes closed, even while his other senses reported for duty and started gathering intel. The first sensation that swam through the fog was of the ropes biting into his wrists. Further analysis revealed that his hands were lashed behind him, and his feet were bound around the ankles. He was upright, obviously seated in a chair. His mouth, however, wasn’t gagged. Gambit took that as a bad sign—if they weren’t worried about him crying out, that meant there was no one out there to hear him. No one who was sympathetic to his plight, at any rate.So far, everything pointed to escape being difficult, but Gambit pushed that rather depressing conclusion aside, and let his other senses seek out information about his surroundings. Someone out there was breathing, but not moving. A guard, perhaps? That could prove a help or a hindrance, depending on whether or not Gambit could convince his watcher to undo the bonds. Mike doubted it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.The room was cool, too, he observed, and he realised that his jacket and tie were gone, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Gambit remembered being in a similar state of undress when he had first found himself in his cell. That horrible, soul-sucking cell... Oh hell. Gambit fought down rising panic, struggled to keep his breathing regular as the implications of being alone, helpless, in the hands of the same woman who had tormented him for three long months, sunk in. He found himself trying to intuit, through sheer force of will, if his hair was still there, or if it had been shorn once more. Purdey wouldn’t like that. Purdey! The last memory before the blackness took him came rushing back, of Vanessa telling one of her minions to frighten Purdey. Gambit felt his pulse quicken, struggled to remain calm, but he knew he hadn’t been successful the instant he heard the footsteps on the floor. No, bootsteps. Her bootsteps.“You’re awake, Major,” the all-too-familiar voice stated, sounding almost bored. “Don’t play dead. I’m not in the mood.”Gambit resigned himself to opening his eyes, and slowly raised his head until he was looking up into the steely pools, just as he had dozens of times all those years ago, to the point that her face was inexorably linked with the pain that was to come. And here he was, helpless to do much of anything but look defiant until he had a chance to escape. Or someone found him. Vanessa seemed to recognise the parallels too, because she smiled companionably, and dropped into a crouch so they were eye-to-eye. “Just like old times, isn’t it?” she commented conversationally.“Sadly,” Gambit snapped, glancing around at his accommodation now that he had no reason to pretend he was asleep. Other than his chair, the only other piece of furniture was a table with a pitcher of water on it. No sign of any implements of interrogation, which didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t some hidden somewhere, but at this point Gambit was willing to take every break he could get. The room itself was completely white—white tiles on the floor, white walls, plain white painted ceiling with a single, simple light fixture hanging in the centre. There’d been a window at one point, but someone had bricked it in and painted it over in—surprise, surprise--white. Gambit looked back at Vanessa, smiled mirthlessly. “The accommodations are a step up, though,” he quipped.“Yes, aren’t they?” Vanessa agreed, giving the space a once-over. “It was a bit of overkill on Solomon’s part to cram you into that little cess pit, but I didn’t have much say in the matter.”“You do know I’m not going to help you anymore than I did then?” Gambit said calmly, with that matter-of-fact voice that always worked so well with enemy agents. It didn’t always make them acquiesce, but Gambit knew it might at least earn him some respect for his confidence. Gambit wasn’t entirely certain if Vanessa had any respect for him or not, after all she’d done to him, but it couldn’t hurt to show her he was capable of calm rationality in the face of fear. Vanessa smiled knowingly. “You always were a stubborn one, Major.”“Don’t call me that,” Gambit snapped, the old title, a relic of a past life, grating against his already raw nerves. “I’m not in the service anymore.”Vanessa snorted, straightened up and started to circle his chair. “I don’t see what difference it makes. You’re still killing people for your government.”“We went through this earlier, when I was strangling you.” Gambit let his head fall back against the chair, grinning almost madly, enjoying the memory of that brief moment of control. “I don’t expect you to understand.”“Enlighten me,” Vanessa challenged, peering down at him from above and behind his seat.Gambit didn’t know where the conversation was going, but she hadn’t started asking him for anything yet, so he didn’t see any harm in answering--especially if it killed time. The longer she she took to start shaking information out of him, the better. “When I was in Africa, killing was the endgame. Cold-blooded killing. Putting a bullet into someone’s skull for no reason. Now, I kill when I have to, and only when I have to. In hot blood,” he couldn’t help but adding. Vanessa frowned at the reference, not being privy to the in-joke about the temperament of his Irish granny, but didn’t comment. Gambit didn’t care. It was for his benefit, not hers, and in those particularly grim circumstances, any small personal victory was to be celebrated.“If that’s what you need to tell yourself,” Vanessa said instead, not sounding convinced by his reasoning. “I suppose your good lady partner feels the same way?” “Yes, only she’d make an exception in your case. Take you down in cold blood,” Gambit retorted with grim certainty, felt a flush of anger as he remembered what had happened just before he’d passed out. “What the hell did your man do to her, anyway? We had a bargain—““We did,” Vanessa confirmed nonchalantly. “And we still do. We only led her off. She got into some fisticuffs with one of my men, but if it makes you feel better, he seemed to come off the worse for it.” She caught Gambit’s sceptical look. “Well if you don’t believe me...Robertson!”A man Gambit didn’t recognise shuffled in, looking embarrassed. It was easy to see why. Affixed over the bridge of his nose was a rather large plaster. Gambit smiled in satisfaction. That was Purdey’s handiwork all right. He felt a swell of affection and pride. “She’s brilliant, isn’t she?” he addressed Robertson cheerfully, who scowled in obvious disagreement. Vanessa, however, seemed to share in the joke.“I wouldn’t expect any less from one of your girls,” she agreed, coming around the back of the chair to face him again. “Or is she the girl?” Gambit didn’t answer that. There was no sense in giving her more information about his relationship about Purdey than he had to, especially since Gambit knew that Vanessa’s willingness to let her go unharmed had more to do with keeping her alive as potential leverage than any particular desire to win Gambit’s trust. Vanessa watched his jaw set stubbornly before shrugging.“No matter. We’ve other things to talk about. Now Major, I have a question or two for you. You know the drill. Answer and spare yourself unpleasantness. Otherwise...” She let the sentence hang as Gambit’s memories filled in the blanks. “It’s quite simple really,” she went on. “When you filed your report right before you resigned from the military, you said you didn’t know what had happened to the papers. That you’d broken into Solomon’s compound and been captured and only managed to get out by the skin of your teeth.”Gambit pursed his lips and said nothing. Vanessa sighed, and ran a hand through her newly-dark hair. “You’re not helping anyone, Major, least of all yourself. Let’s try another one. Who else knows about the papers?”Again, Gambit said nothing, eyes staring straight ahead. Vanessa threw her hands up in defeat. “Fine, be stubborn. You know, you haven’t changed a bit since last time.”“I have,” Gambit contradicted, with a glint in his eye. “The right bit.” “You don’t leave me much choice, Major. There’s someone else here who’d like a go at curing you of that stubborn streak.” She went to the door and opened it. Gambit craned his neck to see around her, felt his heart stop. Grinning madly, a man lumbered into the room. Big and burly, he stood before Gambit, arms crossed. Gambit worked his jaw. He’d been prepared for Vanessa’s usual tactics, but this turn of events had well and truly pulled the rug out from under him. Somehow, he managed to coax three words out of his suddenly-paralysed vocal cords.“O’Hara. Tommy O’Hara.” “Good.” Grinning, O’Hara bent until he could lock eyes with his future victim. “I wouldn’t enjoy this nearly as much if you didn’t remember. Then again, you did have me locked up only a few months ago. Or did you forget?”“I remember,” Gambit snarled back, anger triumphing over fear. “Course, if I had my way, you’d have gotten worse than solitary.”Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “Never in cold blood, Major?”“There are exceptions,” Gambit growled back.“You gonna tell us what we want to know?” O’Hara asked eagerly.Gambit swallowed, knowing what sort of reaction that his words would elicit. He took a deep breath, felt his body ready itself for attack. “No.”O’Hara smiled broadly. “I was hoping you’d say that.” His fist pulled back.Gambit tasted blood. vvvPurdey awoke with a jolt, and for a moment forgot that Gambit wasn’t there and that there was no one to reach for. Her defences weren’t at their strongest so soon after waking up, so it hit her harder than she would have liked when she reached automatically for the person beside her and met with only empty bed. She was struck by the sudden urge to cry, but that wouldn’t get either her or Gambit anywhere, so after taking a few calming breaths, she threw back the covers and set about finding something to wear.Purdey had moved a few necessities into Gambit’s flat a few weeks ago, after the regular trips back to her place for a change of clothes had worn thin. She’d told Gambit that if they were going to make a habit of spending the night at one another’s abodes, they ought to at least get the logistics right. Gambit had seemed very pleased with the idea, which surprised her slightly. She’d assumed that, like most men, he would want to hang onto the trappings of bachelorhood as long as possible, separate flat included. But he was positively enthusiastic about the idea. Shortly after, some closet space had been cleared at both ends, and Purdey now had a sizeable part of her wardrobe, including shoes, belts, and scarves, hanging comfortably next to Gambit’s shirts and suits, with those suits that had made way for her wardrobe now tucked in with her dresses at her own flat. It made things much easier, and that morning Purdey found the shared closet provided some much-needed solace. The only difference between the clothes she kept at Gambit’s and the ones at her flat was the scent of leather they picked up due to their close proximity to some of Gambit’s bomber jackets and Cuban heels. But that was hardly a problem—it was a nice smell, a reassuring smell that followed her throughout the course of her day. Under the circumstances, Purdey knew she was going to appreciate it even more that particular day. She selected a pink blouse and black skirt, before moving off to have a shower. After she had dressed, Purdey scanned the breakfast options in Gambit’s larder. There were cornflakes, naturally, along with things Gambit stocked as a courtesy for her. But with Gambit gone, somehow her usual morning repast felt…wrong. She grabbed the packet of cornflakes, shook it experimentally. Half full. Enough for a halfway decent breakfast, if she supplemented it with half a grapefruit and a little yogurt.She was hunting for the marmalade when she realised something else was missing. It took her a moment to pinpoint what, exactly, but after a moment her nose provided the answer. No coffee. Coffee was a must in Gambit’s flat early in the morning. Without the strong, warm scent wafting through the space, the start of her day felt hollow. Purdey set about remedying that, even if she didn’t particularly like coffee. It was something she could do, and if it made her feel better and less alone, then it was all to the good.The coffee was brewing when she was startled by a small tap on the windowpane. She almost dropped the cup and saucer she was retrieving from the cupboard in her surprise, but whirling toward the source, she sighed in relief and treated herself to a small smile. A sparrow—perhaps better described as a ball of brown feathers--was blinking at her through the glass, head cocked inquisitively, as though wondering where the flat’s regular occupant had gotten to. Purdey smiled to herself, reached out slowly to ease the kitchen window open, trying not to startle the tiny bird. It hopped back a pace or two, but as soon as she had leaned back once more, it bopped innocently onto the sill, looking for all the world like the type of cartoon bird that was so often fond of trailing Disney princesses. “Good morning, Charlie,” she greeted the bird Gambit referred to as his ‘fine feathered friend’ as she reached beneath the counter for the jar of birdseed. She remembered well the first day she’d come across Gambit’s unofficial pet while waiting for the man himself to finish getting ready in the early days of their partnership, how pleasantly surprised she’d been to discover that he had a soft spot for this humble member of the animal kingdom. During the S-95 caper, she’d found the tiny creature laid out carefully on a tea towel, fast asleep. “Mike’s not here,” she explained, “so I’m afraid I’ll be serving breakfast this morning.” She took a handful of seed and scattered it on the sill, then propped one elbow on the counter and settled her head in her hand as she watched him fall upon the pile enthusiastically. “He’s in trouble,” she went on, feeling at once foolish for divulging her worries to a bird, but also relieved to finally be saying them out loud. “But if I have my way, he’ll be back soon.” She sighed, and Charlie left off eating to look up at her, black beady eyes fixed on her face. “Hopefully Steed will find something. Or Larry. Even if he hates Gambit, he’ll at least want to get him back so he can discredit him in person.” She chewed a lip worriedly. “I suppose I could call Steed, ask him if he’s found anything. Then again, if he had, he would have called me.” She straightened up. “What do you think, Charlie? Should I have breakfast first?”She received an energetic chirp in response. Purdey smiled. “I don’t know why Mike said he felt lonely sometimes. Why get a dog when you’re better company than most people?”She turned back to the coffee, pouring a cup and setting it on the table with the rest of her breakfast. She’d already pulled a chair out when another thought occurred to her. If Charlie’s tap had set her on edge, who knew what any other sound would do. And not every sound might precede something as innocent as the little sparrow. Purdey realised she was frightened, more than she wanted to admit, after seeing those photographs Vanessa had taken of her outside of her flat. Anyone could be watching. She forced herself to remain calm, stubbornly set her jaw, and let pragmatism be her watchword. She went to the drawer where Gambit kept his spare firearm, pulled out the Smith & Wesson, and checked the chamber. Fully loaded. I loaded it myself this morning. She could hear his voice, echoing in her ears from all those months ago, could see Gambit stepping into the dark chamber in the castle on the Isle to St. Dorca save her and Steed on what would become one of many occasions. She made sure the safety was on and weighed it, felt the reassuring solidness of the weapon in her hand, before returning to the breakfast table. She was going to enjoy her breakfast now, watchers be damned. Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Purdey called, “It’s not locked.”Steed entered, eyebrow raised incredulously. “Under the circumstances, I would have thought your security—“ It was then he noticed the Smith & Wesson resting on the table next to Purdey’s bowl. “Ah,” he said in understanding.“I thought it would be best to take precautions,” Purdey explained, sipping her coffee.“I thought you didn’t hold with caffeine,” Steed pointed out, coming to sit across from her at the table.“I don’t,” Purdey confirmed, wincing at the taste. “I also don’t know how Mike stands it, but it didn’t feel right, somehow, to not smell coffee brewing in the flat this morning.” She smiled sadly. “Don’t tell him I’ve gone sentimental. It’ll only go to his head and make him insufferable.”“I promise,” Steed vowed, as Purdey went to rinse out her bowl.“Any leads?” Purdey inquired, trying to keep the tension out of her voice.“One or two. They worked all night at it, but Miss Thyme is very difficult to find. Our files raise more questions than answers, and Army Intelligence wants all the paperwork filed before it so much as confirms it has a file on Vanessa Thyme.”“What about the other men in Gambit’s unit? Can you access their files?” Purdey wanted to know, returning to her seat.Steed shook his head. “It’s the same story as the dossiers on Miss Thyme. They’re even circumspect about Gambit’s army record. The man I spoke to only admitted he was part of that particularly secret detail when I confronted him with Gambit’s Ministry file.” Steed set his bowler and brolly down on the table and rubbed his forehead in fatigue. Purdey didn’t have to ask to know that he’d been up just as late as Larry’s people, trying to find a way to get Gambit back.“Nothing solid, then,” Purdey inferred, tapping one perfectly-manicured nail against her bottom lip. “Otherwise you would have told me the moment you walked in.” “Miss Thyme is very good at covering her tracks,” Steed acknowledged.Purdey scowled. “I wish you’d quit calling her that. Makes her sound respectable.”“Always regard your enemy with a healthy dose of respect, if you can,” Steed advised. “It helps your judgement no end, and sometimes it’ll buy you something in return.” He held Purdey’s angry eyes until her jaw wasn’t clenched to the point he thought it would crack. “I don’t like what she did to Gambit anymore than you, and I like her taking him hostage even less. But viewing this as a vendetta isn’t going to make things easier for him or you.” Purdey cast her eyes downward, chastised. “I’m sorry,” she apologised. “But you didn’t see him that night, when he told me the story about what happened to him last time Van--Miss Thyme got her claws into him. Steed, I’m scared,” she admitted. “If we don’t make find him in time...I don’t know what’ll happen to him.”“All the more reason to keep a clear head and do Gambit proud.”“I suppose,” Purdey said with a sigh, looking balefully at her grapefruit. “Is there anything hopeful on the horizon?”Steed nodded. “The paperwork’s being processed. And Larry and his team are still combing through records for more leads on Thyme and where she might take Gambit in this country.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I get the distinct impression our military friends would rather everyone forgot about Gambit’s unit, and what it got up to. Even when they do hand over his files, we’ll have to find our own leads.”Purdey sighed disconsolately. “So we have nothing to do but wait?” “Not exactly. I’m going to pay a return visit to the club,” Steed informed. “Specifically to have a chat with the manager, who was conveniently absent last night.”Purdey looked up from her grapefruit with a start. “Do you think he was in on it?”“I think it would be very difficult to make Gambit disappear without someone on the inside making certain everyone was looking the other way,” Steed hypothesised. “I’ve been to more than my share of clubs where the clientele got away with murder.”“Literally?” Purdey arched an interested eyebrow.“Magician’s assistants disappearing alive and reappearing with a knife in the back,” Steed offered.“Oh, dear,” Purdey sympathised. “And here I thought you only went to gentlemen’s clubs.”“I do,” Steed confirmed, “but some of them have a looser definition of ‘gentleman’ than others. I used to work with this young nightclub singer, you see. I got her some very good gigs, met with a lot of club managers. Often I’d have to twist their arms, but we always came to an accord in the end.”“I’m sure you did,” Purdey said with a smile, knowing that Steed’s usage of the phrase wasn’t entirely metaphorical. “Happy negotiating.”“Thank you.” Steed’s eyes were alive with old memories. “I’ll contact you if I find anything.”“Do.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Steed stood at the entrance to the club, idly swinging his brolly as he contemplated the sign on the door that read ‘closed’. He smiled to himself, casting his mind back to cases long past, cases that inevitably featured a young blonde singer always eager for work, even though Steed often gave her more than she bargained for in her average gig. Venus Smith had lived a whole life on the tour circuit, before starting another one by trading her youthful exuberance for a smoky jazz sound more befitting of a woman now in her mid-thirties with a husband and two children. She had enjoyed modest success with her recordings, and Steed liked to think that some of her business savvy had been earned while wrangling with a certain agent with an annoying habit of only telling her half the story whenever he had her perform at a particular venue. Steed knew he had certainly learned a thing or two about clubs in his time with Venus, and he was certain it would stand him in good stead fifteen years on. Even at that early hour, the manager would be hanging about somewhere, doing some the less-than-glamourous work required to keep the lights on. And if he wasn’t, Steed would ensure he made an appearance in double-quick time. He rapped smartly on the club door with the handle of his brolly, rocked back on his heels while he waited for an answer, then repeated the gesture, this time much more insistently, until someone became annoyed enough to answer. The man who eased the door open a crack was obviously part of the cleaning detail, and didn’t like interruptions.“What d’you want?” he snapped at Steed. “Can’t you see we’re closed?”“I gathered that from your sign,” Steed replied cheerfully, beaming down at the man, who was a good four inches shorter than he. The cleaner scowled.“Why’d you knock, then? Need someone to read it out loud?” he sneered. “We’re closed ‘til six. Come back then.”“I’m not here for a drink and a show,” Steed clarified. “I was rather hoping to speak to your boss.”The man raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Well, he’s busy. Doesn’t have time to talk.”“Really?” Steed said airily, grasping his umbrella about halfway down the shaft.“Really,” the cleaner echoed. “So you can shove off.” He moved to slam the door in Steed’s face, but quickly found this to be impossible given the umbrella that had suddenly been thrust across the doorframe. He swallowed. Steed, so impeccably dressed in his grey suit and bowler hat, was still smiling, but the light had left the eyes, and the cleaner felt a sudden wash of fear. He let Steed push the door open once more, and stepped back before he was trodden on by a pair of Chelsea boots.“I think you’ll find,” Steed said calmly, but with a hint of steel lining his words, “that your boss will be delighted to squeeze me in.”“Right,” the cleaner gulped, knowing instinctively that giving any other answer would end badly.“Which office is his?” Steed asked pleasantly, smile still fixed in place.The cleaner pointed to a corridor off to Steed’s right. “First door on the left,” he informed.“Thank you.” Steed doffed his bowler, the accompanying smile now actually reaching his eyes. He carried on down the hall, umbrella swinging merrily.The cleaner didn’t care about Steed’s sunny disposition. He made a snap decision then and there to visit his mother in Basingstoke for the day, whether his boss liked it or not, and didn’t waste any time in abandoning the half-mopped floors.The manager, one Stewart Hay if the sign on the door was to be believed, was poring over the books when Steed rapped his umbrella on the glossy paint finish. He grumbled something about bothersome employees, assuming that the cleaner—whose name was Phil—had failed to understand the ‘not’ part of ‘do not disturb’, and was making a nuisance of himself. What he didn’t expect when he yelled “What?” was the man who stepped inside, his tailored suit setting him apart from the club’s regular clientele. The way the man was looking at Stewart, with a sort of confident contentment that belied other, much less pleasant, emotions, rather squelched Stewart’s sense of humour. He swallowed nervously and closed the books almost instinctively. This man didn’t look like a cop, but it was hard to tell these days. No in sense taking chances.“Can I help you, sir?” Stewart queried. “Sorry about barking at you like that. It’s just that we’re closed, and I’m trying to finish some paperwork…”“I understand,” Steed replied indulgently. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. If we forgo the usual back and forth, this will all be quick and painless.”“Painless?” Stewart echoed, smile pasted on his face as his mind turned over the connotations of Steed’s phrasing. “Er, what exactly was it that you wanted to see me about?”“A friend of mine,” Steed told him, setting his bowler and brolly down on Stewart’s desk and taking a seat in the armchair directly across from the manager. “What about him?” Stewart asked suspiciously.“He was in here yesterday,” Steed went on, eyes boring into the other man’s, though his tone remained light. “Go on,” Stewart managed.“And at some point during his visit here, he disappeared without a trace,” Steed said levelly, never taking his eyes off the man’s face.Stewart felt his heart stop. No, no, he couldn’t mean… “I’m sorry to hear that, sir. You were part of that lot who were searching the premises yesterday, right?”“That’s right.” Steed was still smiling. “I know that you were rather conveniently absent from said premises at the time.”“It was my day off,” Stewart defended, a little too vehemently. “How delightful. I hope you had a lovely time,” Steed said cheerily. “But as you weren’t available to be interviewed, I thought we might have a chat today.”Stewart shrugged as casually as he could with knotted up shoulders. “Sorry, but I don’t keep tabs on all my customers. Are you certain your friend didn’t go home with someone? Might be sleeping off a hangover somewhere?”“I don’t think he had time to drink,” Steed replied. “In fact, I believe he left not long after he arrived, and not by choice.”Stewart put on his best serious, but impassive, expression. “What do you mean, sir?”“I mean,” Steed said sharply, good humour suddenly flowing away, “that I believe my friend was abducted from your establishment yesterday afternoon by a woman by the name of Vanessa Thyme, and presumably, some of her associates. I also believe that, since this building was under surveillance at the time, that the secret exit my colleagues discovered in the course of their search was used, and since such an exit would be known only to the manager of this establishment and a very select clientele, I think it follows that you assisted Miss Thyme and agreed to look the other way.”“Those are very serious accusations,” Stewart choked, composure hanging by a thread.Steed leaned forward, voice low and steely. “I’m prepared to believe that you were more or less ignorant about the full extent of Miss Thyme’s dealings. I’m not particularly interested in what your motivations were, or whether any money changed hands. I’m not even interested in shutting down your club. I am, however, very interested in the fate of my friend, and any information you may have about his, or Miss Thyme’s, whereabouts.”“What if I told you that I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about?” Stewart tried, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking as much as he thought it was under Steed’s unnerving gaze.Steed looked thoughtful. “Well, we’ll certainly have to reconsider the ‘quick and painless’ part of the proceedings,” he said blithely. “Of course, I abhor violence…”Stewart perked up. “Do you?”“Yes,” Steed assured with a grin. “But I don’t smoke, either, and that’s never stopped me from carrying cigarettes for friends. It all depends on the situation, you see. Whether or not someone’s willing to listen to reason.” He fingered the handle of his umbrella, sliding it out slightly to reveal a slim, razor-sharp metal blade. “Oh dear. Silly me.” Steed slid the blade back into its sheath, then tapped his bowler with the brolly handle. It made a dull metallic ‘bong’. Stewart, now confused as well as completely terrified, gave in.“I’m feeling reasonable,” he squeaked. Steed’s beaming smile returned.“Splendid. What can you tell me?”“I don’t know much,” Stewart professed. “Really I don’t. The Thyme woman, all she did was pay me for a private room and access to our secret exit. It’s for people who don’t want to be caught leaving the club. Connects to the restaurant next door, comes out through the storerooms. All I had to do was keep my staff out of the way, and turn a blind eye.”“Do you know where she took him?” Steed asked urgently.Stewart shook his head. “No, I don’t. Honest. She didn’t tell me anything at all.”“So you’ve no idea how to locate her,” Steed murmured, frowning in disappointment. “Well, there is one thing…” Stewart volunteered hesitantly.Steed snapped to attention. “Yes?”“There was this number she gave me to ring in case of trouble. Said if I saw someone sniffing around the club or anything suspicious before the meeting, I should call her and she’d call the whole thing off.”Steed leaned forward urgently. “Do you remember the number?”Stewart smiled knowingly. “One better. She wrote it down. I never had to use it and threw it in the rubbish bin…” He bent and rummaged in the can by the desk, extracted a scrap of paper and handed it to Steed. “There. That’s it.”Steed took it hurriedly, glanced at it. It wasn’t a London number, that was certain. But someone at the Ministry would be able to trace it. “Excellent,” he told Stewart. “Thank you, Mr. Hay. You’ve been a great help.”“Does that mean you’re leaving now?” Stewart asked hopefully, not bothering to disguise his relief.“It does indeed,” Steed assured, gathering up his bowler and brolly and making for the door. “Good day.”When he had gone, Stewart let out the breath he’d been holding and slumped back in his chair. Just then, Steed poked his head back into the office.“I thought I’d let you know,” he told the alarmed manager, “that the man doing your cleaning appears to have gone AWOL. It’s so very difficult to find reliable help these days. Work ethic isn’t what it used to be.” He tsked sympathetically, and disappeared again, this time permanently. Stewart cradled his head in his hands and started planning what he was going to say when he sacked Phil. vvv“Get up!” O’Hara ordered the kneeling figure at his feet.Mike Gambit spat blood onto the no-longer-pristine white floor before raising his eyes to meet O’Hara’s. His hands were still bound behind his back. O’Hara had freed his feet about an hour earlier, when Gambit ceased to respond to his blows quite as actively as the Irishman would have liked. Gambit had managed a few kicks since then, but nothing like the punishment that O’Hara had exacted on Gambit’s own body. The ropes were burning his wrists, his mouth tasted of copper, and his whole body throbbed painfully, but he was damned if he was going to let O’Hara get anything out of him using brute force. He’d been thinking about the flat, the one that Purdey was helping him design now. It was something to wrap his mind around—a good distraction, a complicated one. Something that didn’t involve the pain and helplessness of his current situation.“I’m comfortable where I am, thanks,” he told O’Hara through split lips.His nemesis scowled. “You always had to get smart, didn’t you? Head on the chopping block, and you’d make a joke out of it.”“I’ve done that, actually,” Gambit informed almost giddily, feeling a little light-headed from O’Hara’s last blow. “Real chopping block, real sword. Did a job on that bastard, soon as I’d got my hands free. Same as I’ll do to you soon enough.”“Oh, yeah?” O’Hara said sarcastically, unimpressed. “We’ll see about that.” He stepped forward, fists ready to go back to work, but suddenly a pair of boots was standing between Gambit and his tormenter.“That’s enough, O’Hara,” Vanessa said levelly, eyes discouraging argument.“You wanted him softened up,” O’Hara growled. “I’m doing pretty damn well.”“Too well,” Vanessa snapped back. “He’s no good to us if he’s taken so many blows to the head he can’t remember his name, let alone where the papers are. We’ll leave off for a bit, let him stew, and start up again when he’s actually capable of feeling what you’re doing to him.”“You must be joking,” O’Hara exclaimed, looking as though he were ready to land the next blow on Vanessa herself.“Do I look as though I’m joking?” Vanessa demanded. “Trust me. I’ve had experience with the Major. Eventually he tunes the pain out. Give him time to recover and you’ll be more successful in the end.”“All right,” O’Hara said reluctantly. Gambit let out a long breath and leaned forward until his forehead was resting on the floor, counting his teeth with his tongue to reassure himself that he hadn’t lost any. Yet.Vanessa, his unlikely saviour, was suddenly beside him, rolling up his sleeve, syringe in hand. Gambit was too tired to struggle as she jabbed it into his arm, the pain lost in the milieu of damage already done to him. “Not gonna talk,” he muttered thickly.“No,” she agreed, her face blurring as Gambit toppled onto his side. He felt the bonds on his wrists being untied, but his body wouldn’t respond to his efforts to strike out. “You’re going to sleep,” he heard Vanessa say, a million miles away, right before he fulfilled her prophecy.vvvFor two hours, Purdey pretended to work while she waited for news from Steed, before she gave in to the realisation that she was quietly driving herself mad by doing nothing to help Gambit’s cause. In desperation, she sought out Larry’s centre of operations in one of the Ministry’s seemingly infinite unoccupied back offices, always equipped with a desk, a phone, a wastepaper basket, and a thick layer of dust. It was up to the occupant to provide the rest. She knew the man was, for all intents and purposes, the enemy where Gambit was concerned, but with no other sources of intel to be had, beggars definitely couldn’t be choosers. She didn’t expect to be welcomed with open arms, but at least the very fact that she was asking for information might convince Larry that she wasn’t involved in some grand conspiracy with Gambit.Larry was on the phone when she found him, and gave her a decidedly unfriendly look when she entered. Purdey crossed her arms and glared back, and they entered into a spontaneous staring contest for the duration of Larry’s call, which only ended when Larry was forced to avert his gaze to replace the receiver. “What do you want, Purdey?” he asked gruffly by way of a greeting, picking up a piece of paper from the desk and studying it in what was an obvious attempt to make her feel like a bother.“That’s a fine how do you do,” Purdey quipped, cocking her head to one side. “And you wonder why Gambit’s never warmed to you.”“He might not have cause to warm to anyone ever again, if my investigation uncovers what it thinks it might,” Larry shot back, slapping the page back onto the surface of his desk with more force than was strictly necessary.“So you haven’t been able to find where he was taken?” Purdey inferred, unsure if she was disappointed or relieved by the revelation.Larry scowled. “It’s only a matter of time,” he temporized, the lack of results clearly denting his pride.“As is Gambit’s ability to hold out in the face of increasingly unforgiving odds,” Steed cut in, stepping into the room unannounced.Purdey tried not to dwell on the implications of Steed’s comment—or his seemingly magical ability to manifest right on cue--as she whirled around expectantly to face him. “Steed, I was wondering when you’d be back. Have you found anything out about Gambit?”“Possibly.” Steed looked grim, and Purdey felt herself tensing automatically as her body braced itself for more bad news. “We received word about an hour ago that Tommy O’Hara has escaped from custody.”Purdey blanched. “O’Hara? I thought he was locked up tighter than Fort Knox?”“He was,” Steed confirmed, “but somehow he managed to find his way out again. Someone masquerading as the correct authorities arranged for him to be transferred between institutions yesterday, and he was broken out en route. We were notified a few minutes ago, when someone spotted the connection.”Purdey bit her lip. “What time?”“By an extraordinary coincidence, not long before Gambit had his meeting with Miss Thyme,” Steed replied knowingly.Purdey inhaled sharply. “He must be working with Thyme. They’d know each other from their time in Africa. And we know that O’Hara tried to kill Mike at least once in the past.” She felt her guts twist anxiously as she recalled their encounter with O’Hara just a few months before, during their summer sojourn in Canada. Gambit had agreed to go into the interrogation room with his old enemy at Canadian intelligence’s request, on the off-chance that his presence would cause O’Hara to fly off the handle and let slip something he shouldn’t. It was a memory from their time in Canada that she had desperately wanted to forget, but the images flooded back into her brain unbidden…vvv“They want you to what?!” Purdey was so aghast that she didn’t even bother to keep her voice down, ignoring the eyes that swiveled her way as both passersby in the corridor and the occupants of nearby offices suddenly tuned into their conversation.“It’ll be all right, Purdey,” Gambit soothed, sotto voce, eyes flicking instinctively to survey their surroundings, identifying each and every eavesdropper in seconds with the consummate ease of a professional agent.“It’s most definitely not all right,” Purdey bristled, outraged at the very suggestion, volume not modulated even slightly by Gambit’s desperately placating hands. Gambit sighed as half a dozen nearby ears tilted in their direction to match their corresponding eyelines, and knew intuitively that they had to continue the conversation somewhere without an audience. He pressed a hand to the small of Purdey’s back and guided her, fuming, into a nearby empty conference room. Only after he’d closed the door behind him did he turn to address her crossed arms and pursed lips. “Canadian intelligence asked for my help. They think O’Hara might be more forthcoming with me than one of their people, given our history.”“Exactly,” Purdey exclaimed. “You two have too much history, none of it good. For heaven’s sake, Mike, he tried to kill you just a few hours ago!”“I know. I was there,” Gambit teased gently, trying to lighten the mood and encourage Purdey to uncoil from the tightly wound spring she was quickly twisting into. “But we’re not having another bout. He’s handcuffed and locked in a room, with security people waiting outside.”“I know they’ll take precautions, but I still don’t like it,” Purdey declared, hugging herself tightly. “Call it instinct, or overprotectiveness, or anything. I don’t care.” She fixed him with wide blue eyes burning bright with conviction. “But I know you shouldn’t go in that room.”“You really are worried, aren’t you?” Gambit tilted his head to one side, broad grin making its way across his features. “Purdey, I didn’t know you cared.”“Well, someone has to worry about you,” Purdey said grudgingly, seeming to remember herself and ducking her head as much to hide her blush as to avoid his gaze. “Since you don’t seem capable. Can’t you let them interrogate O’Hara themselves? If he hates you so much, he’s less likely to tell you anything, not more.”“Maybe,” Gambit agreed with a shrug. “But I have to give it a try, if only for the sake of international relations.”Purdey’s head snapped up, nose crinkling in the process. “Mike Gambit, don’t tell me you’re doing this out of some idiotic need to get back in the good graces of the Canadian police?” “All right, I won’t tell you.”Purdey tsked and rolled her eyes. “Really, Gambit. You must realise that your being arrested all those times has more to do with your winning personality than your professional accomplishments.”“It’s nice to know you have so much confidence in me,” Gambit said wryly. “But it doesn’t matter why I’m doing it. I’ve already promised them I would, and you know I don’t go back on my word.”“Yes, I know,” Purdey sulked, arms crossing even tighter as she glowered at him. “Your insistence on being honourable is another personality flaw we really must cure you of one of these days.”“I’ll add it to the list,” Gambit chuckled.Purdey sighed and let her arms drop to her sides. “Well, if you’re going to insist on doing this, at least be careful,” she ordered. “Even if O’Hara is locked up, I can still see him pulling some darnfool stunt to get at you.” She allowed herself a small, knowing smile. “You have that effect on people.”“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Gambit said softly, stepping forward and, with unusual boldness, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Coming from you.”“You ought to,” Purdey murmured, eyes sliding closed to savour the warmth of his lips against her skin, uncharacteristically allowing the gesture without following it with a tart rejoinder. She smiled up at him as he pulled away, and he smiled back with a tenderness that made her heart flutter giddily. They’d had a few of these more intimate encounters of late, be they physical or conversational—clinches on bridges for cover and debates about romantic commitment from last Tuesday. Always in Canada. The country seemed to bring their feelings for each other to the surface in ways that London never had. Purdey wondered if there was something in the water. Or maybe it was just the jet lag talking.“I’ll be watching,” she called after Gambit, as he opened the door.He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyebrows waggling madly. “I hope so,” he practically purred, and Purdey was grateful that her knees managed to keep from wobbling until he was out of sight.vvvThe pleasant fizz that had settled over Purdey when Gambit had kissed her was quickly washed away by the warning prickle that sprang up at the back of her neck as she watched Gambit step into the interrogation room through the window.O’Hara, seated at a table with clenched, cuffed hands resting on the surface in front of him, looked up and bared his teeth in a snarl when he spotted his visitor. “Well, well, look who it is. They must be more desperate than I thought to send you in, Gambit.”“Maybe,” Gambit said with an equanimity Purdey recognized as characterizing his smooth transition into combat mode, be it physical or verbal—or both, as she was fearing this encounter would go. “Maybe they’re all sick of looking at your face. Not that I blame them.” He had his hands behind his back, a gesture that emerged whenever he was keenly alert or cheekily pleased with himself. She had a feeling that both were at work this time around, but between tone, quip, and stance, she also knew that he was completely in control, and felt herself relax a bit.O’Hara grunted at the insult. “You always had to be smart, didn’t you Gambit?” he accused. “Always thought you were better than the rest of us.”“Well, I knew I was better than you,” Gambit replied casually, strolling unconcernedly over to the table and pulling out the chair on the other side. “But since you’re a low-life, sadistic murderer who’d kill his own grandmother if there was a couple of quid in it for him, that’s not saying much.” He punctuated the statement by settling down in the chair and pulling it forward with a screech, then placed his hands, fingers loosely-laced and relaxed, on the table across from O’Hara’s own chained ones.O’Hara treated him to a nasty sneer. “You’ve killed more than your share,” he spat. “Don’t sit there and pretend your hands are clean. That holier than thou act may work with your friends, but it doesn’t work with me.”“It’s not an act,” Gambit said firmly, in a tone that brooked no argument. “I killed when I had to, and only when I had to. Still do. You do it because you like it.”“Bet you’d like to kill me,” O’Hara taunted.“Better not put me in a position where I have to, then,” Gambit said dryly. “You can’t spend your winnings if you’re dead.”“Too smart and holier than thou,” O’Hara pronounced once more for good measure, settling back into his seat with exaggerated casualness. “But I have to admit you’ve come up in the world from the old days. Working for British intelligence, international travel…” He paused and licked his lips lasciviously. “And a gorgeous blonde trotting along behind you. Oh, I’d love to get my teeth into her.”Gambit’s teeth bared in a humourless grin that mirrored the one Purdey felt spreading across her own face. “You’ll have a spine broken in three places and no teeth at all if I let her in here after you’ve said that.”O’Hara licked his lips. “Sounds like a challenge.”“More like a death warrant,” Gambit warned. “If you keep giving her reasons to kill you, I’ll be the least of your worries.”“Worse than being locked away for life, you mean?” O’Hara looked around the room. “I’ve been in worse. You know that. I’ll survive. So whatever deal you’re here to offer me will have to be pretty damn good.” He paused, but Gambit was unmoved. “You are offering me a deal?”Gambit shrugged laconically. “I don’t know what they’re willing to offer you, other than a trip back home. Personally I hope they don’t offer you a damn thing, lock you up, and throw away the key, but it’s not my decision. They want you to talk.”“What do they want to know?”“Details about Sminsky’s operation,” Gambit said, with perfect nonchalance. “Who else he’s trained, who he’s been in contact with, anything else you might have that’s worth selling.”O’Hara snorted derisively. “Forget it. I’m not helping you or anyone else.”“Suits me,” Gambit said casually, but Purdey could tell he meant it. “If you want to be locked up for the rest of your life, I’m not going to stop you.”O’Hara grinned broadly, but it was a vicious grin that made Purdey’s stomach twist sickeningly. “I’m not going to be locked up for long,” he confided, voice low and conspiratorial, as though he was telling an old friend a secret. Gambit arched an unimpressed eyebrow. “Is your mother going to bake you a special cake with a file in?”O’Hara’s grin became even more evil, if that were possible. “Better. I’ve got friends.”“I find that hard to believe, given your winning personality,” Gambit said wryly.O’Hara laughed mirthlessly. “You won’t feel so smart when I’m broken out of here,” he vowed. “And when I’m out, first chance I get, I’ll take you apart.”“You can try,” Gambit said cockily. “But all told, I think you’d be safer in here.”“You keep laughing,” O’Hara snarled, all humour draining away. “You won’t be laughing when I have you where I want you.” He tilted his head inquisitively, regarded Gambit with something almost approaching idle curiosity. “Remember that girl I was with when you got me arrested in Africa?”“The one you were going to assault?” Gambit said tersely, lips pulling back angrily, all humour draining away at the memory. “I remember. Not the first time I stopped you. Or the last.”“You’re not the only one who remembers,” O’Hara growled. “I’ve got a good memory, me. I remember exactly what I was going to do to her before you interrupted. And before I kill you, I’m going to do it to that pretty blonde of yours, and make you watch!”The verbal attack came at the same time as the physical one, and Purdey was still reeling at the words when O’Hara lunged forward and wrapped his big hands around Gambit’s neck. “Gambit!” Purdey cried, darting for the door as the armed guards outside of the room did the same, scrabbling for the keys on their belts.Inside, Gambit gripped O’Hara’s wrists and twisted his whole body, toppling sideways as his chair tipped over, sending O’Hara rolling across the table and tumbling onto the floor along with him, but, most importantly, no longer with his hands around Gambit’s throat. Sensing his opponent was momentarily stunned, Gambit recovered quickly, regaining his footing and backing away toward the door. He didn’t want to kill O’Hara if he had to—if nothing else, it would prove inconvenient for their Canadian friends—but he was damned if he was going to let the man kill him, either. He could hear a key scraping in the lock, but kept his own gaze fixed on O’Hara, who had shaken off the impact of the fall and was now charging toward him with all the finesse and deadliness of an angry rhino. He flung himself forward, arms outstretched, handcuffs taut between his wrists, and pressed the chain hard against his windpipe, flattening Gambit against the wall in the process.The chain bit harshly into his skin, and Gambit seriously considered whether he was going to have to kill O’Hara if he wanted to avoid being killed first. All the moves he knew would be needed to shake him off involved more damage than the Canadians were going to want done to their prize prisoner, but Gambit’s devotion to international relations only went so far. He was just about to make a move that would definitely hospitalize O’Hara at the very least, the edges of his vision starting to blacken from lack of oxygen, when shouts reached his ears, and suddenly the pressure on his throat was gone, and O’Hara was being dragged away, snarling and spitting, practically foaming at the mouth, eyes wild and bloodshot. Gambit’s hand instantly went to his injured throat, gasping and panting, sucking in great lungfuls of life-giving air around the swollen lump that had been left behind. He watched O’Hara being shoved to the ground and further restrained with a dull numbness, as though the scene were unfolding from a great distance and he was a disinterested observer. He felt strangely detached from reality, and suddenly he was flashing back through time, to a hot, sticky night in Africa, nursing a nasty cut on his forehead, as he watched O’Hara being set upon by different police, but still screaming obscenities at him, vowing to kill him the second he was free. He could feel the slickness of the blood beneath his fingertips as he applied pressure to the wound, could hear the panicked half-gasps, half-sobs of the woman he’d narrowly saved from a fate worse than—and including—death, echoing in his ears, felt the bile rising in his stomach that would eventually culminate in a violent purging of his dinner behind the building he could see across the street. It felt real, realer than reality, and threatened to scare up more equally-vivid memories, more disturbing ones, horrific ones. Over the crowd of onlookers watching O’Hara being manhandled into a car, across the street, in a dark alley, Gambit swore he could see a pair of silver eyes glinting in the gloom, looking straight at him.Straight at him. Out of the dark.He could feel the walls of the cell closing in around him, strangling him more effectively than O’Hara’s cuffs, his airways squeezing shut of their own volition. He swore he was going to suffocate. O’Hara had summoned memories of the past to the surface—memories of his captivity—that were more deadly than any blow.“Mike!”Purdey’s voice cut through the gloom, the memories, the closeness of the air, bringing him back to reality with a jolt, and suddenly the silver eyes were replaced with bright blue ones, staring at him with obvious concern. Instantly, Gambit felt himself relax, felt the fear, the anxiety, the panic, flow away. “Mike,” Purdey repeated, softer this time. Her hands were on his chest, and Gambit knew she could feel how hard his heart was pounding. “Are you all right?”“Yeah,” Gambit croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again, not entirely successfully. “Yeah.”“I’ll take you both!” O’Hara was screaming, desperately trying to wrestle free from the men restraining him. “You and your girl!”Purdey levelled a withering gaze at the fuming man, his threats rolling off her like the proverbial water off a duck’s back. “Let’s go, Gambit,” she said calmly, taking his elbow and steering him out of the room. Gambit did as she was told, following her dazedly.It was only when they were safely in the corridor, and away from O’Hara’s gaze, that Purdey turned her attention to his neck. “Do you need to see a doctor?” she inquired, parting the halves of his already-open collar so she could inspect the redness that was already purpling into a bruise.“No,” Gambit managed, enjoying the way her fingers felt against his injured flesh, even if the tissue was sensitive. “No, I’m okay.”“I suppose I should have expected that,” Purdey sighed, letting her hands fall to her hips. “From the man who needs doctors more than anyone but never wants to see them. But if you buttoned up your shirt and used a little of my concealer, you at least won’t attract any unwanted attention.”“As long as that means I still get your attention, then that’s fine with me,” Gambit quipped, and Purdey sighed again and shook her head.“If you put it that way, you might as well buy me a drink after I’ve fixed your neck,” she opined. “And dinner.”Gambit grinned down at her, nightmares well and truly banished by her presence alone. “Purdey, that sounds like exactly what the doctor would have ordered.”vvv“He could be nursing a grudge after what happened in Canada,” she told Steed, shaking off the ghosts of the memories as best she could, but the sensation of being haunted stubbornly remained, “and that means he’ll want revenge. Mike didn’t count on that. Who knows what they have in store for him?”“You haven’t heard the results of my investigation,” Steed pointed out. Hope flashed in Purdey’s eyes. “What did you find?”“My trip to the club was very fruitful. The manager kindly informed me that he did indeed accept a small gift—““You mean a bribe.”“--in return for use of a private room and a secret exit, and turning a blind eye.” Steed smiled deviously. “In addition, after some gentle persuasion—“ Purdey snorted. “—he revealed that Vanessa gave him a telephone number. Unlisted, naturally, but we’re tracing it as we speak.”Purdey sighed. “That’s something, at least,” she murmured. “Hopefully we’re not going to hit a dead end.”“We won’t,” Steed said with feeling. “I’ll second that,” Larry put in, much to Purdey and Steed’s surprise; they’d almost forgotten he was there. Purdey wished he wasn’t. “I’ve come to an unpleasant conclusion,” he told the expectant pair. “It’s been nagging at me ever since this whole thing started, and now that I’ve heard about O’Hara, it makes sense.”Purdey felt her eyes narrow. Something told her Larry was going to make her very angry in the next ten seconds. “Oh?” she said acidly.Steed’s brow was furrowed. “Explain.”Larry had the audacity to look smug. “Well, it occurs to me that we only have Gambit’s word about what went on while he was in confinement.”“And I suppose that the weight loss and injuries confirmed by countless medical professionals were figments of his imagination?” Purdey said sarcastically. “Not to mention the fact that he was completely traumatized?”Larry shook his head. “I’m not arguing that there was no physical evidence of injury. But he could have let them do it, to give his story validity. And no one can be completely certain that he really was traumatised.”Purdey took a menacing step toward Larry. “Why would he pretend? Gambit didn’t have any reason to put on an act.”Larry met her icy gaze with his own. “He would if he wanted to avert suspicion. If he was in on it from the beginning.”Purdey dug her nails into her palms until she was certain they’d draw blood. “If you don’t come up with a good argument to back this up very soon, you’ll be sorry,” she vowed.“I’ve got that, don’t worry,” Larry promised. “Think about it. Gambit had access to all sorts of secrets in his capacity as a government-sanctioned mercenary. How do we know that he didn’t take a pay-off from this Thyme woman, then pretended to be captured so he could lay low for a bit while he told all? After he was finished, he could go back to the service with the interrogation story as cover. And look where he wound up. The Ministry. Think about it, logically. We know he met O’Hara in Africa, and now O’Hara is almost certainly working with Thyme. The three of them could have been working together way back then—Gambit gets the information, O’Hara and Thyme sell it. Everyone profits.” “O’Hara tried to kill him!” Purdey exclaimed, outraged. “In Africa and in Canada! I saw O’Hara attack him.”“He said he tried to kill him in Africa,” Larry retorted. “Again, we don’t have any real proof of that. And what you saw could have been staged.” Purdey was incandescent with rage. “If you’d read any of the reports about what went on in that cell, including mine, you’d know that wasn’t staged.”“Not to your eyes, maybe, but Gambit’s a trained martial arts expert,” Larry reasoned. “He knows how to take a dive. And speaking of your report, what about that exchange, when O’Hara talks about having friends who will get him out? What if that was a signal to Gambit?” Purdey was gaping at him with shocked incredulity, but Larry just ploughed on. “Now O’Hara’s free, conveniently right before Gambit ‘falls’ into Thyme’s clutches again. He has the clearance. He could have arranged O’Hara’s escape. And now that he’s been working at the Ministry for some time, Gambit’s got a whole new batch of secrets to sell.”“You’re saying Mike was undercover here, too? For four years?” Purdey asked in disbelief, hardly able to fathom what Larry was saying. Larry shrugged “Doesn’t mean a thing. Spence was undercover for twenty. And we all know how close Gambit and Spence were.”“Gambit killed Spence,” Purdey pointed out angrily.“Maybe he wanted more money,” Larry said blithely. “Or maybe their two spy rings overlapped, and it was every man for himself. Or Spence was loyal to his old master Perov.”“You’re accusing Mike Gambit of being a traitor?” Purdey gasped well past anger, barely restraining herself from leaping over the desk and throttling Larry. “Mike Gambit! One of the Ministry’s top agents. How many times now has he put his life on the line for this country? And why would he help lock up O’Hara when we were in Canada if he was working with him?”“To keep up his cover,” Larry reasoned. “He obviously planned to get him out again.” “No,” Purdey said, her voice dangerously low. “You’re wrong. I know Gambit too well. He hates traitors, and all that they stand for. He’d never sell out, certainly not for money.” She crossed her arms defiantly. “I don’t believe it. I won’t.”Larry snorted obnoxiously. “That’s no surprise. You’re not exactly objective, Purdey. You’ve always been entirely too fond of him.”Steed’s voice cut in, low and menacing. “Larry, you’ve crossed a line.”They both ignored him. “I don’t suppose jealousy could be influencing your judgment?” Purdey said with mock sweetness. “And being infatuated with your colleague isn’t?” Larry snapped. “Come on, Purdey. Wake up. He’s got you exactly where he wants you—eating out of the palm of his hand. He knows that even when he’s made a run for it, you’ll defend him at all costs.”“Don’t say that! You didn’t see him when he told me about his time in Africa. You don’t know what he went through,” Purdey almost snarled, her whole body jerking forward as her finger stabbed violently at his chest.“And I’ll bet you ate it up,” Larry retorted, as Purdey quivered with rage. He shook his head, expression one of pity. “You’re not rational Purdey. He’s using you. Can’t you see he’s been playing you for a sap?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously as another thought occurred to him. “And when did he tell you about what happened to him in Africa? I thought he didn’t tell anyone about that.”“That’s none of your business,” Purdey snapped, stepping back hurriedly, knowing she’d gone a step to far in her desire to defend Gambit. If Larry found out about the circumstances under which Gambit had told her that particular story, she was going to be on Larry’s list to be investigated next.“It bloody well is my business if it’s endangering security!”“Fine. Then bring out the handcuffs.” Purdey held out her wrists.For the first time in their conversation, Larry blanched, genuinely shocked. “What?” “The cuffs. To arrest me,” Purdey said matter-of-factly, hands still extended. She knew much of Larry’s hostility toward Gambit stemmed from his own interest in her, and as annoyed as he was with her for taking Gambit’s side, she was willing to gamble that Larry didn’t really hate her, or at least not enough to make him want to slap the cuffs on her along with Gambit. “Because I’m associated with Gambit. By your reasoning that makes me guilty.” Larry’s mouth dropped open. “I can’t arrest you,” he sputtered.“Why not? I hope it’s not because you’re as biased in favour of me as you are against Gambit,” Purdey said with feeling. “Because I don’t know that the world’s ready for that level of hypocrisy.” Larry didn’t have an answer for that.“I’d suggest thinking up some other explanation then,” Purdey said tartly, letting her hands drop. “If you need me, I’ll be looking for ways to help Mike, not cooking up conspiracy theories.” With that, she turned on her heel and flounced out. Steed gave Larry a look that indicated a talking-to was in his immediate future, before going after her.Purdey was striding down the hall, fighting angry tears, when Steed intercepted her. Steed caught her arm gently, and she whirled to face him.“I don’t need you to lecture me, too,” she cried. “I know I’m not impartial, Steed, but really, can anyone claim to be where Gambit’s concerned? Even you?”Steed smiled warmly. “I’m not here to lecture you, Purdey. Larry’s way of thinking is part of the job. We need people considering all the angles, even the unpleasant ones, although he could have approached this particular one with a little more delicacy.”Purdey sighed resignedly, shoulders slumping. “I just want him back, Steed.”“So do I, but there’s very little we can do at the moment. I’m waiting on my trace, and I’ve no idea when it’ll come in.”Purdey swallowed hard. “When it does come in, I want to be the first to know. Don’t tell Larry right away, not until we’ve investigated it ourselves. He’ll only use it to try and incriminate Gambit if he can.”“My dear,” Steed smiled. “This is not my first time, shall we say, making my own inquiries. I predict that, once the trace has gone through, it won’t reach Larry for at least a few hours, due to an unfortunate administrative error.”Purdey smiled back conspiratorially. “You really are beautiful, John Steed.”Steed bowed his head in modesty. “You are too kind, dear lady.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was a few hours later, and the afternoon was just starting to fade into one of those crisp, chill evenings that typify the autumn. While she waited for Steed to finish radioing the Ministry about their location, Purdey surveyed the darkening sky outside her window, and the wide expanse of land that led up to the foreboding old country house just visible through the trees in the small, grown-in layby in which Steed had parked his car. A gentle breeze came up, whipping the tree branches against her window, and she shivered, but not from the cold or the horror movie sound effects. It was the prospect of Gambit being all alone in that ominous, deserted-looking house, with only Vanessa and her goons for company, doing heaven knew what to him. Give what that horrible woman had done to Gambit the first time around, the thought of her testing whatever new torments she’d added to her repertoire on Gambit made Purdey’s blood run cold. She found herself revisiting the mental images she’d formed the night that Gambit had told her about what happened to him in Africa, and they unspooled in front of her eyes without her consent. By the time Steed finished relaying his message, she was feeling very worried indeed, and not only about Gambit. Steed’s finger was barely off the radio’s transmit button when she hurriedly said, “Do you think Larry will come?”“I doubt we could keep him away,” Steed assured with a smile, returning the radio to its home in the Big Cat’s console. “He’ll be here with the cavalry, just as soon as the message gets to him. Which, given that I left it on the answerphone of a clerk who isn’t due on-duty for a half-hour, gives us a little lead time to attempt to rescue Gambit ourselves.” He titled his head inquisitively at the nervously quivering Purdey. “I would have thought you’d be more worried about him coming than not, at least not before time.”“I don’t know what to think,” Purdey admitted, trying to ignore the shivers that were travelling down her spine. “But if Gambit is in there—or even worse, if he isn’t—and I go in and spook them, they could move Gambit somewhere else. Then we won’t have any leads, and he’ll be at that Thyme woman’s mercy for who knows how long.” She shook her head, willing herself to fight the tears that threatened to surface. “I know he’s strong, Steed. But he’s already suffered so much at this woman’s hands. I don’t know if he can do it again—be held captive by her with no idea of when or if he’ll be rescued. And I don’t want to be the reason that it happened.”“It’s undeniably a responsibility no one should have to bear,” Steed empathized, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Especially not a lover. But for what it’s worth, I’m quite confident that Gambit, wherever he is, is taking solace from the knowledge that you’re out looking for him.” He smiled encouragingly at Purdey. “He knows you better than you know yourself, Purdey. And he knows that you’ll never give up on him, no matter how long it takes. He didn’t have you the first time around, but having you this time will give him strength.”“Do you think so?” Purdey’s eyes were unusually bright, even in the dim light of the cab of the Big Cat.“Wholeheartedly.” The warmth in Steed’s voice alone was enough to settle the angriest butterflies in her stomach, at least, even if the rest carried on unbothered. She turned back to survey the bleak landscape with a morsel of hope.“You’re sure the telephone number Thyme called is linked to this house?”“Indubitably,” Steed confirmed. “The technician I used takes great pride in this sort of thing. An inaccurate tracing would be as good as career suicide as far as he’s concerned.”“Let’s hope it isn’t suicide for us to go in our own,” Purdey murmured worriedly. “We still don’t even know that Gambit’s in there.”“True. But we have to start somewhere,” Steed said mildly. “And if you still have reservations about going in solo, and think Gambit faces better odds if the numbers are on our side, we can always leave it to Larry’s people to make the first move. They can clear the way and we can follow them once the dust has settled. It would only mean waiting a little longer.”The fire suddenly returned to Purdey’s eyes. “No, Larry will only try to twist what he finds to fit his theory,” she said with conviction, reminding herself of the reason they’d made this plan to begin with. “If we get there first, we might be able to find Gambit and keep his reputation intact.” She met Steed’s eyes. “If you don’t hear from me in half an hour, come running.”“You can depend on it,” Steed assured. “Good luck.”Purdey nodded in thanks and slipped out of the car.vvvHer abbreviated recce wasn’t as thorough as it would have been under ideal circumstances, but with the clock ticking before Larry arrived, Purdey knew it would have to do. The grounds didn’t appear to be guarded, but Purdey wasn’t willing to chance being caught, and stuck to the shadows as much as possible around the perimeter of the grounds, hugging walls and foliage while she familiarized herself with the layoutThe house itself had two wings jutting out to encompass the gravel driveway. Purdey counted three floors, plus an attic, but most of the lights shone from the bottom one. The third floor was completely dark, and the second had two or three small illuminated rectangles. Something was wrong with them, though, and when Purdey circled around to the back of the house, where there were no trees to obscure her vision, she could see why—the majority of the second floor had its windows barred as though meant to deter thieves, only Purdey had the feeling they were meant to keep people in rather than out. If Gambit was anywhere in the building, she suspected he would be there. She bit her lip, and started to work out how she was going to get in.vvvThere were raised voices and footsteps in the corridor outside his cell, and Gambit squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and did his best to block them out as he slowly came round from whatever Vanessa had dosed him with. As far as he was concerned, they were just part of the ambient noise that Vanessa had undoubtedly laid on for his benefit, to try to recapture the feel of being back in his cell in Africa. That conclusion meant he was all the more surprised when the door opened and a woman was flung into the cell with him, revealing that the commotion had been genuine after all. He didn’t get a chance to see her face before she spun around and raced back toward the door, trying to stick her foot across the jam before it closed, just missing it by seconds. She slammed into the wood forcefully, smacking the surface angrily with the palm of her hand. “Cowards!” she spat scornfully, then stood fuming for a moment before turning around to face him. Tired and still feeling the effects of the drug, Gambit let his eyes flutter closed, determined to remain stolid and unaffected no matter what—or whom--they threw at him. He was too tired and too drugged to fight her, but in his semi-somnolent state, at the very least he could ignore her and refuse to play her game, no matter how many times she called his name.“Mike? Mike?” The voice reached him through a fog, a thick haze that had wrapped its tendrils around Gambit’s addled, fatigued, aching—and now confused--brain.“Mike, it’s me!”It was Purdey’s voice.Gambit’s eyes kept threatening to close, but he dragged them open with effort, was confronted with the room’s white tiled walls. He was stretched out flat on his back on the floor, the cold hard, tile digging into his spine.“Mike.”Gambit raised his head, every muscle in his neck protesting angrily, toward the source of the voice. A sucking sensation, caused by sticky dried blood adhering his cheek to the floor, impeded the action, but he fought the resistance with every ounce of his strength. But the effort was worth it. Because the sight that greeted his eyes was a welcome one.“Purdey?” he breathed incredulously, hardly daring to hope.But it was undoubtedly Purdey’s face that split open in a broad, relieved smile. “Mike!” she exclaimed joyfully, hurrying forward and dropping to her knees in front of him, hands tenderly cupping his face. “Mike, it is you!”“Purdey…” Gambit repeated, not daring to believe it, resting his hands on her forearms to confirm that she was real. “Purdey, what are you doing here?”“Looking for you, you idiot,” Purdey replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Why else would I be here? Are you all right? Have they done anything to you?”“Nothing I haven’t lived through before,” Gambit said truthfully, rotating a sore shoulder. “I’ll survive. How did you find me?”“It’s a long story,” Purdey confided, pushing his hair back from his forehead. “But the short version is, I’m very good.”“Tell me something I don’t know,” Gambit said fondly, fingertips ghosting over her face, encouraging her to lean in close, touch her forehead to his. “I’m happy to see you, but you shouldn’t have come.”“And leave you here to be tortured? Don’t be stupid,” Purdey chastised, stroking his cheek. “They’ll torture you next,” Gambit pointed out, jaw tightening at the thought.“Let them try,” Purdey said brashly. “But if you’re really worried about preserving my delicate bone structure, we can always take out insurance.”Gambit frowned in puzzlement. “What kind of insurance?”Purdey bit her lip, clearly uncertain as to how he’d react to her proposition. “Well, if you told me where the papers were, then I’d have bargaining power, too. You wouldn’t feel as though you had to tell them where they were to save me. I could always tell them if I really had to, if I felt that there was no other way.” She smiled and stroked his hair again. “It’d take some of the pressure off you, at least. You shouldn’t have to bear it all on your own.”“Yes, I should,” Gambit said calmly. “I’m the one who took them. It’s my job to keep them safe.”Purdey pursed her lips, clearly not satisfied with that answer. “Why don’t you just give her the papers?” she sighed in frustration. “She’ll keep coming for you no matter what we do until you turn them over.”Gambit shook his head a tiny bit, mindful of his aching head. “I can’t do that. I can’t give those papers to someone like her. It’d be catastrophic.”“You don’t know that,” Purdey protested, big blue eyes meeting his. “But it will be catastrophic for us if we don’t turn them over and wind up dead.”Gambit shook his head again. “I can’t do it, Purdey. I’m sorry.”Purdey leaned in closer. “Not even for me?” she asked softly, voice pleading.Gambit’s brows gathered worriedly. “This is bigger than you or me, Purdey,” he said sharply, then paused. “You know that,” he added quietly to himself.“Yes, but you winding up dead does me no good at all,” Purdey went on, pressing her hands to either side of his face. “She’ll just keep coming, Mike. Even if you’re dead, she’ll come for me. And Steed. Until we’re all dead.”Gambit was nodding along, as though he could see the sense behind her reasoning. “I understand why you want me to tell you,” he said softly, thoughtfully tracing her jaw.Purdey looked pleased with herself. “So you will tell me?”Gambit nodded, to himself. “I’ll tell you something,” he vowed, just before his hand suddenly darted from her jaw to her throat and started to squeeze.“Mike!” Purdey exclaimed in alarm, automatically clawing at his grasp. “Mike, what are you doing?!”Gambit, for his part, was deadly calm as he watched her struggle and squirm. “Do you want to know where you got it wrong?” he asked, voice low and menacing.“Mike!” Purdey’s eyes were painfully wide, breaths coming out as tortured gasps. “What are you talking about? What have I done?”“Lots of things,” Gambit snarled, wrapping his other hand around Purdey’s throat to join the first. “But the worst, bar none, was pretending to be Purdey.”“Pretend?” Purdey wheezed, eyes bulging alarmingly. “Mike, you’re not making any sense. They must’ve brainwashed you.”“Oh, they did that, all right,” Gambit growled, applying slightly more pressure, causing Purdey to cry out in agony. “Into believing you were Purdey. If I had to guess, you used a drug similar to the one they used on the real Purdey. The one that made her think I was dead.”“Mike, you’re not thinking straight,” Purdey protested, hands trying and failing to loosen Gambit’s grip on her throat. “It’s really me. They’re trying to make you kill me. It must be part of their plan to get you to hand over the papers.”“Oh, that’s definitely what it is,” Gambit agreed, allowing himself a small, humourless smile. “But what they really hoped was that I’d tell you, as Purdey, where they were. But it didn’t work. Do you know why?” He leaned in close, whispered in her ear. “You got the face right, I’ll give you that. The hair’s probably a wig, and the clothes are easy to copy. The perfume’s a nice touch—you did your research to work out which brand she wears. But you mucked up the words. You see, Purdey’s a complicated woman. She tells you she loves you by insulting you. It’s her special talent. One that’s easy to get wrong if you don’t understand it. And you don’t understand it.” He applied more pressure, was rewarded with a high-pitched squeak. “Because no matter how angry she was, Purdey would never, ever, for any reason, call me stupid, or an idiot, or try to get me to tell her where the papers were to save her own skin.” He tugged her closer, and added, as the coup de grace, “You don’t act right, you don’t talk right, and under that scent you don’t smell right. Vanessa.”The woman in his grasp suddenly stopped struggling. “Too bad, Major,” she croaked, as Gambit pulled back slightly to look her in the eye, really looked, fighting the effects of the drug, and saw—Vanessa, in a wig. Not Purdey. Not what he had been conditioned to see, but what was there. “You could have saved yourself all this trouble, and you wouldn’t even have to blame yourself for giving in to the enemy,” she wheezed, somehow making her case despite turning purple. “No one would blame you for telling Purdey.”“Purdey’s one of the reasons I won’t give in,” Gambit growled, squeezing harder. “And getting rid of you means that I won’t ever have to worry about giving in to you again.”Vanessa’s hands scrabbled at his fingers to free herself as she turned from purple to blue. “You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood. That’s not your style.”“Not normally,” Gambit growled. “But I make exceptions when people go too far. And I’ll do it in hot blood. You can do what you like to me, but trying to use Purdey against me—using Purdey at all—crosses the line. That’s where you’ve gotten it wrong. And now you’re going to pay for it.”“Major!” Vanessa cried, a bit desperately, but Gambit was at the end of his tether, and Vanessa had done very little to garner his sympathy. She struggled futilely against his unyielding grasp, but the edges of her vision were beginning to blacken.Then, all at once, the pressure on her throat let up. Gambit’s face, stony and menacing, smoothed out into the serenity that only unconsciousness could bring, and he toppled backward heavily to sprawl on the tile floor.“You okay?” Tommy O’Hara inquired, as Vanessa backed away from the prone Gambit and regained her footing, clutching her bruised neck.“Yes,” she said hoarsely, coughing a little. “We knew it might be a risk. But it was worth a try.” She pulled the Purdey wig from her head and shook out her hair. “Anyway, this was never the main play. It would have been nice if it got us some answers, but there are other methods.” She regarded the unconscious Gambit with annoyance. “How much did you give him in that last dose?”O’Hara flashed a teeth-baring grin. “Just enough to keep him from killing you. He’s already been pumped full of so much of that stuff that if I’d given him much more, he’d be dead.” He scowled at the unconscious man’s body. “Not that it’d be much of a loss.”“It would have been for me,” Vanessa snapped angrily, consulting her watch. “We don’t have long. I need to get going. Do you know what to do?”O’Hara nodded. “Seems like a waste,” he opined. “Just leaving him here to be found. Why don’t we get him out of here, keep working on him?”“Just do as I say,” Vanessa snapped. “Or I’ll make sure you wind up like the Major.” She regarded the sleeping Gambit with a sickly smile. “And you don’t want his luck. Not now.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The back of the house had a large, unkempt lawn stretching out from the building toward the woods. Purdey surmised from the cars parked out front that attempting to enter from that end would be risky—anyone who so much as glanced out the window would spot her. The back of the house, while less likely to result in unwanted encounters, was frustratingly free of trees to climb, which had been Purdey’s preferred method of getting into one of the house’s upper floor windows. She bit her lip and scanned for her other break-in go-to—a drainpipe. She was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was one near one of the few windows left unbarred. The only problem was getting there from her current position. The bare lawn afforded no cover, and in the dying light Purdey knew she would present an easy target should anyone observe her approach. But there wasn’t another way in that she could see, and she was wasting time—the longer she stood there, the greater the chance she’d be spotted regardless if she made the trip or not, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, least of all Gambit. Not to mention there was no way of knowing how much time Gambit had left—if any.She swallowed the thought and forced herself to stay calm. Gambit always said she could run like the wind—now was her chance to prove him right. She took a deep breath and pelted off, as hard and as fast as she could, across the lawn, skirt whipping round her legs, breath tearing at her throat, eyes focused on the drainpipe—safe ground, away from the windows and their treacherous light.There! Someone moving behind the curtain, silhouette inching toward the window! Purdey put on an extra burst of speed, willing her legs to propel her to the wall, where, if nothing else, she could at least press herself to one side of the window and try to avoid being seen. Come on, come on…She made it to the wall just in time. The curtains twitched aside and the window was thrown open just as Purdey left the ground and clamoured part of the way up the drainpipe, enough to get safely above the window. Purdey clutched onto the weather-beaten metal for dear life, hoping years of neglect hadn’t rusted away her makeshift ladder, and focused on calming her laboured breathing. She risked a peek below her, in time to see a dark-haired head and a pair of arms lean out of the opening—with the edge of Purdey’s skirt hanging a scant six inches above. Purdey resisted the urge to swear, and instead reached a tentative hand down to hitch up the garment and tuck it into her belt. Thankfully, the person below didn’t seem to notice. Purdey squinted down in the fading light and realized that, in all likelihood, the head of hair belonged to Vanessa Thyme. Purdey found herself caught between wanting to drop onto the woman’s head, and praying that she didn’t look up. In the end, Vanessa seemed to satisfy her need for a little night air, and went back inside. Purdey let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and set about climbing higher.The unbarred window was open just a crack, but Purdey somehow managed to scrabble onto the ledge and pry it open the rest of the way. She pushed the curtains aside and felt about in the dark for anything that could be knocked over, but her hand met with only empty air. Wriggling into the dark space, she landed on plush carpet and spent a moment waiting for her eyes to adjust. The room was an office, she realised, much like an old-fashioned gentleman’s study. A large stately desk, intricately carved, and leather armchair were the focal point. The wall was lined with bookshelves filled with many elegantly-bound tomes, probably antique and worth a good deal to a collector who knew his first editions. There were also the obligatory paintings, depicting some war or another, arranged on the walls to her right and behind her. There was also a filing cabinet. Purdey made for it and tugged at a drawer, but it was locked and wouldn’t budge. She tapped the metal gently and the hollow sound she got in response told her there wasn’t much inside to be found. It didn’t worry her--that wasn’t why she was here. Gambit was her first priority, and he certainly wasn’t in the office. She made for the large oak door, and listened for a moment before easing it open a crack.After the dark office, the light in the hallway was painfully bright. Purdey shut her eyes instinctively against the glare, and immediately wondered if they were betraying her. But no, when she opened them again, the hall was as she had seen it before—stark and white, from the painted walls to the tiles on the floor. It looked more like a hospital ward than a gracefully decaying manor house. Purdey looked back over her shoulder at the office, trying to persuade herself that she wasn’t mad. No, she had it right: the door was oak on one side, painted plain white on the other. Even the ornate handle gave way to a plain brass knob on the other side. “Someone’s been redecorating,” Purdey observed under her breath, before making her way out into the hall, closing the office door quietly behind her. The corridor itself was lined with doors, each identical to the one she had just come from, except for one small detail--the observation slats, one in each door, but omitted from her own. The type that were installed in cell doors. Purdey swallowed hard. Cells. The kind Gambit had spent those three hellish months inside. If there was one thing to be said for Vanessa Thyme, it was that she was aesthetically consistent, which Purdey supposed was all well and good if you liked the penitentiary look. Purdey gave up trying to understand the appeal of the décor, and made her way down the hall. She started investigating the line of doors, trying the slats, moving them aside as silently as possible so as not to disturb the occupants. The first three she tried revealed empty, dark rooms. The fourth, however, made her gasp. The lights were on inside, and the room had been given a makeover similar to the hall’s—sterile white, tiled floors, stripped of all furniture save a table with a pitcher resting on top and a solitary chair. But it was the heap in the middle of the floor that caught her attention. A person. A man. He was sprawled more or less on his front, his face obscured by his arm, but she would have recognized the head of dark curls anywhere. “Mike…”Purdey set about with her lockpick, cursing at every second that ticked by that she was unable to go to him, knowing he could very well be dying. When the lock finally gave way, she took only a moment to make sure that closing the door behind her wouldn’t lock them inside, before dashing across the room and dropping to her knees beside the limp form. It was then that she noticed the blood. Pooled by his head, it had dried by that point. Praying he wasn’t seriously injured, she rolled Gambit over onto his back. He was unconscious, but at her touch he stirred, and Purdey looked into his face, gleaned what relief she could. Gambit’s nose had been bloodied, and his mouth had a thick crimson line emanating from the corner. She could also make out already-purpling bruises on his bare arms where the sleeves had been rolled up. In fact, there seemed to be bruises everywhere—his cheeks, his hands, his neck, what little she could see of his chest where the shirt had been unbuttoned. All mottling into an ugly mosaic of blues and purples and greens and yellows. She had a feeling that she’d see the pattern repeated over the rest of his body, but she didn’t have the heart or the time to go looking. Obviously Gambit had been serving as someone’s punching bag—more than once, if the age of the bruises was anything to go by. But he wasn’t dead, and it looked as though his torturer hadn’t set to work using the more subtle methods that gave Gambit nightmares. Still, her heart ached at his wounds. She reached down and brushed back the now-untidy curls, trying to bite back tears of relief and hurt. “Oh, Mike,” she said softly. The move was so sudden, so unexpected, that she didn’t have time to consider how to retaliate. Gambit’s eyes snapped open, and without seeming to see her his hands flew up and found her wrists, gripped them firmly even as he bolted upright like a coiled spring, closing the distance between them.“Now, look,” he snarled, and Purdey emitted a small gasp at his blazing eyes, which had turned very cold and very blue. In fact, Gambit’s whole face was a mask of anger. She wondered briefly if he’d been brainwashed, but no, surely not so quickly? They couldn’t have worked on him long enough to turn him against her.Could they?She knew the answer soon enough, because Gambit suddenly blinked, as though his sight was failing him. Purdey noticed for the first time that his eyes were glassy. He’d been drugged. That explained it. Now, though, he seemed to be shaking away the effects, trying to focus on the features before him. Then he smiled, a slow, sinister smile that chilled Purdey’s blood. It was definitely not a welcoming smile, and she knew why soon enough.“Oh, very good,” he managed thickly, voice hoarse, as though his throat were very, very dry. “Very good. You look even more like Purdey than last time. What did you pump me full of now?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond, just plowed on regardless. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Those hallucinogens get better all the time, I’ll grant you. But you must be getting desperate if you’re trying the same trick again. I didn’t fall for it before, and I’m not going to fall for it now. So unless you want your wrists broken--”“Mike, it’s really me,” Purdey insisted, trying to keep her voice steady, to keep it from cracking with pain—or fear--as his grip tightened. No, you’re not afraid of Mike. It’s the drugs that have you worried.“Funny. You sound more like her this time around,” Gambit muttered, face creasing in genuine confusion, muzzy brain desperately trying to work out what was happening.“That’s because it is me,” Purdey pressed, matching his slightly-random head movements with her own so she could keep holding his gaze. “Mike Gambit, you may be drugged within an inch of your life, but I’m as real as I was the night I climbed into the shower with you, fully clothed.”Gambit gaped at her dazedly. Somewhere in the depths of his foggy brain, he remembered that Vanessa couldn’t have possibly known about that night they’d gone out dancing and he’d resisted telling Purdey about what had happened to him in Africa, and how she’d looked after him as he spiraled into the depths of his nightmares. Which meant… “Purdey?” he asked uncertainly.She smiled radiantly. “Yes, I’m here.”Gambit grinned sloppily. “Purdey,” he repeated, and promptly collapsed, releasing her wrists in the process. “Mike!” she hissed as loudly as she dared, tapping his bruised cheeks. “Come on, Mike, I can’t get you out of here if keep fainting.”“Not fainting,” Gambit protested blearily from the floor. “Passing out.”“What’s the difference?”“Gives me a little more dignity, at least.” Gambit’s eyes eased open and he fought to focus on the person leaning over him, properly this time. Bright blue eyes, not cold silver ones. Blue eyes that he had lost himself in so many times he no longer kept track. And below them, that familiar nose, and a pair of lips that had returned his kisses every day for the past few months. His heart lifted hopefully. It had to be her. The drugs could never perfectly replicate the features now fixed on him with a mixture of fear and pain.“Purdey…?” he croaked, and realized how dry his throat was. “Purdey, is it really…?” He coughed and tried again. “The drugs, they couldn’t…?”“It’s me, Mike,” she assured. “I may be flattering myself, but I like to think I’m one of a kind.” Her voice finally allayed his fears. No one, not even Vanessa, could replicate those cut-glass tones. He felt himself relax, then noticed that her wrists had bright red marks encircling them, felt his heart sink as the realisation of what he’d done right before the world had faded in and out brought his brain into wakefulness.“Oh, hell, Purdey, what have I…I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked anxiously, struggling to sit up again, wincing as he did so. Purdey was rubbing the reddened marks, but quickly reached out to steady him. He let her push him so his back was braced against the wall. Only then did he take her hands again, examining them as he chided himself. “I thought you were her. She’s already pretended to be you once…”“I’m fine,” Purdey reassured, resting a comforting hand against his face, and she was happy when he smiled in relief. “Which is more than I can say for you at the moment. Mike, what have they been doing to you?”Gambit noticed how she was looking at him and touched his upper lip, regarded the dried blood on his fingertips with something approaching annoyance. “Damn, I must be a sight,” he muttered, half to himself, then saw Purdey’s worried look. “It’s worse than it looks,” he told her. “It was O’Hara—Tommy O’Hara. Thyme let him rough me up a bit—bruised and bloodied, that’s all.” He felt about in his mouth with his tongue. “No teeth missing, thankfully. Meant to soften me up for the next round, I suppose. Least they didn’t break me nose.”“Then they haven’t…?” Purdey left the other, more creative horrors unsaid.Gambit shook his head. “No, though I’m sure they have got further activities planned for when I wake up.” He eyed Purdey with interest. “You don’t seem surprised. About O’Hara, I mean.”“I’m not,” Purdey confirmed grimly. “Steed told me he’d escaped. We put the timing down to more than coincidence.”“Damn straight,” Gambit agreed with feeling. “He’s been here since he got out. I don’t think he liked the accommodation we gave him very much.”“I can imagine,” Purdey replied, starting to stand. Gambit reached out and grasped a handful of her dress. “I’m only going to get the pitcher,” she soothed, sensing his panic at being left alone. “You need cleaning up.”“Not to mention a drink,” Gambit added, licking his dry, split lips. “Half the Thames if you can manage it.”Purdey grinned, relieved to hear him joking, despite his ordeal. “I’ll see what I can do.” “I’m still sorry,” he told her back as she made her way to the table. “About your wrists. I don’t know what she pumped into me, but it was good enough to fool me for a minute before.” He managed a crooked grin that set one of his split lips bleeding again. “It doesn’t help that you’re the person I’m most likely to dream about, in a pinch or anywhere else.”“I see,” Purdey said with a slight smile, carrying the pitcher over and setting it next to him before kneeling at his side. “Wearing nothing more than a smile, I’ll bet.”Gambit grinned wickedly. “I don’t need to fantasize now that I’ve seen the real thing.”“That makes two of us,” Purdey replied pertly, eyes dancing in spite of herself. “Here, let me help you drink.”She tipped the pitcher just enough so that Gambit wouldn’t end up being drowned while he drank. Eventually he made a noise that told her he’d had enough, and she set about wetting her handkerchief so she could clean off the blood caked on his face. He winced visibly at her first touch, but after awhile she found the right amount of pressure that hurt him as little as possible while still doing the job.“Where’s Steed?” he asked from behind the cloth.“Waiting outside,” Purdey replied. “If I don’t get back soon, he’ll come after me, and Larry and his people will be here eventually.”“Should’ve waited for them,” Gambit objected. “I’d have been all right for a little while longer, and you would’ve had some back-up.”Purdey snorted. “I’m not sure I can trust the back-up,” she said sharply, then elaborated at Gambit’s alarmed expression. “Not Steed. Larry. He has the ridiculous idea that you’ve been conspiring with Thyme and O’Hara, running some sort of intelligence ring, and this is your way of getting out.”“Bloody painful way,” Gambit muttered. “If I was that brilliant, I’d have found a way that didn’t involve a heavy beating every few years.”“That’s what I told him,” Purdey informed in exasperation. “For all the good it did. I think he wants to believe you’ve gone over the other side. I’m sure he thinks I might redirect my affections in his direction if you’re out of the way.”“What is it with you and men named Larry?” Gambit grumbled, experimentally moving the muscles in his back and grunting when they protested. “Is there some curse in the family you haven’t told me about?”“Only that the women have to have unusual names,” Purdey revealed with a grin. “Although that’s more of a tradition.”“You’ve told me that before, I think,” Gambit murmured hazily, playing for time until he felt able to sit up without pitching forward. Purdey knew it and he knew she knew it, but she was too kind to mention it.Purdey raised a finger in triumph. “Ah, but I didn’t tell you that my aunt wanted to call me Charlotte—Charly for short. But my mother wouldn’t hear of it.” “Just as well—you don’t look like a Charlotte,” Gambit replied with a fond smile. “You could only be Purdey.”“I’m glad you approve.”Gambit frowned suddenly. “Do you think it’s really all down to jealousy? Larry? Could he be the one working for the other side?”Purdey thought about it. “It’s possible,” she allowed, “but I don’t think so. I think he wants you to be a traitor for his own ego, not because anyone’s paying him to make that argument. He’s biased, but I think he’s clean.”“Hmph,” was Gambit’s eloquent reply, as Purdey dabbed the last of the blood from his face. “Anything else I should know about, besides my own side turning on me? Like how you got here.”“Steed traced a number Thyme left at the club,” Purdey explained. “It led here.”“Speaking of being led. Vanessa, she sent…some heavy, to attack you. Did he…?”Purdey nodded. “I caught him tearing your flat apart. He tossed me over the couch. I was a bit bruised, but it wasn’t anything fatal.”He relaxed a little at that. “I thought as much. He came back looking a little worse for wear—I think you broke his nose.”Purdey smiled radiantly. “Did I?”“You did. Brought me great solace when I was sitting around tied to a chair. I’ve never loved you more.”“The feeling’s mutual.” She reached out to touch his battered face. “I’d kiss you if that lip wasn’t so bad,” she confided.Gambit’s eyes glittered from behind the bruises. “Do it anyway. Lets me know I’m alive.”Purdey shook her head a tiny bit. “Later, when they’ve given you something for the pain, or at least iced it. I don’t want to hurt you.”Gambit regarded her with a sincerity that made her heart ache. “Purdey, that’s the last thing you could do to me.”“Still, I’m not going to risk it. Are you really all right?”“I’m fine,” was the reply, but when he saw Purdey’s sceptical look, he added, “considering I’ve had the stuffing pounded out of me. I’m a bit dizzy, but lots of drugs pumped into your system will do that.” As if to illustrate his point, the room suddenly spun a little, and Gambit slumped forward into Purdey’s arms. “A ‘bit’ dizzy?” she repeated.“May have underestimated,” Gambit allowed with a sheepish smile. “Anyway, at least I was the one who got kidnapped instead of you. Makes a change.” “It’s not my fault the enemy is hopelessly behind in their thinking. ‘Kidnap the girl.’ It’s becoming awfully corny, not to mention unimaginative,” Purdey complained.“Not the word I’d use for it,” Gambit contradicted, sitting up on his own again, pulling back so he could look at her face. He brought a hand up to her cheek, and Purdey sank into his touch. “Now you know what it’s like, trying to find someone who’s been taken. Someone you care about.”“Not for much longer, I won’t. We’re leaving as soon as you’re strong enough.”Gambit looked mildly disappointed at that suggestion. “I was thinking of having a look around first. You wouldn’t happen to know whose house this is?”“It wasn’t my top priority,” Purdey pointed out wryly. “Anyway, Steed probably knows. He’s the one who had the address traced.”Gambit’s brow furrowed suddenly. “That’s odd…”Purdey blinked. “What?”“The drugs,” Gambit explained, thinking over the past day. “They knocked me out.”Purdey looked unimpressed. “I would have thought that you’d made the connection at this point in your career.”“No, what I mean is, why? Why just knock me out? I would’ve thought they’d want me awake to nurse my wounds, or at the very least give me a dose of truth serum to make me more cooperative. But knocking me out? I don’t see what that’s supposed to accomplish. I’ve already established I can’t get out without someone opening the door, so it can’t be to keep me from escaping.” Gambit worked his jaw. “It doesn’t make any sense.”“Maybe,” Purdey offered, “it has side-effects, and they haven’t set in. How do you feel?”“Hazy. Not much else,” Gambit answered truthfully. “You know, something’s wrong with this whole plot.”Purdey frowned, pulled back a little to search the blue-green eyes. “In what way?”Gambit shook his head. “Dunno. Little things that just don’t sit right. Like, if Vanessa wants me to tell her where the papers are, why is she holding off? O’Hara’s been quite happy to take out his frustrations on me while I’m tied up, but she’s called him off more often than she needs to, and she hasn’t been using him to her full advantage.”“How so?”“Not enough questions, for one. She asked me where they were first thing, then O’Hara started in. Then they left me for awhile, came back, asked again, then repeated the whole damn process. And then she drugged me and posed as you.”“It all sounds rather too much like what I expected them to do to you,” Purdey managed, wincing at Gambit’s description. “Yeah, but they never stepped it up,” Gambit protested. “She knows there are better ways than brute force to make me talk, but she’s not using them. Trying to trick me into thinking she was you was clever, I’ll give her that. But her performance was so bad I saw through it pretty fast. And even if her acting was bad, why didn’t she pair her performance with something that’d make me talkative to up her chances?”“Maybe they plan to,” Purdey suggested. “Eventually.”Gambit shook his head. “No, something’s wrong. This feels like the preliminaries. She’s waiting for something.“Like what?” Purdey wondered.“We’ll have to find out. I think I can stand now. If you’ll give me a hand…” He reached out, and Purdey set about trying to lift him. She let him lean on her as he climbed to his feet, and thought about the best way to get him out. One look at the wat Gambit was listing told her he wasn’t going to be able to crawl out the window and shimmy down a drainpipe the way she had on the way in. They were going to have to make their exit by more traditional means, but that meant fighting their way out by force, and she wasn’t certain Gambit was up to that anymore than the drainpipe. Gambit could see her casting around, regarded her quizzically. “What’s wrong?”“I’m trying to decide how to get out,” Purdey explained distractedly.“How did you get in?”“Through the window,” Purdey replied. “But you’re not limber enough to do that. Not half-drugged.”Gambit groaned in reluctant agreement. “So we might have to use the door.”“Yes, sadly. I know how much you love leaping through windows.”Gambit made another noise, this one of the ‘very funny’ variety. “Only when I’m motivated. Is the door an option?” “That depends.”“On what?”“On whether you can fight your way out.”Gambit sucked his teeth. “Do you have a gun?”“Of course I have a gun,” Purdey confirmed, sounding insulted. “But that’ll only get us so far against Thyme’s people. How many are there?”“Four that I’ve seen,” Gambit told her. “Plus Thyme and O’Hara.”“Six against two?” Purdey mused, tongue-in-cheek. “That’s almost a fair fight.”“Almost?’“They have a slight advantage,” Purdey conceded casually. “If you hadn’t been knocked about I’d feel sorry for them. But we ought to be able to handle that many. After all, it’s 3 to 1.” She grinned at him with a particularly Purdey brand of mad confidence.“Worse than 3 to 1, no matter what the math says,” Gambit corrected, finally in a position that could generously be described as ‘upright’. “O’Hara’s dangerous. Have to count him twice.”“Mmm,” Purdey hummed thoughtfully. “Still. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”“Divide and conquer?” Gambit, leaning against the wall for support to take some of the burden off her, grinned slightly. “Party trick number eight?”Purdey shook her head. “Not with the damage you’ve taken. How’s your back?”“It’s been better,” Gambit admitted, “but good enough.”“Enough for a party trick number seven?” Purdey wanted to know, eyes dancing.“With a twenty-one to finish it off?” Gambit put in, smile wide now. “Yes, I think I can manage that. If you give me the gun.”“If you wanted the gun, you only had to say,” Purdey chastised good-humoredly. “You don’t need to pretend to be injured.”Gambit laughed a little in spite of himself. “I wish it was just my ego at work. Come on, let’s go downstairs and get the lay of the land. If we’re lucky, one or two of them will be out on a smoke break, and I won’t have to waste a bullet.”Purdey’s grin was a little mad. “We’ll just have to make sure you don’t then, won’t we?” The pair made their way down the corridor as silently as possible, Gambit doing his best not to clump along loudly enough to be heard below, his usual stealthiness hampered by his injuries and the drugs still working their way through his system. Purdey led the way, and held up a hand as she reached the entrance to the foyer. She peered around the corner, taking stock of the contingent posted at the door. There were four men in all, huddled around a small table playing cards. Purdey recognized one as the man she’d discovered ransacking Gambit’s flat, more from the plaster on his nose than anything else. She allowed herself a small smile at the purple bruise peeking out from beneath the gauze. There was no sign of Vanessa or O’Hara. She ducked back and held a quick, almost wordless conference with Gambit.“You’re a load of cheaters,” one of the men announced, throwing his hand down in disgust and rising from the table.“You can win it back next hand,” came the jeering response from one of his compatriots, but the loser was undeterred, dismissing him with a gesture as he stalked toward the exit. His colleagues laughed at his retreat, then quickly returned their attention to the cards as they were reshuffled, not trusting one another as far as they could throw them. For this reason, none of them noticed the hand that shot out quickly and grabbed their sullen colleague by his shirt collar, yanking him unceremoniously into the corridor without a sound.Purdey swung the man around and pressed him flat against the wall, held him there so Gambit could get a good, one-handed grip on the man’s throat. The unfortunate struggled and clawed at his neck, but Gambit tapped into some heretofore unknown reserve of strength and concentrated on pressing down hard at a very specific point. In a matter of seconds, the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slid silently down the wall. “Just a little pressure, at the right point,” Gambit quoted, thumb and forefinger still held just so, as he exchanged a look with Purdey. “Time for your debut, I think.”Of the three men who remained, the one with his back to the front door was the only one to notice the flickering of the shadows in the foyer entrance. He put down his cards and rose slowly, nodding at his colleagues as his hand went to the gun in his waistband. He edged forward carefully as the others got to their feet and watched him go with trepidation. No sooner had the leader rounded the corner than he was met with Purdey, smiling beatifically, hands on hips, standing protectively in front of Gambit. The man almost ran into them, took Purdey’s beaming face in with an incredulous expression.“Hello,” Purdey greeted, right before Gambit looped his arms through hers and lifted her just off the ground. Both of Purdey’s legs came up at once and as one hit the unfortunate man full in the chest. He staggered back, winded. Before he could recover himself, Gambit swung Purdey sideways and released her, as though completing a particularly tricky maneuver on the dance floor, using the momentum to wind up his own fist for a wicked right hook. The man went down, dead to the world. Purdey shot Gambit a congratulatory look as he flexed the fingers on his somewhat bruised fist. Then, as one, they darted out into the foyer, just in time to intercept the last two goons, who were advancing cautiously following the sudden disappearance of two of their compatriots. Without hesitation, Purdey leaned back, looped her arms once more with Gambit’s, and shot out both legs, one connecting with each man’s chest. They stumbled back as Gambit set Purdey back down with the last of his strength. He drew the gun as Purdey darted forward, twisting to the side to slam a shin into the abdomen of one man, whom Gambit recognised as Vanessa’s assistant Mark, swinging an elbow around to catch the chin of the other. It was then that their first attacker recovered enough to take a run at Gambit. Purdey swung around in pursuit, but Gambit squeezed the trigger of his gun, just once, and the shot shattered the relative silence of the evening. The man went down clutching the bullet wound in his shoulder. Purdey was so relieved that Gambit was all right that she let her guard down, and it was only Gambit’s widened eyes and cry of alarm that made her to duck just in time to avoid a nasty blow to the head. She dodged sideways, circling around and feinting once or twice to keep her opponent on his toes, belatedly realizing it was the man whose nose she had bruised in their last encounter. He was fixing her with an ugly scowl, clearly keen to even the score. Purdey smiled back fiercely, priming herself for a rematch that she intended to win.Gambit, strength now totally sapped, silently cursed his condition for relegating him to the sidelines, forcing him to stand by and watch Purdey fight. He knew she could handle herself, but it was always hard to watch a colleague take on an enemy without being able to help.It was while he was watching Purdey that the fist came from nowhere, knocking him flat on his back. Gambit slammed to the floor, head spinning. Through the fog of his addled brain, he could just make out the angry visage of O’Hara looming over himGambit raised the gun to fire at one of the three O’Haras dancing across his vision, but the real one kicked the gun from his grasp with no small amount of satisfaction.“Gambit!” Purdey cried in alarm, lunging forward to defend him, but abruptly coming up short as her opponent took her distraction as an opportunity to wrap an arm around her throat from behind. As Purdey reached up automatically to grip the choking forearm, she watched as O’Hara dragged Gambit bodily to his feet by his throat, and slammed him against the wall. Gambit’s hands scrabbled at O’Hara’s grip, but with his own strength sapped by the drugs, beatings, and the little fighting he’d already engaged in, he was completely incapable of defending himself to his full ability. Purdey watched in horror as O’Hara, grinning madly, began to squeeze the life out of Gambit.“Oh no you don’t,” Purdey growled, slamming an elbow back into her opponent’s stomach. She felt the arm loosen and spun in her opponent’s grasp, driving a knee up into the solar plexus. The arm fell free, and Purdey delivered the coup de grace in the form of a slicing karate chop to the neck. Her man went down like a sack of potatoes, but Purdey had already whirled around and started sprinting toward Gambit and O’Hara before he hit the ground. Still a few feet away, Purdey threw herself bodily at O’Hara, grabbing his other arm and trying to wrench him away from Gambit, but the angle made it impossible for her to attack him properly. O’Hara, endowed with super-strength born of rage, lashed out violently, sending Purdey flying backward. She hit the floor hard, felt the breath leave her body as she slid backwards across the slick surface. She rolled over with great effort, squinted through the blackening edges of her vision at the scene before her, desperately trying to coax oxygen back into her burning lungs. Even so, she could see Gambit’s face turn an alarming shade of purple as O’Hara, seemingly unconcerned about killing the proverbial golden goose, attempted to throttle the life out of him. Purdey tried desperately to pick herself up, but her limbs felt slow and clumsy. She felt her alarm rise as she realised she wasn’t going to be able to recover in time to save Gambit. O’Hara was going to crush his windpipe if someone didn’t stop him soon.There was a sudden, low-pitched, ‘bong’, that echoed throughout the foyer. Purdey froze. O’Hara froze. Even Gambit, who had been struggling futilely against being strangled to death, went stock still. Without warning, O’Hara’s grip loosened and the big man toppled backward onto the floor with little grace. Gambit, finally free, gasped a ragged breath and fell bodily against the wall. Purdey, finally recovering her own composure, stared at the scene in confusion. It was then that she noticed a grey bowler hovering in the air near Gambit’s head, held by a very familiar hand.“I know I’m a tad early,” Steed acknowledged, stepping out of the shadows. “But I heard the shot and thought I might look in, just in case.”Purdey’s laugh was half-sob as she picked herself up. “It’s always better to be early than late.”Steed turned serious. “Indubitably. It wouldn’t do for a gentleman to keep a lady waiting. Whoops!” The latter was said in response to Gambit keeling forward, causing the older man to reach out and half-catch his partner before he hit the ground. “I rather think it wouldn’t have done to keep you waiting, either, Gambit.”Gambit looked at Steed through eyes that clearly weren’t focussing very well. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Steed,” he rasped.“Typical,” Purdey pronounced, hurrying to join them. She slid an arm around Gambit’s other shoulder, sharing the burden with Steed. “I do all the work, and someone else comes in and steals all the glory.”“I’ll get you a plaque,” Gambit managed. “I won’t accept anything less than a trophy,” Purdey declared. “And a victory dinner.” The banter drew her attention away from the angry red marks around Gambit’s throat. She knew from experience that they’d bruise up nicely before the evening was out. She could see Steed looking at them, too, with more than a modicum of worry.“We can have an entire trophy case put together,” Steed suggested, “but let’s start by finding somewhere for Gambit to sit down.”The pair of them managed to half-walk, half-carry Gambit to a small couch near the door. He settled down heavily onto it, head falling back onto the furniture and lolling dazedly. Purdey settled down beside him, undid the top button of his shirt to better assess the damage, while Steed moved to examine their handiwork. “Is Miss Thyme about?” he inquired, prodding at Mark’s prone form.“She was,” Gambit croaked, as Purdey pulled the two halves of his shirt apart to reveal the already-darkening skin. He slid his eyes her way, tried his best to smile at her despite the damage. “I’m all right.” Purdey snorted. “No, you’re not.”Gambit’s laugh came out as a wheeze. “Okay. Let me put it another way. I’ll be all right.”“You’re both right,” Steed chimed in, moving across the foyer and beginning to unknot the ties holding back to the curtains. Purdey and Gambit each regarded him with almost-identical quizzical expressions, and Steed had to fight the urge to smile at the unconscious synchronicity that they had developed not long after they started working together, and still seemed to be blissfully ignorant about. “Gambit’s not all right, but he will be, and he’s in good enough condition that I believe you can safely leave him unattended, Purdey, and help me restrain our friends before they wake up and decide to cause more trouble.”Purdey pursed her lips and looked to Gambit, who nodded ever-so-slightly, with great care. “Well, all right,” she grumbled, standing and moving to the other curtain. “But I’m not leaving him alone. Now with Thyme on the loose.”“We won’t venture beyond this room,” Steed vowed, as both he and Purdey set about restraining the unfortunate henchman. “And you may like to know that I took the precaution of radioing Kendrick to come along before I came here. He’ll have a look at Gambit when he arrives.”Gambit made a displeased noise from the couch. “I only had my last medical a few weeks ago.”“A perfect time to renew your acquaintance,” Steed said cheerfully.It was at that moment that the front door opened, and Larry arrived with the cavalry in tow, guns at ready.Gambit groaned. “As if things couldn’t get any worse.”Larry surveyed the situation, then motioned for his men to spread out. He moved to join Purdey and Steed, who were putting the finishing touches on binding their last man. “What did you think you were doing?” he said to Purdey, unwilling to try his tone on Steed. “You should have called us immediately, not gone in on your own.”“We didn’t want to trouble you with a lead that might amount to nothing,” Purdey replied sweetly. “By the time we knew it was something worth pursuing, it was all over. But we got you a present to make up for it.” She prodded one of the unconscious men at her feet. “We’ve even gift-wrapped them for you.”Larry regarded the scene sourly. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Miss Thyme’s trussed up somewhere like a turkey?”“We don’t know where she is,” Purdey said truthfully. “But she was here. Gambit was interrogated by her.”Larry turned to regard Gambit, slumped lopsidedly on the couch. Despite his condition, Gambit managed a cocky salute. “Just like old times, eh?” Larry muttered through clenched teeth.“Oh, come on, Larry,” Purdey protested. “All you have to do is look at him to know he’s telling the truth. Anyway, we got O’Hara.” She pointed her chin at the unconscious Irishman. “He nearly throttled Gambit to death. I saw it with my own eyes.”Larry looked unconvinced. “What you think you saw, and what you actually saw, can be two very different things. You were the one who reported Gambit dead when he wasn’t, remember? Not the most reliable witness.”Purdey opened her mouth to reply, but there was suddenly a new player on the scene in the form of Dr. James Kendrick, striding purposefully through the chaos straight toward Gambit. Larry moved to intercept him, but the good doctor shot him a dangerous look. “This is my clean-up,” Larry protested indignantly.“He’s not under your jurisdiction until he’s no longer my patient,” Kendrick snapped back, with an expression that brooked no argument. Purdey resisted the urge to smile, and failed. “When I’m satisfied that he’s physically sound, your lot can start asking your questions.”Larry’s mouth was still moving, but there was no sound coming out. Kendrick was already making a beeline for Gambit, bag swinging efficiently. He crouched in front of Gambit, and set the satchel on the floor beside him. Gambit grinned at the physician. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see you,” he admitted.“I hope you remember that when it’s time for your next medical,” Kendrick said gruffly, pulling a small penlight from his bag. “I’m getting too old to be chasing your lot down the corridors.” He shone the light into Gambit’s eyes as Purdey came to crouch beside him. “Anything I should be looking out for, aside from the obvious signs of a beating?” He split the question between Purdey and Gambit, knowing that the man himself might not be fully aware of his injuries.“He’s been drugged,” Purdey supplied. “Sedatives and some sort of hallucinogenic.” She remembered the ache in her wrists where Gambit had grabbed her. “He didn’t recognize me at first.”Kendrick nodded once, curtly. “Pupils aren’t blown. No sign of a concussion.” He began exploring, carefully, for broken ribs. “You’ll have to stay overnight for observation,” he pronounced, ignoring Gambit’s groan in protest. “I know you’d rather lie somewhere on your own in agony for some ridiculous reason, but I’d rather not take any chances, especially where drugs are concerned. I want to find out what they filled you with, and whether we ought to be concerned about side-effects.” He turned to Purdey. “And yes, that does mean he’ll be out of Larry’s reach until I’m satisfied there’s nothing medically wrong with him.”Purdey didn’t bother to hide her elation. “Thank you, doctor,” she praised, giving him a quick peck on the cheek in gratitude. Kendrick’s bushy eyebrows climbed upwards, but Purdey had to admire his ability to resist the urge to smile. “Can I ride with you back to the medical wing?”“If you can keep him in line, be my guest,” Kendrick said wryly, eyeing Gambit up with a hint of a smile. “I think you may be outnumbered this time, Gambit.”Gambit sighed and started to struggle to his feet. “Never mind. I’ll come quietly. I know when I’m beaten.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What’s the verdict?” Purdey inquired brightly as she entered the Ministry’s infirmary later that evening, book tucked under her arm.Gambit looked up from trying to untangle his arm from the tube of the IV drip. His face had been a mask of disgruntlement, but the moment he saw Purdey he cheered up noticeably. Purdey thought his colour was a little better, too, the wan paleness that she’d seen in the cell no longer throwing the bruises on his face into such sharp relief. “Kendrick seems to think I’ll live,” he told her, as Purdey settled into the chair beside his bed. “Try not to be too disappointed.”It was too soon for joking, and he knew it the second Purdey’s face fell. She recovered quickly, but he knew he hadn’t imagined the anxious expression that had flashed across her features for a fraction of a second. She really had been worried about whether he was alive or not while he was missing. “No permanent damage, then?” she tried, as soon as she could force a smile again.“Cuts and bruises. No concussion.” He shrugged as though this was an everyday occurrence, which, for him, it was. “Nothing I haven’t had before.”“And the drugs?” Purdey wanted to know.Gambit laid back on his pillow with a sigh. “They’re running tests, but Kendrick’s guess is that they’re your standard kit for interrogation. Sedatives, hallucinogenics, that kind of thing. They’re going to analyze them just to be sure, and they’re keeping me under observation tonight. But if Kendrick was really worried, he’d probably have me in a secure ward to keep me from popping off half the department in a brainwashed stupor.”“Who’d be able to tell the difference?” Purdey quipped, apparently having decided that it was all right for her to joke at his expense. “We’d better get comfortable, then.”“We? Last time I checked, only one of us was in a hospital bed,” Gambit pointed out, as Purdey settled back in her chair and opened the book she’d carried in. “You don’t have to stay here all night. Go home and sleep in a proper bed.”Purdey shook her head. “I only just found you again, Mike Gambit. I’m not about to let you out of my sight now. Besides—“ She brandished the book. “I have some reading to catch up on.”Gambit canted his head to one side, read the title. “‘Standard Rules and Procedures.’ That’s the Ministry’s code of conduct. You’ve read that.”“Ah, but this is the updated edition,” Purdey differentiated, winning smile in place. “Every agent worth his—or her--salt ought to know it backwards and forwards. You can’t be the only one who quotes the rules from memory. I mean to give you a little competition.”“You can try,” Gambit challenged, and Purdey’s eyes lit up with purpose. Gambit watched her tear through the book voraciously until his eyes got too heavy and he gave in to sleep with an enormous sense of well-being.vvv“What happened after you’d woken up?” Larry demanded, looming menacingly over Gambit.“Really, Larry, he just told you!” Purdey exclaimed, outraged, from her station across the table in the conference room. It was the next morning, and no sooner had Kendrick conceded that Gambit was up for questioning than Larry practically manhandled the injured man off the examination table and down the hall, with Purdey and Steed in tow. That was why Gambit was now sitting, rather lopsidedly, in one of the leather chairs around the table that was usually used to discuss ongoing assignments, as opposed to its current repurposing as a better-appointed interrogation room. Purdey could tell from Gambit’s posture that the man was still struggling with the after-effects of being drugged, beaten, interrogated and sleep-deprived, not to mention kidnapped, which meant he was vulnerable, especially when dealing with an unfriendly like Larry. It made Purdey’s blood boil at the sheer unfairness and inhumanity of it.“Which time?” Gambit wanted to know, absently cradling a bruised rib on his lefthand side, then turning his weary head up to flash Larry a quick, humourless smile. “I passed out—or was made to pass out—a few times. You’ll have to be more specific.”The response reminded Purdey that Gambit was a professional; that he, like her, had been trained to withstand interrogation of all kinds; that, unlike her, at one time, he’d put theory into practice for three months straight. Larry was an amateur in comparison. Gambit could take him, as unpalatable as the idea of being questioned by their own people was. But it didn’t make Purdey any less angry on his behalf, and it didn’t prevent the pang in her heart whenever she laid eyes on his bruised and battered profile.“Don’t try to be smart,” Larry snapped, earning a snort of derision from Gambit.“You’re the one who needs to be smart,” Gambit asserted, shifting in his chair with a grunt. “You need to keep your timelines straight and your questions specific if you’re going to get anywhere. And anyway, shouldn’t you be questioning the men who grabbed me? You do know that they’re the enemy?”“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be talking to your friends soon enough,” Larry sneered. “Just as soon as I’ve finished with you.”“Larry,” Steed cut in, in that level way that meant he was cross without actually saying as much. “We’ve been over it several times, and I’m sure Gambit will be happy to write up a report as soon as he’s been allowed to have a decent night’s sleep.”“After he’s had a chance to get his story straight, you mean,” Larry shot back.“Oh, really, this is ridiculous!” Purdey exclaimed. “You’re going after him when you should be going after Thyme.”“I am, but it’s getting more and more difficult to work out where one ends and the other begins,” Larry said darkly. “And I’m determined to work out exactly where that is.”“She kidnapped me. She wants the papers. Purdey and Steed found me,” Gambit recited tiredly. “There’s not much more to tell.”“Yes, but the question is, do you have the papers?” Larry asked, with exaggerated precision. “And how was it that Purdey and Steed were able to find you so easily?”“No, I don’t have the papers,” Gambit said flatly, voice a montone. “And as for your second question, you’d have to ask them that. I was the one being rescued, remember? It’s hard to be in on your own escape plan.”“We’ll see,” Larry temporised, straightening up from leaning over the table menacingly. “But there has been one good thing that’s come out of all this. And that is that I have Gambit’s friends, including Mr. O’Hara, in custody. And they’ve been stewing long enough.” He stepped away from Gambit. “That’s all. For now.”“Oh, good. I wouldn’t want to be deprived of your sparkling personality for any longer than necessary,” Gambit muttered, rising to his feet with a grunt. He regarded Purdey and Steed with jaded eyes. “I’m shattered. Who wants to drive me home?”vvvGambit sat in the passenger seat of the XJS slumped to one side, although, mercifully, his posture conveyed fatigue rather than drugged half-consciousness. Purdey had caught the slight tightening of his jaw in annoyance when she guided him over to the car. The Jag was very much his baby, the first real splurge he’d made with his Ministry pay, and Gambit didn’t let anyone else drive it without a fight, not even her. Purdey could have easily taken his Range Rover to the Ministry to collect him instead, but her impish desire to get a rise out of Gambit had gotten the better of her. It did her good to give Gambit the side-eye and watch him sulk a little, rather than worry after his physical and mental integrity, and she knew it would do him good to think on something other than being kidnapped and interrogated and accused of being a traitor. She was prodding him in fun and he knew it, and she knew he knew it, and their relationship was such that he appreciated the joke, even if it was at his own expense. By the time they were halfway home, his mouth was tugging up at the sides in a way that told her he was amused by the fact that she’d successfully gotten a rise out of him.They pulled into the XJS’ customary spot in front of his block of flats. Gambit was untangling himself from the safety belt when Purdey handed over a cream flat cap she’d found in his closet that typically only saw use when they were playing cricket at Steed’s. Gambit regarded it with mild bemusement, as though trying to work out if he was still suffering side-effects from the drugs and wasn’t seeing things quite straight. Purdey noticed his confusion and had mercy on him, despite the temptation to have a little more fun. “I thought you might want to pull it down over your eyes,” she told him. “Just until we get inside. No one at the Ministry looks twice at facial bruising, but the people in your building might. It’s too serious to be from a pub brawl.”Gambit flipped down the sunvisor and winced as his own visage was reflected back at him in the small mirror. “I’m not going to win any beauty contests, am I?”Purdey smirked at the mental image of Gambit clad in a tiara and strapless gown. “Your bone structure might carry you through. I could cover the worst of it over with concealer, if you’d prefer.”Gambit snorted derisively. “I’d better have the hat, then. We don’t have the time for you to give me a full glam rock makeover.” He gave her a pointed look. “Unlike last time.” And Purdey had a brief flash of memory of Gambit with face paint and frilly shirt, being chased down by her and a horde of other women in miniskirts and t-shirts with ‘Mike’ printed across the front, all to whisk Professor Vasil out from under the nose of top agent Perov. It had been a bright, sunny day, fun in spite of the peril. She’d had the pleasure of doing Gambit up herself, and choosing his ensemble. She’d gotten a few pictures of him in full get-up, too, before he managed to cover up the camera lens with his palm. They’d proven to be excellent for bribery for weeks afterwards—she’d wheedled half a dozen particularly expensive dinner dates out of him using the threat of ‘accidentally’ posting them on the Ministry’s public notice board. That was back in the days when she felt like she had to come up with reasons to go out with Gambit. She’d dropped the pretence as their friendship deepened, their desire to be in one another’s company overcoming any awkwardness that might have arisen in suggesting a dinner date. And Gambit was always so eager to spend an evening with her that she hardly needed to give him a reason, or even much encouragement, to receive an offer. She still had the photos, though. Somewhere. She made a note to dig them out when life was rather less fraught. Gambit would probably enjoy having a laugh about them after everything that had gone on, at least until she tried to use them as leverage again. Her mind fizzled pleasantly as she considered what she could make him do this time around.In the end, Gambit pulled the hat so far down his face that Purdey almost had to guide him by the hand to keep him from running into the walls. She didn’t mind—there was something reassuring about having Gambit’s hand in hers. As long as it was there, that meant he was there, not in a cell somewhere. Even though he’d been free for over twelve hours, she still caught herself checking that he wasn’t a figment of her imagination.Thankfully, there was no one in the lift or the corridors to stare at Gambit, hat or no. All the same, Purdey let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding once they were inside. She immediately crossed the flat to the couch and retracted the automated bed. Gambit watched the mechanism slide out as he removed the hat and tossed it on a nearby chair. “Don’t make me lie down again. I feel like I’ve been horizontal for a decade.”Purdey marched over and took him by the shoulders, steered him straight for the bed. “For someone so keen on standing up, you’ve been awfully lopsided. If you wind up facedown on the floor, I’m not going to pick you up again.”“I’m just a little tired,” Gambit protested as Purdey pushed him bodily down onto the surface. “And thirsty.”“I’ll get you some water.” Purdey left him with heavy-lidded, half-closed eyes, hurried over to the cupboard and retrieved a glass, before filling it from the tap with blessedly cool water. She brought it back to him, then helped him sit up a little so he could drink it. “Thanks,” he murmured hoarsely, wiping a few drops away with the back of his hand.“I’m surprised you didn’t ask me to replace it with scotch,” Purdey teased, earning a rueful, albeit weary, grin in response. It made her heart swell immeasurably. Gambit’s grin, even a tired one, was something she hadn’t seen in what felt like too long, and she wasn’t about to start taking it for granted. “Are you hungry? I’ll see what we have.” She turned to bustle back to the kitchen, but he caught her arm before she could move out of reach.“Could you stay with me instead? Please?” His grin turned crooked. “I’d rather have you than food, although I know that might be a hard concept for you to wrap your head around.”“It might surprise you to learn, Mike Gambit, that I value you more than a packet of marshmallows,” Purdey confided, setting the water glass on the side table and settling onto the edge of the bed.“High praise,” Gambit rasped dryly, but the fond smile curling his lips told her he understood the depths of the roundabout compliment. He patted the mattress beside him. “Come have a lie-down. You must be exhausted from sitting up all night.”Purdey shook her head a little. “I wouldn’t want to disturb you if you fall asleep.”Gambit shook his head slightly. “Last thing you could do is disturb me, love. If anything, I’ll sleep better if I have you beside me. Not to mention it’ll feel less like I’m an invalid and you’re tending my bedside.”Purdey canted an eyebrow. “But I am tending your bedside,” she reminded, brushing a curl back from his bruise-mottled forehead. “And you do need looking after. Kendrick was in two minds about letting you leave, remember.”“Kendrick’s always in two minds when it comes to me,” Gambit quipped, clutching Purdey’s hand and wincing slightly as the movement rippled up his battered body and every injury protested in turn. “One says he has a duty to keep me in good health.”Purdey tilted her head expectantly, sensing the set-up for the punchline. “And the other?”“Wants to kill me,” Gambit said good-humouredly.Purdey snickered a little in spite of herself. “Well, I’m not Kendrick.”“Thankfully. He hasn’t got your legs.”“But I share his concern for your well-being,” Purdey finished, shaking her head in mild exasperation. “And his occasional desire to throttle you.”“You’re starting to sound more like him all the time. No wonder you get on better with him than I do.”“He’s a very wise man,” Purdey pronounced. “And he knows you need looking after. So I intend to do just that.”“Yeah, but there are things you can do that Kendrick can’t,” Gambit observed, voice dropping an octave, turning rich with meaning.Purdey’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Mike Gambit, are you trying to get me to climb into bed with you?”“Maybe.”“You could have just come right out and asked,” Purdey observed, rising and walking around to the other side of the mattress before crawling onto the surface and settling down next to him. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have slung a leg over his form and settled down onto him instead, let events unfold from there. But she was extremely conscious of Gambit’s poor bruised and battered body, and somehow thought that the weight of even her slim frame wouldn’t be welcome on sore muscles and injured flesh. “Rather than dance around the issue.”“That doesn’t sound like us,” Gambit said wryly, as Purdey curled up next to him like a particularly graceful cat. “And it sounded less pathetic than me begging.”“Asking for what you need isn’t begging,” Purdey corrected, resting a tentative hand against his chest. “Or at least, I don’t think it is.”Gambit worked his jaw a little, as though debating what to say next. “In that case,” he said carefully. “Would you…would you let me hold you?”Purdey bit her lip and regarded him with trepidation. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she confessed, suddenly understanding why Gambit had been so reticent to make the request in the first place. “I saw all those bruises, Mike,” she said softly. “I know you’ve been hurt, and I know you must be hurting now. I don’t want to add to it.”Gambit swallowed hard. “It hurts more to not be touched by you,” he said hoarsely. “I can take everything else. I’m used to it. But when they were working on me, all that kept me going was thinking about you.” Purdey’s eyes began to well up. “Oh, Mike,” she managed, swallowing the sob she refused to give throat to, but they both knew her reserve was well and truly broken. Gambit opened his arms, and she dove into them with a cry of relief, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of looking out for Gambit’s well-being for the moment. He was inviting her to rest her head on his chest, to tuck her body close to his, so however much he might hurt, he clearly thought he could handle it. As his arms curled around her, she suddenly realized that she needed to be held as much as he needed to hold her, a desire she’d tamped down in her determination to make sure he was all right. In all the flurry, all the worry, all the horrors that had flashed through her mind about Gambit and his fate, she hadn’t paid attention to how she was feeling, and, in the aftermath, hadn’t bothered to work out whether she was all right. Now, as she relaxed into Gambit and bed alike, she felt herself almost…deflate, go limp, the wires of tension pulled taut within her limbs suddenly going completely, blessedly slack. She exhaled, long and slow, felt her lungs empty as though she’d been holding her breath for days. Which, in a way, she had.“That’s better,” Gambit soothed, gently stroking her hair.Purdey managed a chuckle with what little breath she had to spare. “For me or for you?”“I know better than to speak for you, Purdey-girl,” Gambit breathed, bruised lips pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “But having you in my arms makes me think I can do just about anything.”“Even beat Vanessa Thyme?” Purdey wondered, lips scraping against the fabric of his shirt as she spoke. She could track the soothing rhythm of his breathing, hear his heart beat in his chest, smell the scent of his skin even through the cloying stench of disinfectant that clung to his clothes, and feel the warmth of his skin seeping into hers. She was surrounded by Gambit, subsumed by him, senses drowning in the sheer comforting, quiet, tender strength of him, his own particular brand of powerfully masculine gentleness. It would have seemed like a contradiction in terms, but in Gambit those ostensibly polar opposites married together perfectly, seamlessly, naturally, all wrapped up in an aura of respect and mutual regard for her, with a side of lively humour and intelligence. Married…The less-enlightened members of society would have their own ideas about what would constitute her perfect match, but Purdey didn’t give a fig about what society and anyone in it thought. There was not a doubt in her mind that Mike Gambit was tailormade for her in every way, shape, and form.“I love you.” The words slipped out on a relaxed, gentle exhale, and Purdey realized she was half-asleep, ready to slip away into dreamland in Gambit’s embrace, the toll of what had happened catching up with her. She only realized she’d said them when Gambit pulled her a little closer.“I love you, too,” he whispered into her hair, breathing deeply of the golden strands. “And missed you. Missed this.”“Not more than I’ve missed you,” Purdey asserted, with remarkable confidence for someone who was half-asleep. “It’s simply not possible.” “Don’t worry. It’d take more than a little interrogation to make me forget that it’s pointless to contradict you,” Gambit teased gently, nuzzling her hair with his nose.Purdey woke up a little and arched an eyebrow at him from her position on his chest. “A little interrogation? Gambit, you were drugged and beaten black and blue.” “Nothing I can’t handle,” Gambit declared confidently, but Purdey noted the way he winced when he shifted on the bed and felt her eyebrow climb higher.“I suppose I should take it as a good sign. If your ego is returning to full strength, you must be feeling better.”“And if you’re willing to come right out and tell me you love me, you must be more worn down than you’re letting on,” Gambit countered knowingly.Purdey pursed her lips. “You said it, too,” she almost accused, but Gambit couldn’t help but notice she didn’t deny what he’d said.“Yeah, but I’m the hopeless romantic in this relationship,” Gambit admitted cheerfully, with the sort of incisive candidness that had always been able to cut through her defences and directly touch her heart and soul. “I’m supposed to go around with my heart on my sleeve and offer it up to you at every opportunity.”“Even non-romantics are allowed to have their openly romantic moments once in awhile,” Purdey defended, lifting her head slightly so she could look him in the eye. “Especially when the people they love have gone through terrible things.” She tenderly traced the shape of one of his eyebrows, searching his face for signs of the ghosts lingering behind his eyes. “I haven’t asked you how you’re coping with having been interrogated by Vanessa Thyme again. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been to find yourself back at her mercy, even for a little while. How are you holding up?”“Better than I thought I would,” Gambit asserted, although Purdey noted he hadn’t said he was fine. “I’m not saying I enjoyed it, or that I didn’t have some moments where I felt like I was being pulled back into old nightmares. But on the whole, I found myself thinking more about the future than the past.” His eyes shone brilliantly at her, with all the love that Purdey could ever want, had ever known could exist, and she felt her heart swell beyond the already-impossible limits she’d previously known. “Thinking about you, being back with you. Whenever I needed to go outside of myself, when the pain got too much, I thought about you. Wondered what you were doing.”“You needn’t have wondered long,” Purdey said softly, reaching up to caress his bruised cheek. “I was looking for you. You must have known that.”“Yeah,” Gambit agreed, with a blissful sigh, eyes fluttering closed. “But just imagining you being out there, living your life, being, well, Purdey made everything feel so much…better.”Purdey shook her head in mild disbelief. “You really are the romantic,” she marveled. “Coming up with things like that.”Gambit opened one eye to regard her. “You have your moments,” he replied. “Especially right now. Not that I’m complaining.” “Somehow I’m not surprised,” Purdey said wryly. “But as I’m having rather a run of romantic moments, I may as well add to the collection.” She sat up and carefully leaned over his battered body, conscious that putting too much weight on him would hurt him, until she reached his mouth with hers. Gambit looked up at her in mild surprise.“I thought you were afraid of hurting me?”“You’ve reminded me that you’re tougher than even I give you credit for,” Purdey said simply, lowering her mouth to his. “So unless I’m wrong…”Gambit instantly proved she wasn’t, head moving up the fraction of an inch to close the gap between them, capturing his mouth with hers. Purdey kissed him, hard and long, opening her mouth to deepen it, savouring the softness of Gambit’s bruised lips, noting, approvingly, that his ordeal had done nothing to hinder his technique, or his passion. His hand was curled into the hair at the back of her neck, massaging and soothing, as she sank into the complete and utter bliss of his touch and his taste. By the time she broke away to come up for air, she was gasping like she’d been in a race and her heart was fluttering deliriously. Even better, Gambit had a glint in his eye that told her he was taking masculine satisfaction from the reaction he’d elicited. For once, she didn’t bother to chastise him for egotism. It was good to see him bolstered up a little after everything he’d gone through. And anyway, the reactions he had awakened in her body told her, in no uncertain terms, that he had every right to feel proud of how he’d made her feel.Gambit’s self-satisfied grin could have been seen from space. “That was definitely the right thing to do,” he pronounced, as Purdey grinned happily down at him. “Just what the doctor ordered. I feel better already.”Purdey shook her head in mild disbelief at his unvarnished joy and pride. “Well, you may not be fully recovered, but you’re definitely on your way into orbit. Which means you really are feeling better.” She sat up and rolled away from him so she could stretch out beside him on the mattress. “Which means that you shouldn’t do anything to jeopardise your recovery. And that means that you should rest now, before you get too excited and overexert yourself.”“What makes you think I’m getting overexcited?” Gambit teased, and Purdey couldn’t help but laugh at his boyishly mischievous expression.“I have a lot of experience in the ways of Mike Gambit,” she said pertly. “And you are not going to get any more free passes now that I know you’re not as physically or mentally damaged as I thought.”“I knew it was too good to last,” Gambit said almost wistfully, then elaborated at Purdey’s puzzled expression. “You, being so emotionally unfettered. Couldn’t last forever.”“You only get the perks when you need them, Mike Gambit,” Purdey declared. “Otherwise your ego is quite capable of bolstering you up, and I’m not about to inflate it artificially.”Gambit gifted her a crooked smile. “Just as well,” he said fondly. “I’d hate it if you went soft on me. Wouldn’t be half as much fun.”“I’m glad you see it that way,” Purdey said wryly, pushing him down as he tried to sit up. “Now lie down and rest, and let me look after things. And look out for Vanessa.” Gambit’s face clouded over at the mention of the woman’s name. “If that’s all you’re going to do, you don’t have to stay on,” he protested. “Watching me sleep isn’t going to be very interesting. I’ll be all right.”“I thought you said you were worried about us being on our own? In case Thyme came for us?” Purdey pointed out. “You really must get your story straight, Mike Gambit. You don’t have the wherewithal at the moment to juggle too many contradictory perspectives.”Gambit looked down disconsolately. “I don’t want you to wind up in the line of fire if this all goes south, that’s all. But telling you that isn’t going to make you more inclined to go away, is it?”“Amazingly, you’re making some sense,” Purdey declared.“The next bit’s going to make sense, too, but you’re not going to like it,” Gambit cautioned.Purdey regarded him incredulously. “Oh?”“As much as I’d like to spend all day in bed with you—“ Purdey snorted derisively. “As though you’re in the condition to enjoy it.”“Like I was saying,” Gambit cut back in. “As much as I’d like you to stay here with me, it’s going to throw a spanner in our plan to keep what we’re up to under wraps.”Purdey looked decidedly unimpressed. “At this point, I’m losing the will to care who finds out what.”“You were the one who was worried about how it would look and whether it’d put our jobs at risk,” Gambit pointed out.“A girl can change her mind,” Purdey defended.“I know. Especially if that girl is you.” Gambit sat up and continued before Purdey could open her mouth to protest. “Come on, Purdey-girl. Even if you’re not worried about your reputation, you have to admit it’s not going to help my cause if they think I’ve seduced you into becoming part of my so-called plan. And Larry’s only going to see it as another reason to try to get rid of me.”“And if it protects me in the process, you’re not exactly going to complain, are you?” Purdey said tartly.Gambit feigned innocence. “Well….”Purdey sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know what they gave you, Mike Gambit, but it’s made you entirely more logical than I’d like. You making sense twice in short succession is practically unheard of.”Gambit pursed his lips. “Very funny.”“Really? It wasn’t meant to be.” Purdey flashed him a smile. “But I take your point. I can’t hang about for days on end without attracting suspicion.” She looked at Gambit sprawled out on the bed, bruises still livid on his face, and felt herself soften. “But I think I can justify one night, in the spare room, to make sure you’re all right. A friend would do that, don’t you think?”Gambit smiled a little crookedly. “A good friend would. And you’re the best friend I could ever want, Purdey-girl.”“Good. Then that’s settled.” Purdey lay back down beside him, took his hand and kissed the back of it. “Now rest, before I have to be an even better friend and make you.”Gambit grinned contentedly, and obeyed.vvvGambit awoke the next morning to find Purdey curled up next to him with her jacket draped over her as a makeshift blanket. Gambit smiled fondly at her serene sleeping features, but couldn’t help but feel a niggling sense of guilt at the dark smudges just visible under her eyes. All told, he hadn’t been missing for that long, but he doubted Purdey had slept much in that period, or indeed the previous night. Even after he’d started to drift off, she’d insisted on keeping an eye on him, just in case he suffered any further unexpected ill-effects from his ordeal. Every time he’d woken during the night, Purdey had been awake, watching him carefully from her side of the bed, as though he was a hare that might startle away at the first hint of movement. He realized she was worried he’d disappear on her again, or she’d wake to find he was never there to begin with. To make matters worse, Gambit had the sickening sense that he really might wind up disappearing again before the whole mess was over with. And he wasn’t entirely certain he’d be able to find his way back again.“Good morning, Gambit.” The sotto voce greeting came from his doorway, where Steed was standing with several small packages tucked under his arm, spare key dangling from his fingers. Gambit beckoned to him to come in, and Steed moved silently in deference to the sleeping Purdey to set the packages on his bed. “I thought you might want some breakfast, since I suspect neither of you are up to making any yourself.”“I don’t know about Purdey, but I haven’t had anything since before I was taken,” Gambit told him in a whisper. “Not much appetite. But Purdey’s always up for breakfast.”“Breakfast?” Purdey was suddenly awake beside him, blinking and stretching, remarkably unconcerned about the senior agent finding her stretched out on the bed beside Gambit. They were both still in their clothes, of course, so there was hardly anything scandalous to be seen, but given her reticence about telling Steed about their relationship, Gambit had assumed she’d be at least a touch self-conscious about being caught sleeping with him, even if it was only sleeping. Then again, given what had transpired over the past few days, he supposed that embarrassment seemed rather peeny in comparison. “Steed, you shouldn’t have,” Purdey went on, not even doing a good job of pretending to mean it, eyes flashing greedily as they settled on the packages.“Nonsense,” Steed said with a smile, answering the question that would have been on Purdey’s lips had she not been licking them. “Bacon and eggs and toast, with a fried tomato for good measure.”“Lovely.” Purdey was already opening one of the packages and taking the fork Steed provided. She looked up at Gambit as she started to tuck in. “Aren’t you having anything?”Gambit was regarding his food with mild weariness. “Maybe in a bit. Between what I was pumped full of by Vanessa and what Kendrick put through me to flush it out again, my stomach’s in knots.” He looked worriedly at Steed. “Speaking of which, any word on Vanessa? Did they find her?”Steed sighed and perched on the edge of Gambit’s bed. “I regret to say that Miss Thyme appears to have made her getaway long before Larry and his friends were on the scene.”“So we have no idea where she is?” Gambit couldn’t hide his dismay.Purdey swallowed a mouthful of eggs a little harder than warranted. “Surely they must have some idea? We have her people in custody. They ought to be able to tell us something.”“They’re being questioned as we speak. We’ve been all night at it.” Steed leveled his gaze at Gambit. “I rather think O’Hara’s playing as many games with us as we are with him.”Gambit snorted, clearly unsurprised at this intelligence. “They may as well beat their heads against the wall for all the good it’ll do them. The harder you squeeze, the more he’ll fight back. He likes to be tested, and he likes it even better when he can rub it in the faces of whoever he’s up against.”“So we have no leads, and Gambit’s still in danger,” Purdey said quietly, suddenly uncharacteristically unenthusiastic about the food in front of her.“I don’t know if that’s true,” Gambit murmured, sitting up a little. “There’s something strange about this whole business.”Steed cocked his head to one side inquisitively. “Do tell.”Gambit’s jaw was working thoughtfully. “Well, start with how you found me. Purdey says the club manager gave you a number Vanessa was using, and you traced it to the house I was in.”Steed nodded in confirmation. “That’s right.”“Why didn’t that come up when Larry questioned him?” Gambit wanted to know, and Purdey suddenly remembered that Gambit had asked her if she thought Larry was corrupt. Clearly he still had as many doubts about Larry as the other man had about Gambit.“He was nowhere to be found that night,” Steed explained. “He was conveniently absent from the club. I thought he might have hidden himself away to avoid the fireworks, and come back the next morning, which was when I found him.”“Okay.” Gambit closed his eyes and took a breath, obviously still fatigued from his ordeal. “That might be all right, but why would Vanessa write the number down and leave it where there was a risk our people would find it? She knew the club would be searched as soon as I disappeared. She’s too careful to make an obvious mistake like that. She wouldn’t write anything down, and she definitely wouldn’t leave that piece of paper intact, just lying there waiting to be found.”Purdey froze with her fork of eggs halfway to her mouth. “Gambit, you’re not saying…?”Gambit nodded grimly. “She left it for you to find. She wanted you to come for me.”“But that doesn’t make sense,” Purdey protested, fork dropping into the eggs with a ‘splat’. “Why would she go to all the trouble of kidnapping you just to have you be rescued again?”“To prove to all of us that she could take me, if she wanted to,” Gambit hypothesized. “And to see if I’d let her take me, if it meant sparing you. She threatened to have you shot if I didn’t come with her, you know.” He looked levelly at Purdey. “She knows my weak spots, and she wants me to know that she knows. Letting me know I could lose people I care about if I don’t give her what she wants is her first pressure point, and she’s letting me know she means to squeeze it.”Purdey blushed a little in spite of herself. “Then why did she bother interrogating you? If she only wanted to prove a point?”“Another pressure point. She’s tapping into my past memories of being tortured, getting me rattled. O’Hara was added spice to the pot—a new scare tactic, something else for me to worry about, because I knew that he was less likely to hold back on hurting me in favour of the long game. And he has a bone to pick with all of us now, not just me, which means I know he’s motivated to hurt people other than me, and for reasons bigger than money. And if being tortured wound up making me give in and tell her what she wanted to know, right then and there, well, she wasn’t exactly going to say ‘no’ to that. But it explains why she didn’t press as hard as she could have, and knocked me out eventually. She was buying time until you caught up. She knows from experience that hurting me isn’t likely to work. So she softened me up on multiple fronts without letting me get too suspicious. I’d know something was going on if she just locked me up until the cavalry came to the rescue.”Steed was nodding thoughtfully to himself. “It’s possible.”“You’re giving her an awful lot of credit,” Purdey grumbled, prodding at her eggs. “Suppose she made a mistake? She can’t be infallible.”“No,” Gambit allowed. “But I’d be making a mistake if I didn’t assume she was capable of planning that far ahead just to muck with my mind.”“Hmph.” Gambit’s grudging respect for his nemesis clearly irked her. “You still could be wrong,” she argued. “She might have had no time to destroy the number. And what if she meant to keep working on you once you woke up? There’s no definitive proof that she intended for any of this to happen.”“Maybe if that’s all there was,” Gambit said slowly. “But we also have to take into account the way you got me out last night. It was too easy.”“Easy?” Purdey’s glumness turned to indignation. “I had to climb up a drainpipe just to get in, never mind nearly being caught on the way. Then I had to drag you around half-unconscious like dead weight and fight off all those men. And even then O’Hara almost strangled you. If Steed hadn’t come along, we’d have been sunk.”“All right, maybe ‘easy’ was the wrong word,” Gambit allowed, cracking a rueful smile in the face of Purdey’s flashing eyes. “It was hard with just the two of us, but if you’d had Larry and his people you could have taken them down quickly. There wasn’t even anyone guarding me in my cell. Vanessa should have had some sort of insurance policy. Bomb, tripwire, hidden passage to stow me away. Not a bunch of hired muscle who she was happy to have captured. And she didn’t even bother to try holding me hostage. I should have been lying there with a gun to my head. No, there’s something else going on, another play that we haven’t worked out yet.” He looked pleadingly at Purdey. “Come on, Purdey-girl. You have to admit something smells wrong.”Purdey pursed her lips, then looked to Steed. “Well, perhaps there are some things that don’t quite add up.”“And we’d be a fool to assume anything at this stage,” Steed murmured. “We must keep our wits about us. If Gambit’s right, Miss Thyme will undoubtedly have more tricks up her sleeve.”“So we sit and wait for the other shoe to drop?” Purdey said glumly. “How encouraging.”“We don’t have a choice,” Gambit sighed. “Just be happy for the temporary reprieve. But don’t expect it to last long.” He looked from Purdey to Steed. “Maybe Purdey should stay at the stud farm. She’s already threatened you both to get to me. I don’t like the idea of either of you being alone.”“Perhaps not, but I’ve managed perfectly well so far,” Steed contradicted. “Purdey, however, may be more interested in having company.” “Only if it means keeping an eye on Gambit here in London.” To both men’s surprise, Purdey had brightened up considerably. “You might be able to read Vanessa Thyme, Mike Gambit, but I can read you like a book, and I know you won’t stay in this bed a second longer than you have to even though Kendrick told you to rest. If you’re going to strain yourself unnecessarily, I’d rather I was here to keep an eye on you.”“I’d be all right,” Gambit tried to protest, but Purdey was already thrusting the clamshell of breakfast at him.“I’m not in the mood for empty denials or unrealistic predictions,” the blonde declared. “Now eat your breakfast before I do it for you. I’m going to get you some clean clothes.”vvvGambit having escaped Purdey’s watchful eye by disappearing into the shower, the female agent joined Steed at Gambit’s dining room table, where they finished their breakfast whilst watching the city gradually awake.“Do you really think that what Gambit said is true?” Purdey asked, gazing out at the grey sky but not seeing what was in front of her. “Do you think that Vanessa Thyme really did set all of that up just to show Gambit what she could do and put him off-balance?”“I think Gambit knows her better than you or me,” Steed replied. Purdey pursed her lips. “So you think that Vanessa is watching us?”“In all likelihood, yes.”Purdey eyed him with a touch of bemusement. “You seem awfully relaxed about it. And about leaving Gambit and me alone with no one to look out for us.”“I don’t believe Miss Thyme is going to tip her hand so soon after her last endeavour,” Steed declared, taking a sip of coffee. “I may not know her personally, but I’ve tangled with enough people like her to be able to hazard a fairly good guess. She needs to give Gambit time to work out what she’s done, and to stew about it. If she strikes in the next day or two, he won’t be able to react in the way she’d like. She wants him physically recovered but mentally exhausted. That’s when she’ll strike next, because it’ll give her the best chance of getting the papers. But first, we wait.”Purdey pulled a face. “I don’t like it.”“Nor I,” Steed agreed. “But we’re still in a better state of affairs than we were in just over twenty-four hours ago.”“Are we?” Purdey didn’t bother to hide her scepticism.Steed cocked his head to one side. “We have Gambit back, don’t we? We have a theory about what Miss Thyme might do next. We’re now certain we know what she wants. And the prisoners, if nothing else, have provided Larry with something else to focus on rather than trying to persecute Gambit.” He smiled beatifically. “Not bad for a day’s work, if I do say so myself.”Purdey grinned back in spite of herself. “Steed, how do you know exactly what to say in any situation? Is it experience or an in-born gift for consolation?”“I like to think I inherited my soothing bedside manner from my dear Auntie Penelope,” Steed said lightly. “She was always very good at chasing away nightmares with a cup of cocoa. Even if her rock cakes were the instigators of the nightmares in the first place.”Purdey seemed unfazed by this revelation. “I had an uncle like that. I sometimes wonder if our family trees overlap.”“A line of inquiry to pursue another day,” Steed decided, standing up and gathering his dishes. “I should get back.” He frowned at his coffee cup, then chanced a look at the coffeemaker. “Oh, dear. I seem to have finished the pot.” “Oh, that’s all right,” Purdey said unconcernedly. “He won’t mind.”Steed raised an eyebrow. “How can you be certain?”“Because I’ll tell him he won’t mind,” Purdey said brightly, rising and giving Steed a quick hug. “Thank you, Steed. For the encouragement.”“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”Purdey smiled brightly. “I will now.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit’s eyes slid open, and he felt an immediate sense of déjà vu upon seeing Purdey curled up on her side next to him, sleeping contentedly. Steed had been gone by the time he returned from showering, shaving, and getting dressed, a process that had taken much longer than it would ordinarily. It was hard to scrub or shave skin that was so mottled with cuts and bruising that even the slightest touch made him wince, and that slowed things down considerably. Somehow, when he’d stripped off and examined the whole of his naked frame at once, taking in the full extent of the damage, he’d suddenly started to feel it more. It was more a psychological than any real increase in registered pain, and Gambit knew it, but after everything he’d gone through, he wasn’t at peak mental toughness required to shake it off. Gambit had inspected his own ravaged body more times than he could count over the years, had faced some pretty grim injuries, and it took a lot to rattle him. But there was something about the personal nature of this particular ordeal that made looking at his own wan, pale, bruised, sleep-deprived visage peering back at him in the bathroom mirror as he hunched over the sink that depressed him more than usual. No wonder Purdey had been frightened to touch him—just looking at him was enough to make anyone’s bones ache, including his own. Shaving had been absolutely agonizing, in every sense of the word. Not only did the pressure and scraping of the blade make him wince, but every time he revealed a new patch of skin, hoping that it was stubble that was making it look quite that dark shade of black, he found it only looked more vivid with the hair stripped away. Gambit prided himself on what he called his ‘healing hands’, but that day all they seemed to be good at doing was revealing more damage. If anyone had the gift of healing lately, it was Purdey. When she touched him, all he felt was tenderness and warmth and love, like she was infused with his own personal pain reliever, a tailormade panacea. If he’d asked her to shave him, he probably wouldn’t have felt a thing. But he’d already worried her enough about his physical state—he’d seen her distress every time her gaze alighted on any patch of damaged flesh. The idea of her seeing just how thoroughly O’Hara had worked him over made his already-riled stomach churn violently. He decided he’d have to make sure she didn’t see him in the all-together until the worst of the bruising had faded, which would probably be relatively easy to accomplish. After what he’d endured, he suspected neither of them were likely to get amourous any time soon.After he’d emerged as groomed as his injuries would allow, Purdey had made good on her promise to Steed by telling him that he didn’t mind that Steed had finished off the first pot of coffee. Then she’d forced some of the breakfast Steed had brought into him while they waited for the next pot to brew—and he was still upright. Despite his stomach still feeling like one giant mass of knots, Gambit had to admit that he felt stronger for the nourishment, and when he chased it down with the newly-brewed coffee, the warmth combined with the sustenance finished the work that the shower and shave, tortuous as they’d been, had begun by making him feel almost human again. Then they’d puttered around for a bit, setting some things to rights that had fallen by the wayside during his enforced absence. Purdey wouldn’t let him do anything strenuous, and installed him at his glass dining table with a stack of mail to sort through while she fluttered around him seeing to the things that required a little more physical wherewithal, asking him what he wanted to be done as needed, which wasn’t very often. It was Purdey, after all. Even if she did bother to ask for his opinion, chances were she’d ignore it in the end. Gambit didn’t mind, really. There was something comforting about the mundane domesticity of it all that soothed his aching body and tortured soul. For a couple of hours, they almost managed to forget about Vanessa and Larry and everything else, the gathering storm swirling angrily outside. They’d have to face it, eventually. They both knew it. But for a little while, they were insulated from it, and Gambit treasured every single, unblemished second.It could only last so long, of course, and eventually Purdey noticed that, despite his best efforts, he was listing quite badly in his chair. The fact that he could barely muster the energy to protest when she ordered him to rest told her that she was quite correct in her assessment of his physical state, and she sent him back to bed, where she’d again taken up surveillance duty curled up beside him. She’d been wide awake when Gambit had succumbed to his weariness, but upon his waking, she was completely dead to the world. Gambit was gratified that she’d managed any shuteye at all given everything that had happened. He watched her for a few minutes, just savouring being there, alone with her, safe and sound for the time being. He basked in her beauty, and the intense love he had for her, thought how lucky he was that they’d finally found a way to close the gaps between them that their respective pasts had stubbornly attempted to keep pried open, that they’d finally reached the point where love could be given and received without hesitation. Now, lying there, it could have been an ordinary early afternoon and they could be an ordinary couple, who had nothing to fear from mercenaries or agents alike. Just two people with the rest of the day ahead of them, and nothing to do but decide what they were going to do with it.Gambit sighed, let a long breath out through his nose. Sadly, reality couldn’t be ignored. They weren’t an ordinary couple, and this wasn’t an ordinary day. So despite wanting to stay in the bed with Purdey with every fibre of his being, Gambit carefully pushed back the blanket Purdey must have drawn over both of them, and sat up, his battered body protesting every inch of the way. Somehow, he managed to get out of the bed without waking Purdey, and made his way over to the window to pull back one of the curtains a fraction of an inch. He surveyed the street below, on the lookout for anything suspicious. There was the telltale vehicle parked out front, which he knew would be Ministry surveillance keeping tabs on him. His jaw tightened in sudden and surprising annoyance, despite the fact that he’d fully been expecting to find watchers on his doorstep. He was tiring of this game, tiring of Vanessa’s ability to upend his life even when she wasn’t in the immediate vicinity. There was no sign of the woman herself, but Gambit knew from experience that she was lurking out there somewhere, in spirit if not in body.There was a rustle of fabric that indicated Purdey was rousing, and Gambit mentally chastised himself for getting up, knowing it had woken her more likely than not. She padded over to his side by the window on stocking feet and peered outside with interest. “Anything interesting?” she asked around a yawn.“Surveillance,” Gambit replied frankly.“Ours or theirs?”“Ours.”“Oh.” Purdey sounded almost disappointed. “I was rather hoping Vanessa Thyme was waiting out front.”Gambit regarded her incredulously. “Why?”“So I could go out and throttle her,” Purdey said matter-of-factly, scrubbing sleep from her eyes. “Then all our problems would be solved.”Gambit laughed in spite of himself, imagining Purdey putting her words into actions. “I can just see you doing it, too. It’s a nice idea.”“Give me the opportunity and I’ll make it a reality,” Purdey said flatly, sleep burning away in the face of pure, unadulterated ire.“What did I do to deserve you?” Gambit murmured affectionately, watching Purdey stew.“You could always do more, but as you’re not quite up to full power, I’ll excuse you for the moment,” Purdey said flippantly, leaning in and giving him a quick kiss. “And speaking of not being at your best, you really ought to be back in bed. You’re still at a tilt.” She took him by the shoulders, turned him in the direction of the couch and gave him a gentle shove to set him on his way. “And no arguing.”“I won’t say a word,” Gambit vowed, glancing over his shoulder at her and grinning wickedly. “As long as you come with me.”“I hope you realise that you’re not going to be able to get away with this sort of blatant extortion when all this is over,” Purdey warned, good-humoured smile twitching her lips as he settled onto the mattress. “I’d better take full advantage of it while I can, then,” Gambit murmured cheekily, lying back and closing his eyes. “There’s got to be some advantage to this whole rotten business.”Purdey sighed wearily. “That, Mike Gambit, is something I won’t argue with, which only goes to show how serious all this is.”“Don’t remind me,” Gambit groaned, burrowing a little deeper into the mattress. “Are you coming?”“Just a moment.” Purdey crossed back to the window, eyes scanning for any sign of Vanessa Thyme, but the people on the street were still relatively innocuous, save for the Ministry watchers. She gave them the glare she thought they deserved, before she yanked the curtain closed. Not that she thought they could see much all the way down there, but Purdey was determined not to give Larry so much as an inch. If he wanted to get intel, he was going to have to fight for it.Curtain closed, she turned smartly on her heel, feeling a certain amount of satisfaction at her small triumph, and started making her way back to the reclining Gambit. Negotiating her way around Gambit’s armchair, her stockinged foot came into contact with something slippery, and she clutched at the chair to keep from losing her balance. Frowning in puzzlement at what she could have stepped on, she crouched to examine the carpet, only to find something small and shiny poking out from beneath the chair. She pinched it between thumb and forefinger, tugged gently to loosen it, and came up with a piece of photographic paper, about 5” x 7”, dog-eared, and yellowed with age. It was black and white, and featured a man and a woman from the waist up, arm in arm, her turned toward him with a broad smile on her face and her unencumbered hand on his shoulder, him grinning broadly and ducking his head slightly as if in shyness. Both were somewhat windswept, standing in front of what looked like some sort of docks, though the frame wasn’t wide enough for any positive identification. Purdey estimated that their fashions were from the 1930s, and when she turned it over was rewarded with the inscription, in very faded pen, “A & G, 1935”. There were marks on the back, too, the sort of vertical tears that suggested it had at one point been pasted into an album. She turned it back over and pondered the image further, pondering the sense of déjà vu that was prickling at the back of her brain. There was something familiar about the image, but Purdey could have sworn she’d never seen it, or the people in it, before.“Purdey?” Gambit’s inquisitive tone momentarily diverted her attention from her discovery. “You okay?”“I’m fine,” Purdey assured, straightening up, eyes still glued to the picture. “I found a photograph, that’s all. It was wedged under your chair. I must have missed it when I straightened out your flat after Miss Thyme’s goon finished ransacking it.”“Photograph?” Gambit’s eyes flew open and he sat up in alarm, thoughts instantly flashing back to the envelope of photos Vanessa had sent him, the ones that had shown Purdey going about her day, used as a message to prove that she could get Purdey whenever she wanted. “What kind of photograph?” he asked tersely, already steeling himself for the worst.Purdey seemed to realise that he was distressed, incisive mind quickly coming up with the likely reason, and she hurried over to rest a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right,” she soothed, handing him the picture. “It’s nothing like that. Old family photo, or something.” She crawled onto the bed beside Gambit as he examined it, waited for him to say something, but he remained silent. When she was comfortable and turned to look at him, she was surprised to find that the fear had been replaced with sadness. “Gambit?” she said softly, leaning in closer, resting her hand on his shoulder much the way the woman in the photo had. “What’s wrong?” She looked back at the picture, tried to work out what she might have missed that Gambit found distressing. “Who is it in that picture?”Gambit swallowed hard, and Purdey could tell he was debating what to say next. “I, uh, suppose you’re not going to be satisfied if I say I don’t want to talk about it?”“Not when you say things like that,” Purdey confirmed, looking hard at Gambit now. “Mike, who are they?”Gambit took a deep breath and smiled shakily at her. “Well, I guess I was going to have to tell you about them one of these days,” he said resignedly, handing the photo back to Purdey. “Purdey, meet Mr. and Mrs. Gambit. My parents.”“Parents?” Purdey’s eyes widened dramatically, head whipping to look back down at the picture in her hands with almost comical swiftness. “Mike Gambit, you mean to say—this is them?”“In their glory days, yes.” Gambit leaned back heavily against the pillows, as though the admission had cost him more than he could spare. “Alan and Gillian—with a ‘G’, mind. She was always very particular about that. Gilly for short. I assume you can work out which is which.”“Yes, of course,” Purdey murmured absently, too absorbed by the photo to rise to Gambit’s mild baiting. She examined the photo with renewed, almost rabid, interest, keen eyes analyzing every tiny detail. Now that she knew that they were Gambit’s parents, she understood why they seemed so familiar. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. The woman was sporting a full head of dark, curly hair, the smiling eyes turned toward her beau shaped like Gambit’s own. The man was also dark-haired, sporting a wave that looked rather akin to Gambit’s own curls when he brushed them out. The enviably long eyelashes adorning the eyes flicking shyly downward, the bowed top lip stretching in that endearing smile, the strong cheekbones, the broad shoulders, the shapely hands and even shapelier hips, all were present and accounted for, though Purdey flattered Gambit (and, in classic Purdey fashion, herself) that the son had drawn from his mother to become even more handsome than his father. The pair were almost shoulder to shoulder, too, suggesting a closeness in height regardless of what kind of shoes she was wearing, and given their offspring’s six foot stature, she estimated that both were tall. All in all, they were a handsome couple, which, given what their combined genetic makeup had produced, wasn’t particularly surprising.“Well, now I know where you got your hair,” she commented to Gambit, grinning up at him, but felt her mirth fade away instantly when she noticed he was still looking rather sad. “Do you want to tell me about them?” she asked carefully, laying the photo on his lap as a signal that she was willing to let it go if he wanted her to. “It’s all right if you don’t,” she added, backing up her actions with her words, though she couldn’t deny that she was absolutely bursting with curiousity. Gambit never talked about his parents, and she knew there had to be a good reason for that. One that Gambit might not be keen to divulge.“No, I should tell you,” Gambit sighed, pushing himself a little more upright against the pillows as if to brace himself. “You’ve told me all about yours. Only seems fair that I do the same.”“If you’re sure,” Purdey temporized, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. She settled down onto the mattress beside him, tucking one arm under her head. “How did they meet?”“Tea dance,” Gambit divulged, with an unexpected bark of laughter. “If you can believe it. Apparently those sorts of things actually worked for matchmaking back in the day. He worked at the docks, she was a secretary and doing pretty well for herself, at least by our neighborhood’s standards.” He looked at Purdey, gauging her reaction. “Apparently my dad was a bit of a ladies’ man, and wasn’t there looking for anything serious.”Purdey slanted a wryly amused eyebrow. “I’m beginning to see the resemblance more and more.”“I know better than to take that as a compliment,” Gambit said knowingly, but the way his lips twitched at the ends suggested that he did, just a little bit. “Anyway, it didn’t matter, because the second they clapped eyes on one another it was a done deal. Six months later they were married and had a flat. They were too poor to have kids or do much of anything else, but they didn’t care.“By all accounts, they had five good years together. Five years of bliss, my aunt always told me. Mum was happier than she’d ever been. They loved each other so intensely that everyone else looked tame in comparison. Nothing seemed to keep them down as long as they were together.” He paused and took a shaky breath. “Even the war didn’t seem to slow them down, except for keeping them apart. But they used to write letters to each other every few days, even every day sometimes. I found some of them one day, read a few of them. I was just a kid and to me it was mush, but I could tell they meant every word of it. And they used to make up for every lost second together whenever he was on leave. Which was how I came about.” He gave Purdey a look. “Please don’t make me spell that out for you.”“I think I can read between the lines, thank you,” Purdey said pertly.Gambit nodded in mild relief, as unwilling to dwell on his parents’ love life as every other child going back to the beginning of time. “Everyone tells me they were ecstatic when they found out she was expecting. That they really, really wanted me. They had enough socked away that they knew they could finally afford a kid, and when my dad got word at his posting that he had a brand new baby son, he was walking on air for weeks until he could meet me.” He smiled a little crookedly at an old memory. “Mum said the first time he held me, she knew he was going to be a great dad. Maybe he would have been.” The smile faded. “Neither of us ever got the chance to find out.”Purdey felt her heart sink. “What happened to him?”“The war,” Gambit said grimly. “Nothing that didn’t happen to thousands of others. Only instead of losing a limb, he had his lungs done in. Breathed in a lot of something that he shouldn’t. He came back a shadow of himself. Housebound. Usually bedridden. I was only two when the war finished, three by the time they let him out of hospital and brought him home. That’s the only way I ever knew him.“He couldn’t work, obviously, so Mum had to take on a second job, and then she had to look after him on top of it. Never any money for anything as it was, definitely not for a full-time carer, or to put him somewhere half-decent where they could look after him. Not that Mum would have let anyone else look after him. She was determined to do it herself. The family pitched in as much as they could, but they had their own burdens to bear, and more often than not they needed the extra help as much as she did. All told, it took its toll. She was always exhausted, always just barely keeping everything ticking over. That meant, most of the time, I had to more or less fend for myself.”Purdey felt her eyes fill with tears. “Mike…”“It wasn’t their fault,” Gambit said quickly, as though he felt some lingering need to defend them against her judgment. “But between Dad not being well, and Mum stretched so thin, there just wasn’t any emotional energy left for a kid. They didn’t mistreat me, they didn’t hate me, they just…couldn’t give any more.”“So you were all on your own,” Purdey concluded softly, feeling her heart break for the young Gambit, set adrift by his parents for reasons beyond all of their control.“Not totally,” Gambit corrected, trying to force a brave smile onto his lips, and not quite succeeding. Purdey has a sudden sense that he’d done that before, many times, probably to people who expressed the same sentiments she just had to him when he was a child. He’d been brave, even back then. She could see him now, brave little boy with dark curls, smiling that same shaky smile up to the adults in his life who pitied him, never wanting to let on that he was hurting, even if the pain was almost too much to bear, self-sacrificing right from the start. His parents had enough on their plates as it was. He wasn’t going to add to it. He was going to be brave, because that was what they needed from him. That was what he did for the people he loved. And he clearly still loved his parents, even if they hadn’t had the resources to love him back. He was still doing it now, making sacrifices at his own expense. That was why he was in the fix he was in now, being attacked on all sides by Larry and Vanessa Thyme and O’Hara and who knew who else. All because he’d made the choice to take those damned papers out of the hands of those who would undoubtedly do something horrible with them. And he was still doing it, by refusing to hand them over; by handing himself over to Vanessa to save Purdey herself. It wasn’t the first time Gambit had put his life on the line for her, and she had the horrible feeling that it wouldn’t be the last, not even in this particular scenario. Sacrificing himself for others was what Gambit did. Because he loved them. Because it would never occur to him to do anything else. Because it was so easy for him to save the people who mattered when all he had to do was step into the line of fire. For him, it was the most natural thing to do in the world. Gambit was still talking, and Purdey dragged herself back from her thoughts with difficulty, not wanting to miss anything, conscious of the possibility that he might not retell this particular story again for some time. “I had plenty of family about—aunts, uncles, cousins…Gran.” His voice cracked a little at the name, and Purdey was reminded of the high esteem in which he held his grandmother. Every time he talked about her, it was accompanied by obvious affection—and sadness that she was no longer with them. Now that she had a sense of what Gambit’s childhood had been like, she finally understood why she had meant so much to him. “I spent a lot of time with Gran,” Gambit murmured softly, more to himself than her, eyes distant with memory. “She was a one of a kind. Wouldn’t let you get away with a damned thing, and the sharpest tongue you’d ever have the misfortune of being on the wrong side of. But she was also kind, loving.” He sighed deeply. “I think she sort of resented my dad, in a way, because she could see what taking care of him was doing to her daughter. I always used to hear her saying to my aunt that she didn’t understand why my mother didn’t just put my dad somewhere, that they could find the money somehow. She’d try to be quiet about it, because she didn’t want to turn me against my dad, no matter how she felt about everything. But kids always hear stuff they’re not supposed to. They’re small and quiet, and they know where to hide.” He trailed off again, and Purdey knew he was imagining his child self curled up in a cupboard or on a staircase, silently listening as the adults in his life tried to grapple with problems that he had no hope of fully understanding. “Mum used to hear them, too, sometimes,” he continued, almost in a daze, reliving the memories as they flickered behind his eyes. “She used to get angry. No one ever talked to Gran like that, not even Mum, but when Dad was involved she was fearless. She used to say that she would never send Dad away, that she loved him too much for that.” He swallowed hard, met Purdey’s gaze, held it. “She used to say that those five years they had together were so wonderful, that they were worth all the hardship that came after. That he loved her so well, and she loved him so much, that the idea of not caring for him felt like a betrayal. And Dad used to say, when he felt up to talking, that he’d always known he could only settle down with the girl who was the love of his life, and that he’d known Mum was the one the second he’d seen her. Mum felt the same way. They were in it to the end, together, no matter what happened.”“And what did happen?” Purdey asked softly, sensing they were coming to the clinch.Gambit took a deep breath. “Dad died when I was twelve. Everyone said they were surprised he lasted as long as he did, with the state his lungs were in, but Mum kept him alive. She was almost catatonic at the funeral. Everyone kept saying that it was sad, but that she should be relieved because he was at peace now, that she’d had a huge burden taken off her shoulders and now she could get on with her life.” His jaw was working slightly, and Purdey could tell the memories were really hurting him now. “But she didn’t want to be free. She wanted him. And she never really recovered from losing him. She was gone within a year after her died.” He caught Purdey’s surprised expression and smiled sadly. “The official cause was pneumonia, but everyone knew that what she’d really died of was a broken heart. So that left me, a thirteen-year-old orphan, all that was left of their great love affair.” He looked down at his hands, as though confirming that he still existed, that the living proof was still there. “They gave Gran custody, but everyone knew that wasn’t going to last. She was getting older, and she didn’t really have the energy to keep up with a teenage boy. Or the money. And losing her daughter had taken the wind out of her sails.” His shoulders heaved with the heaviness of his sigh. “She wanted to keep me. I never questioned that. But she wasn’t going to be able to do it forever, and everyone else in the family either wasn’t keen or was stretched too thin as it was. I knew that it was only a matter of time before Gran had to give me up, whether she wanted to or not, and then all I had to look forward to was one long round of pass the parcel, getting shifted from one household to another until I turned eighteen and became my own problem. I wasn’t keen on waiting around for the axe to fall, so I saved them all the trouble of making the hard decisions and made my own. Joined the navy at fourteen.” He smiled bravely at Purdey. “Don’t feel too bad for me. I wasn’t entirely self-sacrificing. I’d wanted to get out and see the world for years. I used to go to the docks and look at the ships coming and going and try to imagine where they’d been and what they were carrying. I’d go to the library and find the atlas, which probably weighed more than I did, and try to work out how to say all the names of the different places and where they were. It was this whole other world away from Battersea, and I wanted to see every bit of it, every country, every city in the whole book.”Purdey smiled a little at the young Gambit’s ambition. “It’s an admirable goal. Did you manage it?”“I might have missed one or two,” Gambit said wryly, smile genuine this time. “The landlocked countries were a bit tough to get to when you were in the navy.”Purdey laughed, grateful to release some of the tension. “That was very inconsiderate of them.”“Don’t I know it. I never forgave them for it,” Gambit quipped back, shaking his head slightly at his youthful folly. “But I did get to see a lot of the world. Learned a hell of a lot. Grew up fast, learned how to take care of myself.” He turned reflective. “I’d like to say that it was a better education than I ever would have had at school, but I know I traded one kind of learning for another. But school wasn’t going to feed me or put a roof over my head. The navy did.”Purdey searched his face. “What did your grandmother think of you going out to sea so young?”“She thought I was a bloody idiot,” Gambit said flatly, grinning like a naughty schoolboy. “We had a very loud conversation about it, I can tell you. But in the end, she knew there wasn’t really any other way out. She didn’t want me drifting around, feeling miserable, getting into trouble and she could feel that she wasn’t going to be able to keep me on for much longer. So she prepared me as best she could, poured a lifetime’s worth of advice into my ear about how to comport myself, and promised to find me wherever I was and give me hell if I defied her, even from beyond the grave if necessary. Then she gave me a St. Christopher that belonged to her dad.” His hand went automatically to the small bump beneath his shirt, pressed against it like the talisman it was. “He was a sailor, too. She made me promise to look after myself. And then she let me go, her darling boy.” His breath hitched a little bit at the remembered endearment. “And I went. And I was on my own.” “Mike…” Purdey breathed, at a complete and utter loss for words. Purdey prided herself on always having something to say in any given situation, but for the second time in a matter of weeks, a story Gambit had told her about his past had left her absolutely speechless, not to mention heartbroken on his behalf. “I never thought…I knew there must be some reason why you never talked about your parents, and left home so young. But I didn’t think it would be so…so…”“It’s not the only sob story out there,” Gambit cut in gruffly, attempting to distance himself from her emotions as a way of preventing himself from succumbing to his own. “The war chewed my parents up and spit them out, just the way it did thousands of other people. And I was far from the only one left behind. Lots of kids had it way worse than me. At least I had family that would’ve taken me in and made sure I didn’t starve. Gran actually cared about me. I had an aunt, too, who wanted to take me, but she was having a difficult pregnancy at the time. Bedridden for the most part. She still says she feels badly that she wasn’t able to take me before I left, but she would have had a newborn to deal with. She didn’t need me underfoot.” He softened a little, the weariness and resignation getting to him as the fatigue and pain from his injuries made themselves known. “Anyway, whether they wanted me or not, I still would’ve been surplus to requirements. I might have lived there, but it still wouldn’t have been my home. I still wouldn’t have belonged. And anyway, I was young and footloose. Globetrotting sounded pretty damn good, even if it meant I didn’t really have a home.” He paused and considered, seemed to do the math in his head. “Come to think of it, I guess I didn’t really have a home, didn’t put down roots, for almost twenty years. Even when I came back to London, back in 1973, I didn’t really, properly put down roots until I was working with you and Steed, and we had a team that I knew was worth staying for.” He smiled a little to himself at the admission, then added, “Well, if I’m honest, it was the second I clapped eyes on you that I knew you were the only girl in the world that I would drop anchor for, even if you never wanted me as more than a friend. But I’ve always known you were it, Purdey-girl. Wherever you are has always been home, and always will be. The only one I’ve ever known and ever will know.”Purdey felt her eyes brim with tears, overwhelmed by everything he’d said, everything he’d been through, and how, in the end, it had all, somehow, come back to her. How could the man go through what he’d gone through, been deprived of love and yet still known how to give it, freely and selflessly, without attempting to own or possess or try to force her to return it, she didn’t know. It was as though that ability to love was built into the man at the cellular level, that loyalty and devotion were woven into his very DNA.As if to reaffirm Purdey’s hypothesis, Gambit said, “I, uh, guess I came by it honestly. Falling for someone at first sight, I mean. Must be genetic. Or maybe hearing that story growing up has turned me into a romantic. But I know in my bones, I felt the same way about you that they did about each other.” He grinned self-consciously. “Probably sounds horribly corny on your end, eh?”But Purdey only smiled kindly and reached out to stroke his face. “Not corny,” she corrected, moving her face closer to his, lips curling into a tender smile. “I think it makes you a very beautiful, wonderful man. And I think that I’m very lucky, because your parents’ love story, while very tragic, left something very special behind in the world. Because a world without you, Mike Gambit, doesn’t bear thinking of, as far as I’m concerned.”Gambit’s face lit up properly for possibly the first time since he’d started telling his story. “How was I lucky enough to find you?” he marveled. “I visited all those cities around the world, but it took going back to London, right where I started, to find you.”“You must understand,” Purdey purred into his ear, nuzzling his neck with her nose. “I’m your anchor, Mike Gambit. You said so yourself. You were going to be pulled back to me wherever you are.”Gambit arched an eyebrow at her questioningly. “Hang on, I thought I was supposed to be the romantic here?”“I have my moments,” Purdey said mildly, pressing a kiss to a patch of unbruised flesh between his neck and shoulder.“More than a few,” Gambit agreed, eyes fluttering closed as he savoured her lips on his skin. “I only hope you being my anchor doesn’t me you get dragged down with me if all this goes south.”Purdey pulled back and regarded him with mild annoyance. “Mike Gambit, the point of an anchor is to pull something else down to hold it in place. An anchor can’t be dragged down by whatever it’s anchoring. It doesn’t make sense.”“You know what I mean.”“Given that analogy, I’m not sure I do,” Purdey huffed quietly. “But bad metaphors aside, it’s still a ridiculous sentiment. I am not going to listen to any more homilies about how you don’t want me to sacrifice myself for you. I’m here with you to the end, Mike Gambit, no matter what you say. Because I might not have pledged my devotion to you the second we met, but I knew there was something about you that penetrated my defences and went straight to my heart. I felt you in my soul, Mike. It just took my brain a little while to get past being afraid and start letting myself love again.”Gambit smiled brilliantly at the admission, clearly touched by her words. “Well, whatever you want to call yourself—anchor, gravity—”“Purdey,” Purdey cut in, smiling brilliantly. “Just Purdey. It’s an all-purpose word for everything worth being.”Gambit grinned. “I can’t wait to find you in the dictionary,” he murmured, tracing her jaw with a fingertip. “But I’m smart enough to know that I was lucky to find you at all. Even the romantic in me would never have believed I’d find someone like you to fall in love with, and I definitely wouldn’t have believed that you’d ever love me back.”“That’s where your negative thinking comes in,” Purdey declared airily. “Honestly, Mike Gambit, only you could combine romanticism with pessimism and somehow reconcile that complete contradiction in terms.”“Oh, I don’t know,” Gambit said softly, eyes shining. “I can think of someone else who manages to balance some pretty impossible contradictions on a daily basis.”“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s a compliment,” Purdey huffed without malice. “And that’s only because you’re still not up to full strength.”“More reasons to heal faster, then,” Gambit murmured. “I don’t know how much more of this doting I can take. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”Purdey’s smile wavered, and he could see she couldn’t quite keep up the front that she’d been quietly attempting to build over the past few moments. “Before things go back to normal,” she said softly, laying a hand aside his face and looking deeply into his eyes, wanting, needing him to understand that what she said next, she meant to the depths of her soul, “I want you to know that I will do everything in my power, for however long I need to, to make sure that you stay on this planet for as long as possible. I will fight for you as long as I have breath in my body. And there is nothing the Ministry, or Larry, or Vanessa Thyme, or even you, Mike Gambit, can say or do to stop me. And if that doesn’t prove how much I love you, I don’t know what will.”Gambit was breathing hard, and Purdey could tell from the warmth shining out of his blue-green eyes that the vow meant the world to him. “Purdey…” he whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”“You don’t need to say anything,” Purdey pronounced, leaning in and kissing him hard, felt his bruised lips kiss back, saying all the things, conveying the profound emotions, he didn’t know how to verbalise. When she finally broke away, he was still looking at her as though he expected her to fade away before his eyes, a mythical being from his wildest dreams. Being looked at as something so profoundly wonderful made her smile, then laugh, then give him another quick kiss to convey her pure and utter delight at being there, with him, at that moment. Then she settled down beside him on the pillow, bodies as close as could be, and asked, “How do you feel about your parents? No one could blame you for resenting them.”Gambit shook his head very slowly, much to Purdey’s surprise. “I missed what I didn’t have,” he admitted. “What they couldn’t give me. But at the same time, I also understood why they couldn’t give it. I didn’t enjoy it, but being angry about it wasn’t going to make things any better or easier for anyone, including me. Not to mention it’d get me a cuff round the ear and a lecture about how my parents were doing their best if I started to get sulky around the relations. So no, I’ve never hated them.”“That’s an awfully mature point of view for a child,” Purdey opined, clearly surprised at his reaction. “Yeah, well, you grew up fast where I came from, in those days,” Gambit said grimly. “You figured out how the world worked, and you got on with it as best you could. You had to learn to look after yourself to a certain extent, even when you were young, because no one would do it for you.”“I always wondered where you got that independent, self-sufficient streak,” Purdey mused thoughtfully. “I knew you’d been alone for a long time, but I would never have dreamt that it had been cultivated in you so young.”“For better or worse,” Gambit sighed, smiling wearily at Purdey. “It’s not always been the best thing to be.”“It’s kept you alive,” Purdey pointed out. “I’d say that was for better.” “There is that,” Gambit acknowledged with a wry chuckle. “I’ll tell you one thing that I still can’t quite fathom about what my parents did.”Purdey perked up. “Yes?”Gambit considered for a moment. “I understood that circumstances forced their hand, but even so…” He paused and grappled with his thoughts for a moment, clearly trying to organize them in a way that made sense to his tired brain. “Put it this way. If something happened, heaven forbid, and I had to look after you, and we had a kid…I love you desperately, Purdey-girl, but I don’t know if I could neglect my kid quite like that, no matter how thinly stretched I was. I can’t believe I wouldn’t be able to find a way to look after both of you. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard, but just letting my own kid slip through the cracks would be harder.”“That’s because you’re you, Mike Gambit,” Purdey said simply, resting a gentle hand on his chest over his heart. “And you always find a way to look after everyone else before yourself.” She regarded his bruised visage with pursed lips. “Which is painfully apparent just now. In more than one sense of the word.”Gambit inclined his head in acknowledgement of her point. “Not really a fair comparison, at any rate,” he went on. “My parents had family to help them out, but there’s no arguing that they wouldn’t have fared better if they had a little more money to go around. I have a job that pays well and a flat in a good neighbourhood and two vehicles to my name. I could buy myself an easier time of it, even in bad circumstances, than they could ever imagine. In fact, if they’d seen what I amounted to, they’d probably faint dead away.”“From pride, no doubt,” Purdey asserted. “That their son did so well for himself, in spite of everything he went through.”Gambit grinned a little at the praise. “I must still look awful,” he opined. “Because you keep laying on the compliments.”“And we also seem to keep talking about our imaginary children,” Purdey countered with a smile. “This is the second time in a few days. Or have you forgotten about our conversation before you got those bruises?”“I remember,” Gambit acknowledged, smile turning conspiratorial. “Coincidence? Or are we trying to tell ourselves something?”“Both,” Purdey said firmly. “But we’re not going to be able to make any concrete decisions on that topic one way or another until you’re no longer being attacked on all sides.”Gambit’s eyes fluttered closed tiredly. “Reality. I forgot about that for a minute.”Purdey frowned. “Then you can forget about it for a little while longer. Enough talking now. You need to rest.”“All I seem to do is rest,” Gambit grumbled, shifting irritably. “And wait for the axe to fall, from one side or another.” He eyed Purdey inquisitively. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to work? I’m still on some kind of leave—injury or pending investigation, I don’t know—but you’re not. Not to mention the longer you sit here, the more creative our friends outside can get about what we’re doing.”“I don’t care what they think I’m doing, but the truth is, I’m looking after my colleague,” Purdey said firmly, resting the back of her hand diagnostically against his forehead. “In every sense of the word. Keeping an eye on you while you recover, and watching out for further attacks.” She flashed a confident smile. “I’m very efficient.”Gambit grinned wearily. “Don’t I know it. All right, if you won’t go back to the Ministry to save your own reputation, then you can at least go back and be my eyes and ears.”“Steed can do that,” Purdey pointed out, transferring the hand to his cheek.“Yeah, but his eyes and ears pick up different things than yours,” Gambit argued, grinning wickedly despite his fatigue. “And they’re much more attractive.”Purdey preened. “That may be true, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you all alone and vulnerable.”“I might be vulnerable on my own,” Gambit allowed around a yawn, “but I’m also vulnerable if you’re seen to be bedding in here with me, literally and figuratively, and they accuse me of trying to manipulate you.”“I think the damage has already been done,” Purdey pronounced, retrieving her hand and regarding him matter-of-factly. “But if you feel that strongly about it, I’ll go back tomorrow. Under protest.”“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Gambit murmured fondly. “Thanks, Purdey-girl.”“Yes, all right,” Purdey huffed softly, clearly unhappy that she was being forced from Gambit’s bedside. “You got what you want. You can turn off the charm offensive.”“Charm offensive? What charm offensive?” Gambit teased. “I’m like this naturally.”“You’re something naturally,” Purdey grumbled without malice. “But if you are going to send me away from guarding your bedside, at least get some rest so I can be somewhat sure that you’ll be lucid enough to know if someone comes in here to kill you.”“That sort of thing has a tendency to wake me up in a hurry,” Gambit said sardonically. “Anyway, I hurt more than I’m tired.”“Maybe a soak in the bath is in order,” Purdey suggested, sitting up. “Would you like me to draw you one?”Gambit shook his head, easing himself upright. “Shower’s better. Running water feels better on the muscles, and you can build up a nice head of steam.”“Sounds like a plan.” Purdey sprang up from the bed and rounded it to take Gambit’s arm to help him get to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go before you keel over from exhaustion and I have to drag you there.” There was a slight hesitation to Gambit’s steps as they made their way to the bathroom, and Purdey thought at first it was just fatigue and pain at work. But his reasons became painfully clear the second she tried to help him unbutton his shirt. “I can manage,” he told her, hand covering hers on his chest, remembering how his battered body had looked in the mirror earlier that day, how he’d been glad Purdey hadn’t seen it.But Purdey saw through his reservations in an instant, as per usual. “I don’t have to undress you to know that you’re black and blue all over,” she said frankly. “And if you think that I’m going to be more overwhelmed by your injuries than I am worried about you collapsing in here on your own and hitting your head, then you don’t know me at all.” Her hand twitched impatiently beneath his. “Come on. I’m not going to stand here all day.”He relented—of course he did; it was Purdey, after all—and let her unbutton the shirt with a lightness of touch that spared fabric scraping against damaged skin as much as possible. Gambit watched her progress with hooded eyes, taking the opportunity to quietly savour her fine-boned features in deep concentration, jaw set stoically. If he was worried about her reacting to his injuries, then she simply wasn’t going to react. He knew that, if he made that observation out loud, she’d be the first to point out that she was an agent, and a damned good one, and wouldn’t be able to do the job if she couldn’t be steely on demand. So, as she parted the two halves of the fabric of his shirt to reveal his bruised chest, her expression remained remarkably neutral. A little too neutral, Gambit noted—the neutrality of someone who wasn’t really neutral at all—but all in all, an admirable poker face that would’ve easily passed muster with someone who didn’t know Purdey inside and out like he did.“If Miss Thyme was only trying to send you a message,” she observed, walking around to his back so she could work the shirt off his arms without forcing him to twist his shoulders uncomfortably in their sockets, “she was rather ostentatious about it.”“Subtlety was never her strong point,” Gambit agreed through clenched teeth, trying not to wince as Purdey tugged the garment off. He knew she couldn’t see his face from her position, but he wasn’t entirely certain that Purdey not only had eyes at the back of her head, but ones that saw right through the back of his, as well. “I’ve never been able to decide whether that worked in my advantage or not.”“Let’s hope it becomes a moot point in the near future,” Purdey pronounced with feeling, draping the shirt over the towel rack and surveying Gambit’s mottled back with dismay. With his back to her, she didn’t have to disguise her reaction, but she should have known that Gambit would pick up on her distress regardless of which way she was facing.“You okay back there?”“I will be, when you are,” Purdey confirmed, pressing a kiss to an unbruised patch of skin on his shoulder blade before turning her attention to his trousers. “And that will be when this whole awful affair is over and done with. Sooner rather than later.”“We can only hope,” Gambit said tiredly, watching as Purdey darted over to the bath to turn the shower on, then turned to take his arm and help him into the tub. “I wish I didn’t feel like an invalid in a nursing home,” he groused petulantly, as Purdey lowered him carefully into the porcelain receptacle.“If I have my way, you’ll live to a ripe old age and find out what it’s really like,” Purdey told him, tugging the shower curtain closed. “Promise me you’ll try to stay alive long enough to find out.”Gambit grinned up at her. “Well, it would be a shame to miss out on all the pretty nurses,” he quipped, then earned a blast of water to the face when Purdey readjusted the shower head.“I’m sorry, my hand slipped,” Purdey said sweetly, and not at all apologetically, as Gambit sputtered and wiped water from his eyes. “I didn’t mean to drown you.”“That’s what you’ll tell the police when they find me,” Gambit gurgled, pushing sodden curls back from his forehead. “Are you going to close that before the whole bathroom floods, or are you planning to hold my head underwater instead?”“And risk getting this shirt wet?” Purdey teased, tugging the curtain shut. “I’ll leave you to soak your head. And the rest of you.”“Thanks ever so.”Purdey stood grinning for a moment, the bit of levity welcome after the strain of the past few days. She stood there, listening to the water pattering down in the shower, and debated, briefly, what to do next. In the end, there was no real question about where she wanted to be. Without hesitating further, she quickly undressed, then pushed aside the curtain. She felt Gambit’s eyes on her as she settled into the space between his outstretched legs, felt his grin long before she met his gaze.“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he quipped.“If that’s your attitude, I’ll be happy to leave again.”“On second thought, I’d like the company.” “I thought you might.”“Don’t know that I’m much up for conversation, though,” Gambit warned. “I’ve talked myself hoarse.”“That’s all right,” Purdey said brightly, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I’m quite capable of having a whole conversation all on my own.”“Don’t I know it,” Gambit said fondly, leaning back against the tile and letting the water wash over him as Purdey’s words—on everything from ancient philosophy to the merits of marshmallows—did the same. He felt peace.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit followed the line of the light as it glided serenely across the ceiling of his flat. He’d been awake for at least two hours that he knew of. He hadn’t wanted to risk checking his watch too often for fear of waking Purdey. She’d been so worried about his well-being that he had the feeling she hadn’t paid much attention to her own health. Consequently, while he’d spent the past two days doing nothing but sleep and recuperate, he now felt so well-rested that he wasn’t tired anymore, whereas Purdey was sleeping the sleep of the completely exhausted, unmoving and deep. Truth be told, that wasn’t the only reasons that Gambit didn’t want to disturb her. His other reason was rather more selfish on both their parts, but given everything the pair of them had been through, he rather thought they were entitled to a bit of self-indulgence. Purdey being asleep was only part of the equation. It was how she was asleep that mattered. The past two days had seemed like an eternity of Purdey being afraid to touch him for fear of hurting him due to his various and myriad injuries. But in her unconscious state, she was able to forget her worries and concentrate on what she wanted. And what she wanted, if the way her body was currently pressed against his was any indication, was to feel him, to glean the comfort that only physical closeness could bring. Given that they’d dried themselves after coming out of the shower and immediately climbed into bed, that physical contact was very intimate indeed. The skin on skin contact, with Purdey’s silky smooth flesh pressed to his, was soothing him in ways that even the shower couldn’t, calming the depths of his soul, infusing him with serenity. As he laid there, watching her peaceful features, her chest gently rising and falling, he knew, without a shadow of a doubt that, despite everything that was happening, he was a lucky man.He took a moment, while he was free of Purdey’s worried gaze, to give himself a once-over. He found the shower had done its work in more ways than one; the steam had made him sweat and, as a result, it had hurried along the healing of the bruises, his body taking up the old blood and leaving behind slightly discoloured blotches that were infinitely less visible than they had been. The heat of the water, in combination with the steam, had also finally, blessedly, unknotted some of the worse knots in his muscles, ironing away the aches and pains in the process. Between that, a good night’s sleep, and the close company of the woman he loved, Gambit felt stronger than he had in some time. He only hoped that Purdey would recognise that strength, too, so she would believe him when he insisted he would be all right if he was left alone while she went back to the Ministry. Despite their conversation the previous night, he fully expected her to argue about it when she woke up. Which, if he had his way, wouldn’t be for some time. As if Purdey herself had sensed his wish and wanted to be contrary, she suddenly stirred and opened her eyes. “You should still be sleeping,” was the first thing she said, somewhat accusatorially.“So should you,” Gambit countered neatly. “I might be the invalid, but of the two of us, I’ve had more kip. Which is why I’m all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”“And cheeky,” Purdey added, pouting beautifully. “Mike Gambit, are you telling me I need my beauty sleep?”“Do I look suicidal?” Gambit quipped, earning an elbow to the chest for his trouble. “Anyway, I’ve always said you don’t need a beauty sleep. You’ve always been the most beautiful girl in the world.”“You must be feeling better if you’re up to making shameless attempts to charm me,” Purdey observed, but not before preening slightly. “Is this your way of proving to me that you really are up to being on your own, or are you just trying to stay on my good side?”“Can’t I do both?” Gambit pointed out cheekily. “I have enough charm to go around.”“Yes. More than is good for you sometimes,” Purdey countered knowingly. “All right, I can tell you’re going to be stubborn about me not staying here another day, so I won’t bother arguing with you.”Gambit feigned shock and surprise. “Purdey, not arguing about something? Are you feeling all right? Maybe you do need to stay here and rest up, regain your strength.”“I’m feeling very strong, thank you, Mike Gambit,” Purdey said pertly, sitting up and giving him an imperious look. “And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”Gambit was the picture of innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”Purdey narrowed her eyes. “Either you’re not entirely sure of your charm offensive, or you’re adding a little reverse psychology to the mix in the vain hope that I’ll be so insulted by your insinuation that I’m not up to going to the Ministry, that I’ll leave you here just to prove you wrong.”Gambit grinned up at her unrepentantly. “Is it working?”Purdey’s lips twitched angrily for a moment. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you diversified your tactics, because you really don’t have enough charm to go around.”“Purdey, you cut me to the quick.”“Not deep enough,” Purdey opined, throwing back the sheet and slipping out of the bed. “But you convinced me that you’re going to be all right for the moment, so I’ll leave and set about getting you some intel.”Gambit caught her elbow before she could slip away. “You do know that it’s not that I want you to go,” he murmured softly, all teasing past. “But it will be better for us both if you’re not here for much longer.”“I know,” she confirmed with a sigh, leaning backward on the bed until she could reach his mouth with hers, tipping her head back to give him a quick kiss. Then she slid out of the bed, intentionally forgoing donning any sort of covering for her naked body, and padded toward the hallway that connected the living area to the bathroom and bedroom, where Gambit’s closet was located. She felt Gambit’s eyes on her nude form as she went, and basked in his gaze. It was one type of intimacy that they hadn’t been able to properly share over those past few days, and it was one that she was sorely missing. When Gambit was healed, and the crisis was over, Purdey promised herself that they would make up for lost time. “Do you think our friends are still lurking outside?” she called as she flung open the closet doors and slid out one of the drawers that were built into the space.“They definitely were when I got up at half past three to go to the loo,” Gambit called back. “If they’re willing to sleep deprive themselves on my account, then I don’t see them wandering off for a cup of coffee.”“What a pity,” Purdey lamented, rifling through the drawer for a bra and panties. “They could have brought you some and saved me having to wrestle with your coffeemaker.”“I told you, it’s all in the wrist,” Gambit bellowed good-humouredly. “It’s not hard when you get the hang of it.”“I think it’s a sign from the universe that I’m right to loathe the stuff,” Purdey asserted, sliding her drawer closed and opening the one below it to reveal a clutch of Gambit’s socks. She rested a hand almost reverently on them. There was something about having her clothes and Gambit’s in such close proximity that she found comforting, the shared space for their clothing speaking to the relatively recent deepening of their intimacy. Then she delved her hand into the mass of balled cotton and felt her fingers close around the familiar shape of a Smith and Wesson. One of Gambit’s many secreted guns was still where it ought to be. She breathed a small sigh of relief. If she was gone, and something happened, he might need it. It eased the tense, coiled ball in her stomach a fraction to know that it was there if the situation called for it.“You get the hang of the taste, too,” Gambit offered. “Eventually. Once you’ve drunk it from all over the world, you start to be able to sort the good from the bad.”“Or irretrievably damage your palate so that you can’t tell the difference,” Purdey parried effortlessly, straightening up and letting her eyes drift up the shelves of pajamas, still sealed in their plastic wrap, the fruits of who knew how many birthdays, Christmases, and any other holiday that entailed a gift, all courtesy of the same aunt who still dutifully sent yet another pair to the nephew that she knew very well had no intention of wearing them, probably much to her dismay. An aunt wanted to take him to live with her, Purdey remembered, wondering if they were one and the same woman. The recurring present certainly had a maternal touch to it, as though the woman were trying to make up in adulthood for what she hadn’t been able to achieve when Gambit was a child.
“You and Steed have been gossiping about my taste in wine again, haven’t you?” Gambit accused without heat, as Purdey beat a path from closet to bathroom to retrieve the clothes she’d discarded the night before. They were sitting in an untidy heap on the loo, mixed in with his own clothes, the ones that she’d stripped off of him so he could get in the shower.
“It’s not exactly top secret that you’re quite content to sample some of the more colourful brands,” she replied, gathering the garments up and carrying them along with her fresh underwear back to the living area, where she dumped the lot on Gambit’s bed.
“I’m flexible,” Gambit said blithely. “That’s all.”
“Yes, I know,” Purdey said lightly. “But you don’t always bend the right way.” She left Gambit to ponder the implications of that statement and turned her attention to the clothes. “I’m not sure which will look worse,” she considered as she started sorting through them. “If I leave your flat wearing something that’s already been worn, or something new.”
Gambit was sitting up and leaning against the pillows with one arm tucked behind his head, looking for all the world like a cat lounging in a sunbeam. “I like what you’re wearing now,” he purred, eyes flicking appreciatively up and down her nude form.
“That is one of the least surprising things I’ve heard in a very long time,” Purdey said dryly, regarding Gambit from beneath hooded eyes. “But aside from making me rather cold, I don’t think it’ll help your cause if I’m arrested for indecent exposure.”
“No one could call your figure indecent,” Gambit opined, voice a rich roll of velvet that seemed to swath her naked frame and protect it from the cold. “If they did, they should be charged for insanity.”
Purdey chucked as she slipped her panties on. “It’d surprise our friends outside, at the very least. Maybe they’d leave out of sheer panic.”
“Over what? The fear that I’d come out in the raw next?” Gambit joked, and earned an uproarious laugh from Purdey, her shaking sides making it hard to fasten her bra.
“Now that I would pay to see,” she declared, fishing her skirt out of the pile of garments and turning to sit on the edge of the bed to put it on.
“Turn around and I’ll give you a free preview,” Gambit murmured, shifting position so he could crawl up behind her and press a kiss to her still mostly-bare shoulder.
“Your generousity knows no bounds,” Purdey mused wryly, but she reached up and around to press a hand to his cheek as he rested his chin on her shoulder. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” she asked softly, savouring the way his nose nuzzled his cheek.
“I’ll be all right,” Gambit promised, craning around enough to give her a kiss. “I’m flirting, aren’t I? Even Kendrick wouldn’t deny that that’s a foolproof proof diagnostic method where I’m concerned.”
“As much as I hate to admit it, you make a good point,” Purdey sighed, smiling fondly at him before breaking away to reach for her shirt. “The way you’ve been looking at me is another encouraging indicator.”
“I appreciate you, that’s all,” Gambit murmured, rubbing the small of her back with a comfortingly-warm hand.
“Including in the all-together,” Purdey quipped, shooting him a look over her shoulder before she pulled her sweater over her head. “Although I must confess, you’re the only man I’ve ever known to be as interested in a woman putting her clothes on as taking them off.”
“If you can’t appreciate a girl no matter what she’s doing, there’s something wrong,” Gambit pronounced, gaze following Purdey as she sat up and started searching the floor for her shoes. “That’s always been my motto.”
“One of several, I’d hazard,” Purdey predicted knowingly. “Along with never miss an opportunity to tell a bad joke, and always be conveniently AWOL when it’s time for your medical.”
Gambit ducked his head in graceful acknowledgment of the facts as they were put to him. “If you don’t have more than a few words to live by, you’re probably not going to live very long,” he defended unconcernedly.
“In that case,” Purdey began, fishing her shoes out from under the bed, “I’d like to add a few more.” She left the shoes for a moment, choosing instead to kneel on the bed, framed Gambit’s face with her hands. “Don’t do anything to make the woman who loves you very, very angry, including getting yourself killed.”
Gambit searched her face and could see the worry there, the fear and trepidation, but the strength, too, and the fierceness, the complete and total unwillingness to give up the fight, and the expectation that he would follow suit. No arguments. No surrender.
“I promise,” he vowed, quite seriously, “to do everything I can to stay alive for as long as possible.”
It wasn’t a promise that nothing would happen to him, and she knew it. Gambit would never make a promise that he couldn’t be absolutely certain he could keep. But it was a promise that he would do everything in his power to stay alive, and that was enough.
“Good boy,” she whispered, and kissed him fiercely as if to seal the deal, felt Gambit’s hands grip her waist as he kissed back just as fervently. She broke away finally, eventually, with obvious reluctance, keeping her hand on his cheek for as long as possible, until she’d crawled off the mattress and had to let him go. “I’ll ring you at the Ministry,” she promised, tugging her boots on hurriedly. “And I’ll come back after work. And I’ll make sure Steed drops in, too. And if something happens in-between check-ins, ring someone,” she finished sternly, in a voice that brooked no argument. She straightened up and put hands on hips, staring imperiously down at him. “Don’t try to solve all your problems on your own, and definitely don’t discount anything that seems odd. Our friends down there might be rather intrusive, but at least we know if you get their attention, they’ll come running. I’d rather they over-intrude than find your body. Is that understood?”
Gambit gave her an elaborate navy salute, which rather lost some of its gravitas when he was still lying in bed with no shirt on, but he made up for it in cheekiness. “Aye, aye, ma’am. I’m more afraid of what you’ll do if I don’t than anything they might do to me, anyway.”
“Flatterer,” Purdey trilled, turning toward the door, fluffing her hair as she went. “Now let’s see if our friends outside are convinced by my self-sacrificing, careworn aesthetic.” She smoothed her creased clothes meaningfully. “I have clothes that look like they’ve been slept in and hair that sticks up. If I manage a suitably weary walk, I just might pull it off.”
“I know you will,” Gambit praised, nodding toward the window. “Make it a good performance. I’ll be watching out the window.”
“Of course you will,” Purdey said coyly, giving him a cheeky wave in her wake. “Get a good seat. All dancers like to have an appreciative audience.”
vvv
Later that morning, John Steed eased Gambit’s flat door open with great care, eyes ever-vigilant for what he might find within. “Gambit?” he called, setting a tentative foot inside. The flat was, as far as he could tell, uninhabited, but Steed knew from long years in the field that looks could be deceiving. He spotted an abandoned coffee cup on the kitchen counter and moved toward it, picked it up and sniffed the contents. Gambit’s usual blend, but this time left, rather churlishly, half-undrunk, which was a crime in Steed’s view given the quality of that particular blend. Steed set the glass down and cast another look around the flat. The acrid smell of chemicals reached his nose, stinging his sinuses, and he snorted slightly as he whirled around looking for the source. His attention settled on Gambit’s darkroom, the door of which was firmly shut, but the small cracks around the edges were more than enough to let the scent escape. “Gambit?” he repeated, creeping toward the door.
Without warning, the door swung open, and Gambit emerged, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, wiping his hands on a chemical-soaked rag. “Sorry, Steed. I didn’t hear you come in,” he apologised. “I was going mad lying around and developed some film I’ve been meaning to get to.”
Steed’s smile was relieved. “No harm done. I suppose I should have announced myself rather more insistently.”
“I should have heard you regardless,” Gambit admitted, somewhat sheepishly. “I keep expecting someone to break the door down at any minute. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”
Steed nodded in approval. “Your instincts are serving you well. You’re right to tread carefully, not only because of Miss Thyme, but Larry’s people. No one will confirm anything to me directly, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Larry’s been given an even broader remit for his investigation than we previously thought.”
Gambit left off wiping his hands to grin ruefully at his friend. “Don’t I know it. I’ve been checking for bugs in here every day since this whole ordeal got started.”
Steed nodded in pleased agreement, set his bowler and umbrella on the kitchen counter and gave the flat another once-over, now that he was no longer distracted by the prospect of enemy agents leaping out of the shadows. He noted the results of Gambit’s recent bout of home improvement with a raised eyebrow. “I see you’ve been busy, even before you were grabbed. Purdey told me you were making the most of your imposed vacation before it was so rudely interrupted.”
Gambit snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Steed smiled knowingly. “I’ve never been particularly good at being relegated to the sidelines, either,” he confessed, allowing an amused furrow to crease his brow. “How are you feeling, physically?”
“I wish people would quit asking me that,” Gambit said wearily, tossing the rag carelessly onto his tabletop. “I’m battered and bruised, but mostly annoyed. I’m stuck waiting for the next attack with no recourse and hardly any allies.” He smiled tightly. “Present company excepted.”
Steed returned the smile. “And Purdey, of course.” He cast around vaguely. “Where is Purdey, if you don’t mind my asking? I thought the pair of you were going to stick together for safety?”
“I sent her back to work,” Gambit informed. “It was going to look strange to our people outside if she hung about my flat all day, since I’m not injured enough to justify protection, and we’re trying to keep as much of what we’re up to under our hats as possible. She went back to her flat to get ready.”
Steed sucked his teeth. “I’ll keep this brief, then. I’d like to intercept her before someone else at the Ministry does.”
Gambit paled noticeably beneath the bruises. “What have you heard?”
“O’Hara’s been talking,” Steed said grimly. “Or rather, he finally decided to say something worth hearing. And they’re listening very closely, I assure you.”
Gambit squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for bad news. “What’s he saying?”
“That Larry’s right,” Steed said flatly. “That you and Vanessa Thyme are in league with one another. That you’ve been working together selling secrets for years. That everything that has happened thus far has been a way of disguising your relationship.”
Gambit swore. “I knew it! I knew you rescuing me so easily was too good to be true.” He ran a hand through his hair in aggravation. “They’ve set me up, and they’re trying to turn everyone against me. They’re going to use my own reputation as a bargaining chip.” He clenched his jaw tightly, resigned to his fate. “I’ll be in a cell before the day is out. Only question is who puts me there: Vanessa or Larry.”
“Perhaps not today, but I agree wholeheartedly. The situation is less than ideal,” Steed replied matter-of-factly. “But I think it’s high time you took a more active role in the proceedings. Tell me, assuming you were able to move freely, do you think you could find Thyme, perhaps nip this whole situation in the bud?”
Gambit nodded. “Yeah. Or maybe draw her out.” He straightened up slightly and flattened his hands against the surface of the counter. “Something. Anything’s better than waiting for the axe to fall.”
“Indisputably.” Steed sounded quite cheerful. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
Gambit blinked. “How do you work that out? I’m being investigated and watched. I can’t track Thyme down with half the intelligence service trailing after me.”
“Precisely. You need to be on your own. And you will be.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at Gambit’s lips. “What are you planning?”
Steed smiled enigmatically. “I have it on good authority that, very soon, Larry will report the findings of his investigation to McKay. As your superior, I’ve asked to sit in on the meeting. I hate to be pessimistic, but I suspect that it won’t be good news, and when Larry has said his piece, someone will come to arrest you. I think there will be a small window between the report and the arrest when I can arrange for your watchers to be called off. I’ll get a message to you when that is. That’ll be your cue to run.”
Gambit nodded, unquestioning. “How will it get here?”
“Probably via Purdey.”
“She’s not going to like that,” Gambit said knowingly. “And she really won’t like us scheming without her.”
Steed shook his head. “It’s not her decision. If she won’t do it, I’ll find someone else. But this is your past and your life on the line. We already know what she’ll say—she wants to keep you where she can see you, protect you. It’s admirable, but we can’t keep you safe by hiding you away. If she was here, I know she might persuade you to try to clear your name at the Ministry, in person. But you need to make this decision with a clear head, not based on what Purdey wants. You have to be selfish for once.”
Gambit’s jaw was working, but Steed could tell he was going to make the right choice. “All right,” he said finally. “But she needs to be told, for her own safety as much as anything. I’ll tell her when she visits me tonight.”
“I can relieve you of that particular chore,” Steed offered. “I’ll take her out for dinner and put her in the loop. She may be more amenable to the idea if she feels that the decision’s been taken out of both of your hands. We can discuss strategy without worrying about listening ears, and it’ll look less like the pair of you are cooking up some grand scheme. That is, if you don’t mind spending an evening alone.”
Gambit shook his head. “I’ll be all right. Thanks, Steed.”
“Excellent.” Steed retrieved his bowler and brolly and moved for the door, resting a hand on Gambit’s shoulder as he passed. “We’ll find a way through this one way or another.”
Gambit’s smile was uneasy. “I hope so,” was all he said.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was late that same evening when a solitary figure stole through the night, gaining entry into Gambit’s building through the back entrance. It was locked, of course, but the individual made quick work of the lock with a small tool, manipulating it with the ease of a professional. As the door swung open, the light within threw a decidedly feminine silhouette into sharp relief. The figure looked left and right, seeking out any observers, before stealing inside and closing the door softly behind her.In the dimly lit stairwell, the woman, swathed in a long coat, deftly made her way upstairs, barely touching each step as she ascended. She quickly reached the top floor—Gambit’s floor--without incident, and opened the door that led out into the corridor. There, she made her way, quite purposefully, to Gambit’s flat, taking care not to let her face be seen by any of the other tenants, in the unlikely event that they were stationed by their keyholes at midnight. Gambit’s flat was at the end of the hall, and the woman produced another piece of metal from her pocket, used it on the lock to gain silent, smooth entry to the flat. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind her, sealing herself off from the outside world in the process.The flat was pitch black inside, all lights extinguished with the curtains drawn tightly against even the artificial illumination provided by the streetlights. The woman hesitated for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark, but was otherwise unfazed by her surroundings. In fact, the cover of darkness suited her purposes perfectly. She had chosen that late hour to make her move for a reason, after all.It only took a minute for her vision to adjust, and when it did, she could see the outlines of the furniture, the contours of the room, and, most importantly, the lump lying in the middle of the retracted bed. She moved silently, purposefully toward it. The lump, also known as the sleeping Gambit, was dead to the world, completely oblivious to the fact that someone was moving toward him as he lay there, completely vulnerable, at the mercy of his visitor. The figure stopped short of the bed, watched him sleep for a moment. Then slowly, inexorably, she reached for him, fingers splayed and straining for his head. Her fingertips brushed against his temple, moving some hair out of the way, and it was at that moment that Gambit’s eyes snapped open and he knew that he wasn’t alone.“Shh,” Purdey hushed, leaning down before he could make a noise so he could see her profile in the dark. “It’s me.”Gambit let out a long breath in relief. “Where did you come from?”“Dinner with Steed,” came the reply, as Purdey straightened up and started to unbutton her jacket. Gambit could hear the hiss of the buttons passing through fabric and the rustle of the garment sliding off her shoulders. “I thought he told you.”“Oh, right,” Gambit said thickly, rousing slightly from his slumber. “How was it?”“It was dinner with Steed,” Purdey said flatly, as though that explained everything. “The restaurant was excellent, and the conversation was of the same standard.”“I’m almost sorry I asked,” Gambit said dryly. “Speaking of being sorry,” Purdey continued, with a strangely cheerful inflection to her voice. Gambit wished he could see her face so he could read her expression. “Were you going to tell me Tommy O’Hara had accused you of being in league with Vanessa Thyme, and that you`re planning to go on the run the moment Larry finds a way to arrest you for it? Or were you planning on leaving it up to Steed to drop it casually into conversation?”Gambit groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Steed came by after you were gone. I would have told you, but he said he would.”“And the decision to run was made on the spot, as soon as Steed suggested it, I suppose?” Purdey asked, not bothering to hide the annoyance in her voice.“Steed said I should make that decision on my own,” Gambit justified. “He said you’d try to talk me out of it.”Gambit could almost hear the incredulous eyebrow being arched. “And you thought he was right?” “Steed’s the expert in surviving when the chips are down and your own side turns against you,” Gambit said reasonably. “This sort of thing’s happened to him enough times.” He let his arms flop onto the bed in defeat. “All I seem to do these days is give you more things to worry about. By leaving you out of just one conversation, you got a reprieve from the whole mess for a day.”“But you wouldn’t have disappeared without telling me? You would have told me everything?” Purdey pressed, sounding worried. “If Steed hadn’t interceded?”“You know I would. To be honest, I wish this whole damn thing hadn’t happened and I didn’t have to tell anyone anything. But I don’t seem to be getting any of my wishes granted, so yes, I would have told you. Steed said he’d do it over dinner and save me being the bearer of more bad news. That’s the only reason you didn’t hear it from me.”“All right.” Purdey seemed satisfied with that explanation, reassured that Gambit wasn’t intent on keeping her out of the loop indefinitely, and her tone softened. “Any other new developments you’d like to share while we’re on the topic?”“No more catastrophes or threats to life and limb,” Gambit said wryly. “But I’m sure another crisis will come along if you wait long enough.”“You do seem to attract them,” Purdey agreed, and Gambit heard more rustling of clothes followed by a pair of gentle ‘thunks’ as she removed her shoes and let them fall to the floor. Gambit reached for the light switch on the bed’s control panel, but Purdey’s hand shot out with surprising speed and accuracy given the lack of light. “No, don’t do that. They’ll want to know why you’re up, and then they’ll catch me when I leave again. I was lucky to get in unseen.”“All right,” Gambit relented, returning to his repose. “Thought you could use some light, that’s all.”“No need. My night vision is excellent,” Purdey declared, and Gambit felt the bed sag as she planted one knee on the mattress and climbed onto the bed.“I thought you were leaving,” he teased.“Then you weren’t paying attention. I didn’t say when I was leaving.” Gambit could hear the coy smile in Purdey’s voice, which was somehow even sexier than being able to see it. He felt her shift to straddle his hips. “Unless, of course, you’d rather be left on your own?”Gambit grinned, knew that Purdey would be able to hear the humour in his voice just as he could hear it in hers. “You just want me to say I missed you.”“Well, it wouldn’t hurt,” Purdey said pertly, leaning down to kiss him. Gambit could feel her hands on his chest, fingers caressing the bare flesh, and didn’t bother to suppress the shiver of desire that rippled through him, knew it would travel through Purdey’s frame in turn.“Then I missed you,” Gambit confessed, hands finding her waist in the dark, registering her elevated breathing through the swell of her ribs.“Good,” Purdey pronounced, kissing him again before running her hand over his skin diagnostically. “Does this hurt, given your recent pounding?” “Definitely not.” Her lips were soft and full, and Gambit could feel them capture his, surrounding his top one and tugging gently on it, then releasing it to turn her attentions to the bottom lip. Gambit kissed back, deepening it, mouth sinking into hers. He could feel their breaths intermingling, realised that the lack of vision was heightening his other senses, and was proving rather delicious indeed. Eventually, Purdey said, “Then I will stay. You’ve persuaded me.”“I thought you’d already decided?”“Mike Gambit, I’m not going to stay where I’m not wanted,” Purdey teased, and Gambit shook his head slightly in disbelief.“I don’t think there’s anywhere you’re not wanted.”“You might be surprised.”“Well, you’re always welcome wherever I am,” Gambit vowed. “And if you’re staying, we may as well make you more comfortable.” He slid a hand up the back of her dress, registered the nap of the fabric. The slick texture of silk met his fingertips, thin ridges suggesting a darted waist. There was also an invisible zipper running up from the waist to the nape of her neck, and Gambit allowed his fingers to leave the fabric and brush over the bit of flesh at the top of the zipper before burying themselves in her blonde hair. He heard Purdey gasp a little at his featherlight touch, and didn’t bother to contain his smile. After all, Purdey couldn’t see him.“Don’t be so pleased with yourself, Mike Gambit,” Purdey said on cue, as though she could intuit the uptick in his ego from the ether alone. “After all the trouble I took to get up here, I expect rather more than a mild neck massage.”“When have I ever left you wanting?” Gambit pointed out reasonably, fingers cupping the back of her head, relishing the smoothness of her blonde locks before slowly disentangling himself from the golden strands. He let his fingers trace a path down the back of her neck as it arched luxuriously, eventually catching the zipper between his thumb and forefinger and pulling in one long, leisurely motion. The dress unzipped easily, Purdey letting out a blissful sigh with each inch of exposed flesh. Gambit idly thought that the garment in question might be a pink number that Purdey had worn once or twice to the office, but found its aesthetics suddenly didn’t matter when he reached the end of the zipper and his hands were free to explore the flesh beneath. He used both hands to draw the two halves of the fabric apart, slid the garment over her shoulders and down her arms. His thumbs skimmed over her skin as he went, mapping out the curve of the muscles in her biceps and forearms. She was an athletic work of art, even in the dark, strong and sensual, poised and vulnerable. She pulled her arms from the sleeves, let the dress pool around her waist, half-on, half-off. Gambit knew it would be up to him to deal with the other half, but there was other, more pressing business to attend to first. His hands travelled up her front this time, skimming over her stomach to cup her breasts through the fabric of her bra. He felt the roughness of lace against his palms, and Purdey arched into his touch. Then he slid his hands around to her back, unfastened the garment in one smooth motion and let it slide down her arms, before replacing the absent scrap of fabric with his own hands…Later, as they lay in one another’s arms, and after their heartrates had settled down, Purdey’s voice broke the silence that had settled over the flat in the intervening minutes. “I should go.”Gambit smiled slightly, even though he knew it was much too dark for Purdey to see it. “I thought that was my line.”“You were right last time,” Purdey said simply, propping herself up on one elbow. “Much as I hate to admit it. I’m not going to do a very good job of sneaking back out of this building after the sun’s come up.”Gambit groaned. “I wish you didn’t have to sneak at all. I’m sick of feeling useless, and I’m sick of everyone else having to do all the work to keep me out of trouble.”“You’re not useless,” Purdey assured, quite seriously. “We’re keeping you in reserve, that’s all. Until the right moment.”“You mean when they come to arrest me.” Gambit’s tone was decidedly unoptimistic.“Mike, what have I told you about negative thinking?” Purdey chastised gently.“Nothing that’s made me alter my mindset, sadly,” came the glum response. “Gambit, if this is your way of persuading me to stay with you, it’s having the opposite effect.” Purdey sounded annoyed. The way she shifted on the bed matched the sentiment.Gambit sighed and sat up himself, scrubbed his hands over his face. “Sorry,” he tried. “I’m just—I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”“Not much longer,” Purdey promised, reaching a hand out into the blackness and feeling around for him. She found his chest and homed in on his heart, felt the slightly elevated rhythm as it danced beneath her palm. “I can feel it, and so can Steed.”“Then it must be true.” Gambit sounded weary, but a little less depressed. His hand covered hers and gave it a squeeze. “I hope we’ll be ready.”“We will,” Purdey declared, using her first hand as a guide to send a second out in search of his head. She found his cheek and the rough scrape of stubble that came with it, persuaded him to turn toward her as she navigated her way through the murkiness for a kiss. They wound up bumping noses, but there was something tantalising about their lips having to ghost over one another’s faces on a quest to ultimately meet. Which they did, with great success, and Purdey could feel the heat radiating off of Gambit as his mouth conveyed things it never could with words. Purdey was left breathing hard, intoxicated and unwilling to break away. It was as though Gambit was determined to make sure that every one of their liaisons mattered, that they make the most of every second, lest they never get another chance to repeat it. Purdey was equally determined to make sure that wouldn’t be the case, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t enjoying herself in the process.When she finally broke away, she felt the warmth and the fizz of electricity that passed between them tingle throughout her body. Eventually, Gambit said,” I thought you were leaving?”“A moment ago, you didn’t want me to leave.” Purdey flung back the covers and slipped gracefully through the dark onto the floor. “You’re very indecisive.”“Well, you are the expert.” Purdey could hear the tongue-in-cheek note in his voice and aimed a look at where she estimated he was in the gloom, just for the satisfaction, even if he couldn’t see it.“If this is reverse psychology, it’s not having the desired effect,” she added, bending to retrieve her discarded clothes. “How do you know? Maybe I’m trying to get you to do the opposite of what you think I want you to do.” Gambit was teasing her now, seeming to have forgotten, for the moment, the reality of their predicament. It was good for Purdey’s soul to engage in some good old-fashioned banter, without any of the baggage, and she had a feeling Gambit was finding it equally beneficial.“Reverse reverse psychology?” she quipped, considering the idea as she tugged on her undergarments. “That seems rather ambitious for you at this time of night.”“I’m my most ambitious at night,” Gambit replied wickedly, and Purdey swore the saucy smoulder she knew was in his eyes momentarily lit up the darkness. “Or haven’t you noticed?”“I’ve noticed several things about you at night,” Purdey replied coquettishly, picking up her dress and shimmying into it in a way that she suspected Gambit might appreciate, if only he had the light to see it. “But if I’m going to leave before sunrise, I don’t have time to list them.”“Pity,” Gambit said with a tinge of regret. “We’ll have to save that for later.”“Will we?” Purdey said lightly. “We’ll see about that.” She zipped up her dress as if to punctuate the point, then picked up her stockings and started to pull them up her legs.“I hope so,” Gambit murmured, suddenly sounding deflated, as though reality had come knocking at the door. “If we get the chance.”Purdey’s hands froze on her stocking momentarily, before she started pulling it up a little quicker than she’d intended. “Of course we will. Why wouldn’t we?”“You know why.” Gambit’s voice was grim now, and Purdey could imagine his jaw tightening up again.Purdey quickly put on her other stocking and returned to the bed, crawling to his side and feeling around for his hand, grasped it tightly. “It’s going to be all right,” she vowed.Gambit’s hand felt shaky in hers. “How do you know?”“Because I’ve decided,” Purdey said firmly. “You put a lot of stock in keeping your promises, Mike Gambit. I’m going to make one of my own. This will work out. Whatever happens. I promise you.”She detected movement nearby, as though Gambit was shaking his head. “How can you promise that?”“You promise things like this all the time,” Purdey pointed out. “And you haven’t let me down once. Now I’m returning the favour.” She stared very hard into the gloom, as though she could will the ability to see Gambit’s face in the dark. “Do you trust me?”“Of course I trust you.” The answer came automatically, and he seemed to realise she was serious. She felt some of the tension leave his hand. “Thank you, Purdey-girl.”Purdey embraced him. Later, after she’d put on her shoes and coat, as she crept out of Gambit’s building and onto the street, taking care not to be seen, the enormity of what she just promised sank in. She’d meant every word of it. Now she had to find a way to see it through.vvv“Now then Tommy, what’s this all about?” Steed wanted to know, as he was ushered into McKay’s inner sanctum by the man’s secretary. It had been two days since O’Hara’s accusations, but Steed had no doubt this meeting was the culmination of everything that had unfolded in the Vanessa Thyme affair thus far. Still, it never did to tip one’s hand before it was strictly necessary. “It sounded terribly urgent.”“It is.” The voice wasn’t McKay’s, but Larry’s. Steed glanced to his right and saw the man standing just to the side of the door, hands in pockets. “I’ve turned my report in to McKay.”“Oh?” Steed didn’t seem too enlightened by this intelligence, which was his intention. “Which one would that be, if I might ask?”“You know as well as anyone that he’s been investigating Vanessa Thyme’s sudden appearance in the country, and her connection to Gambit,” McKay elucidated. Steed nodded, and took a seat. “Yes, of course, but I don’t see why you’ve brought me in. I thought I was persona non grata due to the company I kept.” He cast a meaningful glance at Larry.“It isn’t just that she slipped the net of our surveillance people, and had Gambit in custody for just over twenty-four hours,” Larry explained. “It’s not even what O’Hara told us during interrogation. It’s what I’ve uncovered in the course of my investigations.”Steed arched an eyebrow. “Do tell.”“I have evidence that Gambit and Thyme have been colluding,” Larry said forcefully, as though daring Steed to contradict him.Steed smiled, but there was ice in it. “I find that rather difficult to believe given their history.”“Maybe according to the version of history you’ve been given,” Larry said ominously. He picked up a file from McKay’s sideboard and handed it to Steed. “We wanted to see if Thyme had been in contact with Gambit before she resurfaced a few weeks ago.”Steed opened the file and skimmed the contents. “Surely he’d say something if he had?”“You’d hope so,” Larry said bitterly. “But that depends on what his motivations are, and what I’ve discovered suggests they’re not as pure as he’d like to make out.”Steed furrowed his brow as he digested the file’s contents. “Swiss bank accounts?”Larry nodded in satisfaction. “It took some digging and a lot of paperwork to find out who they belonged to, but they’re definitely in Gambit’s name, going back several years to his time in Africa. The last deposit was made the day Thyme entered the country.”Steed eyed Larry sceptically. “And we’re only learning about them now? Doesn’t that seem rather convenient?”“Convenient? We had to dig for weeks to come up with that lead, and we never would have come across it at all if we hadn’t been looking into Thyme. Gambit could easily have kept them under wraps for who knows how long. After all, he’s done a good job of it so far.”Steed closed the file, tapped the cardboard thoughtfully with his middle finger. “I rather pride myself on reading people, and I quite honestly don’t see Gambit as the type to turn traitor just for larger paycheque.”“Perhaps you don’t know him as well as you think,” Larry argued. “Maybe Thyme conditioned him when she had him in custody, or maybe he got a taste for serving the black market instead of his country in his mercenary days. He didn’t make a secret of how unhappy he was with how he was being used. Stands to reason he’d try to go into business for himself. But that’s not the only black mark against him. Those papers Thyme is supposedly after? They concern a rather important scientific discovery with huge defence implications. Gambit was supposed to bring them back to his handlers. But when he escaped his imprisonment, he swore he never managed to lay his hands on them. But they never resurfaced. If Thyme had them, she would have put them on the market right away, but she didn’t. But if Gambit had them…” He let the sentence hang.Steed frowned incredulously. “You’re suggesting that Gambit plans to sell them now? After all this time?”“Why not? He’s kept his nose clean long enough. Maybe he’s been biding his time and doing smaller deals until he thinks it’s safe to cash in his chips.” Larry pointed to the file in Steed’s hands. “On top of the bank accounts, we’ve also found reservations for plane and train tickets to several destinations over the next few days, all in his name. And there’s a rather long list of occasions where his whereabouts were unaccounted for, including instances where he accessed Ministry resources. Those could all suggest possible deals or meetings with contacts. He might have been planning this sale for years, and heaven knows how many others he’s put together using the information he’s gathered while working here.” Larry leaned forward, regarding Steed intently, trying to make him see his point of view. “After all this time, he’s ready to sell the papers and get out of our business, and Thyme has come along to help broker the deal. That was why she took him. It was a planning session. Tommy O’Hara’s confirmed it.”“And we all know how frightfully honest he is,” Steed sardonically. “Mr. O’Hara’s trustworthiness aside, it still seems an awful lot of trouble to throw us off one deal, no matter how lucrative. It would have been extremely risky for him to undertake anything of the sort while employed with our department.”“Hiding in plain sight?” Larry offered. “Come on, Steed. We’ve seen it before. Anyway, don’t you think it at least merits bringing him in?”“That depends on what your definition of ‘bringing him in’ entails,” Steed qualified, looking to McKay. “You’ve been awfully quiet, Tommy. Do you believe Larry’s version of events, or is this conversation meant to help you work out the merits of both sides?”McKay sighed and leaned forward in his chair. “Look, Steed, I don’t particularly like it, either, but Larry does make some good points, and there is good reason to believe that Gambit has not been entirely forthcoming about everything that’s gone on in his past.”Steed arched an eyebrow in alarm. “And that’s reason enough to arrest him?”“Not arrest,” McKay corrected. “Take into custody, for his own safety as much as anything with Thyme still at large. At least until we have some answers.”“I can see you haven’t wasted any time in rationalising,” Steed replied, with a hint of recrimination. “And I’m sure Larry will be entirely even-handed in his treatment of Gambit while he’s in ‘custody’?”“I know how to handle him,” Larry said, with no small amount of pride. “He can answer our questions—all of them—and we can decide how to proceed from there.”Steed regarded him knowingly. “You clearly didn’t call me in here to ask for my opinion on the matter,” he surmised, turning back to McKay. “I must be here for some other reason.” He cocked his head. “It wouldn’t be so that you can keep me from potentially warning Gambit that you’ve set the bloodhounds on him, would it?”“You and Purdey,” Larry cut in, saving McKay the bother of replying. “She’s been called in, too. As soon as she’s here, we’re going to go get Gambit. It’s for your own good as much as his.”Steed raised his eyebrows disingenuously. “Oh, is it? That’s extremely reassuring.”Just outside McKay’s office door, Purdey turned quickly on her heel and strode off down the corridor as fast as she could without drawing attention to herself.vvvPurdey burst into Gambit’s flat, not bothering to knock. There wasn’t time. The man himself was in the kitchen, making coffee. He whirled around at Purdey’s entrance. “Purdey? What--?”“You need to leave. Now,” Purdey cut in, hurrying to his closet.Gambit ran after her, caught up just as she threw the doors open. “What’s going on?” he asked urgently.“McKay’s sending Larry to arrest you,” Purdey said quickly, knowing they didn’t have time for long explanations. “It’s just as we thought. You’re going to have to run now. Steed’s made sure the surveillance team was removed, just as we planned.” She spotted what she was looking for—the overnight bag that every agent had packed and ready to go in case of an emergency trip to who knew where, nestled in the corner behind a row of his boots. She grabbed it and thrust it into his arms. “Steed tried to talk McKay out of it, but Larry’s built enough of a case that he can’t ignore it. They think you’re in league with Thyme. A double agent or something. They’re going to arrest you and probably tear your flat apart, so you need to leave. Now.”Gambit swore and took the bag, opened it and started stuffing extra clothes inside. “You’re sure they won’t know you tipped me off?”“I eavesdropped. They don’t know I was there,” Purdey told him, and Gambit arched an eyebrow at her.“Naughty. But it doesn’t matter. They’ll know it was you, one way or another.” He stopped packing and met her eyes. “You shouldn’t have warned me. They’ll drag you in for questioning in my stead. At best you’ll wind up implicated in helping a fugitive. At worst they’ll charge you as a co-conspirator and throw you in a cell with me.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “This could be the end of your career, Purdey. I can’t let you take that risk. If I stay and take my medicine, they might just let you off with a warning.”Purdey’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I’m implicated whether you go or not,” she argued. “I’m quite literally sleeping with the enemy, and they’ll figure it out eventually. They’ll question me no matter what I do. I may as well make it count.” She snatched the bag from him, searched through it. “You’ll need money, and a passport just in case. Where are they?”Gambit grimaced, but went to an alcove beneath the platform containing his display cases and pulled a panel aside, revealing a small space from which he extracted a wad of bills, a passport, and spare clips of ammo. “This could all blow up in both our faces,” he pointed out as he moved to stuff them in the bag.“That’s why you need to go out there and find Vanessa Thyme,” Purdey said matter-of-factly. “Then we’ll both be all right. McKay will never hold your going on the run against you if you’re innocent. But you can’t prove anything if you’re in a cell, and they’re going to be watching me, so I can’t do it.”“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Gambit said gruffly. “Neither does you winding up in a cell in my place.”“Steed won’t let that happen,” Purdey said confidently, grabbing Gambit’s wallet and gun off the counter. “And anyway, I can take care of myself.” She slid the wallet into his back pocket, and the gun into his holster. “The question is, can you?”“I’ll be all right,” he said with a smile. “And I know you can take care of yourself. I just don’t want to be what you need to protect yourself from. I can live with the consequences of what I’ve done. I can’t live with you suffering for them.”“That’s the thing about partners,” Purdey pointed out, buttoning his jacket for him. “And lovers. You throw your lot in together, for better or for worse.”“We haven’t gotten quite that far yet,” Gambit reminded, picking up on the quoted wedding vows.“But we’ve been through more than most,” Purdey countered softly. “Please, Mike. I know what I’m doing.”“At least one of us does,” Gambit muttered wryly, closing the bag and throwing it over his shoulder. “Are you going to wait for them?”“Yes,” Purdey confirmed. “Anything in the flat I should hide? Evidence that might incriminate you?”Gambit shook his head. “I wasn’t stupid enough to keep anything here. Just don’t let them completely destroy my weapons collection. Took me years to get that lot together. If I don’t get sent to prison, I’d like to have something left intact.”Purdey grinned in spite of herself. “I’ll keep it safe. Anything else?”“Just take care of yourself,” Gambit pleaded, then leaned in and kissed her, hard. She kissed back, threading her fingers into his hair, knowing she might not have an opportunity to do so again for some time. When he broke away, he added, “I’ll be in contact as soon as I can. If you find anything in the meantime, you can tell me then. Otherwise…well, you know what to do.”“I do.” Purdey released him, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do at that moment. She wanted to hang on, tight. But there wasn’t time for sentimentality. They’d wasted enough time as it was.Gambit nodded once, curtly. “Right,” he said and strode for the door. He opened it, allowed himself one last backward glance at her. “Give them hell.”Purdey smiled fiercely. “Mike Gambit, do you know me at all?”Gambit grinned back. “I do,” he confirmed. “Luckily.” And then he was gone. Purdey willed herself not to cry. Then she squared her shoulders, straightened her skirt, sat down on the couch, and started to plan what she would say when Larry arrived.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey didn’t have long to wait after Gambit made his exit. Not twenty minutes had passed before there was a knock on the door. Purdey answered it, if only to save Gambit from having to replace the door after someone broke it down. Larry was on the other side, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “I knew you’d be here,” he accused, dispensing with the niceties.Purdey regarded him coolly. “Did you? I’d never have thought you were psychic, but I suppose we all have hidden talents.”Larry ignored her flippancy. “You were supposed to report to McKay’s office half an hour ago.”Purdey feigned surprise. “Was I? I must not have received that memo.”“You were called. You came here instead.”Purdey shrugged guilelessly. “Can’t have been me. I came here for my lunch break.” She indicated over her shoulder, where the makings of a sandwich were prominently displayed on Gambit’s kitchen counter. “Gambit wasn’t here, but I didn’t think he’d mind if I helped myself.”“You warned him we were coming,” Larry growled.“How could I? I didn’t know you were coming.” Purdey looked over his shoulder at the team of agents assembled behind him. “If I had known you were bringing friends, I would have made more sandwiches.”“This isn’t a joke, Purdey,” Larry warned.“No, it isn’t,” Purdey agreed, expression turning deadly serious. “And as it isn’t a joke, I’m going to tell you, quite seriously, to turn around and tell McKay that Gambit isn’t here.”“I’ll do that, after I’ve finished my business here,” Larry told her, nodding to the men behind him. “Bringing Gambit in was only half the plan. Since he’s not here, we can at least search his flat from top to bottom for whatever else he might bes hiding.”Purdey raised her chin defiantly. “Well, then, I hope you have more than your muscle to back you up. Otherwise you’re not coming past the threshold.”“Oh, we have authorisation,” Larry assured, unfolding a piece of paper from his breast pocket and holding it under Purdey’s nose. “Signed, sealed, and delivered, compliments of McKay.”Purdey read it with a scowl, met Larry’s eyes with a steely gaze. “Don’t expect me to just leave you to it while you tear his flat apart,” she warned.“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Larry said with a smile. “You’re welcome to supervise. Although I’ll be keeping an eye on you, too.”“I expect you will,” Purdey said flatly. “Shall we get on with it? I want to finish my sandwich in peace.”vvv“Hello?”Purdey was kneeling on the floor, gathering up the books that had been unceremoniously tossed from Gambit’s shelves, when the voice startled her to attention, and she looked up to find a woman standing in the flat’s now-open doorway. She was on her feet in an instant. “Who are you? And how did you get in?”The young woman smiled and brandished a slip of silver in her right hand. “I have a key,” she explained. “A key?” Purdey repeated suspiciously, eyeing the woman up as a prospective opponent. With everything going on, strangers letting themselves into Gambit’s flat were definitely not to be trusted. “And where on earth did you get a key to this flat?”“Michael gave it to me,” the woman said simply, tucking the offending object into her shoulder bag. “I take it he didn’t tell you. Although he gave it to me so long ago, maybe he forgot.” She shook her head as if to banish the thought. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re Purdey, aren’t you?”Purdey crossed her arms, now doubly suspicious that the woman knew her name. “That depends on who’s asking.”The woman put a hand to her forehead. “Oh, I’m sorry. What am I thinking of? You must think I’m mad just barging in here.” She took a step forward, hand extended, and Purdey resisted the urge to take a step back. “I’m Sara. Sara Lynley. Michael’s cousin.”“Cousin?” Purdey repeated incredulously. “Gambit’s never mentioned you.” That wasn’t strictly true. Gambit had mentioned an unnamed female cousin who had looked after him when he came back from Africa. But this woman, whoever she was, didn’t know that, and the less Purdey told her, the easier it would be to trip her up if she wasn’t who she said she was.Sara nodded, as though Gambit failing to mention her existence wasn’t a surprise. “He does tend to keep his cards close to his chest where family is concerned. But I promise you he has several cousins, though he’s not close with most of them. Neither am I, for that matter, but we were born months apart so we wound up spending the most time together. He’s the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had.”“Then why hasn’t he mentioned you?” Purdey wanted to know.Sara smirked. “He’s probably terrified that we’ll get on swimmingly and he’ll be even more horribly outmatched than usual. I suspect he’s practising the art of self-preservation.”Purdey suppressed the urge to grin. She was starting to like Sara in spite of herself, but she still had no way of knowing she was who she said she was. “You know I can’t leave it at that.”“Of course you can’t,” Sara agreed, digging into her bag again and extracting a slim leather wallet, which she flipped open to reveal her ID. “Maybe this will help.” She handed it to Purdey. “I’m MI6.”Purdey blanched at the credentials. “MI6?”“Well, you don’t think Michael woke up one morning and thought, ‘I’ll join the Ministry’, do you?” Sara scoffed, taking the ID as Purdey handed it back and tucking it into her bag. “He needed a little gentle steering in the right direction.”“Which you provided?” Purdey surmised. Sara nodded. “I’m sorry, but none of this proves anything. Gambit’s in trouble, and you could be someone hired to earn my trust. You could have been sent by your department to get me to tell you where he is. Not that I know. But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”To her surprise, Sara didn’t look offended, only nodded thoughtfully. “Michael always said you were good. Professionally and, well, just about every other way, really.” She gave her a lopsided smile, and Purdey somehow knew it wasn’t an act. “He really does love you, you know. Desperately. Always has. I was so glad when I heard the two of you had finally worked everything out.” Purdey blinked. “What do you mean, ‘worked out’?”“Oh, come on,” Sara sighed theatrically. “Don’t make me spell it out. No one wants to think about the love lives of their relations, let alone discuss them.”Purdey shook her head in protestation, but she was unsure of how convincing it was. “I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s not true. We’re just friends and colleagues.”“Michael told me,” Sara said simply. “And he might delude himself about some things, but he definitely wasn’t deluded about that. Oh! But it’s still a secret, isn’t it? You haven’t told anyone.”“I thought it was,” Purdey grumbled. “That was supposed to be the plan. We only told Steed a little while ago.”Sara had the decency to blush. “Sorry,” she apologised. “Don’t blame him. He didn’t want to tell me, but, well, I’ve known him all my life, and the second I saw him I knew something was up. The more he denied everything, the more it confirmed it. In the end, he more or less had to tell me to save himself from looking completely ridiculous. He couldn’t come up with a decent lie about it to save his life.” She laughed, but then her smile wavered a little, though her voice stayed steady. “He…he hasn’t always had a lot of happiness in his life. It’s nice to know he’s finally found some.”Purdey swallowed the lump in her throat that had emerged unbidden. “Yes, well, we’ve both come a long way to get to where we are.” She forced herself to remain stonyfaced. “But that still doesn’t prove who you are.”Sara thought for a moment. “He has a scar. Just here.” She drew a line over the top of her scalp. “You’d never know he had it unless you went looking, or were in a position to look.” She eyed Purdey meaningfully. “He got it playing on a bomb site. Some idiot threw a brick at him because Michael beat him in a fight defending one of the smaller kids. He never did get stitches for it, but the hair grew over it, lucky for him. It’s not in his file. I only know about it because I was there.” She opened her hands and held them out to Purdey beseechingly. “How’s that?”Purdey finally allowed herself to relax. She knew the scar, and she knew the story. Gambit had told her one day, after she’d seen it and started asking questions. It was the sort of thing only a family member would know. And in spite of everything that was going on, she wanted to trust Sara. Her instincts told her she could, and Steed always counselled her to follow them. “Thank you,” she said finally, accepting Sara’s story. “I’m sorry, but I had to be certain.”Sara waved the excuse aside. “Of course you did. I would have given you the third degree, too, if Michael hadn’t talked about you forever and a day and shown me a picture of the pair of you. You’d be a very poor agent if you didn’t ask.” Purdey smiled gratefully at her. Now that she knew she wasn’t an enemy, Purdey could assess the woman objectively. It would have been wrong to call Sara Lynley beautiful. Not to say that she was unattractive, not by any stretch of the imagination. But the better word to describe the woman’s features, in Purdey’s eyes, was strong, like Gambit’s own. Aside from the eyes, the most obvious similarity to her cousin was the head of dark curls, pinned back untidily so that more than a few hung loose to frame her face. The skin was quite pale—porcelain, complete with flawless complexion. She was slim in a sturdy sort of way. And tall. A quick glance at the woman’s feet revealed a pair of flats, but she wasn’t suffering much against Purdey’s heels. She was 5’10” at least. The face itself was strong and narrow—thin lips, almond eyes. All topped off with a fairly sharp chin. It was a face built to express disapproval, and express it well. But Sara Lynley was anything but disapproving when she looked at Purdey, and without warning the lips broke into one of the broadest grins Purdey had ever seen—warm and amiable. “We’re lucky Michael makes a habit of getting himself dinged. Otherwise I never would have been able to prove who I was.”Purdey laughed at that. “Has he always picked up damage at an alarming rate?”“I could fill a book. He was always up to something that got him a black eye or a split lip. Sometimes I’d tag along and see how he got them. My mother wasn’t too keen on what we got up to together, but on the other hand, at least someone was keeping an eye on him, trying to keep him from breaking his neck.” She shook her head in fond recrimination. “Michael didn’t have anyone else to do the job, and mum could only do so much. So I ended up playing nurse on a regular basis. I remember I took a first aid course at school, and I was one of the few students who didn’t really need the refresher course the next year.”Purdey smiled to herself. “He hasn’t changed much, then.”“Not a bit,” Sara agreed cheerfully. “Never have the words ‘it’s just a flesh wound’ seen so much use—or abuse. Only now it’s bullets. Back in the day, Michael confined himself to fighting the school bully, and falling out of trees.”“Michael,” Purdey repeated, the name sitting awkwardly on her tongue. “You’re the first person I’ve heard call him that outside of a bank manager.”“Oh, the whole family calls him ‘Michael,’” Sara informed casually. “It is his name after all, and no one ever considered calling him anything different. He’s never been too keen on it, and he’s always told everyone to call him ‘Mike’--including you, I notice. I think he thinks it’s too serious or formal or something. He’s always said he doesn’t feel like a Michael. But I can’t imagine calling him anything else now. Especially since it gets on his nerves.” “This is fascinating,” Purdey said with obvious delight. “Mike hasn’t told me much about his childhood, or his family. He only just explained what happened to him in Africa a little while ago. And he’s never offered to introduce me to anyone. Not yet, anyway”Sara nodded reflectively. “No, he does tend to keep his past to himself. Even I don’t know everything about Africa. Don’t feel badly. I think he’s afraid it will scare people away, and he’s already lost too many people close to him to risk pushing more away. If he’s told you about Africa, though, he trusts you enormously. He’ll tell you more when he’s ready. There’s a lot to tell, and some of it he’d rather not remember. As for keeping me a secret, well, I think he’s got some ridiculous notion I’ll embarrass him in front of you with stories from his youth.”“Yes,” Purdey said quietly. It felt strange to meet a woman so close to Gambit, and yet have no reason to be jealous of the affection which was so obviously mutual. “You’re not a Gambit, too, then?”“I don’t have a drop of Gambit blood in me, thank goodness. No, our mums are sisters. You’ve probably heard him mention an Aunt Katie.” She noticed Purdey’s blank expression and elaborated. “Or perhaps he may have referred to her as his dear pajama-sending aunt.” “That rings a bell,” Purdey confirmed with a grin of recognition. “But no, Mike never gave me a name. I think you have me at a disadvantage all the way around.”“That’s probably true,” Sara agreed. “I know a fair bit about you, from what he’s told me. The ballet, your espionage lineage.” Sara smiled sadly. “I lost my own father a few years ago. We’ve got that much in common.” She looked away suddenly to hide the tears that threatened to shed, surveyed the wreck that was now Gambit’s flat. “So, what happened here?”Purdey sighed and looked at the mess herself. “Our people tore it apart. This is the second time it’s been ransacked recently. Last time it was a standard-issue heavy who did the honours. Everyone’s looking for some papers they think Gambit has, something from his army days.”“Oh, hell,” Sara groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Not this again.”Purdey snapped to attention. “You know about them?”“Of course I do,” Sara replied tiredly, dropping one hand and pressing the other to her forehead. “I was the one who sat by his bedside after they brought him home from Africa. He was so thin and so pale I hardly recognised him.” She closed her eyes against the memory, and Purdey could see the lines of pain in her face. “We all thought he might be dead. It had been three months after all. No one would tell us anything, even with my connections in the service. It was only when he came back that I got the full story. Or as much of it as Michael was willing to talk about. I think he kept a lot of it bottled up inside. You know how he is.”Purdey nodded in agreement. “Unfortunately. I wish he’d talk about some things a little more.”“You and me both. What do you know about the papers?”Purdey shook her head. “Very little. I don’t know where they are, but I have a vague idea about what’s in them. But that’s all.” She glanced inquisitively at Sara. “Do you know where they are?”Sara shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s never been something he wanted to talk about. Where’s Michael now?”“Gone,” Purdey said simply, suddenly conscious of the possibility that the flat could be bugged now that Larry had been through it. “I don’t know where.”Sara nodded. “But they think he has them, and that’s all that matters.”“And that he’s planning to sell them with the help of Vanessa Thyme,” Purdey added.Sara swore silently under her breath. “That’s why I came here. I’ve been out of the country and only just came back this morning. I heard about Vanessa being in London and knew he’d need help. But I thought his own people would be on his side at least.”“It’s not our finest hour,” Purdey said bitterly. “One of our own, Larry Carrington, is investigating Gambit. He and Gambit have never been friendly, and now he’s determined to use this as an opportunity to bring Gambit down.”“Oh yes, I’ve heard about Larry,” Sara said grimly. “But still, anyone who knows what Michael went through can’t honestly believe he’d ever side with Vanessa Thyme of all people.”“She abducted him a few days ago. Larry thinks it was a cover so that they could talk without raising suspicion,” Purdey told Sara, and the latter paled dramatically in response. “What?! How could that happen? Is he all right?” If Purdey had had any doubts about Sara’s identity up to that point, they were well and truly banished by the anxiety written across the woman’s face. The best actor in the world couldn’t feign the concern and fear that completely engulfed Sara.“Just a few days ago,” Purdey went on, speaking calmly so as to not alarm Sara further. “She had him for just over twenty-four hours. We got him out again, but Larry’s managed to make it all seem like part of some grand scheme.”“Tell me everything,” Sara demanded, grim now, eyes flashing dangerously. “From the beginning.”Purdey thought for a moment, then went to Gambit’s record player, selected a particularly long player, put it on, and turned it up. It was only when the song was blaring at full volume that she beckoned Sara to sit next to her on the couch and told her everything, without worrying about listening ears.“And that’s the whole story,” Purdey said bitterly, sometime later. “And what makes it worse is I don’t know how to help him.”“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Sara advised, smiling reassuringly. “And I’ll do the same. If we get even a whiff of where Vanessa Thyme’s skulking about, we can go from there. If we can work out what’s actually going on through our own investigations, we can clear Michael’s name and he can come home, or at the very least we can get them to stop chasing him. I’ll listen out for anything my people find, and you do the same for yours.”Purdey bit her lip. “That was my plan, though I don’t know that I’ll be much help. They’re watching me almost as closely as Gambit. They think I might be an accomplice, or at the very least sympathetic. Either way, they think I’m compromised.”Sara nodded. “Even so, you have more access—and more friends—in your department than I do. Do the best you can. I know Michael wouldn’t expect more. And just be…available.”Purdey arched an eyebrow. “Available?”“In case he needs you,” Sara elaborated. “And he will need you, I promise you. The way he’s needed you his whole life.” She smiled, a little crookedly, then cleared her throat and dug in her pocket. “Here’s my card. Call if you need me, though somehow I think you have matters in hand. But keep in touch. We can help each other.”Purdey took the card like the lifeline it was. She had Steed, but it was good to know that there was someone else out there in the business with Gambit’s best interests at heart. “I promise. Thank you, Sara.”Sara’s grin got broader and more symmetrical. “My pleasure. And once this all blows over, we ought to go to dinner. With Michael. And pretend we don’t know one another. We can have fun with him for at least an hour before he works out what’s going on.”Purdey laughed for what felt like the first time in a very long time. “I’d like that.”vvvOne week later, Purdey sat on her couch looking at the telephone, legs tucked underneath her, knees pointed toward the side table where the instrument in question sat innocently. She’d been sitting in that position for the better part of a quarter of an hour, trying to work out whether the plan she’d hatched in the wee sleepless hours of the morning would work and, more importantly, whether it would be a good thing if it did.She supposed she really ought to give Gambit more time. He’d only been on the run a week, after all, even if it felt interminably longer, and she knew better than to expect that he’d quickly turn up results on his own, without resources, all while trying to keep a low profile since the department was out looking for him. There was still a chance that he might find Vanessa Thyme, stop her, clear his name, and put the whole ordeal to bed.But that meant waiting.Purdey wasn’t good at waiting. Her mother had teased her about it when she was a little girl, when she’d get impatient because ballet class wasn’t until the afternoon, or Uncle Elly wouldn’t be back to visit for another week, or her father was working late. She was impatient when people couldn’t keep up with her train of thought, no matter how oblique, and impatient when she had to wait for files, or for people to get ready, or for a train that was late. It wasn’t so much the slowness of other people that bothered her. She just didn’t like having to sit around and not be able to do anything to speed things up. And that went double when someone she cared about was in trouble, and she was forced to sit on the sidelines and do nothing but watch them fight their battles. Just watch. And wait.Now Gambit was in trouble, and she was playing a waiting game, keeping her eyes open for any information about Vanessa or Gambit, and whatever else Larry was cooking up, but powerless to do much about any of it. She couldn’t find out what was Larry up to because she’d been banned from any sort of involvement in the investigation. She couldn’t find out how Gambit was doing, or even offer some kind of assistance, because she had no idea where he was or how to contact him. And she had no means of finding Vanessa on her own without Larry finding out.Or did she?Purdey hadn’t been sleeping very well since Gambit had gone AWOL. Worry and anxiety, coupled with a noticeably cold and empty bed, meant a lot of time lying awake in the wee hours pondering the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, as well as how to possibly get in touch with Vanessa and try to do something to aid Gambit’s cause. Purdey knew her flat was being watched, and in all likelihood that her phone was bugged as well. The question was whether or not someone else was also listening…Purdey bit her lip and tried to think clearly. It was a bad idea. A very bad idea. There was no guarantee that it would work, and even if it did, there was so much that could go wrong. But at this point, from Purdey’s perspective, anything would be better than waiting.Purdey snatched up the telephone receiver before she could second-guess herself further, dialled a number from memory, and jittered impatiently as it rang. She listened to four rings before she started to wonder if she’d get an answer and whether she’d have the courage to try again if she didn’t, before there was a click and a warm voice identified itself. “Steed.”Purdey closed her eyes with relief. “Hello, Steed. I’m not bothering you, am I?”“Purdey? Of course not. What can I do for you?” The voice took on an edge of concern. “Are you all right?”“Yes, I’m fine,” Purdey promised. “I’m just frustrated. I wish I could do something to help Gambit.” “So do I. But our options are rather limited at the moment.”“I know.” Purdey played with the hem of her dress with her other hand. “But I wish—I just wish that I could talk to Vanessa Thyme. Try to—I don’t know, negotiate some sort of deal that would help Gambit. Just so I could do something instead of feeling so useless.”“I think rather a lot of people would relish that opportunity. If they could find her.”“I know,” Purdey sighed. “But no one knows where to find her, including me. If I ever had a chance to talk to her, it would have to be because she found me.”Steed knew, Purdey realised at that moment, what she was trying to do. He didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound, but the pause before he spoke was too pregnant and too long for a man who was still in the dark. And anyway, he was Steed. Steed always knew the score. “You ought to be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”“I haven’t received much of what I want lately,” Purdey griped. “I think I’d welcome one wish coming true for a change.”She could tell Steed wasn’t pleased about what she was doing, but was powerless to stop her. “As you said, she’d have to come to you,” he said finally. “Otherwise it’s all just conjecture.”“Yes, it is,” Purdey agreed. “I just wanted to talk about it with somebody who understood. You understand, don’t you Steed?”“I do,” Steed confirmed with a sigh. “I’m needed at the Ministry, but I’ll talk to you later. Take great care of yourself in the interim, won’t you? For Gambit’s sake, if not your own.”“I will, Steed. Good-bye.” Purdey rang off, put the receiver in the cradle, and settled back onto the couch to wait once more.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Hello, Miss Bryde.”Purdey froze with her hand on her flat’s front doorknob, key still clutched in her hand, eyes riveted on the figure seated with casual confidence in Purdey’s armchair. Every day since she’d made her call to Steed, she’d wondered what she would do if she returned home from work and found that Gambit’s persecutor had taken her up on her cryptic invitation to meet face to face. Now that it was actually happening, she was about to find out. Her only hope was that she didn’t let both Gambit and herself down in the process. Steed had subtly warned her about biting off more than she could chew. For a woman with Purdey’s prodigious appetite, that had seemed nigh-on impossible. Now that it was coming to the crunch, she was painfully aware of how much relied on her ability to handle this particular situation. She was under no illusions that she was very likely taking her life, and Gambit’s, in her hands.“Vanessa Thyme,” she identified, voice cool and level. She hadn’t seen a photo of the woman as of yet, but somehow she recognised her from Gambit’s description alone. The cold beauty, the cutting eyes, the cruel lips, and the unmistakable poise possessed by the deadly dangerous, albeit cloaked in an air of nonchalance. Even now, the crossed legs and limp wrists hanging over the arms of the chair conveyed languidness, but Purdey could sense the coiled power beneath. She forced herself to remain calm—Vanessa would sense weakness, she knew, and she was determined not to give her the satisfaction of thinking she’d rattled her.Vanessa inclined her head, as though accepting a compliment. “You do know me. I wasn’t certain you would. But I shouldn’t be surprised that the Major chose a clever girl.” She rose to her feet, and the gun was in her hand as if by magic, a particularly sinister conjuring trick. “Step away from the door, please,” she commanded, easing back the safety, eyes never wavering from Purdey. “I shouldn’t want you to run out on me before we’ve had time for our chat.”“Why would I run?” Purdey queried, letting a little indignation creep into her voice. “I’m the one who asked to meet.”Vanessa nodded thoughtfully, as though this made sense. “True,” she conceded. “But then again, you might get cold feet. Or this might be a trap. And I should hate to have to gun the Major’s girl down in cold blood. Not before time.”Her accent was as maddeningly hard to place as Gambit had described, and Purdey realised with frustration that she was no more able to get a fix on the woman’s background than he had been. Despite the air of danger and cool confidence, there was something ineffable about Vanessa—Purdey felt more than saw her, like a spectral presence lurking in the corner of her eye. If the woman had changed her clothes and hair, Purdey could see how she could easily fade into the crowd. No wonder Gambit was having so many problems locating her, let alone Larry’s people.“My feet are quite warm, thank you,” Purdey quipped, stepping calmly away from the door and draping her coat quite unconcernedly over the back of a kitchen chair. The initial flash of fear she had felt was gone now and her training had well and truly kicked in, leavened with just the right amount of red-hot rage. This was the woman who had tortured Gambit every day for three months, after all, and Purdey would have quite happily killed her where she stood if she thought she could get away with it. Their training always emphasised composure when facing the enemy—emotions were generally discouraged in their business, seen as a costly distraction that one couldn’t afford if one wanted to last more than a few months. But Purdey had always been of the opinion that people weren’t automatons, and there was a place for getting mad or worried about a colleague’s well-being. Heaven knew there was emotion involved in every decision she made where Gambit or Steed was concerned. Channelled the right way, anger could even help an agent’s cause. People did things no one would ever expect to protect someone they cared about. And Purdey cared about Gambit more than anything, which meant she wasn’t going to back down, no matter what Vanessa did. “So,” Vanessa said evaluatively, eyes raking up and down Purdey’s form as she resisted the urge to shudder. “This is the infamous ‘just Purdey’, as Purdey Elizabeth Bryde styles herself. Or hides behind.”Purdey sniffed. “That’s rather rich coming from a woman who hasn’t lived under her own name in years, isn’t it?”“Ah, checking up on me, are you?” Vanessa’s grin was infuriatingly smug. “But then, you would, wouldn’t you? I’d be surprised if you didn’t. I’ll readily admit that I’ve done the same. You have a very admirable record. The Major chose well.”“Gambit and I were assigned to work together,” Purdey pointed out. “Which you’d know if you’d read our files properly. But yes, you could say we’re very well-matched.”“Yes, you have had a very admirable success rate,” Vanessa allowed evaluatively. “You work together remarkably well. Intimately, even.”Purdey’s eyes narrowed at the insinuation. “If you have something to say, whatever your name is, then say it. I don’t have time for games.”Vanessa laughed. “So like the Major! But perhaps he’s rubbed off on you. Or you on him. It hardly matters, does it?” She quit pacing, regarded Purdey quite frankly. “You are lovers, aren’t you?”Purdey kept the surprise from flitting across her face by sheer force of will, but then she could do a very good poker face when the need arose. She’d used it on Gambit for years. “Where on earth did you get that idea?” she fudged, careful not to deny it. Denial always sounded defensive, even if the denial was merited.“Oh, it’s in the files,” Vanessa said mysteriously, sending a jolt through Purdey’s body. “If you read between the lines, it’s all right there. Your colleagues haven’t noticed because you’ve always been so involved that getting that little bit tighter hardly makes a difference. But there are little signs that you’ve become more intimate.” She could sense Purdey’s discomfort, and Purdey knew it. “Still, it’s none of my concern. All I care about is getting what I want. But remember this, ‘just Purdey’. I knew the Major intimately, stripped down to his core, long before you even knew he existed, when you were just whiling away the hours at the Sorbonne.”“If you knew him as well as you make out,” Purdey spat, not remotely surprised that Vanessa knew about her past. She was through letting the woman rattle her, “as well as I do, you’d know that Gambit won’t give in, no matter what you do. He’s never going to hand those papers over to you.”“Not if I threaten him,” Vanessa allowed. “But he has weaknesses. Like you, Purdey Elizabeth Bryde, the Major’s partner, friend…lover.”“And if you knew me as well as you clearly believe,” Purdey cut in, annoyed now, unflappable, “you’d know that I’m not the sort of woman who is going to sit idly by and be used as Gambit’s pressure point. And speaking of pressure, I’m surprised you were brave enough to show your face here.” Purdey nodded out the window, where the surveillance team was sitting, blissfully unaware of who was in her flat. “I am being watched, you know.”Vanessa snorted derisively. “I’m not worried about your people,” she spat. “They wouldn’t know I was here if I hit them over the head. So don’t bother trying to warn them. You’d be dead and I’d be long gone before they so much as rang the bell.”“Why would I want to warn them?” Purdey countered, with withering condescension. “If I wanted them here, I would have told them. But that would have rather defeated the purpose of having you here to begin with.” Purdey took a few steps closer to Vanessa, ignoring the way she cocked the gun in warning. “What does surprise me is that you were foolish enough to come.”“I want the papers,” Vanessa said flatly. “I don’t care how I get them. If you’re willing to hand them over, I’d be happy to leave the Major to you. I’ve had my fill of him.”“The feeling is mutual, despite your charming company,” Purdey replied cuttingly, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “But I don’t have the papers, and I don’t know where they are.”Vanessa let out a long breath through her nose, more of a snort than an exhale. “For your sake, I hope you have something else up your sleeve.” “Oh, I do,” Purdey assured, examining her nails unconcernedly, as though evaluating her manicure was more important than talking to Vanessa. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was infuriate and wrongfoot people. Gambit had commented dryly on it several times, usually when she was doing it to him. “Suppose I did get them for you. Would you be able to give me evidence that would prove that you’ve been framing Gambit, and that he hasn’t had any dealings with you?”“Possibly,” Vanessa conceded. “But only if you could get the papers.”Purdey grinned brashly. “I shouldn’t worry about that. I’m very good.”“You could persuade the Major to give them to you?” Vanessa looked sceptical.“As I said, I’m very good.” Purdey stared levelly at the other woman, daring her to contradict. “I don’t give a damn about those papers, but I do care rather a lot about Gambit. So you had better not do anything more to hurt his cause until I get them, or I promise you I’ll hunt you down and break your back in three places.”Vanessa had the gall to laugh. “My goodness, you and the Major really are cut from the same cloth, aren’t you?”“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Purdey said lightly. “But you should also take it as a warning. I can be very vindictive when I get upset, particularly when you threaten people I care about.”“I’ll bear that in mind, Miss Bryde.” Vanessa had a smile playing on her lips that Purdey didn’t like at all. “Bryde, Bryde,” she rolled the name around her mouth. “Like your father before you.” She registered Purdey’s flash of irritation and smiled. “Oh, yes, I know about him. The daughter of the spy who became a spy and fell for a spy. Very romantic.”“Leave my father out of it,” Purdey fumed.Vanessa ignored her. “You do realise that even if he’s cleared of everything, the Major will still be in trouble for taking the papers? Naughty boy that he is.”“Let me worry about that,” Purdey snapped. “Do we have a deal or not?”Vanessa considered, eyeing Purdey evaluatively. “All right. You persuade the Major to hand over those papers, and I’ll supply evidence that will clear him of working cheek to cheek with me.”Purdey blew a raspberry at the turn of phrase. “I think he’d rather cut off his cheek than have it anywhere near yours.”Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “That can be arranged, Miss Bryde.”“Just Purdey,” Purdey corrected briskly. “To friends and enemies alike.”“Ah, yes. To distance yourself from daddy dearest.” Vanessa feigned sympathy. “Poor little girl, playing spies to follow in her father’s footsteps.”“Not playing,” Purdey said sharply. “I found the man who killed my father, you know. I almost killed him. Only Gambit stopped me.” She stared meaningfully at Vanessa. “But Gambit isn’t here now, is he?”“I assure you I’m absolutely terrified, Miss Bryde,” Vanessa taunted. “Let me know when you have the papers. You know how to contact me.”“I haven’t succumbed to amnesia in the past five minutes, so I think I’ll be all right,” Purdey said sweetly. “Now get out of my flat.”“Tsk, tsk. Manners. You and the Major really must go on a remedial course.” Vanessa tilted her head in a queasy attempt at playfulness. “He’s been looking for me, you know. Getting a bit ragged around the edges in the process, poor thing.”Purdey felt her composure slip at the mention of Gambit and his state of well-being. “You’ve seen him?” she asked, throat suddenly dry.“Peripherally,” Vanessa confirmed casually. “I know he’s looking for me, but I’m not foolish enough to let him catch me. I doubt he’d be as restrained with me as he persuaded you to be when you faced your father’s killer.” Her smile turned coy. “Would you like to know where he is? I’m sure you’d both love a reunion.”“A reunion with your knife to Gambit’s throat,” Purdey said knowingly. “I don’t need your help, such as it is, when it comes to finding Gambit. I have things well in hand.”“Mmm, I’m sure you do,” Vanessa mused. “Perhaps I’ll visit him all the same. We’re at our best when we’re one on one, the Major and I. We’ve had some fascinating conversations. If I do see him, I’ll tell him you said ‘hello’.”Purdey felt her stomach churn sickeningly. “If you touch him— ““Oh, don’t worry, Miss Bryde. I know he only has eyes for you. It would just be a friendly chat. Like the old days. Food for thought, Miss Bryde. Call it motivation to work quickly. I hope to hear from you soon.”With that faux-cheerful farewell, Vanessa slipped out Purdey’s back door and into the lot behind her flat. Purdey caught a glimpse of a shadow outside her back windows, and then it was gone. Seconds later, there was an angry pounding on her door. Purdey stood, rooted to the spot for a moment, unable to move as the sick sense of terror and dread settled over her, threatening to swallow her whole. The knock sounded again, and Purdey forced her mind to surface from dark visions of Gambit suffering at Vanessa’s hand. She knew her watchers would get suspicious if she didn’t answer soon. So she squared her shoulders with much difficulty and went to the door. Her watchers were glaring suspiciously at her when she opened it, but their expressions melted into concern when they laid eyes on Purdey’s ashen pallor. “Purdey, are you all right?” one asked, peering inquisitively over Purdey’s shoulder into the flat. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”Purdey’s wide blue eyes flicked from side to side uncertainly. “I hope not,” she said cryptically. “I really do.” VvvPurdey was still shuddering from the aftershocks of meeting Vanessa Thyme face to face when she went for dinner with Steed later that evening. The invitation had come at relatively short notice, and Purdey had a sneaking suspicion Steed had somehow found out what had happened and wanted to know how it had gone. Thankfully, he didn’t leave her squirming in suspense for long.“Anything interesting happened to you of late?” Steed asked nonchalantly, once they’d ordered and the wine had been poured.Purdey took a sip of wine and regarded Steed equally coolly. “What makes you think that?”“It’s the most extraordinary thing. I heard through the grapevine that our surveillance team swore they saw a second shadow moving about in your flat, though by the time they investigated they found you alone.” He eyed Purdey expectantly. “They can’t have been hallucinating?”“I may have had a visitor,” she said vaguely, knowing that the fewer details she divulged, the better, but that there was little point in attempting to deny it entirely.“Oh, yes?” Steed swirled the wine in his glass under his nose and savoured its bouquet. “I don’t suppose you could have persuaded her to hang about until you received a visit from our men outside?”“Not a chance,” Purdey said flatly, and with a certain amount of frustration.“Pity. Still, I’m relieved you came through intact. Did she have anything interesting to say, or was it purely a social call?”Purdey snickered at the mental images that conjured up in spite of the knots in her stomach. “You make it sound as though we had tea and sandwiches.”“Perhaps you did. It would have at least lent it an air of civility,” Steed pointed out, tilting his head to one side evaluatively. “But it wasn’t civil, was it?”Purdey shook her head. “No,” she said bitterly. “No, it wasn’t. But she says that she’ll leave Gambit alone, and give me evidence that he’s not colluding with her, in exchange for the papers.”“I’m not surprised,” Steed sighed. “What did you say?”“I agreed.” Purdey took a larger sip of her wine than was strictly suitable in a social setting.Steed sucked his teeth. “And do you plan to follow through on that agreement?”“If nothing else presents itself,” Purdey said defiantly, eyes burning brightly. “If we can’t find a way to catch her and clear Gambit’s name.”“You’d have to get your hands on the papers first,” Steed pointed out mildly, but chose not to rebuke her, much to her relief. Purdey was well-aware of the consequences of what she was proposing. “That may prove difficult.”“Gambit will tell me where they are,” Purdey said unconcernedly.Steed’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “I doubt he’ll volunteer that information, particularly if he knows you’re using it to save his own skin.”“He’ll tell me,” Purdey said firmly. “I can be very persuasive.”Steed chuckled. “I know you can. But you’ll have to find Gambit first.”“He’ll find me,” Purdey said confidently. “It’ll work out.” She met Steed’s eyes. “It has to.”“Well, we’re not quite at the point of desperate measures,” Steed temporised. “Gambit might turn up something. Or we might.”Purdey bit her lip. “Vanessa said she saw Gambit,” she said quietly.Steed’s eyes registered alarm. “She did?”“But he didn’t see her,” Purdey went on, and saw Steed’s shoulders slump in disappointment. “She knows he’s looking for her, but she’s not letting him catch her. So we might not have much luck if we keep waiting.”Steed held up a finger to stop her train of thought. “I have something that might change your mind. You see, I had a rather interesting meeting today myself.”“Really?” Purdey had a difficult time mustering much enthusiasm—almost all the news she received these days, even from Steed, was less than positive. She’d accepted Steed’s dinner invitation when she realised his insistence was not solely due to a desire to cheer her up. She chastised herself for not realising that Steed had something up his sleeve besides questioning her about her rendezvous with Vanessa Thyme. “Are they planning Gambit’s execution now?”“Now Purdey, it isn’t as bad as all that,” Steed soothed, sipping his wine as though he didn’t have a care in the world.“Isn’t it?” Purdey replied bitterly. “Gambit’s out there, all on his own, trying to track down the woman who nearly killed him once and seems determined to ruin his life all over again. And to make matters worse, he has his own department after him as well.”“Yes!” Steed agreed, with that irrepressible cheerfulness that endeared him to his colleagues and confused his enemies. “But if you want to play a more active role in the proceedings, I have a task for you.” Purdey frowned in confusion. “What sort of task?”“This.” Steed reached into his inside breast pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, set it on the table, and slid it across to Purdey. Purdey regarded it with a mixture of bemusement and trepidation. She tightened her grip on her wine glass and seemed to consider whether or not to risk reading it, but ultimately curiousity got the better of her. The wine was abandoned, and the piece of paper was picked up, unfolded, and scanned by the big blue eyes. Steed watched her carefully, noted the exact moment the light returned to those eyes. The blue orbs flicked up in excitement seconds later.“Steed, this is wonderful!” she exclaimed, then, as heads turned their way, seemed to realise her enthusiasm had pushed her slightly too far up the decibel scale. She continued, more quietly, “These are details of the findings in Larry’s report about Gambit’s supposedly suspicious movements. Dates and times, instances when he accessed files unrelated to assignments, information about the bank accounts they say Thyme paid him through. If we can prove that he’s been set up, we might not need the papers.” She shook her head in disbelief, both at their luck and Steed’s ability to attain the unattainable. “I thought you said Larry wouldn’t let you anywhere near his report. I’ve been trying to get my hands on it all week. I’ve always been blocked.”“We both have,” Steed conceded. “But there are others sympathetic to the cause who are a little more fortunate.”“Who?” Purdey wanted to know. “Besides us, I thought everyone had more or less given up on Gambit. Some of them are actually enjoying the idea of him being hunted down as a traitor.”Steed raised a triumphant index finger. “Ah, that would be telling,” he said mysteriously. “For now, all you need to know is we have someone who believes the odds should be a little more even. That’s only part of what the report contains. I’ve been promised further information as our source can acquire it. It wouldn’t do to push the matter and risk being discovered.”Purdey nodded in agreement, folded the paper up with hands shaking slightly from excitement, rather than anxiety. “Have you looked into any of the findings contained in here?” she wanted to know. “Can you disprove any of Larry’s suspicions?”“I’ve started making inquiries toward that end,” Steed confirmed, taking another sip of wine and savouring it. Purdey knew Steed could feign nonchalance better than anyone in the game, but there was an ease to Steed’s actions that told her he was confident some sort of proof could be found. “It’ll take some time. Again, we don’t want to risk anyone working out that we’re running a counter-investigation. Otherwise Larry will take great care to make our task that much more difficult. We have to tread carefully.”“Of course,” Purdey agreed, expression turning mysterious. “But would you mind if I made my own inquiries alongside yours? I’d be very discreet.”“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you, my dear,” Steed replied, but there was a small furrow between his brows. “I take it you plan something rather more delicate than a trip through our own file room?”Purdey wasn’t about to give Steed the whole story about Sara. Not only was it better for Gambit if they both played their cards close to the chest—the less each of them knew, the smaller the chance they could be pressured by Larry into telling all if either of them was found out—but it was rather nice to have the upper hand on Steed for a change, no matter how slight. The man had heaven knew how many resources at his disposal, all tucked away for an emergency or a rainy day. At this stage of her career, Purdey thought she was allowed an ace up her own sleeve.“Naturally.” Purdey drank some more wine and then scanned one page in particular, which consisted of a series of dates. “What are these in relation to? The title’s been cut off by the copier.”Steed leaned forward and tapped the page with an index finger. “Those are all times when Gambit took leave quite unexpectedly and with no apparent reason. There’s no official record about what he did or where he went. If we can determine Gambit’s whereabouts during those periods, it would go no small way toward rehabilitating his reputation.”“I’ll start with this then,” Purdey said firmly, and Steed could see the blaze of purpose that had banished the despair and frustration visible in her eyes just a few minutes earlier. He knew Purdey hated sitting on the sidelines more than anything—she needed something to do, something that would make a difference, rather than waiting for Gambit to turn up captured or dead. A frown crossed her features as she investigated the page in more detail. “Some of these are crossed out.”“Ah. Well.” Steed poured himself a little more wine, which conveniently eliminated the need to look her in the eye. “Let’s just say that, on occasion, Gambit took leave at my behest.”Purdey’s eyes narrowed. “Steed! Do you mean to tell me that all this time you’ve been getting Gambit to run cloak and dagger operations off the books?”“Now, Purdey,” Steed demurred, smiling his most charming smile. “It wasn’t quite as dramatic as all that. But every once in awhile, something comes up that needs attending to, and if I can’t see to it personally, well, Gambit’s been more than willing to do so on my behalf.”Purdey crossed her arms, looking irked. “And how long has this been going on?” “Oh, rather a lot of it went on back in 1975, before we started to chafe against one another. Something you cured us of, my dear, as you well know.”Purdey, for once, was unmoved by Steed’s charm. “I’m not in the mood to be flattered outrageously,” she huffed. “And anyway, several of these dates came after I started working with you.”Steed shrugged and took another sip of wine. “That’s a testament to how successful you were.”“Why didn’t you tell me this was going on?” Purdey demanded. “I was part of the team. I had a right to know.”“Ordinarily, yes,” Steed conceded. “But these weren’t team assignments. Some of them had a decidedly personal element, or called for ultimate discretion. The fewer people who knew, the better. I only involved Gambit when it was unavoidable.”“It was still irresponsible,” Purdey grumbled. “And dangerous. Suppose something had happened to Gambit on one of these ‘unofficial’ assignments? He wouldn’t have had anyone to call for back-up other than you.”Steed eyed her knowingly. “Purdey, as touching as your concern for Gambit’s well-being is, I think you ought to say what you want to say.” He surveyed Purdey’s taken aback expression and sipped some more wine. “Go on. I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t ask.”Purdey hesitated for a moment, examining her fingernails where they lay stretched out on the tabletop. “All right,” she said finally. “Why did you never ask me to run unofficial assignments for you?”Steed swirled his wine in his glass thoughtfully. “Do you know, Gambit has sat opposite me many times, just as we are now, and asked me that very same question.”Purdey narrowed her eyes. “And?”Steed smiled. “I think if Gambit had his way, he would have had you share the load. You must remember that, even though we shared that assignment at the end of 1975, you didn’t come onboard with us in a permanent capacity until late March the following year. Gambit worked with you on the training course, so he was better acquainted with you and your abilities. But I didn’t have the benefit of that experience, and I wouldn’t dream of sending anyone I hadn’t vetted personally to do that kind of work. Gambit was a known entity.” He sucked his teeth before continuing. “By the end of last year, I was certain you had the experience and, more importantly, I trusted you could handle it. I think I would have asked you earlier this year, if we hadn’t started having so many cases of traitors and suspicious goings on. I was framed more than once, you’ll recall: Spelman, that business with Victoria Stanton, Mark…” His voice trailed off at the name, but he snapped back to the present quickly. “I’ve been in the crosshairs rather a lot, so I decided I couldn’t risk asking anyone else to do work that might lead anyone to question their loyalties. Not even Gambit, as that list will confirm.” He leaned forward intently. “I needed the measure of you for myself, Purdey. I would trust you today. I am trusting you now. With this. I couldn’t have used Gambit when I first met him, either. Not when he was an unknown quantity.” Steed’s smile turned hopeful. “You see?”Purdey regarded him sceptically for a moment. “All right,” she relented finally. “But I’m only forgiving you because of this.” She wafted the paper as evidence. “And because you seem to have come to your senses. But I won’t forget about this, either.”Steed chuckled knowingly. “I’m sure you won’t.”“Gambit is always saying how devious you are,” Purdey went on ruefully. “I didn’t realise until now how much he was speaking from personal experience.”Steed bowed his head and spread his arms in his trademark pseudo-innocent confessional shrug. “You’ve found me out, my dear.”“Not soon enough, apparently,” Purdey said wryly.“Well, we all have our secrets. Gambit, me—even you, Purdey. You must confess you haven’t been entirely forthcoming about your own past at times.” He raised an interested eyebrow. “What else haven’t you told us, I wonder?”Purdey ducked her head with a small smile. “Yes, all right. You’ve made your point,” she admitted, a little snippily. “These things you had Gambit do—are you going to be willing to go on the record about them? Larry might demand it.”Steed nodded sagely. “I’m sure he will.”“Well, how you can be certain that it won’t only make things worse for Gambit, letting the Ministry know what he’s been up to on the side? It could prove their point, that Gambit is off doing things of his own accord and can’t be trusted.”“There’s a difference between collaborating with a known mercenary agent to sell state secrets, and doing a few favours under the radar for a fellow agent in aid of the greater good.” Steed tapped the piece of paper with his index finger. “I won’t say McKay will be pleased about it, but he was in the field once, too. He knows about the types of things that are done when needs must, and not all of them can be done in the way bureaucracy would necessarily like.” He leaned back and rolled the wine glass between his palms. “And there’s an added defence. Gambit was acting on my behest, not of his own accord. I’ll see to it that I have my knuckles rapped to spare his. I suspect we’ll both escape relatively unscathed.” He beamed at Purdey. “Let’s hope others are similarly willing to take their lumps.”Purdey regarded the page glumly. “Let’s hope.”“I shouldn’t worry too much,” Steed reassured. “Gambit’s loyalty is unwavering but hard-won. He wouldn’t risk his life or his career for someone or something that wasn’t worthwhile.”“No,” Purdey said pertly. “Speaking of which, I know where Gambit was on some of these occasions.”“That’s extremely convenient,” Steed commented knowingly, feigning surprise. “I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me?”“As you said, I have secrets of my own,” Purdey pointed out, folding the paper away and picking up her wine glass. “To Gambit.”Steed chuckled, not in the least perturbed by events, and leaned forward to clink his glass against hers. “Cheers.” He settled back in his chair with a pleased sigh. “As you’re here, I may as well tell you that I’ll be going away, so you’ll have to fend for yourself for a day or two.”“What do you mean you’re going away?” Purdey’s tone conveyed the same mixture of outrage and confusion that was written all over her face. “You’re not actually considering taking a holiday with Gambit out there on the run, all on his own?”“I can assure you, my dear, that I am unequivocally not going on holiday,” Steed vowed. “Regardless of what the Ministry may tell you, should you make inquiries.”Purdey relaxed visibly. “So you’ve told them you’re going on holiday,” she surmised. “But you’ll actually be doing something else entirely. Something to further Gambit’s cause?”“Naturally,” Steed assured, aiming another winning smile her way. “We need further proof that Gambit and Thyme aren’t in league with one another, but as we’ve been locked out of any and all pertinent files stored domestically, save what I’ve been able to liberate, we need to cast our net wider. I intend to marshal proof from beyond our shores that proves Gambit’s irreproachability.”“Knowing Gambit’s reputation, that may be a tall order,” Purdey quipped automatically, then deflated when she remembered Gambit wasn’t there to react to her jibe. “Do you think you can find anything that will help?”“I’ve been reliably informed that it’s already been found,” Steed told her, reaching across the table to rest a comforting hand over hers. “But if Larry knows that’s why I’ve gone, he’ll put a stop to it, so I’d rather not say more until I return.”Purdey nodded, but still looked worried. “I understand. But don’t be too long about it. I have this awful feeling that any day now, they’re going to catch up with Mike, and when they do, I don’t know that we’ll be able to help him, no matter what we’ve managed to find.”“I’ll be as brief as I possibly can,” Steed promised, smiling encouragingly. “After all, I’ve told McKay I’m only taking a few personal days to clear my head.”Purdey arched a sceptical eyebrow. “And he believed you?”“Not for a moment,” Steed admitted cheerfully. “But Tommy knows better than to ask questions when there’s no possibility of receiving a completely honest answer. And since they’re quite certain that Gambit hasn’t managed to leave the country, he can’t possibly accuse me of rendezvousing with a fugitive overseas.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “And to be quite honest, I think Tommy’s rather keen for some evidence vindicating Gambit to come to light. He’s an excellent agent, after all, and I think he’d rather hang onto him if he can. Not to mention I think he’d enjoy having an excuse to not swallow what Larry’s told him without question. The model of scepticism is old Tommy.”“But he needs something,” Purdey murmured. “Otherwise he can’t possibly justify giving Gambit the benefit of the doubt.”“Hence your own investigations,” Steed finished. “And my trip. We need another story to sell, if we’re to give Tommy any reason to grant Gambit clemency.”Purdey nodded smartly. “All right, Steed. I hope that whatever you find is good enough to convince McKay.”“I’m assured by my contact that it is,” Steed assured. “And where is your contact?” Purdey wanted to know, curiosity getting the better of her in spite of herself.“Oh, didn’t I say?” Steed said airily. “Canada, of course.” He sipped his wine and spent the rest of the evening enjoying the vaguely flummoxed expression that settled over Purdey’s face and refused to be dislodged.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Steed!” The voice was as warm as the wave that Steed caught out of the corner of his eye as he cast about the lobby of the Chateau Laurier for his rendezvous. That warmth only intensified when he twisted around to regard Tara King head on as she sprung out of a chair tucked behind one of the building’s several magnificent marble pillars.“Tara, my dear!” Steed exclaimed in greeting, welcoming the arms flung around his neck with abandon as much as the musical laughter that reached his ear. He wrapped an arm around her waist in return, the other still holding his bowler and umbrella, and, for a moment, it was 1967, and Tara was the newly-minted Agent 69, fresh from training and still learning the ropes, expressing her gratitude for him saving her from almost certain death once again.It was a lovely moment, but fleeting, and when Tara pulled away, the years returned in a flash. The woman who stood before him, clad in a smart navy knee-length dress trimmed in white, with her hair cut bluntly at her chin, was definitely just that—a woman, not a wide-eyed ingenue. Not that Tara wasn’t still beautiful and brimming with youth, vitality, and brightness—she was still the vivacious woman he had been proud to mentor and work with for several years. But if the eyes were no less bright, they were also more knowing, imbued with the maturity and sophistication of an accomplished woman who, at a mere thirty years of age, was already onto her second career, after admirably acquitting herself in the first.“I can’t believe you’re here,” Tara enthused, eyes taking in every detail of his impeccably-tailored grey suit, and the way it draped elegantly on his frame. “When you called earlier this week and said you were going to meet me in person, I thought for certain it must be an early April Fool’s joke.”Steed frowned in mock horror. “My dear Miss King, would I ever deceive a lady in such a way?”“You would and you have,” Tara said knowingly, but without venom. “You’d just do it so charmingly that the lady in question would forgive you instantly.”“You cut me to the quick, my dear,” Steed said in mock horror, but with a twinkle in his eyes that told Tara he knew she spoke the truth. “But I’m delighted that you were able to meet me on such short notice.”Tara laughed again. “Well, you did just make the trip all the way from London to Ottawa. The very least I could do is take a long lunch and walk a few blocks to meet you. Besides, you’ve promised me tea.” She looped her arm through his and started to guide him toward the hotel’s restaurant.“I have indeed,” Steed confirmed, letting himself be led. “A small price to pay for your company.”“And for my precious cargo,” Tara added knowingly, patting a shiny black valise slung over her shoulder. “I know you’re not only here to see me.”“Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less delighted,” Steed said sincerely. “I do wish that we could meet more often.”“That’s what comes with an overseas posting with the embassy,” Tara pointed out, carefully omitting the fact that they both knew very well that she’d gone into that line of work precisely to put some distance between them. “But I can’t complain. I love my work, and I’ve seen so much of the world because of it. It’s been a completely different experience from working at the Ministry.”“A better experience?” Steed queried, doing his best to mask the competitive streak that threatened to surface, unbidden, surprised at his own reaction. But Tara had been a student of John Steed long before she’d even met him in the flesh, and had used their time as partners to only deepen and intensify her studies. She could tell when he was trying to hide something, and what it was. More importantly, she knew how to fix it.“Not better,” she assured, hugging his arm a little tighter. “Just different. And I needed something different.” She smiled to take any lingering sting away. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss some things about home.”“Some things?” Steed repeated, eyes twinkling. “I know a gentleman should never inquire…”“Then he shouldn’t,” Tara teased. “But I can tell you, I miss certain places. Shops. Restaurants.” She paused and turned her big green eyes on Steed. “People.” She grinned broadly. “Does that make it better?”“It is rather encouraging to be missed,” Steed confessed. “If I can flatter myself that I number amongst those lucky few who hold that special place in your affections.”“You know you do,” Tara said softly, and Steed knew she wasn’t only alluding to their friendship and partnership. He was well-aware that Tara had been in love with him, that it had been a driving factor in drawing them together in the early days of their partnership, when he was still smarting from the loss of Emma. It was ironic that that love would be what ultimately drove them apart. Because no matter how fond Steed had been of Tara, how much he had cared for her, how happy he had been to work with her and have her in his life, he could never pretend that he felt the same way about her that she did about him. And Tara, bless her, had never held it against him, had never let it make her bitter. But it had made her realise that she couldn’t stay with him forever, for his sake as much as hers. There was only so long that one could maintain one’s sanity in the face of unrequited love, and Tara had ultimately known when she had to walk away, even if it hurt them both to sever the partnership that they had forged. He’d been sorry to see her go, watch another partner move on to new horizons without him, but he’d known it was for the best. Still, he had no doubt that the loss had kept him from taking on a regular partner for a few years. John Steed was a strong man, but even he could only bear being left behind so many times. It was easier on the psyche, and the ego, to not welcome anyone else into his life on a permanent basis, so as to not risk being abandoned again. And he hadn’t. Until Gambit.Which brought him to why he was here.Tara’s smile had turned slightly crooked as her mind, like his, flicked back to her reasons for leaving, and the final days of their partnership. A subdued silence settled over them and stayed stubbornly in place as they waited patiently during an interminably long interval for the couple ahead of them to be seated. It followed them, cloudlike, as their server escorted them to a table for two tucked by a window in the bright, cheery space. They were happy for the distraction as another woman brought the trolley laden with canisters of tea, and walked them through all the varieties available for their delectation. By the time they’d made their selections--and replied to the query as to whether they wanted the champagne option with a merry, “Of course!”--the gloom had passed, and Tara’s green eyes were bright and clear.“Afternoon tea is something else I miss from home,” she confided to Steed, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I come here often to get my fix. Don’t tell anyone back in England, but this version is almost as good. I don’t want them to seize my passport and accuse me of treason.”Steed laughed in delight. “Your secret is safe with me, my dear,” he vowed, turning happily as two flutes fizzing animatedly were delivered to their table by the charming waitress. “Ah, here we are.” He raised his glass to Tara. “Your health, my dear.”Tara shook her head. “Oh, no, Steed. To you, for coming all this way to see me.” She winked ever-so-slightly. “Even if you did have an ulterior motive.”Steed laughed in good-natured acceptance of the truth of the jab. “Cheers.”“Cheers.”They drank, taking a moment to savour the pop of bubbles on their tongues. It was with genuine regret that Steed set his glass aside and said, “Speaking of that ulterior motive.”“Mmm.” Tara pressed her fingers to her lips as the bubbles tickled her nose. “I have them here.” She set her glass on the spotless white tablecloth and started rifling through the satchel, came up with a stack of files. She held back from setting them on the table, pulling them to her chest as the server set two teapots on the table. “Thank you,” she said politely, then waited until the woman was far enough away to be out of earshot. “It wasn’t easy,” she confided quietly, setting the stack in front of her with a hefty ‘thunk’.“I didn’t think for a moment that it would be,” Steed assured, leaning forward in anticipation. “But you seem to have exceeded yourself, as per usual.”Tara glowed at the compliment, just as she had back at the beginning of their partnership, when every word from him was considered tantamount to sacred text by her. “Well, I wouldn’t be a very good member of the international espionage and diplomatic set if I couldn’t pull some strings, would I?”“I have no doubt that you could charm your way into any embassy or security service in the world, credentials or not,” Steed opined.“It might have taken a little longer if I didn’t have them,” Tara allowed. “It’s just as well that I did. There’s been a lot written about Mr. Gambit. I had my work cut out for me to pull it all together.”Steed allowed himself a small smile. “I’d like to say in all honesty that I’m surprised that Gambit’s reputation precedes him, but I’m afraid I can’t.”“You might have mentioned that when you called,” Tara said, somewhat tiredly. “At least I would have had some idea of what I was dealing with.”“I wanted you to approach your task without preconceptions,” Steed said airily, pouring his tea with enviable flourish. “I needed that inquisitive mind of yours to be completely open to all possibilities, unfettered by my own knowledge base. Besides, you knew he was an active agent. You must have expected the usual reams of records acquired by people in our line of work.”“Yes, I expected that,” Tara said wryly, patting the stack in front of her in a way that indicated she’d found more than she’d bargained for, and wasn’t about to let Steed forget it. “I expected the extensive documentation of his Ministry career. All those dotted ‘i’s and forms signed in triplicate, all the reports filed diligently for inclusion in the case file hall of fame.” She paused and divided the pile in half, creating two, smaller piles. She indicated the one on her right. “This was what I expected, what I’d expect to find on any agent.” She turned to the pile to her left. “What I didn’t expect was the masses upon masses of documentation covering his previous career with the army.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Army files are detailed, but never this detailed, especially when the soldier in question isn’t serving in an active conflict zone. Or at the very least, isn’t supposed to be.” Her lips pursed grimly. “But Gambit wasn’t serving in a traditional capacity, was he? At least, not toward the end of his career?”“I’m afraid not,” Steed confirmed, sensing Tara’s annoyance and smiling apologetically. “I would have told you, my dear, as I said, but I did want you to pursue your own avenues of inquiry without me blocking them off.”“I understand,” Tara sighed wearily. “But again, I would have rather been given some sort of warning about what I was getting into. I wound up having to block out twice as many lunch hours than I’d bargained for to get through just half of Mr. Gambit’s CV.”Steed winced in sympathy. “My apologies, my dear.”“You owe me for a week’s worth of terrible ham sandwiches from the local café,” Tara said good-humouredly, flipping open the file on top of Gambit’s military career pile. A black and white 8x10 photo of Gambit was resting on top, and Tara picked it up and regarded it with a pleased little smile. “Mind you, it did have its compensations.”Steed’s own smile was a little strained, but he wasn’t entirely certain that Tara noticed, eyes riveted as they were on the glossy image before her. It was a strange sensation for him to feel jealous of Gambit, always having been successful in his own right at wooing the opposite sex. It was more irrational still for him to be jealous of Gambit where Tara was concerned, a woman who had openly desired him for years, and still nurtured a fondness for him that he could safely assume would never be completely extinguished. But, much as he hated to admit it, even John Steed wasn’t immune to the effects of wounded male pride when the eyes of a desirable woman turned to another masculine profile. “I wasn’t aware he was your type,” he said with affected casualness.The humour in Tara’s eyes told him he hadn’t fooled her for a second. “Tall, dark, and handsome, you mean? Oh, Steed, you know my type better than anyone.”Steed felt his bruised ego revive a little as Tara’s green eyes worked their magic on him, but couldn’t help the extra deterrent that slipped out from between his lips. “He’s also spoken for, I’m afraid.” He omitted Purdey’s name, mindful of the secrecy of their romance. Not that he thought Tara would be indiscreet, but there was no telling who might be listening. He knew he really shouldn’t be telling Tara that detail at all if he really wanted to keep it secret, but his pride wasn’t quite as immune as he’d hoped from the smart of Tara’s wandering eye.“They always are,” Tara sighed resignedly, setting the photo aside. “That also seems to be my type.” She eyed Steed meaningfully, and for a moment the spectre of Emma Peel hovered over their table, until the waitress arrived with the tea trays.“Gambit’s eligibility aside,” Steed began after a moment, when the waitress had well and truly vacated the premises once more. And, more importantly, his ego had quit smarting. “What did you find out?”“Lots of things,” Tara said unconcernedly, selecting a cucumber sandwich from the tray and nibbling at it.Steed waited a moment for her to continue, but when she showed no signs of adding more, he realised he was going to have to persist. “Such as?” he prompted.Tara laughed at Steed’s expression. “Oh, really, Steed,” she said merrily. “I hardly ever got to keep you in suspense when we were working together. You always had the upper hand. Let me enjoy this.”Steed chuckled in spite of himself. “All right, my dear. I will concede that you’ve earned the right to savour the moment, especially as this particular endeavour is extra-curricular.”“Thank you, Steed,” Tara replied, inclining her head slightly so the edge of her blunt bob tickled her chin. “But I shan’t keep you in suspense any longer. I know this is quite serious business, particularly for Gambit.” She popped the last of her sandwich into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully as she set about opening another of the files from Gambit’s military career. “As far as I can tell, Gambit had a perfectly respectable career with the Paras before he got himself pulled into some sort of top secret undercover operation.” She looked expectantly up at Steed. “I assume that’s what you’re interested in.”“You assume correctly,” Steed confirmed, plucking a scone from the tray and deftly slicing it open with the same finesse as when he wielded his brolly.Tara nodded in satisfaction. “I thought it might be,” she said knowingly, taking a curried chicken from the tray this time. “The operation consisted of several serving British soldiers posing as mercenaries, all of whom would be conducting clandestine business for the British government while taking on the odd job to reinforce their cover. Am I on the right track?”“Like a bloodhound,” Steed confirmed, smearing his scone with clotted cream and strawberry preserve.“By all accounts, Gambit was not a happy recruit,” Tara went on. “Or a willing one. Reading his record, and his reports, he made multiple overtures that suggest he was unhappy with the questionable nature of the entire operation, not to mention the methods they were instructed to employ in the completion of their assignments.” She paused as she skimmed over a page in the report, and a grin crept across her face. “According to this, he was very good at finding creative ways of stopping the terrible people he was assigned to kill in ways that were morally and legally superior to what his superiors asked of him.”Steed matched her grin with one of his own around a bite of scone. “That does sound like Gambit,” he opined, when he could speak clearly. “But it might work against him where our people are concerned. Could any of his actions be construed as going into business for himself?”Tara emitted a peal of laughter that was strong enough to make her drop her scone. “If he was, he’s terrible with the accounts. He was dipping into his own funds for the resources to do things properly. And I have the financial records to prove it.” She brandished a handful of pages and waved them under Steed’s nose. Steed took a thin sheaf of pages from her and perused them while he sipped his tea. “Where did you get these?”“They’re all part of the service,” Tara replied wryly. “Despite this operation supposedly being undercover, it was more or less an open secret amongst various foreign intelligence services who had an interest in the same targets. They were keeping tabs on what Gambit and his fellow operatives were up to.”“Hence the records,” Steed surmised, and Tara inclined her head slightly in confirmation. “Did any of them have contact with Gambit?”“Not directly,” Tara confirmed. “Which is to say, not when he was aware of it. He wasn’t the only one there pretending to be something he wasn’t. Some of them even helped him along the way, even if he didn’t know it.” She smiled again. “I think rather a lot of them approved of what he was doing, and his willingness to flout his bosses’ authority to do it. Reading between the lines, I think that they were considering trying to recruit him, and they might have done it if he hadn’t been making it so clear to his bosses that he wanted out.”“It would’ve been the Ministry’s loss if they had,” Steed opined, sampling the cucumber sandwiches for himself. “And if he’s tried for treason, it still might be. What do they have to say about his capture?”Tara paled a little at that. “Nothing positive,” she admitted, in the definition of understatement. “There’s very little they could record firsthand about his internment itself. They knew he’d gone missing trying to steal papers from a person of interest named Solomon, but no one knew if he was dead, or captured, or had made a run for it. And no one was interested in jeopardising their surveillance operations to find out.” She picked up her teacup and took a long, rejuvenating drink before continuing. “It was only when he broke himself out that there start to be firsthand accounts.” She regarded Steed with moist doe eyes. “Oh, Steed, I know he’s your friend. How graphic do you want me to be?”“I’m familiar with all the gory details,” Steed informed, repressing the urge to shudder. “Gambit gave me a firsthand account of his own.”Tara looked relieved that she didn’t have to repeat what she’d read. “That’s just as well. This isn’t the place to talk about that sort of thing.” She swallowed hard, and Steed could tell the files she’d read about Gambit’s interrogation had shaken her, even as a seasoned agent who’d found herself in her share of frightening situations. “Gambit was eventually taken back to England for treatment, but before they could risk moving him, he spent a few days in the local hospital. All the interested services sent people in, mostly medical staff, to see what they could get out of him about Solomon. They also talk about his treatment and state of mind.”Steed leaned forward eagerly. “The fellow investigating Gambit is quite keen to posit the theory that he faked his psychological trauma.”“If he did, he’s an awfully good actor,” Tara said grimly. “Given the accounts from their medical experts, they were amazed that Gambit had survived at all. I don’t think anyone could honestly believe that he could fool all of those people. And the same goes for the medical establishment at home.”“Which Larry has been giving no credence at all,” Steed muttered under his breath, then smiled at Tara’s look of bemusement. “Don’t mind me, my dear. It’s been a rather trying time, not helped by some rather trying people.”“I know the feeling,” Tara sighed in commiseration. “All too well. In that case, I hope this helps.”Steed smiled reassuringly. “It’ll be a great help, Tara. I’ve no doubt about that. The more evidence we can bring forward, from independent sources no less, people with nothing to gain by attesting to Gambit’s motivations, the better.” He selected one of the cream puff swans at the top of the tray, dipped his finger in the cream and savoured the way it dissolved on his tongue. “What did you find on Vanessa Thyme?”“Another person you could have warned me about,” Tara said wryly, dipping into her satchel for more files. Steed nodded thoughtfully. “Another extensive record, I trust?”“Rather the opposite,” Tara contradicted, opening the first of a thin stack of files on top of Gambit’s, and skimming the top page. “She knows how to cover her tracks. I could find things on the career, but not the woman, if that makes sense.” She pursed her lips as she picked up the top sheet. “Still, I don’t know why I was surprised. A name like ‘Vanessa Thyme’ screams ‘alias’, doesn’t it?”Steed chuckled, seeing the humour in the situation. “One of many, I’d hazard.”“Yes, and I have the feeling there are dozens of capers she’d pulled where they’re still trying to work out who’s responsible,” Tara theorised, flipping the page over. “It’s just that no one’s thought to join the dots yet.” She shook her head as she reacquainted herself with the executive summary of the file. “I always wonder what it is that drives people to enter such horrible careers.”“Besides ours, you mean?” Tara gave him a look, but Steed ignored it. “Never mind. I’m not particularly concerned with her biography. Just her connection with Gambit. Is there any indication that your foreign service friends found even the smallest hint of a connection between her and Gambit, one that went beyond detainer and detainee?”Much to Steed’s pleasure, Tara shook her head in a definitive ‘no’. “Not a thing. There wasn’t any indication they’d even met before he was captured, and wherever she surfaced after the fact was far away from Gambit. And before you ask, yes I did cross-reference with the files you sent me rather than take their word for it.”“I wouldn’t dream of doubting you, my dear.”“No, but you want to be sure. This is someone’s life on the line, someone you care about.” Tara regarded him intently. “I know you’d do the same for me. And you have.” They shared a moment as they collectively reflected on their many escapades as partners, the close calls and narrow misses, the dramatic rescues and death-defying escapes. Then Tara turned back to business. “I really can’t find anyone in all these records who would reasonably assert that Gambit was in league with Thyme. And it’s not for lack of imagination, either. Like all people in our line of work, all the foreign intelligence services have suspicious minds. They were on the lookout for the possibility that Gambit might have gone over while in captivity. They were also very interested in the papers he was sent to acquire, and alert to the possibility that he might want to sell them on for his own profit. They suggest as much in several reports, and dismiss it just as quickly. They kept tabs on him in the years following, but they didn’t find anything. As far as they’re concerned, the papers are gone, the whole army operation was shut down, and Gambit moved onto the Ministry.” She shook her head. “The case is closed, and that goes for Gambit’s interactions with Vanessa Thyme.”“Until now,” Steed murmured, running a finger along the space above his top lip. “I don’t suppose you could see your way to making some copies of all that tireless research?”“You can have mine,” Tara offered, shuffling the files into one pile. “I’m not going to have much use for them, am I?”Steed smiled wickedly. “Even the photo?”Tara blushed, much to his amusement. “You said he was taken, didn’t you?”“I did.” Steed regarded her for a moment, smiling fondly. “Thank you, Tara. You’ve no idea how grateful I am.” “Anything for you, Steed,” Tara replied softly. She bit her lip, seeming to consider her next words carefully. “I suppose you’ll have to rush off back to England?”“My flight leaves tomorrow morning,” Steed confirmed, “but that leaves me plenty of time to finish my tea with a very dear friend. And perhaps I could take you out for a drink and dinner after you’ve finished for the day? That is, if you haven’t made other plans.”Tara positively glowed at the invitation. “That sounds lovely, Steed.” “My pleasure, my dear,” Steed enthused, before indicating the top of the tray. “Might I interest you in a swan?”“Always,” Tara confirmed happily, and the next hour unrolled with a delightful ease that was still fizzing in Steed’s brain when he nodded off on his flight back to London.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey leaned back on the perilously high chair in front of Gambit’s drafting board, and surveyed her work with a critical eye. Gambit used the board to sketch things that were rather more artistic than plans and diagrams, although he did dabble in that as well. She cast her mind to the well-worn, leather-bound portfolio stashed off to her right, just bursting at its fraying stitched seams with ideas for architecture, floor plans, and paint colours, amongst other things. He really was quite artistically talented, although he was also his own worst critic, always determined to do better.Purdey was equally determined to give him the chance to do better, hence her now sitting at the drafting board with the list of dates and times Steed had given her pinned near the top, and notes and other pieces of evidence—receipts, photos, letters, and the like--she’d managed to collect arranged around it. Purdey tapped a pen against her lips and eyed the remaining mystery dates with a mixture of frustration and annoyance. She shifted uncomfortably on the chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs in an effort to find a pose that didn’t make her feel like the leaning tower of Pisa. The chair was set for Gambit’s height, and Purdey had given up trying to work out how to readjust it. That meant she couldn’t touch the floor while remaining in her seat, but the chair was now so top-heavy that it was perilous to perch on it without any way to brace herself. She reconsidered her decision to use the drafting board instead of the dining room table, but the slant on the board meant she could view the whole picture without flattening herself across the surface or forever circling around to the other side. She sighed and felt the chair wobble dangerously, decided to cut her losses and slid off the seat before it did the job for her. It didn’t matter. She’d looked at the pages for so long now their contents were practically seared into her brain. Maybe she’d think better if she stretched her legs and quit battling gravity. She clattered down the few steps that led to the board’s elevated corner of the flat. She’d have to get Gambit to show her how to readjust the chair when he returned. It was another in the seemingly-endless list of reasons to get him back that was constantly compiling in her mind.She’d had a lot of initial success with the list. Steed had given her a start, after all, and she’d been able to flesh it out with proof that she’d been with Gambit on other occasions. That still left some worrying gaps, and Purdey was trying to work out how to find information to fill them. She’d already settled on Sara as a good source of information. Even if the woman didn’t know where Gambit had been herself, Purdey hypothesised that Sara might be able to point Purdey in the direction of someone who did. But that didn’t mean Purdey was content to rest on her laurels, especially since there was no guarantee Sara would be able to help. Which meant thinking up other possibilities that could explain Gambit’s mysterious absences. And one had instantly sprung to mind.Emma.It still irked Purdey to think that Gambit had a history with the one-time Mrs. Peel, no matter how platonic. And Gambit had assured her that it was platonic, but then he’d also waxed lyrical about the woman’s attributes in the past. Purdey had always treated it as the equivalent of a schoolboy crush: starry-eyed adoration of an older woman, although Emma wasn’t strictly that much older than Gambit, not that Purdey dwelled on that particular fact. But at least Emma had seemed unattainable, in availability if not age. To discover that the auburn-haired dream girl was, in fact, very available indeed, and furthermore, had been out gallivanting with Gambit before Purdey was even in the picture, was a very big blow to Purdey’s ego indeed. Purdey had recovered, of course, and now that she was with Gambit, there wasn’t much to worry about in terms of who held the prized place in his affections. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a sliver of anxiety and jealousy that flared up at the mere thought of the woman’s name. Purdey sighed. Gambit’s life and reputation were on the line, so Purdey could stomach a little discomfort on his behalf. She’d have to. Which meant she had to find a way of contacting Emma, preferably one that didn’t involve asking Steed. Purdey’s pride was taking enough blows as it was; she didn’t think she could take Steed’s knowing smile as well. Silently cursing Gambit for his way with women, she set out to locate her predecessor, once removed.vvvEmma Knight answered her flat door and was amazed at who she found on the other side. “Purdey! What a pleasant surprise.”“Hello, Emma.” The singular name, without honorific, felt alien in Purdey’s mouth, ironically so given Purdey’s own preferred mode of address, and the painful history she chose to forget by eliding the use of a second name. Emma had insisted she call her by it to avoid the whole confusing mess thrown up by her divorce and change of surname. Purdey supposed it was exasperating having everyone open their conversations with, “Mrs. Pe—I mean, Ms. Knight,” so it saved time and discomfort for all involved. Only Steed was still allowed to call her ‘Mrs. Peel’, which, coming from his mouth, had become more of a term of endearment than a name. Gambit called her ‘Emma’ with ease, as though she’d never been called anything else. Although he’d had a lot more opportunity to practice, which was why Purdey found herself on the woman’s doorstep…“Do you mind if I come in?” Purdey continued, willing herself not to appear uncomfortable. “It’s important.”“Of course.” Emma stood aside to allow her entry. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Purdey apologised belatedly, even as Emma closed the door behind her. “I would have called, but I’m trying to keep a low profile.”“Not at all. You’re always welcome.” Emma’s friendly smile only served to make Purdey feel more uncomfortable. “Would you like a drink? Mike always has Scotch, but I’m afraid he’s never mentioned your tipple.”“Gin, please. If you have it.” Purdey watched Emma depart for the drinks cabinet with a certain amount of relief. She’d always had a bit of a complex where Emma Peel, or Knight, or whatever she was called, was concerned. She’d been the gold standard of Steed’s partners, held up as the paragon of espionage in Purdey’s training classes—beautiful, multi-talented, accomplished, poised, confident, elegant, intelligent. Purdey’s competitive nature meant that she was always wondering how she measured up—as an agent and as a woman. It was also whispered in the halls—although, tellingly, never when Steed was around—about the true nature of Steed’s relationship with Emma Peel, how special it was. That was bad enough, but she’d at least thought Gambit was her own discovery, that she’d been the first of Steed’s female compatriots to meet him. So it had irked her rather a lot when Steed and Gambit had turned up in Brazil with Emma in tow, and she’d been informed that Emma had pipped Purdey to the post by a week or two. Purdey had actually come around to Emma—the woman was friendly and amiable and didn’t seem remotely threatened by Purdey at all, which somehow only dented Purdey’s ego more. But in spite of herself, she’d found she got along with Emma quite well, and they’d drummed up quite the rapport by the end of their Brazilian adventure. But that comfort level had been slowly built and extremely fragile where Purdey was concerned. As she stood there, waiting for her drink, all the old insecurities were resurfacing, and coupled with her anxiety about Gambit’s fate, it was making her quite uncomfortable indeed.“Here we are.” Emma handed Purdey a glass of gin before turning back to fix something for herself. “Have a seat wherever you like.”Purdey settled herself into a beautiful, ornate white armchair, suddenly conscious of what the gin would do to it if it spilled. Feeling rather like a child at a grown-up dinner party, she surveyed the flat. Emma’s home was a mix of traditional and modern, not quite to Purdey’s taste, but she couldn’t deny Emma had a good eye, and had knit the contrasting eras together beautifully. It reminded her of Gambit’s flat in some ways—the bookshelf filled with tomes on an eclectic array of topics; the penchant for abstract art; the love of modernity revealed by the automation and gadgets dotted about the place; the mat rolled up in the corner that would be used for a karate workout. Purdey had always wondered what on earth two people seemingly as unalike as Emma and Gambit could have to talk about—an ex-sailor, ex-racing driver born on the wrong side of the Thames, and a well-educated, independently wealthy business heiress. But the more she looked at the flat, the more she realised that they shared quite a few interests. Purdey wondered if Gambit ever felt her own company was somehow lacking because she didn’t share some of those interests to the same degree. She hoped not. She suddenly felt woefully inadequate in the kingdom of the one and only Emma Peel—er, Knight.“Not that I mind, but how did you find me?” Emma inquired as she settled onto the couch. “I’m not in the book.”“Gambit has your address,” Purdey told her. She’d been almost afraid to look for it where she had wound up finding it—in Gambit’s infamous little black book of telephone numbers. Gambit had gifted it to her after their first night together, a symbolic gesture to reaffirm how serious he was about their relationship. Purdey had put it in a drawer in his flat, not needing proof of his fidelity, but when she’d pulled it out again that morning, she wasn’t sure what to think about the fact that Gambit had hidden Emma in among his other conquests as the oblique ‘E.K.’ “He must have been here before,” Purdey realised belatedly, suddenly catching up on Emma’s remark about Gambit usually having Scotch.“A few times,” Emma confirmed, crossing her legs so her trouser cuff rode up to reveal black ankle boots. Another thing in common with Gambit. “But more often than not we have other places to be.”“Yes. Gambit told me,” Purdey said, a little too quickly. He had, too. Purdey had probed during their time in Brazil, when her insecurities had gotten the better of her. Gambit had flat out denied that he and Emma had ever been romantically involved, reassuring her that Emma had only ever been a friend. That had soothed Purdey’s fears, but there was something about being here, now, in Emma’s presence, to ask her about things that she’d done with Gambit off the record that made all the old insecurities and jealousies resurface. Purdey had always been jealous about Gambit’s involvement with other women in a way that she hadn’t where any other man was concerned, before they’d even struck up a romance. Even Larry hadn’t aroused that sort of passion at the height of their romance. Then again, she’d never been in love with anyone but Gambit, not properly, so she supposed that made sense. Emma cocked her head inquisitively. “Purdey, I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you here? I don’t imagine that you came all this way to ask me questions that you could have asked Gambit for yourself.” She leaned forward intently. “What is it? What’s happened?”“It’s Gambit. He’s in trouble,” Purdey said finally, then took a long pull of her gin, as though the admission alone had cost her precious strength. Emma’s kitten-like eyes widened. “You should have said so in the first place! Where is he?”“I don’t know,” Purdey said bitterly. “No one does. He’s gone on the run.”Emma sat back heavily, clearly perturbed. “Does Steed know? No, never mind. Of course he does. He’ll be following his own leads.” A thought occurred to her and she looked meaningfully at Purdey. “Did he send you here?”“No. Not exactly.” Purdey set the gin on the side table and reached for her purse, extracted the piece of paper Steed had given her. “Gambit is being accused of being a traitor.”Emma laughed exuberantly. “Mike, a traitor! That’s about as likely as Steed selling secrets in exchange for a beach house in California.”“You’re not the only one who thinks that,” Purdey said wryly, delighted to have someone else vocalise her own feelings. “But it’s true, as ridiculous as it sounds. You see he was—he was captured whilst stealing some papers when he was in the army.” Purdey chose her words carefully, knowing Gambit wouldn’t necessarily want the details of his story spread far and wide, even to someone he regarded as highly as Emma. “The woman who held him is in the country, and she wants the papers, and now she’s managed to frame Gambit as being her co-conspirator.” She handed Emma the page and the auburn-haired woman examined it with interest. “One of the things they’re using to condemn him is the times when he went on leave unexpectedly. Usually it’s hard to get him to take time off, but on these occasions he went of his own volition. This woman has fixed it so it looks as though every time Gambit disappeared, he got a payoff, ostensibly from her. I—we—Steed and I, we thought we might be able to help his cause if we could work out where he was during those times, and prove that he was doing something other than selling off state secrets.”“And you think that on some of those occasions he was with me?” Emma inferred, eyes skimming the page.“Well, yes,” Purdey admitted, feeling awkward again. “I mean, Mike did say that he’d spent time with you in the past, but not what you’d done together or when it happened.”“Of course he wouldn’t,” Emma sighed, pursing her lips as her eyes alighted on some pertinent dates. “I swore him to secrecy, and you know Mike never breaks a promise.” Purdey smiled a little at that, a common refrain that Gambit himself often used to reassure her. “And you’re right. On some of these dates he was with me. I’ll mark them off for you.” She rose and crossed to the black lacquered desk, found a pen and started to make notes on the page.“You do realise that you might have to go on the record and tell them where you were and what you were doing?” Purdey pointed out, biting her lip in anticipation of Emma’s negative reaction.“Then I’ll answer those questions, if it comes to it,” Emma said simply, crossing the room to where Purdey sat and handing her the page. “I’m not about to let Mike sacrifice himself for a few of my secrets.”Purdey took the paper disbelievingly. “Are you sure?”“Quite sure. He helped me without asking for anything in return. It’s high time I returned the favour.” Emma crossed her arms and considered. “In anticipation, I’ll start drawing up an affidavit detailing what went on—in the least contentious terms possible, of course.” She shot Purdey a cheeky smile. Purdey rather suspected that Emma liked being embroiled in the world of espionage again, no matter how tangentially. “I’ll send it to Steed, shall I?”“Yes, that’ll be fine.” Purdey bit back the urge to ask how much Emma was in contact with Steed now that they’d gotten past their initial awkwardness at being reunited in Brazil, but knew Emma was likely to play it as coy as Steed had when she’d made the same inquiry of him. “I’m sure Gambit will be very grateful.”Emma arched a sceptical eyebrow. “Only Gambit?”“Well, I am, too, of course,” Purdey sputtered. “And Steed. We all are.”“Yes, but you’re the one who came here,” Emma pointed out, sliding back into her seat with catlike grace. “I don’t know what Mike told you about me, Purdey, but what he told me about you made it abundantly clear that he was completely besotted with you. And I know that our acquaintance in Brazil was extremely brief, but you seem different to me. As though something’s changed between you and Gambit.”Purdey opened her mouth to protest, but Emma held up a hand to silence her. “It’s none of my business,” she said firmly. “All I’ll say is that, if you did have any reservations about coming here today, for any reason, I want you to know that I consider Mike to be a friend. A good friend. And if something has happened between you, I want you to know that I’m happy for you both. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” Her gaze took on a wistful tinge. “When someone looks at you like that, it’s very important not to take it for granted.”Purdey suddenly felt a wash of relief, as though an imaginary weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “I did take it for granted. For a very long time,” she admitted. “But I’m doing things differently now.” She left it to Emma to read between the lines, knowing that Emma was canny enough to work it out for herself. The kittenish eyes were dancing as Emma’s lopsided smile made a reappearance. “I’m very glad to hear that,” Emma said lightly. “Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”“Possibly.” Purdey rose and moved to Emma’s window. She twitched the curtain aside briefly and looked down at the car parked opposite Emma’s block of flats. A wicked smile crossed her face. “Quite possibly.”vvvThe surveillance men outside Emma’s flat caught sight of Purdey just as she stepped into her car. They scrabbled to turn the key in the ignition but were brought to a screeching halt by a knock on their window.They whirled around to find Emma standing on the pavement beside them, one hand on her hip. They rolled down the passenger side window with trepidation.“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Emma greeted. “I’m flattered by the attention, but I have been out of the game for rather a long time. Or are you here to invite me to the department’s tea dance?”“Mrs. Peel,” one of the clearly gobsmacked agents sputtered, less a greeting than a disbelieving identification. “We were, that is, it’s nothing personal. We’re only here to watch—ow!” His colleague nudged him in the ribs just before he revealed that Purdey was their quarry.Emma shook her head in reprimand. “Very naughty, following one woman and being distracted by another. And I’ve changed my name, gentlemen. That’s ten demerits for working off outdated information.”“Uh…” came the eloquent reply, as both men found themselves torn between catching up with Purdey and not wanting to annoy Emma. “Apologies, Mrs. P—Ms. Knight. No offence intended.”“Well, I suppose I could let it go this time,” Emma said lightly. “But I’ll be very cross if I find I’m under surveillance again without prior notice. It’s very difficult to find somewhere to park on this street without it being clogged up by men with binoculars.” She tapped the car’s roof gently and straightened up. “As you were, gentlemen.”It was only when Emma had crossed the street back to her building that the agents realised they had well and truly lost Purdey.vvvPurdey, for her part, was currently ensconced in a phone box, surveillance-free for the first time in much too long. She dialled the number on the card Sara had given her, waited impatiently while it rang. There was a moment where she feared the woman wouldn’t be in, and Purdey knew she couldn’t risk leaving a message. The idea of losing her opportunity to contact Sara when she wasn’t being monitored seemed a frustrating waste. But just when she was about to give up and ring off, there was a click and the receiver was picked up. “Lynley,” came the brisk greeting, so like Gambit that Purdey momentarily froze as the idea of never hearing him answer the phone again flitted across her mind. But she had no time to dawdle, and knew Sara likely didn’t either.“Sara, it’s me. Purdey,” she added, just in case it wasn’t apparent. Sara hadn’t exactly been bombarded with calls from Purdey over the years. “Listen, I need your help with something. Can you meet me at Gambit’s flat in an hour or so?”“Of course,” Sara agreed immediately. “I’ll see you then.” There was a pause and then a suspicious note crept in her voice, the agent in her kicking in. “Are you all right?”Purdey smiled tightly in appreciation of the woman’s sixth sense and inherent concern. “I’m fine. I’m on my own for once, but I doubt it’ll last long.” She thought for a moment, then added, “You might want to take the back way in.”“Right,” Sara said briskly, sounding relieved that Purdey was currently free from prying eyes and ears. “I’ll see you soon.”vvvPurdey luxuriated in her surveillance-free drive to Gambit’s flat. Muscles she hadn’t even known she had been tensing had relaxed, and she caught herself humming along to the radio as though she hadn’t a care in the world. Being watched and under suspicion, coupled with worrying about Gambit, was unquestionably taking its toll on her, she realised. The sooner they could clear Gambit, get rid of Vanessa, and bring him home, the better for all concerned.Purdey knew from her own time in surveillance that the first move her tail would make would be to lurk outside places she was likely to return to in hopes of getting eyes on her again. She knew for a fact that there would be someone in front of her flat, and it was a given that Gambit’s place would be given the same treatment. All the same, she still experienced a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach when she turned onto Gambit’s street and saw the familiar car parked out front. She tried her best to ignore her watchers as she pulled into a spot across the street, wondering idly if they’d get out and accost her for giving them the slip earlier, but to her delight they seemed disinclined. Emma had undoubtedly cowed them once already. Their appetite for confronting two annoyed women in one day was likely at an all-time low.Sara was already on the couch, making herself at home with a cup of coffee and a record playing when Purdey entered. Sara put a finger to her lips before Purdey could utter a word, then pointed at Gambit’s side table. Purdey nodded in understating at the universal warning for a listening device. Obviously, Sara had had the time to sweep the flat before her arrival. Wordlessly, Purdey moved and turned up Gambit’s stereo system as far as it could without deafening them both, saying a silent prayer of thanks for the soundproofing Gambit had installed to keep his neighbours from banging on his door late at night.They retreated to a corner of the room where they could just about hear one another with loud whispers. “This is a list of the times when Gambit uncharacteristically took leave and was unaccounted for,” Purdey told Sara as she unfolded the piece of paper she’d shown Emma. “They’re the ones being used to damn him. Steed says he can explain some of it, and I’ve also been to see Emma Knight.” That earned a surprised look from Sara, but Purdey had neither the time nor the inclination to explain the whole debacle. She was secretly pleased that Sara had been kept in the dark about Emma as much as she had. It was getting tiresome, being the last one to find out about Gambit’s secrets. “And some—some of these times he was with me.” Purdey tried not to blush, but she had a sinking feeling she was failing miserably. “I was hoping that you might know where he was during the ones left over. That is, if you don’t mind going on record about them if you do.”Sara surveyed the list with a knowing expression, shaking her head in mild exasperation. “Just like Michael. He sits there with that damned unreadable, neutral expression, not saying a word, and then you find out he’s secretly been divining the equation for the meaning of life or something.” Purdey allowed herself a small smile in agreement. Gambit’s poker face was unparalleled when he didn’t want someone to work out what he was thinking. There was something unfathomable about the man when he wanted to keep people guessing. “That boy takes on far too many secrets at this own expense for the sake of other people.”“I won’t argue with you,” Purdey agreed wryly. “Can you cast any light on any of the times?”“Hmmm?” Sara looked up distractedly from pondering Gambit’s ability to keep schtum. “Oh, yes, some of these are me. I need someone outside the department to help me sometimes, you see, but it’s not the sort of thing you broadcast. Everyone gets snippy about the merry hell it plays with the budgets and the allocation of resources. But if it pulls Michael’s fat out of the fire, of course I’ll admit it.” She paused, then added. “Some of these were for family emergencies. Not that Michael would admit that to anyone if he could help it.”Purdey felt the corners of her mouth tug downward. “What sort of emergencies?”“Best to let Michael tell you, if he’s inclined,” Sara said quickly, clearly as unwilling to talk about them as Gambit.Purdey saw the tears well up before Sara could blink them away, but chose not to press the woman further on what was clearly an upsetting topic.“What about the rest?” she asked instead, as Sara took a pen from the inside breast pocket of her coat and marked some of the dates off. “Do you have any idea what those could be about?”Sara shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t, and I have no idea who you could ask. You might have to wait for Michael to make contact and ask him yourself.”Purdey pulled a face. “He won’t like that, even if I do get a chance to talk to him.”“No, he won’t,” Sara agreed with a laugh that contained just the edges of a sob. “But such is life. I’ll leave that with you. I’m still working on debunking the bank accounts and the tickets. I’ll let you know when I’ve got something.”Purdey took the paper and said, straining to be heard over the otherworldly voice of Bryan Ferry crooning over the speakers, “Thanks, Sara.”“My pleasure.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was early in the afternoon two days later when Purdey answered the knock at her door and found a deliveryman waiting on the other side. He looked up from his clipboard and stared at her expectantly. “Miss Bryde?”“Yes?” Purdey regarded him with a touch of suspicion. She wouldn’t put it past Larry and co. to use any kind of deception to get her to talk. But the deliveryman looked decidedly uninterested in her plight. “Package for you,” he explained, hefting a small box. “You need to sign for it.”Purdey took the proffered clipboard and signed her name, trying to think what she might have ordered and forgotten about, but nothing came to mind.The deliveryman, satisfied with her handiwork, handed over the box and bid her good day. Purdey’s puzzled frown increased at the box’s lightness. Whoever it was had clearly shipped her air. It was only when she looked at the address scrawled on the top of the box that she froze.It was Gambit’s handwriting.She hurriedly closed the front door and pulled a knife from the kitchen drawer, set about cutting through the packing tape, taking care that she didn’t tear anything unduly, in case something was hidden underneath. It came away easily, and she was rewarded with a single, plain piece of card peering up at her from inside. She snatched it up and read the scrawl, also in Gambit’s handwriting:
Go to your mother’s. Today. You’ll need an escape route.
It was unsigned and undated, but the postmark told Purdey it had been sent that morning, and the handwriting was unambiguously Gambit’s. Purdey reread the message, then promptly took it, and a lighter, to the bathroom, where she burned it and flushed the remains down the loo. Larry, McKay, or anyone else was definitely not going to get his hands on it.After making sure her bathroom was appropriately aired out, Purdey returned to the living room and pondered her next move. She wouldn’t be able to pull off her escape single-handed without attracting attention. She needed help, and she had a fairly shrewd idea about where she could get it. A plan slotted together in her quicksilver mind.First things first. She went to the phone and dialled a number by heart. “Hullo, mum. It’s me…”vvvCarver was looking forward to a nice afternoon, a quiet afternoon. With no one bellowing for this and that or hurling the occasional bit of abuse. He had a nice, soothing cup of chamomile tea on hand, and the latest copy of the racing forms to enjoy. He was going to savour the silence and try not to think about how it was only a temporary reprieve from the great, huffing windbag that would, in a few short hours, be gracing him with his reddened face and ice phobia.As Carver moved to sit down at his pantry’s table, pondering the hard, uncomfortable chair that was the only type of seating available, a thought struck him. The Colonel’s office, complete with large, plush leather chair, was waiting, unoccupied, for someone to fill its uncharacteristically silent walls. Carver debated inwardly. Technically it was an act of insubordination to even consider parking his sub-ranked posterior in that chair. But then again, it was meant for the highest ranking officer, and when he was the only person there, that made him the highest, surely? Carver smiled a self-satisfied smile. Yes, that reasoning would do. Besides, Carver deserved to occupy the chair that so often contained the bane of his existence. No one would ever know, and it would make the Colonel’s return that much more bearable when the man reminded him that it was he who sat behind the desk and gave the orders. Balancing his tea in one hand and tucking the racing form under one arm, Carver opened the door connecting the pantry to the office and stepped inside.The office was so quiet, so peaceful, serene. Sunlight filtered through the window and spilled over the garish desk and the animal head trophies, small motes of dust floating in the yellow rays. Carver sighed contentedly. Perfect. Only swapping his tea for the iced variety could make his small act of rebellion more complete.The chair was facing away from Carver, toward the window, but this was not of particular concern to him as he strode toward the desk. However, as he neared his destination, there was a slow, but deliberate, movement from behind the desk. It took him a moment to realise that the chair was turning, very, very slowly, but inexorably, to face him.Carver lurched to a stop in surprise, slopping some of his tea over the rim of the cup and onto his hand in the process. He yelped as the piping hot water burnt his skin, and the racing form slipped from under his arm, splatting unceremoniously onto the floor face down. As Carver nursed his burned hand, the chair continued its slow journey, and when he looked back up, he found himself looking into a pair of bright blue eyes.“You!” Carver exclaimed, recognizing the short blonde hair and slim figure immediately. Her legs were crossed casually, and one hand reached up behind her head, clutching the chair back with a relaxed grip. He was quite familiar with this girl, the one who had insisted on being admitted to the base and playing a prank on the Colonel. She had made a few more appearances since that unpleasant first meeting. She took after her uncle, Carver mused ruefully, and now she was having a bit of fun at his expense again.If only he didn’t find her so attractive…“Me,” Purdey confirmed brightly. “Sorry, did I startle you?”Carver tried to wipe the surprise off his face in favour of a stoic soldier’s expression. He was obviously only partially successful, judging from the smile tugging at the girl’s lips as she watched him. “It’s all right, miss. It’s just that no one’s scheduled to meet the Colonel today, and his chair is definitely off-limits.”“Oh, Uncle Elly won’t mind,” Purdey said casually. “Do you?”“Why should I, miss?”“Well, it seems to me that you were planning on having a seat here yourself when you came in…”Carver blanched. If the girl told the Colonel, he’d never hear the end of it. “No, miss, I would never—that’s against regulations,” he sputtered. “Really, I just came to make sure everything was in order before I left for the canteen.”Purdey smiled a friendly smile. “Don’t worry, Uncle Elly won’t hear a thing from me. I promise.” She looked vaguely around the office. “I need to see him. It’s urgent.”Carver drew himself up to his full height. “The Colonel has gone to lunch,” he announced in his best officious voice. Purdey arched an eyebrow. “I pieced that much together myself. You wouldn’t be willing to tell me where?”Carver shook his head. “Colonel Foster was quite explicit when he told me that he didn’t want to be disturbed.”“I can imagine,” Purdey said dryly, quite aware of her uncle’s colourful vocabulary. “But I don’t think he meant it to apply in emergencies, particularly those related to his favourite niece…”Carver shook his head, tight-lipped. “Sorry, miss, orders are orders.”Purdey sighed. “Oh, well. I’ll have to call on him when he returns. And I’m sure he’s having such a lovely day, too. It’ll spoil his mood when I tell him about what his batman gets up to on lazy afternoons.”Carver gaped at her in horror. “But miss, you said you wouldn’t!”“I did say it was an emergency. I don’t have time to waste. Someone’s life is on the line. Someone important.” All the humour was gone from her voice. “Please, Carver.”Carver swallowed. She had him there, and for once she looked deadly serious, all suggestions of teasing gone. “All right,” he said resignedly. “He’s at the Arrow Club, having lunch with some of the other commanding officers. He’s meant to be back by 1400h, but he’s usually at least—““Half an hour late,” Purdey finished. “I know. Thank you.” She stood, made her way across the office, turned at the door. She nodded at Carver’s burnt hand. “Do you know, if I were you, I’d put some ice on that. If you can find any.” She treated him to a quick wink before disappearing out the door.Carver rolled his eyes expansively and set off to find some ice. vvvColonel Elroyd Foster was sipping a nice brandy. He quite enjoyed these monthly meetings with his fellow commanding officers—even if some of the misguided buggers did insist on icing their drinks. Officially, they were meant to be discussing strategy, regulations, budgets, that sort of thing. And they did, to be fair—for about the first half an hour while they waited for the food to come. After that, they came up with their decisions for the reports, tucked into one of the club’s excellent steaks, and moved onto the cricket scores. They weren’t picking up the tab, but that didn’t mean they weren’t entitled to enjoy themselves a bit.The club wasn’t officially “gentlemen only”—women had been allowed in recent years after some particularly vocal wife of one of the members had rallied her fellow military spouses and gotten the rules changed, and the occasional wife or daughter was now seen within the confines of the dining room. But old habits died hard, and it was still a bit of a shock to see a young woman, unaccompanied, stride into the dining area. That was why all conversation ceased at the Colonel’s table as Purdey’s shapely figure stopped in the doorway and began scanning the area. Foster had his back to the entrance, and as such eyed his fellow officers with bemusement. “What the devil is it?” he asked Colonel Andrews, who was seated to his immediate left.Andrews blinked as though coming out of a daze. “Young woman, old boy. Easy on the eyes, too—what’s this? She’s coming this way!”Elroyd twisted to get a better look at this wonderful creature, nearly dropped his brandy when he saw that it was his niece. She smiled when she saw that he was turned her way, and waved cheerily. All eyes at the table immediately swiveled to Foster, who felt a swell of pride. Good for my image, yes indeed, very good….“Uncle Elly!” Purdey greeted, finally reaching the table and bending to give her uncle a kiss on the cheek. He was the only one still seated—all the others had stood as a courtesy to the female of the species. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch date, but I need your help.” She nodded to the other men at the table. “I apologise for the intrusion.”“Not at all, not at all,” Andrews demurred. “Foster, old boy, aren’t you going to introduce us to this charming young lady?”“Of course, of course,” Foster agreed gleefully, happy to show off his favourite niece to an appreciative audience. “This is Purdey, Acacia’s daughter—my niece.”“Ah, I remember Cacy,” one of the other officers put in. “You take after your mother, my dear. Very much so.” There was unanimous agreement around the table. Everyone remembered Acacia Foster, Elroyd’s twin sister, and they’d all hoped to have a chance to take her out, too, until a handsome young man by the name of Jonathan Bryde had appeared on the scene, and everyone else had been left out in the cold. Not that they were happy when he passed on, but there had been a good deal of disappointment when that bishop she ultimately remarried had shown up. “Better Cacy than you, Foster,” Colonel Sommers, seated on Foster’s other side, quipped.Purdey grinned. “Do you mind if I borrow him for a moment?”“Not at all. Give us a moment to clear the air, eh?” Andrews nudged the officer on the other side of him in the ribs conspiratorially.Foster harrumphed, and Purdey could see by his reddening face that a retort was bubbling to the surface. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and pulled her uncle to his feet, gently yet firmly. “Back in a moment,” she told the other officers, dragging the sputtering Elroyd to a nearby booth. He stewed for a moment after he sat down, took a few deep breaths. Purdey waited patiently for him to calm himself, knowing that he wouldn’t be any use to anyone while he was fuming. Eventually, her uncle reined in his temper to the point of forming sentences that were suitable for indoor speech and didn’t blow out the eardrums.“Would you like a drink?” was his first question. Purdey accepted happily—her nerves were raw and her adrenaline had been pumping ever since she received Gambit’s message.Elroyd grinned happily. “Waiter!” he bellowed, blowing off a good deal of steam in the process. Purdey winced, tugging the sides of her mouth back and suppressing a slight smile as a man scurried toward their booth. “Do you come here often?” she asked conversationally.“Home away from home,” Foster replied as the man arrived at their table. The Colonel eyed him up appraisingly. “New here, aren’t you?”The young man nodded nervously. “Yes, sir. First day, sir. What can I get for you, Colonel?”Purdey’s heart went out to the boy. He couldn’t have been much past twenty-two, and first day on the job he had to deal with Elroyd Foster. She hoped her uncle would be kind.“Heard of me, have you?” Foster inquired, raising one bushy eyebrow.The boy nodded. “Yes, sir. The staff had a lot to say about you sir, and I’ve been informed as to your, uh, particular tastes.”Purdey snickered under her breath. She could imagine the sort of words used by the club staff to describe Colonel Foster, none of which would pass muster in the company of their betters.“Tastes?”“No ice, sir.”Foster nodded in approval. “Capital, capital. I’ll have a Scotch, and my niece will have a gin, splash of bitters, and a ginger ale. And she will have ice, do you hear?”The waiter bobbed. “Very good, Colonel.”Purdey was impressed as the boy scuttled off again—her uncle had been known to make better men cry. Either her uncle was softening, or the boy was made of sterner stuff.“Now then, Purdey. What can I do for you? Always a pleasure to help out my favourite niece, especially when she’s as deucey pretty as you.” Purdey smiled at the compliment. “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice. I know you’re here on business.”Foster snorted. “What is the world coming to, if a man can’t make time for his niece?” He glanced around the club, caught the eye of more than one of his colleagues and their expressions of interest as they eyed up Purdey. “And there aren’t many disadvantages to being seen with a pretty girl like you, let me tell you.”Purdey grinned. “I’m always happy to burnish your reputation, Uncle Elly, but I do have a favour to ask.”The colonel pretended to huff. “Couldn’t be bothered to visit your dear old uncle for his own sake, eh?” He caught sight of Purdey’s pained expression, and immediately turned serious. “What is it, my girl? Something troubling you?”Purdey leaned in and spoke softly, well-aware that not everyone watching and listening would necessarily be as harmless as her uncle’s curious colleagues. “Something’s happened,” she said carefully. “I can’t tell you very much, because it’s to do with work. I can trust you not to pass on what I say, can’t I?”Foster looked properly concerned now. “Of course, Purdey, but you have me worried now. You do know that if you’re in trouble, I can put a word in with some of the right people.”Purdey shook her head rapidly. “No, no, no one else can know about what I’m asking you do, or why. And no, it’s not me that’s in trouble. But I do need help.” She looked down at her hands, resting her palms flat on the tabletop. “Or rather, one of my colleagues does.”“That Steed fellow?”Purdey shook her head. “No, the other one. Gambit. I’ve mentioned him to you before.”Foster thought about this for a moment, then she saw the recognition dawn in his eyes. “Ah, yes, the young chap. The one I met while we were rounding up ‘Mad Jack’ Miller’s mob? Walks like a seaman?”Purdey nodded, smiled slightly. Leave it to an army man to recognize the competition. “That’s him. He was in the navy when he was younger.”Foster’s face suddenly clouded in realisation. “I heard something down the grapevine about him being on the lam.” He cocked his head inquisitively, voice taking on a warning tone. “He hasn’t got you into some sort of trouble, has he?”“He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Purdey hissed back fervently. “Not a thing. I need you to trust me on that, and I need you to help me.”“So that you can help him?” Purdey was tight-lipped. Foster sighed. “Purdey, I don’t know if I can do that in good conscience. If you wind up behind bars, it’ll kill your mother. You know that.”“It won’t come to that,” Purdey said firmly. “I won’t let it. But if you want me to succeed without being thrown in a cell, you’ll need to help me. That’s the best way to keep me safe.”Foster looked unconvinced. “You’re deucy loyal to this fellow.”“He’s my partner. And he’s in trouble.”“What sort of trouble?”“Life and death,” Purdey said grimly, and her eyes clouded briefly. “Sorry to hear that, but I don’t see what I can do, particularly for one of the boys from one of the other services.”“He was in the army, too,” Purdey informed. “In case you need any more motivation.” “Well, if you insist!” Foster said boistrously, just as the young waiter returned with their drinks. By some miracle, he managed to keep his tray balanced, despite the shockwaves from Elroyd’s outburst. He gave them their drinks and departed without a word. Foster watched him go. “Good lad,” he murmured. “Steady hand and all that.” He turned back to Purdey. “I won’t say I don’t have reservations, but what can I do?”“I need two things,” Purdey began, turning to the task at hand. “First, a motorbike, hidden in that derelict farmhouse two fields away from mum’s.”“I know the one,” Foster confirmed. “Simple enough. What’s the other?”“I need you to leave your cellar window open tonight,” Purdey told him. “So I can get inside without being seen. Then I need you to drive me to mum’s in the morning.” She bit her lip. “I realize it’s all very mysterious, but Gambit really does need my help, and I can’t risk anyone knowing I’m giving it.”Foster arched an eyebrow. “Goodness me, cloak and dagger doings. I thought I was past all that at my age.”“Oh, Uncle Elly, you’re not past anything,” Purdey assured, patting his arm. “You’ve just been waiting for the right opportunity to dive back into the fray.”Foster laughed. “You’re a flatterer like your mother,” he observed, then added with uncharacteristic softness, dropping his gaze and staring into his drink, “Purdey, tell me something. This Gambit fellow—how close are you two?”Purdey blinked in surprise, the rug well and truly pulled out from under her. She hadn’t told her family about her involvement with Gambit, hadn’t wanted to until she knew the answers to some of the questions her mother would surely ask. She also didn’t want the pressure—her mother wanted Purdey to settle down, to have a normal family before it was too late, and her daughter was too old to give her the grandchildren she desired. And then there was the Larry factor, what had happened the last time she had been this serious with a man. But Purdey didn’t want any pressure, any reminders, anyone looking over her shoulder and pointing out her ticking biological clock and past mistakes. She just wanted Gambit, wanted to take things as they came, waking up to the small pleasures of his smile and his kiss. It was so nice to be loved, unconditionally, without worrying about the future. But her mother was very concerned about the future—Acacia had mentioned on more than one occasion that she didn’t want Purdey left alone when she was gone. Purdey knew that, if her mother approved of Gambit, the first thing she would ask was when they were going to make the relationship permanent. And that was too fast. Gambit hadn’t even proposed. And she didn’t want him to.Did she?She looked into her uncle’s eyes. If she told him all the details, he’d tell her mother, and that would be the end of the pressure-free aspect of the relationship as far as she was concerned. She tried her best to answer the question without lying—Uncle Elly could always see through her when she was being deceptive.“We’re quite close, obviously,” she said in her best no-nonsense tone. “You have to be in our line of work, saving each other’s lives.” Elroyd raised an unimpressed eyebrow.“Just colleagues, then?”“And friends,” Purdey added defensively, knowing her poker face was wavering.“And that’s as far as it goes?” Foster pushed.“What makes you think it goes any farther?” Purdey wanted to know.Foster shook his head and smiled. “I may be old, Purdey, but I’m not stupid. I remember your mother when she was young, when she first met your father. That gel had the same look in her eyes as you do now. I may be an old fool, but I’ve still got eyes in my head.”“That’s very observant, Uncle Elly, and you’re no fool, but that’s not much to base a case on,” Purdey pointed out, even as she fought back images of her mother and father, the way they looked at each other, right up until he died. She didn’t want to be in the same position as her mother, losing someone so dear.“Isn’t it?” Elroyd said knowingly. “I don’t claim to know everything about women, Purdey, but I like to think I know a bit about you. And if this Gambit fellow was nothing more than a friend, you’d be teasing me relentlessly about how silly I was to have such a notion.” He arched a bushy eyebrow at his niece. “Am I wrong?”Purdey thought about protesting, but quickly realized it would be futile. There was hardly any point in denying it at this stage. “Yes,” she admitted softly. “He’s more than a friend. And I’m worried about him.”Foster sighed. “Purdey, you’ve been through this before. I don’t want you to get hurt. I couldn’t watch your pretty face fall again.”“It’s different this time,” Purdey said quietly. “Believe me, I’ve been telling myself the same story since I met him, but…” She shrugged, gave him a half-smile. “I love him. And if he…if you don’t help, then I’m going to wind up like my mother after my father died.”Foster whistled. “That serious?”“That serious.”Foster sighed and shook his head, and Purdey felt her heart sink. “All the men and woman in our family are the same,” he pronounced. “Stubborn and loyal to the end when it comes to fighting for the people they care about. Myself included.” He smiled. “If what you say is true, then I’m happy for you, in spite of the circumstances.” Purdey’s face broke into a grateful smile, and she threw herself across the table to hug him.“Steady on, my girl. The others are watching,” Foster muttered, face reddening in a blush.Purdey released him and returned to her drink with a little hope in her heart. “Thank you, Uncle Elly.”“My pleasure, my dear, my pleasure. I hope it helps bring your young man back. If he’s going to be tangling with my niece, I’d like an opportunity to set him straight before he meets your mother.”Purdey’s smile faded. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?” When she saw her uncle’s questioning look, she elaborated. “Well, you know how she is, and I was hoping to keep her in the dark for as long as possible. It’s easier that way.”Foster took a sip of his drink. “She already knows, Purdey. Has for weeks, just from your telephone calls. How she divined it from your voice alone, I haven’t the foggiest. But she knows you’re keeping someone under wraps.”Purdey’s jaw dropped. “She told you? She didn’t say a word to me! And here I thought I was doing a good job of throwing her off the trail.” She tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the tabletop, pouting slightly. “She is your mother, Purdey, and she was married to an agent herself. She likely knows just what to listen for whenever you mention this Gambit fellow.” He grinned. “You do know where you got your powers of observation, don’t you?”Purdey sighed. “She hasn’t been pushing, though. That’s something at least.”He waved her off. “It’ll all work out for the best, my dear. Just straighten out this nasty business first. Now, do you have time for lunch before you scurry off? You can’t starve yourself. That job’s not easy on lovely young things.”“Lunch would be lovely. I’m positively ravenous,” Purdey admitted. “But shouldn’t you be getting back to your friends?”“Oh, they’ll be all right.” Foster signaled for the waiter to bring Purdey a menu. “By the by, just how did you find me here?”“Carver,” Purdey supplied.Foster scowled. “I thought I told him I didn’t want to be disturbed.”“Ah, but I had something important—leverage.”Foster looked intrigued. “I see.”“You may want to check your desk when you get back,” she added, with one side of her mouth quirked up.“What for?”“Tea stains. Or ice packs.”“Ice?!” Foster stewed grumpily. “Ice. I knew I shouldn’t have left my office door unlocked.”vvvLunch with Uncle Elly proved the most effective distraction from the whole sorry business that Purdey had experienced thus far, and she was almost feeling optimistic about the state of affairs when she returned to her flat. Almost. The sight of the car tailing her in her rearview mirror put a damper on things, reminding her that she was being spied on by her own people. Purdey bit down hard on the impulse to slam on the brakes and get out to confront whoever it was, but reminded herself that it could just as easily have been her doing the following in different circumstances. She kept driving and contented herself with thoughts about how she would give her pursuers the slip later that night.She parked at the curb and clattered down the twenty-one steps to her flat as casually she could, desperately hoping that she hadn’t tipped her hand. She packed her case as leisurely as she could to disguise what might be construed as a suspiciously hasty exit. The last thing she needed was to be dragged in for questioning at this point. She knew Gambit might not have another chance to make contact for some time.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey drove to her mother’s by the most obvious route. She wasn’t trying to lose her tail—on the contrary, she hoped they were following her. She knew her watchers would bolster her alibi should she be questioned about her whereabouts. She thought she’d spotted one familiar-looking car a few miles back, but she suspected they were trading off vehicles to make their chase less obvious, and she didn’t have a bead on her current admirer’s mode of conveyance just yet.She hoped her mother hadn’t done anything that might undermine her plan. Acacia undoubtedly knew she was up to something, despite Purdey’s vague phone call about things going badly at work and needing a break from it all. But her mother had married a spy, so she knew more than most the sorts of perils that came from loose lips. Purdey only hoped she’d be as understanding when she told her what else she had planned.She pulled into her mother’s drive and parked her car, in full view, in front of her house. She alighted and removed her suitcase from the boot, climbed the steps in front of the door and rang the bell. Her mother must have heard her arrive, because she answered almost instantly.“Purdey!” she greeted warmly, opening her arms and embracing her only child. “It’s so nice to have you home for a visit. It’s been much too long.”Purdey hugged her mother back, suddenly realising how much she’d craved the reassurance only a parent could give. “I’m very happy to be home,” she told her, pulling back and smiling at her mother. “I’m sorry it’s such short notice.”“Nonsense. You’re my daughter. If you can’t drop in at the last minute, who can? Come in and we can catch up.” She ushered Purdey inside and closed the door behind her. No sooner had Purdey set down her suitcase than she was moving into the house, checking the windows. “Your stepfather is out writing his sermon, but he’ll be back soon enough,” Acacia began, turning to find her daughter scoping out the house like a true professional. “Purdey, what are you doing?”“Checking,” Purdey replied distractedly, running her hand under the edge of the windowsill. “Has anyone been in here lately? Anyone you don’t know, or who was behaving oddly?”“Of course not!” Acacia exclaimed. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. I saw your father looking for listening devices often enough, but why you’d think there were any here…” She paused and cocked her head, placing her hands on her hips. “Purdey, what is going on? Are you in some sort of trouble?”Purdey sighed and left off searching. “Not me, but someone I work with,” she explained. “I can’t talk about it, mum, but I do need your help.”“Then you had better explain, because I’m not going to help you sacrifice yourself and your career without a good reason,” Acacia said firmly. “And I mean a very good reason.”Purdey shook her head. “Really, mum, it’s better for us both if you don’t know. But you have to trust me that the person I’m helping needs that help very badly, and I’m going to give it to him.”Acacia strode over to where her daughter was standing, met her eyes. “It’s someone you care about, then? Someone who means something to you?”Purdey nodded in confirmation. “Yes.”“How much?” Purdey’s mother pressed.“Everything,” Purdey answered, without hesitation. “And before you ask, he’s done the same for me and more. He’d never ask for help, but he needs it or…” She swallowed hard. “Or I’m afraid something very, very terrible is going to happen to him. So please, mum. Please help me.”Her mother regarded her for a moment, seemed to consider her options. “I’ll help,” she said finally. “On one condition.”Purdey arched an eyebrow. “What sort of condition?”“That you invite him for dinner when it’s all over,” Acacia requested. “Because I think I ought to meet the man my daughter’s fallen in love with.”Purdey blushed in spite of herself. “I didn’t say—““You didn’t need to,” Acacia cut in, taking her daughter’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “And I’m very pleased for you. Now, tell me what you need me to do.”Purdey smiled gratefully. “First of all, have there been any messages delivered here for me? Any unusual communications of any kind?”Acacia frowned in thought. “Nothing for you,” she murmured, tapping a well-manicured finger against her lower lip contemplatively. “There was a solicitation letter from a florist, but I didn`t open it.”“A florist?” Purdey exclaimed, remembering Gambit’s last mode of communication. “Mum, that might be it. Where did you put it?”Acacia looked alarmed. “In the bin! I didn’t think anything of it.” She turned on her heel and hurried into the kitchen, opened up the cupboard beneath the sink. “It should be here…There it is!” She turned around and handed it to Purdey, clasped her hands anxiously. “It’s a bit damp but I hope it’s all right. If I’d known…”“It’s all right, mum,” Purdey assured, though her heart was pounding so fast that it rather belied that assertion. What if the letter had contained something important, and it had been damaged? Or even worse, what if there was no message at all? What would that mean for Gambit?Eventually she managed to tear the missive open with trembling fingers. There was a single sheet of paper inside. Much to her relief, she recognised Gambit’s scrawl. There was no message, just an address to a boat docked in a marina and a time: midnight. Purdey smiled.“Is it what you were looking for?” Purdey’s mother wanted to know. Purdey nodded, moved to the kitchen drawer where she knew her mother kept a box of matches. “Mum, did Elliot walk to the church today?” she inquired as she struck a match and held it to the paper and envelope, setting both alight.“Yes, of course. He always walks in. You know that.”“And you pick him up?”“Yes.” Acacia cocked her head to one side. “Purdey, is this all leading somewhere? Because it will be infinitely quicker if you get to the point.”Purdey dropped the burning envelope and letter into the sink, watched them curl into ash. “I’m going to come with you when you pick him up,” she explained. “But it’s very important no one sees me leave the house or go into the church. Do you think we can arrange that?”“Well, the car’s in the garage, so no one would see you get in,” Acacia said thoughtfully. “And I always drive around the back to pick your step-father up, so no one would be able to see you get out of the car, at least not without us seeing them. If you hurried, you might manage it.”Purdey nodded happily. “That might work. I’ll unpack now. Let me know when you leave. And don’t hurry on my account. They’ll know something’s going on otherwise.”vvvPurdey lay in the back seat, clutching a bag to her chest and hoping no one stopped her mother’s car en route. Thankfully, the car made it to the church without incident, and as soon as her mother pulled around the back of the building, she ducked out of the vehicle and inside, with her mother following behind at a more leisurely pace.Inside, mother and daughter beat a path to the study in the back of the church, keeping a watchful eye open for any observant worshippers or enthusiastic community members who might be wandering the halls. It wouldn’t do for Purdey’s presence to be broadcast all around the village, where her watches might hear of it. There were a couple of close calls, but somehow they managed to slip inside before the town busybodies got a look-in.The bishop was seated at his desk, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose as he pondered which choice of words would rouse his flock and inspire them to do great things. Unfortunately, his thoughts kept drifting to the garden show scheduled for that Saturday, where a rather lovely selection of roses was being promised. He was about to peruse the flyer that had been distributed in advance once more, to decide just which breed he was looking forward to the most, when Purdey and Acacia slipped inside and closed the door carefully behind them, startling him from his reverie. He regarded the newcomers with a measure of surprise, before smiling beatifically.“My goodness me, can that be you, Purdey?” he exclaimed, rising to embrace her.“It is,” Purdey confirmed, rounding the desk to hug him warmly. “But I can’t let anyone know I’m here, so as far you’re concerned it’s just mum, okay?”“Ah, yes, yes,” the bishop agreed, holding her at arm’s length and nodding in understanding. “Yes, your mother said there was something odd going on. I was going to ask Roland about it, but then wondered if that would do more harm than good.”“It’s just as well you didn’t,” Purdey confirmed. “I can’t say too much, but there’s something important I need to do, and I need your help to do it.”“Of course, of course, my dear. Anything you need.”Purdey smiled gratefully. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, I need somewhere to hide until this evening, and I need you to pretend that I’m at the house all night.”“Well, the second’s quite easy,” the bishop said blithely. “And as for the first, there is a place you could hide without being detected, but it’s not very pleasant.”Purdey cocked her head. “Oh? Where?”The bishop peered over the top of his glasses at her. “The crypt,” he replied. “No one’s been buried down there for quite some time, but even the long-time residents tend to unnerve people. But it’s certainly not a place where you’re likely to be disturbed.”Purdey looked to her mother and pulled a face. “Well, I suppose now isn’t the time to be choosy.”“Oh, really, dear,” her mother said blithely. “It’s not as bad as everyone makes out. It’s quite peaceful, and very private.”Purdey arched an interested eyebrow. “Private?”Purdey’s mother smiled mysteriously. “Oh, a lady must have some secrets, dear. You’ll be all right. It’s not for that long, and anyway, I brought you some sandwiches.”vvvAfter everyone had gone, and the night had drawn in, and the sandwiches were nothing more than a memory, Purdey crept out from the depths below the church and into the night, helmet tucked under her arm. She forewent the use of a torch, unwilling to draw attention to herself, even though she was fairly certain any watchers would assume she was tucked up in bed at her mother’s. But she owed it to Gambit to take every precaution she could.She sprinted across an open field, making for a small, dilapidated barn in the distance, praying all the way that her uncle had managed to pull off her request.The barn was old, and had been even when her mother moved to the area shortly after her marriage. Whoever had owned it once upon a time had upped sticks long ago, and as far as she knew no one had bothered to lay claim to it since. She’d come there on walks occasionally, while waiting for her stepfather to finish for the day, and peered inside the ramshackle structure, which contained nothing more than an old wagon and some rotting boards. No one had made it their clubhouse or base of operations in the interim, at least the last time she checked, and she prayed that was still the case. Otherwise Uncle Elly’s ‘gift’ would be long gone.Purdey arrived at the barn and tugged open the creaky old door as quietly as possible, wincing as the ancient hinges squeaked in protest, the noise sounding impossibly loud in the still night air. Creeping inside, she barely avoided tripping over a stray board and picked her way deeper into the structure, squinting in the dark.It was then, in the thin beams of moonlight streaming through the cracks in the wall, that she saw what she was looking for. Sitting in what looked like its very own spotlight was a long, narrow structure, covered with a tarp. Purdey smiled gratefully. “Well done, Uncle Elly,” she murmured to herself, and moved to grasp the cloth. It slid away to reveal the curves and lines of a sleek motorcycle, fast and agile. She would have preferred her own seat, but that was back at her flat, and there was no way of retrieving the motorcycle without attracting attention. But Uncle Elly had chosen well—she’d be back in the city in no time on the magnificent beast.Purdey carefully wheeled her transport out of the barn and onto the nearby country road, forever vigilant for lurking cars. It was only when her helmet was on and there was nothing more she could do to conceal her presence that she risked kicking the machine into life, its throaty growl echoing across the countryside. Purdey didn’t know if anyone heard it, or saw the vibrant headlights cutting through the gloom, but neither of them could be helped. She pulled down her goggles and set off at a quick pace. If she hadn’t managed to elude all of her watchers, she could at least try to outrun them.She’d thought the worst part of the trip would be looking out for tails, but when it became apparent that there was no one following her, her mind was able to wander and dwell on less-palatable topics. Foremost among them was what she would do if Gambit didn’t turn up, and what that would mean. Purdey was under no illusions that their rendezvous was risky, regardless of how many precautions they’d taken. If Gambit felt that there was a chance he would be caught, he wouldn’t come, and Purdey couldn’t blame him for that. The problem was, she had no way of knowing whether Gambit had chosen not to meet of his own accord, or whether that decision had been made for him. And how permanent that decision was.She was so lost in thought that the journey passed quickly, and before she knew it she was approaching her destination: a set of docks, quiet at that time of night. All the same, she shut off her bike and wheeled it into the silent, graveyard-like setting, eyes peeled for an errant night watchman or anyone fond of checking on their boat at all hours. She passed a boat in drydock, and took the opportunity to stash her bike beneath the tarp protecting it from the elements, leaving her helmet with it. Hopefully it would remain undisturbed.Able to move more freely, she darted from cover to cover, taking a circuitous route to her destination: a small boat docked at the end of a short pier, bobbing gently in the moonlit waves. Purdey surveyed the terrain from behind a larger drydocked number, gauging how long it would take her to sprint silently across the open ground. The pier itself was cloaked in darkness, but there was ground to cover on the way where she didn’t have the benefit of the ships to hide behind. She glanced around for another route, but there was none. She took a deep breath and made a break for it, praying that no one was around to see.She crossed the distance quickly and easily, though it seemed longer in her head, and made a beeline for her destination, the boat Gambit had named in his message. Gambit hadn’t specified if he’d meet her beside or on the boat, but it made more sense from an espionage perspective to go inside, where there was less chance of being seen, even if it meant potentially trapping themselves onboard with nowhere to run.There was a small gangplank leading to the boat, and Purdey crossed it and vaulted over the side easily, ducking down through the doors leading to the cabin below. The stairs were narrow and she took them carefully, not wanting to risk either the noise or the injury that might come from tumbling down them. They led into a small cabin containing a shallow bunk and a shelf. There was no sign of Gambit. Purdey checked her watch and found that there were a few minutes to go until their assigned meeting time. She settled down onto the edge of the bunk to wait.It made sense, really, for Gambit to choose to meet there, at the docks, on a boat. She forgot about his past life as a sailor sometimes, a role she’d never really seen him in, their profession largely being confined to land. But every once in awhile she registered his rocking gait, or heard him rattle off a bit of naval trivia, and it reminded her that he’d had whole careers before they’d even met, just as she had had in France and at the ballet. He talked to her about his past more often since they’d begun their burgeoning romance, but it was still sometimes difficult to imagine him not as a spy, but as a young man with the sea air in his lungs and the spray in his face. He always looked wistful when he talked about the sea—he said it was peaceful, calming, and sometimes he missed being aboardship. It occurred to her that she’d like to sail with him one day, observe him in his natural environs. When all this is over, we’ll go sailing together, she promised herself, pointedly refusing to acknowledge the possibility that, if things carried on as they were, they might not be able to go anywhere together ever again.Purdey shook off the sudden chill that was permeating her bones and scrubbed at her upper arms to try and warm them. She checked the time and frowned. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d let time get away from her. It was fifteen minutes past the designated time of their rendezvous, and there was no sign of Gambit at all. Even allowing for the fact that he might be held up, his delay was getting worrisome, and Purdey knew that the longer she stayed, the better the chance that she might wind up caught in a trap. And yet, what if Gambit really was just late, nothing more sinister than that, and she left? Then he’d be worrying after her, wondering why she hadn’t come. Then again, she couldn’t sit and wait forever. Eventually she had to start making her way to Uncle Elly’s, while she still had the cover of darkness. She couldn’t afford to wait all night, no matter how much she wanted to.Purdey bit her lip and rose reluctantly from the bunk, put her hands on her hips and tried to decide how much more time to give Gambit before she gave up entirely. Perhaps he was waiting for her outside the ship, and didn’t know she’d gone in? That was one possibility. Purdey decided to start by investigating whether that was the case, and then take things from there.She climbed the stairs back up to the deck and peered out of the door, alert for anyone loitering on the dock, friendly or otherwise. No one seemed to be about, so she carefully crept out onto the deck and made her way back over the gangplank and onto the pier, pondering her next move. Gambit definitely wasn’t there, so she needed to decide on a new strategy, and soon.It was at that moment, just as she was starting to make her way onto the pier, that she stepped on something. Something soft and squishy. Something that definitely didn’t belong on the docks. Purdey frowned and bent to retrieve whatever it was, holding it up to her face for closer inspection in the dark of the night. The scent of something sweet and sugary met her nose. She smiled.It was a marshmallow.Purdey straightened up and looked around, alert and hopeful. A marshmallow was definitely a message for her, and definitely from Gambit, who knew of her fondness for the little blobs of gelatine. If it was here, so was Gambit, and her heart sang with hope and anticipation. She scanned the rest of the dock for any more squishy clues.There! A few feet away, another marshmallow was waiting. Purdey hurried over and retrieved it, spotted another a few feet away. Like a child in a particularly modern fairy tale, she followed the marshmallow trail all the way to another boat, moored a few berths down from her original destination. The last of the marshmallows was resting on the gangplank, and Purdey plucked it up with rest of its friends as she crossed. As she moved to descend into the boat, she prayed inwardly that, this time, Gambit would be waiting for her.The stairs led to another cabin, though this one was much larger than the last, in keeping with the size of the ship. The bunk was wider, and there was enough space to accommodate a desk, a chair, and a closet. Purdey made her way across the hardwood floor, eyes scanning the room for any more marshmallow clues, but there was none to be found. She hissed in frustration and put her hands on her hips, pivoted to conduct a 360-degree survey of her surroundings. “Gambit?” she called softly. “Gambit, are you here?” She didn’t know what she’d do if he wasn’t; if, after one disappointment, her hope had been renewed, only to be dashed once more. Now she had tangible proof that Gambit had been there. If he wasn’t there, it meant something had happened. Something bad.She started to pace up and down the cabin, too worked up to sit down and wait again, mind whirring as she tried to work out her next move. She was so distracted that she failed to notice a gap between the floorboards gradually widen as part of the floor simply lifted up and away from the rest…
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey heard a soft creak and spun on her heel, just in time to see Gambit emerge from a crawlspace belowdeck. He grinned and said, “Good thing I checked. You were clumping around so much I thought you’d brought the army with you.”“Mike!” Purdey flung her arms around his neck in joyous relief, hugging tight and vowing to never let go. She felt Gambit’s arms curl around her, holding her close and lifting her a little off the ground, and resisted the urge to cry. Gambit would never let her forget it otherwise. For a moment she felt like she was floating on air, in every sense of the word. She didn’t even bother to hide her smile when she pulled back and met his eyes. After a moment, he set her down again, and Purdey had her first opportunity to look at him properly. He clearly hadn’t had much in the way of opportunities for grooming during his time on the run, if his current state was anything to go by. Purdey noted the uncombed hair, which had been allowed to revert to its natural curliness, as opposed to his usual slight side part that brushed the curl out. Along with the untamed hair, there was a rather nice crop of stubble darkening his chin. And his clothes were clearly spending their days stuffed in a bag, rather than being allowed to drape elegantly on a chair or hang in a closet where the wrinkles had half a chance to relax their way out. That made them decidedly more rumpled than befitted a man with a penchant for knife-edged creases in his trousers. Both articles looked a little gray as well, as though they’d picked up a layer of dirt somewhere along the way and hadn’t been cleaned since. The leather jacket, at least, had already been broken in before the current adventure, and could take the wear and abuse with dignity, though Purdey rather suspected the ageing process had been accelerated. That was more than could be said for his boots, which were scuffed and creased with dirt. Purdey wondered absently where Gambit had been the past few days to earn that level of wear, but she supposed they’d come to that in time.She turned her attention to the man himself, cocking her head as she searched his face. Gambit looked pale and badly slept, dark circles under his eyes emphasised by the general lack of colour in his cheeks. The crease between his eyebrows was particularly deep, indicating a prolonged period of worry, and there were lines around his mouth that she was fairly certain hadn’t been there when he left. His eyes bore the distinctive restlessness that came from never being able to relax, paranoia and a well-honed sixth sense resulting in constant vigilance, never resting, even for a moment, because his survival depended on it. In spite of that hunted expression, Purdey was rather pleased to note that there was a spark of light in Gambit’s eyes that seemed to be directly related to looking at her. Seeing Purdey was cheering Gambit up no end, if she did say so herself, and his obvious joy at seeing her, coupled with her own happiness at seeing him, left her with an irresistible urge to kiss him. So she did.Gambit kissed back like a man at a feast after a famine, but then broke away sheepishly. “Sorry,” he told her inquiring expression. “The stubble’s set in and I haven’t had a chance to brush my teeth.”“They’re not the most romantic words after a long absence,” Purdey noted, and Gambit ducked his head a little in embarassment before she added, “but we’ve both had a long night.” Gambit snorted in agreement, and Purdey reached up to tenderly caress his scratchy cheek with her thumb. “And I rather like the stubble,” she said fondly. “Somehow it’s more you and less Terry Walton.”“That’s a relief—on several fronts,” Gambit said with a sigh, really looking at her again, surveying every curve and contour of her face as though he hadn’t seen her in years. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he breathed, gaze still lingering on her features, even as they released each other. “I’m glad you could make it.”“I’m rather offended that you even considered the possibility I wouldn’t,” Purdey huffed good-naturedly.“You know what I mean,” Gambit replied, still looking at her as though she was the best thing he’d seen in a long time. He seemed almost dazzled by her presence.“Sometimes. In spite of myself,” she said with a smile that told him there was no malice in either her comments or her demeanour.“I wasn’t sure I’d make it, either,” Gambit admitted. “I still feel like I’m being watched wherever I go. I keep jumping at shadows and imagining sinister figures peering round corners.” He scrubbed his face as though trying to clear away the paranoia. “I don’t know if I’m going mad or just letting my imagination run away with me.”“If you are, it’s catching,” Purdey said ruefully. “You should see the route I took to get here.”“I may beat you in that competition,” Gambit said wryly. Purdey bristled. “Is it a competition?”“Isn’t it?”Purdey paused, and he could see the lightning quick thought processes shimmer behind her eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she decided finally. “But you had better explain yourself, Mike Gambit, for giving me the run-around all evening. I thought something terrible must have happened to you en route.”Gambit smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he apologised. “I knew you’d look out for tails, but there was always a chance that someone might have stuck with you. So I misdirected you a little, to see if they’d tip their hand when you went onboard the other ship. But since the whole Ministry didn’t close in on you, I thought it was safe to bring you here.”Purdey glanced around the cabin with interest. “How did you find this boat?” she wanted to know, seeing it as a place in its own right rather than a potential ambush location. “Did you look at a brochure before you broke in or were you windowshopping?”Gambit chuckled disapprovingly. “Break in? Purdey, what do you think of me?”“Do you really want me to answer that?”Gambit gave her a look but didn’t pursue it. “It belongs to a friend of a friend. He doesn’t know I’m borrowing it, but he won’t mind. Especially if he knew I was using it to meet you. And if he does mind, I’ll buy him a pint.” He winked cheekily. “All that matters is he doesn’t know I’m here, and I knew he wouldn’t be here tonight.” Purdey pursed her lips but there was a wicked look in her eyes. “How charming.”“That’s what he’d say.” Gambit’s eyebrows waggled wickedly.Purdey tsked disapprovingly. “I look forward to meeting your friends one of these days. I’m sure it’ll be quite the education.”“On both sides,” Gambit quipped before going back to business. “I don’t think anyone will work out the connection and come looking for us here, so we should be safe. And no one jumped you at the other boat, which is encouraging.”“Ah, yes, the marshmallow trail,” Purdey remembered with a smile.Gambit seemed pleased with his work. “Not bad, eh?”“Creative,” Purdey agreed. “Although rather a waste of good marshmallows.”“It’ll be all right. They’re not an endangered species,” Gambit pointed out.“Not yet,” Purdey said mysteriously.Gambit gave her a look that suggested he was both bemused and strangely accepting of the idea that she possessed top secret information about the inner workings of the marshmallow industry, but was unable to put it to words. Purdey looked at Gambit again, at his unshaven chin, mussed hair, and world-weary, sleep-deprived eyes. “You look like you need a hotel room with a shower and a soft bed,” she sympathised, stroking his forehead with a gentle touch. “Where have you been hiding all this time? Do you have a safe place to sleep?”“I make do,” Gambit replied wearily. “Not the first time I’ve had to sleep rough. I’m surviving, and that’s all I can ask for right now.”Purdey cursed herself silently. “I wasn’t thinking. I should have brought you some food or something.”Gambit shook his head. “No, no, nothing that’s going to draw more attention than you already have. I’m all right. Really.”Purdey eyed him sceptically. “I’m not sure even you believe that.”“Then believe it for the both of us.”“All right,” Purdey conceded, in a tone of voice that told Gambit that she wasn’t entirely happy with the temporary conclusion to that state of affairs, but could live with it for the time being. Gambit wasn’t entirely happy with it, either, which he supposed meant that it was a proper compromise. And a temporary one at that. Purdey wasn’t going to let the matter lie without a fight forever, and if it came to the crunch, it was going to be very, very hard—harder than usual—to stop her from having her way and doing something to try to help him that would divulge his location to their employers. And that would unquestionably make things...messy, for everyone involved. Purdey continued, “If you don’t want to tell anyone, I hope you have something else up your sleeve to help your cause.” She had her arms crossed and that unimpressed expression that he’d seen more times than he could count, always accompanied by an expectation that he explain himself, and that the explanation be extraordinarily good. A withering comment would inevitably follow if he didn’t deliver. Gambit barely kept the wry smile that was threatening to stretch his lips off his face, lest Purdey ask what was so funny. A few seconds ago, he’d been absolutely certain he could get Purdey onside with the idea that maintaining the status quo at his own expense was the best course of action, but now he knew Purdey would simply pivot around the issue like the dancer she was, and attack it from another angle. If he didn’t deliver, she’d retrace her steps and they’d be back where they’d started in no time at all. The problem was, Gambit didn’t have many new steps to share. At least, not ones he wanted to resort to, if he could help it. Best keep those under wraps until I need them. If I need them.“I wish I could tell you I’ve found all the answers,” he said resignedly, knowing that trying to talk a good talk wouldn’t wash with Purdey, and would only serve to annoy her further.Fortunately for him, Purdey’s concern overrode her annoyance, and her hands dropped to her sides. “I thought you were going to try to find Vanessa?” “What do you think I’ve been doing?” Gambit said grimly. “I’ve been pulling in every resource, every piece of information I have about her and how she works, every play I can think of. I know I’m not completely off the mark because I find traces of her, signs that she’s been there. But I never seem to catch her—I just miss her, over and over.” Gambit pounded his fist uselessly against his thigh. “She knows I’m after her. I’m sure of it. She’s baiting me. Letting me get close and then slipping away.” He pressed his fingers to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut, as though warding off a headache. To Purdey, it looked more like a potential stroke in the making, and she reached for him worriedly. Her hand on his seemed to bring him back to himself, and his eyes opened again. “It’s a tactic,” he told her. “She’s trying to drive me mad, with helplessness or frustration or who knows what. She’s threatened me and you and Steed, and she won’t let me do anything about it. She wants me to give up on ever being able to find her and hand over the papers because it’s the only alternative.” “But you’re not going to do that,” Purdey said steadily, more of a statement than a question. “Right?”Gambit nodded in agreement. “No. Not without a fight, anyway.”“Good,” Purdey said, as though it was the final word on the matter, which as far as she was concerned, it was. She definitely wasn’t going to tell Gambit about the side deal she’d made with Vanessa. That would only worry him more, and she didn’t want him to give in to the woman on her account. “Keep trying to pin Vanessa down, and we’ll keep working to clear you.”Gambit smiled wanly. “I wish I had more to report, something to show for all the legwork I’ve been doing.”“It’s not only about you finding Vanessa,” Purdey reminded. “If you hadn’t run, you’d be in a cell.”“Maybe. Maybe that’d be for the best, make it easier on everyone.”“On who?” Purdey challenged, incredulous. “Not me. Not Steed. And anyway, no one knows Vanessa better than you. If we’re ever going to catch her and clear your name, you’re our best hope.”“In theory, anyway,” Gambit sighed.“Negative thinking, Gambit. If anyone needs to be able to move freely, it’s you. We need you free. Your sulking won’t do anyone any good at all.”“I’m not sulking.”Purdey cocked her head sceptically. “Then you’re doing a very good impression. I didn’t come all this way just to watch you be fatalistic. I could have made other plans.”“Then give me something positive to hold onto,” Gambit challenged, with a certain amount of desperation. “What are you and Steed up to?”“You mean when we’re not being looked at suspiciously by Larry and his people?” Purdey said tiredly, hoping she didn’t look as weary as she felt, and knowing that she did.Gambit groaned. “I never thought I’d say this, but tell me about Larry.”Purdey sighed. “Let’s just say we were both right to take precautions.”Gambit arched an alarmed eyebrow. “We were?”Purdey matched his grim expression with one of her own. “I wish we weren’t. Larry’s on the warpath. He’s convinced he finally has enough rope to hang you, and he means to use it.”Gambit groaned and turned to pace the room. “That bad?”“Or worse.” Purdey knew there was no point in mincing words at this point. Gambit was best served by knowing exactly what was going on. Holding anything back, no matter how unpleasant, would only make things worse. He needed to be up to date to face the travails head-on. Purdey only wished she could do it in surroundings and circumstances that were a little more relaxed. She pursed her lips and her hands went to her hips in annoyance. “He’s getting worse by the day,” she fumed. “It’s worse than the day you ran. He’s managed to convince the powers that be to give him more resources to continue his investigation, and to hunt you down. Do you know he has every available agent out looking for you? Even the ones on assignment have orders to bring you in if they catch sight of you, or if you come to them for help.” She bit her lip. “They’re even allowed to use force. I didn’t believe it at first, but they are. Larry says it can’t be lethal, but I’m not sure they wouldn’t be able to justify it if they could convince everyone you were dangerous.”“I am dangerous.” Gambit waggled his eyebrows at her in a manner that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Roger Moore Bond film.“He doesn’t mean dangerously corny,” Purdey quipped, realising that Gambit was trying to lighten the mood despite the dire news she was delivering. “Mike, I’m serious. There’s a very real possibility they could accuse you of trying kill other agents and act accordingly. That’s how far it’s gone.”Gambit set his jaw grimly, looked off into the distance as though calculating his chances. “I guess I should be flattered he thinks I can do that much damage.”“Well, it’s not only you,” Purdey pointed out, and Gambit regarded her inquisitively. “They’re also still looking for Vanessa Thyme. Larry’s convinced you’re working together, and that’s why you ran.”Gambit shook his head in disbelief. “Even though he’s read my file, he still thinks I’d work with her? After everything she did to me? My psych eval even said I was still recovering from the whole thing. How do I fake that?”Purdey shrugged. “He has theories. You’re a good actor, she brainwashed you, you want to exact revenge against the government for leaving you to suffer. He doesn’t care which one it is, as long as it paints you as the villain. He’s selling the idea that you and Vanessa are working together to sell the papers and who knows what else, and you’ve been doing it for some time right under the nose of the Ministry.”“Based on what evidence?” Gambit demanded, outrage finally starting to set in.“Other than O’Hara’s so-called confession, he’s keeping the findings in his report fairly close to his chest,” Purdey admitted, expression a picture of frustration. “He doesn’t trust me, especially since I tipped you off before the arrest.” She regarded him with sympathetic annoyance. “You know that they turned your flat over looking for the papers and other evidence.”Gambit leaned against the wall, needing the support, jaw working angrily. “I expected as much.”“Don’t worry,” Purdey told him. “I stayed on and made sure they didn’t do too much damage. I set it right again, too. They didn’t find anything, but Larry just used that as proof that you took the papers with you when you ran, or have them hidden elsewhere.”Gambit turned away from picking distractedly at the wood panelling on the cabin wall and regarded her quizzically. “How do you know all this if Larry won’t let you read the report?”Purdey’s secretive little smile made an appearance. “He won’t let me read it. Steed, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.”Realisation dawned in Gambit’s eyes. “I should have known.”“He is Steed,” Purdey pointed out. “He has his sources. He gets bits and pieces of information from people and passes them on to me, and I pass them onto—" She broke off, eyes shining with what Gambit could tell was excitement at making some sort of monumental reveal.“Come on, come on,” Gambit urged, knowing it wouldn’t make much difference where Purdey was concerned. She’d tell him when she decided she wanted to, not that it made the anticipation any more bearable. “Onto who?”“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Purdey said with practised casualness. “I met your cousin.”“Cousin?” Gambit frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”“Sara,” Purdey clarified, and was rather pleased by the way the name made Gambit’s jaw drop open in surprise. “She came by your flat after it had been ransacked. She heard you were in trouble.” She cocked her head quizzically. “Why didn’t you tell me she was the one who sat with you after you got out of Africa?”Gambit shifted uncomfortably. “Too many things to explain in one sitting. Had enough to get through in the story without going off on a tangent about my family tree. I wanted to save her for a moment that was a little more…upbeat.”Purdey considered this, then nodded in agreement. “I suppose. I would’ve been bursting with curiousity about her if you’d talked about her a little more at the time.” She watched Gambit nod in turn, and then added, not a little mischievously, “And Sara also said that you’d want to keep us apart as long as possible so we couldn’t gang up on you.” Gambit blanched and his mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. “Don’t bother to deny it. You’re already answered my question,” she said smugly. “You’re outmatched as it is, Mike Gambit. You’d be beaten before you started if you were faced with both of us.”“I’m trying not to think about it,” Gambit said tiredly, massaging his temples. “There was another reason, you know,” he added, as Purdey smiled smugly at him while still trying to maintain an illusion of innocence by widening her eyes an inordinate amount. “I was worried you wouldn’t like each other. Sara’s gotten me through a lot of tough times. I don’t know what I would have done without her, especially after I got back from Africa. I didn’t have anyone else who had the wherewithal and understood what was going on enough to help.” He smiled a little crookedly at her. “Nothing worse than your family and the woman you love not getting on. I was trying to avoid that possibility for as long as possible. Or at least until I had the wherewithal to cope with it.”“Oh,” Purdey said after a moment, then lapsed into silence. “I hadn’t thought of that.”“I did,” Gambit replied flatly. “I thought you’d get on all right, but you never know.” He regarded her a little uneasily. “You do like her, then?”“I like her a lot,” Purdey declared. “She sounds like she doesn’t let you get away with anything.”Gambit chuckled in spite of himself. “That sounds like Sara. And she was okay with you?”“More than okay,” Purdey practically bristled. “From the sounds of things, she’s been waiting to meet me for some time. She seemed to know we were dating and was inordinately pleased about it. I assume you’ve been talking about me to her behind my back for ages. She seemed to know exactly what I was like. It was uncanny.”Gambit reddened slightly. “I, uh, might have talked about you a few times with her over the years. But Sara drew her own conclusions half the time without me saying anything. She knows me too well, and that extends to the type of girl I’m attracted to.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Anyway, how is she helping you?”Purdey’s secretive smile was back. “You’re not going to get away that easily, Mike Gambit. We’re coming back to this conversation when all of this is over.” Satisfied that Gambit looked quite uncomfortable with that idea, she continued, “But yes, she has been helping, thankfully. You see, a large part of Larry’s case against you concerns times when you were unaccounted for that coincided with nefarious dealings by Thyme, or at least those attributed to her. That and some rather conveniently opened bank accounts, and plane and train tickets and things that made it look as though you were planning to make your escape.”Gambit groaned. “Any luck so far?”“Some,” Purdey conceded. “We’re letting Sara look into a lot of it. She can run searches without attracting attention, which is more than Steed or I can do at the Ministry. I’ve given up going to the file room. I feel eyes on me at every turn.” She shuddered dramatically. “It’s taking her longer than she’d like. She has to squeeze it in around her own work, and if she pushes too hard she’ll attract attention.” She crossed her arms impatiently. “I wish there was more I could do than keep my ears open and look over my shoulder. It’s starting to feel like I’m under investigation, too. Which I suppose I am, really.”Gambit winced. “I know. I’m sorry I got you and Steed caught up in this. Guilt by association.” He ran an exasperated hand through his hair. “Wish I could fix it.”“So you could struggle through this on your own?” Purdey said incredulously. “Don’t you dare even think that, Mike Gambit. The worst thing you could do is make me stand by without being able to help, and I know Steed feels the same way.” The sharp angle of her defiantly pointed chin wavered somewhat. “And anyway, I haven’t been completely at a loss for things to do. I’ve been looking at the supposedly suspicious gaps in time where you were unaccounted for.” She cocked her head in slight suspicion. “I won’t say that Larry’s right, but some of the times where you were supposedly AWOL do look a bit odd.” Gambit scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Yeah, about that—"“So I’ve been doing some legwork,” Purdey cut in briskly, pulling the piece of paper from her jeans pocket.“I always like to see your legs work,” Gambit quipped, earning a snort of derision for his trouble.“Concentrate, Gambit.”“I am concentrating.”“Yes, but not on this.” She unfolded the page and showed it to him. “These are the dates Larry is using to incriminate you. As you can see, several of them have already been accounted for.”Gambit’s head snapped up in surprise. “How?”“As I said, I did some legwork,” Purdey said coyly, happy to have the upper hand for once after feeling like she was on the back foot for so much of the whole fiasco. “Some of it wasn’t too difficult. Steed made a start. He’s willing to speak about these under-the-radar jobs that you’ve been apparently running for him.”Gambit caught the accusatory note in her voice and met her eyes. “Purdey, he swore me to secrecy.”“That’s what Steed said,” Purdey said tartly. “And these—" She pointed to the pertinent dates. “—were when you were with me. I have proof that you and I were—"“Undercover?” Gambit quipped, in spite of himself, eliciting a groan from Purdey before he turned serious once more. “But we can’t use that evidence. Even Larry won’t believe we were just playing Scrabble. Not that often. Or enjoyably.”“But we have to!” Purdey protested.Gambit shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t want you to have to give up your secrets for me.”“My secret’s not going to do me a damned bit of good if you’re locked away because I kept quiet!” Purdey countered. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might matter more to some people than their secrets? Take Sara, for example. She’s given me some leads on things you helped her with, and she’s going to go on the record about them if need be as well.” Gambit sighed. “Well, always good to know that your family is willing to go to the wall for you.”“So is Emma,” Purdey continued, waiting for his reaction. She wasn’t disappointed. Gambit’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You went to see Emma?” His tone conveyed his disbelief. “I thought you didn’t like her.”“Well, we had a very nice chat, and I’ve decided she’s not so bad after all,” Purdey said airily. “And she’s also willing to pull your fat out of the fire, so be grateful.”“I am,” Gambit murmured. “I’m just amazed everyone’s been willing to come forward.”Purdey snorted. “That’s not surprising, since you seem to be willing to put your career on the line for people without a second thought, but never seem to want to let anyone return the favour. It’s quite selfish in its own way.”“Selfish? Helping other people?”“Yes. Playing hero, without a thought for yourself.”“I think most people would call that ‘selfless,’” Gambit pointed out mildly.Purdey’s mouth twitched irritably. “Never mind the dictionary definitions. The point is, you’ve been sticking your neck out unnecessarily.”“I don’t do these things for just anybody,” Gambit reminded. “They’re for people I care about, who need my help.”“That’s a relief. And here I thought you’d put an ad in the paper,” Purdey said acrdily. “‘Spy for hire. Does own driving’.”“Well, I have to earn the money to keep you fed somehow—ow!.” Gambit rubbed the spot where Purdey’s elbow had dug into his ribs. “Seriously, Purdey. I appreciate you going to all this trouble, but I can’t ask you and everyone else on that list to spill their secrets for me. I didn’t do what I did because I was hoping for some sort of payback.”“Which is exactly why you’re getting it,” Purdey cut in forcefully. “You’d never ask, but you’re not asking. They’re offering. Because they care about you. As much as I care about you.” She shook her head in exasperation. “When will you get it through your thick skull that you have some people’s loyalty? You don’t have to keep trying to earn it.”“Of course I do,” Gambit countered gruffly. “The second you start taking people for granted, that’s the second you start losing them.” He laid a hand aside her cheek. “And I don’t want to lose anyone. Least of all you. And definitely not because of something I’ve done.”“Yes, but loyalty goes two ways,” Purdey protested in frustration. “And I don’t want to take you for granted any more than you do me. I think I’ve done enough of that.” Her mouth twisted angrily. “So do shut it and tell me where you were on the rest of these dates, so I can clear your name.”Gambit sighed and took the list with a small smile. “Well, since you asked so nicely…” He scanned the dates, Purdey watching him intently. The corners of his mouth pulled down suddenly, unconsciously.“What is it?” Purdey wanted to know, craning her neck so she could see which date he was looking at.“These ones,” Gambit murmured grimly, tapping his index finger on the page. “I don’t think telling Larry what I was doing then will help me much.”Purdey frowned. “It can’t be worse than whatever Larry’s imagining,” she stressed. “Where were you? Tell me.”Gambit squeezed his eyes shut, and suddenly looked much younger. “I was helping Spence.”Purdey felt her heart sink. “Spence?” she repeated faintly. “You mean sleeper agent Spence? The man who…taught you everything you know about karate?”“Not everything,” Gambit corrected, pinching the bridge of his nose as though staving off a headache. “Not that it’ll matter much in the end. I’m sure Larry’s already been over all of that with a finetooth comb, but this’ll just add some spice to the pot.” He tossed the piece of paper onto the bed disconsolately and started to pace, sailor’s rocking gait adjusting automatically to the deck bobbing beneath their feet. “Oh hell, Purdey. I’m damned no matter what I do. What’s the use?”“Don’t you dare give up on me, Mike Gambit!” Purdey said sharply. “We all knew Spence. He trained us. We trusted him. Larry can’t claim that everyone he was in contact with was somehow complicit in his cover. If that’s the case, the entire Ministry should be under suspicion.”“Yeah, but I was the only one who had history with him,” Gambit reminded. “I was a teenager when I met him. He was my introduction to the martial arts. He taught me—well, not everything I know, not anymore. But a lot. About life. About being a good man.” He dropped his hands uselessly to his sides. “Because he was a good man in a lot of ways, even if—even though…” He bit his lip, and Purdey could tell he was on the verge of tears. Gambit had never really talked about the fallout of the whole Spence affair, and Purdey had felt their romance was still a touch too young for her to press for more details. But she could see the teenage Gambit surfacing behind his eyes, the one that had never been quite allowed to mourn his mentor properly, the one Gambit had papered over with professionalism and jokes. Purdey went to him before his reserve broke, wrapped her arms tightly around him just before the tears spilt. “He was my friend,” Gambit managed after a couple of uneven breaths, wrapping his arms tightly around her, clinging to her like a life preserver in deep emotional waters. “Sometimes the only one I thought I had. He did a lot to help me, keep me on the straight and narrow, ironically.” He rested his chin on her shoulder. “He was the big brother I never had, I guess. I thought our history counted for something. And he’d never really asked for anything in return, so when he came to me and asked if I could drive a package down to a friend of his, I didn’t think twice. He said he couldn’t take the time off to do it himself, and didn’t trust the post to get it there in time. All the way up to Scotland, and I had to stay overnight.” He wiped away a tear as Purdey stroked his back soothingly. “Wasn’t the first time, either. The rest of those missing dates, I was doing something similar, although not as far afield. He had friends, he said, who had fallen on hard times and he was trying to help, but sometimes he had a class or something and couldn’t go to see them himself. So I’d go in his place and give them things. They did look rough, and the bags he gave me to pass on always had tins of food and things in them. It seemed innocent enough. Looking back, it was as dodgy as hell. He could have been passing anything on. Probably whenever one of his fellow sleepers needed something, and he didn’t want to implicate himself if it all went wrong, he sent me. And he knew that, with my background, I’d be sympathetic. I’d want to help people down on their luck. He played me.” He turned his anger back on himself. “I should have been suspicious. I should have asked more questions, or reported it, or something.”“But he was Spence,” Purdey reminded softly, pressing a hand comfortingly to his chest. “Good old Spence. We all would’ve done anything for him.”“Still, the fact that I did it looks bad. I’m not sure what looks worse—if I was clueless about what happened or if I was complicit.”“Ignorant,” Purdey said forcefully. “And anyway, you killed him. They can’t deny that.”“Yeah, well, I never would have believed he could do that, turn on me so easily, sleeper or not. We’d known each other for so long. I mean, David Miller was a sleeper, but he tried to warn Steed. He couldn’t kill him. But Spence—I guess I didn’t matter.” His face crumpled, and Purdey put both her hands on either side of his face.“He did his job,” she said firmly. “You might not have believed he could bring himself to kill you, but I’ll bet he didn’t believe you could kill him, either. And you did. It doesn’t mean you didn’t care about him, or that it was easy. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him, either. I don’t think he’d forgotten everything you’d gone through together.”“Maybe not,” Gambit murmured. “It did my head in either way. I wasn’t thinking straight for days after. Looked at everyone sideways, wondering whether they were working for the other side.”“Well, I can assure you that I have no intention of going over,” Purdey vowed cheerfully. “If you can resist your penchant for negative thinking enough to believe me.”“That’s a relief,” Gambit said softly. They exchanged a long, affectionate look in silence for a moment, before Purdey sighed and smoothed the front of his jacket as though preparing to send him off to work in the morning like a ridiculously stereotypical 1950s housewife. “Any more dates on that paper that you want to ask me about?” Gambit queried eventually, with a voice that still shookPurdey broke away from him momentarily, to retrieve the piece of paper lying on the bed. She scanned it. “Um, not really. We’ve accounted for most of them.” Gambit nodded tiredly, and with a certain amount of relief. “Okay. That’s that, then.” He could see the concern on Purdey’s face when she noticed his weariness, and tried to smile encouragingly. “How did you get here without being seen?” he asked, by way of changing the subject. Purdey looked unimpressed. “From my mother’s. Don’t you remember what you wrote in your message?”Gambit sucked his teeth in mild exasperation. “I know that. I sent you to your mother’s because I figured they wouldn’t go so far as to start poking into her mail, too. But someone must have followed you there, so how did you get here?”Purdey smiled enigmatically. “The way I always got away when I didn’t want anyone to know. I waited until it was dark and made my move.”“That’s it?”“Of course that’s not it. In case you haven’t noticed, my mother doesn’t live beside the docks.”Gambit made a moue. “Might be easier if she did.”Purdey ignored the comment. “I hid in my stepfather’s church’s crypt until the evening. And before you ask, no, I didn’t stumble upon any ghosts.”“That you knew of.”Purdey blew him a raspberry. “Then I crossed the fields on foot and arranged to pick up a bike a suitable distance away,” she went on, satisfied at Gambit’s impressed expression. “Then I rode back into town, parked somewhere rather unobtrusively, and walked the rest of the way.”“And that’s how you’ll get back?”“No,” Purdey contradicted, with more than a modicum of delight. “I didn’t fancy riding back at sunrise. I thought that’d be too obvious. So I’m going to pay an early morning visit to my dear Uncle Elly, and he’s going to drive me back. With me lying on the floor of the car, of course, so I’m not seen. He’s promised to put some very soft blankets down for me. I might have a nap. It’s not as though I’ll be getting any sleep tonight.”Gambit ducked his head. “Sorry. I know how hard this has been on you.”“Oh, stop being a martyr and come here.” Without warning, Purdey pulled him close and kissed him hard. “Shouldn’t you be getting back?” Gambit murmured against her mouth. “They’ll notice you’re gone eventually. Larry or someone will start asking after you, no matter what your mother says.”“Eventually,” Purdey agreed, her assault on his mouth unrelenting. “But Uncle Elly isn’t expecting me for a little while yet, and it only takes so long to drive back there. I can safely say that you and I have an hour and a half to enjoy ourselves.” She released his mouth long enough to whisper in his ear, “Unless you have any objections?”Gambit moved his head so he could meet her eyes. “You know it’s dangerous for you to be here with me at all?”Purdey looked unimpressed. “I didn’t think we were only roleplaying spy and fugitive, if that’s what you’re asking.”Gambit pursed his lips. “Purdey, you know what I mean. This is my mess, my past catching up with us. You took a huge risk coming down here. You don’t have to make it worse for yourself by staying on.”“I don’t have to,” Purdey agreed, leaning in so her lips just brushed his. “But I want to.”Gambit’s reserve was breaking. His eyes took on a pleading expression. “Purdey, please,” he almost begged. “Don’t let me drag you down. I don’t want to ruin your life. I love you too much for that.”Purdey’s expression turned fierce. “The only thing you could possibly do to ruin my life, Mike Gambit,” she hissed, “is to let yourself be caught and found guilty of something you didn’t do, and to make me stand by when I could have done something to stop it.” She caressed his cheek and softened. “I love you too much for that.”Gambit’s mouth quirked up on one end at that. “I always thought I was stubborn, until I met you.”“You are stubborn,” Purdey asserted. “Just not stubborn enough to dissuade me, that’s all. Now…” She pulled his jacket off his shoulders and down his arms, tossing it carelessly onto a chair. “I only have an hour and twenty-five minutes now. Are there any other methods you’d like to try to dissuade me before I break down the rest of your defences?”Gambit appeared to ponder this for a moment. “I haven’t shaved,” he offered.Purdey grinned. “That’s never been a problem before,” she reminded. “In fact, sometimes it’s rather a bonus.” Gambit chuckled in spite of himself, the ghosts temporarily banished. She nodded at him. “Take that off.”Gambit spread his arms wide. “Which part?”“Everything,” Purdey declared, starting to pull his shirt from his trousers.“Uh-uh,” Gambit objected, even as Purdey’s lips met his. “Your turn. You already took off my jacket. It’s only fair.”Purdey pulled a face. “All right,” she conceded, straightening her arms so Gambit could slide the leather motorcycle jacket over her shoulders, before leaning in to kiss him again. “There, now we’re even.”“Are we keeping score?” Gambit wanted to know, hands dropping to her hips.“You’re the one who started talking about turns,” Purdey reminded, trailing her hands into his hair. Gambit was right—he hadn’t shaved, and his lips were somewhat rough against hers. But that was only a problem if she minded. Which she definitely didn’t.“I said turns, not scores,” Gambit clarified, walking her over to the cabin’s small bed, gently settling her onto it and following her, kissing her leisurely. Then he was gone, bending to pull off his boots and socks, then doing the same for her. When he straightened up, it was her turn. She started unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom up, kissed the newly-revealed flesh on his stomach, felt the rumble of his groan beneath her lips. She quickly realised he was too tall for her to stay sitting, so she got up on her knees on the bed, following the trail of buttons and kissing her way up his chest as she went. Gambit’s arms encircled her, and she could feel him fumbling with his cuffs, saving her the trouble. As always. She licked the sweat gathered in the hollow of his throat and he moaned and arched against her. Purdey grinned at his reaction. “Did you miss me?” she teased, sliding off his shirt. “I always miss you,” Gambit murmured, as the garment fell to the floor, but his face was serious. He laid his hand against her cheek. “So much. But if you change your mind about leaving--““Oh, hush,” Purdey cut in, forcefully unbuckling his belt. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be. Or if I thought you weren’t worth the risk.”“Purdey—““No.” She cast the belt aside, cupped his face in her hands. “I know you’re a noble, self-sacrificing idiot, Mike Gambit, but it took us this long to get this far, and I’m not going to give up on you. Now or ever. I love you and that’s my final word on the matter.”Gambit, for his part, looked like he wanted to cry, from guilt, relief, stress, she didn’t know, but all it did was make her want to kiss him, so she did. He kissed back, hard, pulling her close, and they mutually agreed, via telepathy, to pretend that she didn’t taste his tears, even when she let her lips drift over his jaw.She distracted herself by dropping her hands to his waist and unbuttoning and unzipping his trousers, easing them down and tracing her fingers over his hip bone. It was strange to think she knew his body so much better now, even after all the time they’d worked together, all the times she’d seen him partly undressed for one reason or another in the course of their work. She would have thought there’d be few secrets left to uncover, but now she knew that there were some things she could only learn about by being ‘hands on’ so to speak. She splayed her fingers over the space between his torso and pelvis, feeling the contours of those slim hips that had mentally made her bite her lip in longing a million years ago. “I missed you, too,” she whispered in his ear, and for the first time since they’d reunited, he laughed gently.“That’s a good sign,” he quipped, kissing her hair, and that nearly set her crying, so she set about divesting him of his trousers properly.It wasn’t long before she found herself beneath him, squirming out of her own jeans, her bra somewhere off to the side, Gambit’s body over hers, fitting together as if they’d been made for each other. This was the way they were meant to be, the way they always should have been, Purdey knew. In a different universe, she wouldn’t have wasted so much time pushing him away, there would have been no wounds to keep them apart. There was nothing to do about it now, of course, that lost time, those ‘what ifs’. But she could make sure there was no more wasted time, were no more enforced partings. So Purdey opened herself to Gambit, laced her fingers with his, and met his lips. Every kiss, every touch, every gasped word, every time her body arched up to press against his, was an act of defiance, a vow to the Ministry men that she was not going to betray the man she loved no matter what they threatened her with. She was going to fight for him, the way he would, had, fought for her, and always would.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Later, as they lay entwined, Purdey propped her chin up on Gambit’s chest. “We could run,” she suggested, almost dreamily. “The two of us. If they don’t want to clear you, and they don’t trust me, then we’re finished at the Ministry. So why don’t we go somewhere where they won’t find us?” Gambit quirked an inquisitive eyebrow at her. “Where?”Purdey shrugged cheerfully. “I don’t know. Somewhere warm, maybe. On the sea.”“And do what?” “I don’t know,” Purdey repeated, still cheerfully unconcerned about the possible ramifications of her plan. “Whatever we want.”Gambit tilted his head to better regard her from his vantage point on the pillow. “And what do you want?”“To be with you,” Purdey said honestly, suddenly serious. “And I can’t do that if you’re dead or in a prison cell having your mind turned inside out for an answer to a question that you can’t give.”Gambit smiled slightly. “I appreciate the sentiment, but what happens when you start to miss your mother? Or your uncle, or stepfather? You couldn’t tell them where you were going, you couldn’t contact them when we got there without giving away our location. Not to mention we’d be leaving Steed in the lurch.”“Steed would understand,” Purdey declared. “They all would.”“Are you saying you wouldn’t miss them?” Gambit asked sceptically“Of course, I would,” Purdey acknowledged. “But I’d miss you, too.” She reached out to touch his cheek. “Too much.”Gambit covered her hand with his. “Purdey, you have no idea what that means to me. But think about it. What kind of life would you have with me on the run? We’d never be able to stay anywhere too long. No home, no steady job, never letting anyone get too close because they might give us away. It wouldn’t be much of a life, and definitely not one for kids.”It was Purdey’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Who said anything about having kids while we were on the run?”“You’re the one who brought it up the first time around,” Gambit pointed out. “Would you want to bring up kids with me in any situation, let alone one like that?”“I could ask you the same thing.”“I asked first.”“Who’s to say that that decision hasn’t already been made for us,” Purdey said coyly.Gambit looked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then his eyes widened. “You’re not.”Purdey slung one of her legs over him and propped herself up with her elbows. “What if I was? Would you run away with me then?”Gambit was looking up at her with something approaching awe. “Purdey…” Then a light dawned in his eyes, and he smiled ruefully. “You’re not, are you?”“How do you know?” Purdey said indignantly.“Because I know enough about biology.” He eyed her meaningfully. “You thought if you appealed to my honour, I’d run. Nice try.”Purdey sighed. “It was worth a try,” she said resignedly. “But you still haven’t answered your own question.”“I guess I don’t have an answer myself,” Gambit confessed, as Purdey slumped on top of him. “I’ll have to let you know some other time.”“Maybe,” Purdey agreed. “But it’s whether there will be another time that worries me.”Gambit didn’t have an answer to that, much to Purdey’s dissatisfaction. “I don’t like the idea of us having to be apart any longer,” she grumbled. “Anymore than I like the fact that you hid those off-the-record assignments from me.”Gambit sighed dramatically. “I wondered when you’d give me hell about those.”“I’m not giving you hell,” Purdey qualified. “But I thought that, now that we’re together, we’d tell each other things.”“And we are,” Gambit said gently. “I mean, I am. I told you about Africa. That’s a start. But we’ve both lived a lot, Purdey-girl. Or I’ve lived a lot. And I’ve been on my own for most of it. I’ve had to keep my cards close to my chest to survive. I’m trying to open up, but it’ll take time. And there are some things that it’s not my right to tell.” He took her hand from where it was resting on his chest in his and gave it a kiss. “If it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t do that sort of thing now, not without giving you some idea about what I was doing. But this is now, and I lived a whole life before you, Purdey. Even when we became friends, I couldn’t just make decisions based on what you wanted. We weren’t in a relationship. You didn’t have the right to tell me what I could or couldn’t do any more than I could you.” Purdey nestled her head into his chest and sighed, the anger and tension leaving her shoulders. “You’re right,” she said finally, then brought her gaze up to meet his. “Infuriatingly. But you promise you’ll tell me if something like this comes up again? At the very least, I’d like to know what’s happening so I know what I’m dealing with.”Gambit treated her to a cheery salute. “Aye, aye, ma’am. I promise. Now, anything else you’re angry about that I can put right while I’m here?”Purdey looked at him from under her eyelashes, not bothering to deny that she was still a little annoyed about what had been going on behind her back, an emotion she hadn’t been able to express properly while she was worried about Gambit’s well-being. She would have preferred to have these conversations in more relaxed circumstances, hated to be angry when she was so happy to see Gambit and they had so little time together. But keeping things bottled up was no different than keeping a secret, and she’d only just reprimanded Gambit for doing that. Besides, he seemed to understand that she needed to get things off her chest. But that was just like Gambit—he always seemed to know what she needed, even when she didn’t herself. “I understand that Steed had you doing assignments that he didn’t want to spread far and wide for security reasons. I understand Sara needing help from someone else in another department, and not wanting to go through official channels. I even understand Spence.” She broke off when Gambit looked away quickly at the mention of the man’s name, carried on when he seemed to recover himself. “But I still don’t quite understand what you could possibly be doing with Emma that you had to be so secretive about.”Gambit raised a sceptical eyebrow. “You mean, so secretive that I didn’t tell you?”“Well, I understand why she didn’t want to tell Steed,” she replied, sidestepping the question. “Whatever his history with Emma, it must have been very complicated. They hadn’t spoken properly for the better part of a decade before Brazil. But why couldn’t you have at least told me that you knew her? I wouldn’t have told Steed.”Gambit’s mouth quirked up on one side. “Wouldn’t you?”“I don’t talk about Emma Peel,” Purdey reminded, a touch too defensively.“And there’s a reason for that,” Gambit pointed out. “But do you think you would have been able to resist asking Steed about her, even in a roundabout way? Or me?” Purdey didn’t answer, but Gambit didn’t need her to. “It doesn’t matter, because she made me promise not to say anything, and I always keep my word. If she goes on the record about what went on, you’ll know. Until then, it wouldn’t be fair for me to say anything.”Purdey pursed her lips. “So it’s a secret.”“It’s a promise,” Gambit qualified. “Just the way I’ve promised you to keep a lot of things quiet. I’ve always kept your secrets, Purdey. And you have to admit you’ve kept quite a few of your own.” He regarded her with a touch of irony. “Haven’t you?”Purdey rotated her shoulders back in a telltale sign of discomfort. “I have done. But you know a lot of them now. And anyway, they were personal.”“So were Emma’s,” Gambit pointed out gently. “Some of them, at least. Some were—let’s just say she was being a good citizen. Apparently even when you leave Steed, you can’t quite switch off the agent in you.”“Ah, so you’ve been freelancing?” Purdey teased, with a hint of spikiness. “With Emma Peel. You’d think you didn’t get enough excitement in your life.”“She asked for help,” Gambit said simply. “And she’s good company. I wasn’t going to turn her down.”Purdey scowled. “So you enjoyed yourself?” “Yes,” Gambit said flatly. “Like I said, she’s good company. But you should know that I missed you every time I was out doing something, with or without her. I’m so used to having you by my side that it doesn’t feel quite right to be out there investigating things without you. And while we’re at it, you should know that, whatever secrets I’ve had, they’ve never affected how I felt about you, or our relationship.”“That is nice to know,” Purdey said wryly, making an active effort to let go of the lingering pent-up jealousy. “I suppose I’ll just have to wait for her memoirs to find out just what went on.”“I’d like a copy of those myself,” Gambit quipped.“I’m sure you would.”“After I got a copy of yours, of course.”“I see your sense of self-preservation is still intact,” Purdey said wryly.“Luckily. I have to go back out there and start jumping at shadows again, remember?” He cast a forlorn look out the cabin’s tiny window, where the darkness was ever-so-slightly starting to give way to dawn. “Let’s hope I still have enough left in the tank for round two.”Purdey clung to him a little tighter. “You don’t have to go now, do you?” she asked plaintively, any annoyance about Emma Peel fading away in the face of being separated from him again.Gambit smiled sadly down at her. “It’ll be light soon, love,” he said softly, stroking her hair. “We’ve had our moment, but I have to get a move on if I don’t want to wind up behind bars.”“Just five more minutes,” Purdey pleaded, burying her nose in the space where his neck met his jaw and inhaling deeply of his scent. “Please, Mike.”“Okay. Five more minutes,” Gambit relented, and in anticipation of several more long nights alone, set about committing the sensation of having Purdey in his arms to memory.vvvThey dressed in silence, unwilling to admit to themselves that their time together was reaching its end. Purdey shrugged on her leather jacket and hoped that Gambit believed she was as stoic as she looked. Apparently he didn’t, if the way he rested a hand on her shoulder was any indication.“I know you don’t like this,” he began, and Purdey looked up at him, eyes flashing.“Of course I don’t like it! You shouldn’t have to run. And I shouldn’t have to sneak around to see you. This entire situation is ridiculous.” She zipped up her coat with such feeling that Gambit swore he saw sparks. “And anyway, I don’t see why I can’t come with you. I could help you find Vanessa. I can only do so much when they have people watching me every minute.”“But you are helping,” Gambit argued. “By keeping your eyes and ears open, fighting my corner and making sure McKay doesn’t just hear Larry’s side of things all the time. And you’re trying to poke holes in Larry’s theory. That all helps. You’re my woman on the inside.” Purdey smiled wryly. “And the fact that it keeps me away from Vanessa Thyme and any potential danger is just a convenient side-effect?”Gambit sighed. “Look, I can’t pretend I don’t want you out of it. It’s not your mess, it’s mine, and it’s been a long time coming for me to pay the piper. Why should you be dragged down with me?”“Because, for some incomprehensible reason, I love you, Mike Gambit,” Purdey reminded, reaching out to touch his cheek. “And I can’t let you sacrifice yourself without at least trying to help, no more than you could do the same for me.”Gambit covered her hand with his. “How can I persuade you if you keep making good points?”Purdey laughed. “You can’t. What you can do is come back, alive and in one piece, with all of this cleared up. But until then, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”“Nice place to be stuck,” Gambit said with a smile, expression soft. “Take care of yourself, Purdey, and I’ll do all I can to come back to you.”“You have a deal,” Purdey vowed, and leaned in to kiss him. He kissed back, hard and with feeling, like a man about to go away to war with no way of knowing when he’d see his love again. Which, in a way, he was. When they parted, he held her eyes for a long time.“Tell Steed thanks,” he instructed.“I will.”“And Purdey? Give them hell.”Purdey grinned broadly. “Mike Gambit, don’t you know me at all?”Gambit grinned back. “That’s why I love you.”And then he was gone.Purdey waited five minutes, steeled herself, and ascended into the night. Gambit was long gone, melted into the shadows without a trace. She made for her hidden motorcycle and gauged how quickly she would have to drive to beat the break of dawn. vvvPurdey rode her bike to her Uncle Elly’s house, keeping a watchful eye open for any potential tails, but she felt fairly confident that she’d evaded her watchers. Her uncle had owned his house in town for many years, but didn’t stay there very often, preferring instead to reside on the base with the rest of his men. He was in London on business, however, which made his presence in the city unremarkable, and therefore perfect for Purdey’s purposes.As per her uncle’s instructions, she stashed the bike in a small shed at the outskirts of his property, then vaulted a fence and dashed across the patch of green and pleasant land behind the house and in through the back door, which had been conveniently left unlocked. Safe inside, she removed her helmet and brushed some hair from her eyes, surveying the dim outlines of the furniture in her uncle’s study. She padded across the carpet, past the stuffed lion, and out into the corridor, where a light beckoned her to the living room. She followed it and found her uncle seated next to the fire, a file in his lap and a cup of coffee in his hand. He spoke without looking up.“I’ve poured you one already, my dear. It’s on the sideboard.” Purdey smiled at her uncle’s perceptiveness and seeming nonchalance. He was an army man through and through, but she thought he was rather enjoying his little foray into the cloak and dagger world. She moved to the sideboard and set her helmet on it, trading it for the steaming cup and saucer resting there. Normally she wasn’t a fan of coffee, as she often told Gambit when she teased him about needing his caffeine fix in the morning. But given current events, it somehow seemed fitting to drink the same thing that Gambit normally did in the morning. She wondered if he was going to be able to afford the luxury of drinking something warming that morning, and felt her heart ache in sympathy. “Thank you, Uncle Elly,” she replied, settling into the armchair opposite him and trying to banish the melancholic pall that had settled over her. “You didn’t have to wait up, you know.”“Oh, I was never going to sleep,” Foster dismissed, finally looking up from his file. “Too many things going on in the old brain, especially after a day of meeting with the others. They go on for so long that you think you’ll nod off out of sheer boredom, but somehow it leaves you more riled up than anything. Besides, two visits with my niece in one day was too good an opportunity to pass up.”“It’s not in one day, though,” Purdey pointed out, sipping her coffee. It warmed her in a way that only Gambit had since the whole business got started. “It’s after midnight. We met yesterday.”Foster harrumphed. “It’s yesterday in America. Time zones, Purdey. Never did like them.”Purdey smirked into her cup. “No, Uncle Elly.”“Anyway, why are we talking about this rot? We should be talking about your adventure. Did it work out all right?”“Perfectly. I really must thank you for your help. I don’t know if I would have managed otherwise.”“Oh, it was nothing. Not where my favourite niece is concerned.” Foster cocked his head and regarded her with interest. “But you did see your colleague?”Purdey nodded. “Yes.”“Still surviving, is he?”“Fortunately.” Purdey took another pull of the brandy. “But I wish we could make some sort of breakthrough, and soon. He’s out there all on his own, and I don’t like it.” “We don’t like everything life hands us, unfortunately,” Foster commiserated. “But it’s how we handle it that matters. And I would say you are doing very well at that indeed.”Purdey smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Uncle Elly.”“Not at all, my dear. Now, why don’t you nip upstairs and sleep. You have a few hours until I take you back.”vvvIn spite of the coffee, Purdey surprised herself by managing to lapse into unconsciousness the second she hit the pillows, the trials of the day finally catching up to her. All the same, the few hours seemed more like a few minutes when Foster roused her from her slumber. She pulled her boots and jacket back on and shambled downstairs and into the garage and her uncle’s car, where she promptly fell asleep concealed in the back seat, dreaming dreams where there were no pursuers, only bliss.Foster wound up rousing her once more after he pulled into her mother’s garage, and Purdey stifled a yawn as she trundled back inside her mother’s home. Acacia was waiting for her over a cup of tea and the morning paper. She bustled over the instant she caught sight of Purdey.“Oh, Purdey, you had me so worried. I was convinced that something terrible had happened and you weren’t coming back.” “Don’t worry, mum. It all went perfectly,” Purdey tried to reassure around another yawn. “I never doubted you for a moment,” the bishop chimed in, peering around the wall of the breakfast nook. “I’ve seen you kick. I know you can take care of yourself.”“Elliot!” Acacia hushed, then turned back to Purdey. “It’s not that I doubted you, Purdey. It’s only that it’s, well, it’s very dangerous work, and your father…” She looked down as she trailed off, and took a moment to compose herself. “I know a lot of things can go wrong, that’s all.”Purdey smiled sleepily in reassurance. “I know, mum, but nothing did go wrong, and I’m back now. Thank you for all your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.” She drew her mother into a hug, and felt the older woman hug back just a little too tightly. “Now I’m going to go upstairs and sleep some more. I feel as though I’ve been up for weeks.”“All right, yes, good,” Acacia agreed, pulling away and squaring her shoulders. “That’s a very good idea. I’ll make you some breakfast whenever you wake up again.”“Thanks, mum,” Purdey said genuinely, and turned to her uncle. “And thank you, Uncle Elly. Will you be here when I wake up?”“I’ll have to go back to London fairly soon, I’m afraid. But I’ve already been lucky enough to get as much quality time with you as I have.” He kissed her on the temple. “See you soon, my girl.”“See you, Uncle Elly.” She hugged him before dashing up the stairs.Back in her room, Purdey stripped off the dusty clothes she’d spent the night in, gathered them into a laundry bag and lazily pondered whether having a shower was worth the delay of getting into bed and sleeping the day away. The bed was ever so tempting, but the grit of the day was going to prove too uncomfortable to allow for a decent sleep. So Purdey dragged herself to the shower, let the warm, soothing water rinse away the aches from her ride and dust from the road, although she had to lament the loss of Gambit’s scent from her skin. By the time she re-emerged, she felt refreshed, scrubbed of some of her cares, and as she dried her hair she could feel her bed beckoning, the promise of a refreshing proper sleep tantalisingly close. But no sooner had she entered her bedroom, than the sounds of a sudden commotion emanated from up the stairs.“No!” her mother exclaimed loudly. “I will not allow you in my home without a very good reason, and even then I’m not particularly inclined.”Purdey’s ears pricked up in alarm, and she cast the towel aside, wrapping her favourite yellow kimono around her body in the absence of a dressing gown and tying it like a warrior going into battle before dashing down the stairs. Her uncle and stepfather were huddled around the front door, but it was her mother who was standing her ground as she told her visitor, quite firmly, that he was, “Absolutely not coming in, not under any circumstances.” “Mum?” Purdey queried, pushing in-between Foster and the bishop. “What’s going on? Who is it?”Acacia turned, a stern look on her face. “This young man,” she said, in a tone that suggested her opinion of him was less than positive, “insists on coming in. He says he’s from your Ministry.”Purdey’s eyes narrowed as the visitor came into view. “Larry,” she identified. “Oh, good, you know him,” Acacia said flatly. “You can tell him to call at a more reasonable time, then.”“I’ll take care of this,” Purdey asserted, looking from one family member to another. “Why don’t you make some tea in the kitchen? I’ll join you in a moment.”Acacia didn’t look too certain. “Do you think that’s wise, dear?”“I’ll be fine,” Purdey assured. “Really. Uncle Elly, could you help her, please?”Foster seemed to understand, touched his sister’s arm. “Come on, Cacy. Let the girl do what she needs to.”Acacia allowed herself to be drawn away by her husband and brother, but not before shooting Larry one last look. Purdey watched her go, trying not to smile. It wouldn’t do for Larry to think she was in a forgiving mood.“What are you doing here?” she snapped, the second they were in the next room. “What do you mean what am I doing here?” Larry shot back. “You’re the one who left without a word.”“I’m practically on leave, don’t you remember?” Purdey countered. “I’m not allowed anywhere near any assignments at the Ministry or anything else that might interfere with the investigation, so I came out here. I knew your watchers would follow me, so why bother calling in?”“Why are you here?” Larry pressed. “Is it to do with Gambit?”“I’m here to be with my family. Isn’t it obvious?” Purdey’s voice dripped with disdain. “We are still allowed to visit our mothers, aren’t we?”“Yes, but all of your relatives have intelligence connections.”“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” Purdey exclaimed. “In case you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t been exactly a brilliant few days. I want to be with the people who care about me. The ones who don’t suspect me of trying to slide a knife between their ribs. Do you remember what that’s like, Larry? Trust? Or are you suspicious of everyone now?”Larry ignored the jab. “You visited your Uncle yesterday.”“Yes,” Purdey confirmed. “For lunch. I told him I wanted to be with family in my time of need. He said he’d come and check on me today. To support me.” She crossed her arms and added, “That is still allowed, isn’t it?”“Don’t play innocent,” Larry snapped. “You were hunkered down at your flat, waiting for updates. And then you picked up and left and came out here on the spur of the moment, and you expect me to believe there’s nothing sinister going on?”“I got restless,” Purdey enunciated. “I knew Uncle Elly was in town, so I thought I’d go and see him and take my mind off things. I told him I wanted to come out here, and have a break from it all. I phoned mum and she said it was all right, so I came down. And here I am.”Larry cocked his head inquisitively. “And that’s all?”“Yes.”“And Gambit?”Purdey narrowed her eyes. “What about him?”“Do you know where he is?”“No,” Purdey said firmly. “But he’s definitely not here. I checked under my bed this morning.”Larry pulled a face at the quip. “You wouldn’t mind me asking your family to confirm that, would you?”“I very much would,” Purdey countered. “You can ask all the questions you like of me, but I draw the line at watching my family be interrogated like common criminals.”“It’ll be your fault if they are,” Larry pointed out. “You can prevent this—all of this. The suspension, the watchers, the questions, me bothering you here. All of it can be stopped. All you have to do is help us figure out what’s going on here.”“You mean help you arrest Gambit for being a traitor?” Purdey said blithely.“Come on, Purdey. If he really hasn’t been in touch, then he’s left you holding the bag and run off to save to his own skin. What sort of man does that? Can’t you see he’s using you? He doesn’t deserve your loyalty, and you definitely don’t deserve to be brought down with him.”“Gambit is a thousand times a better man than you!” Purdey shot back, pointing angrily at his chest. “And if you knew him even a fraction as well as you think you do, you’d know that the only reason he’s staying away is to keep me safe, and the moment he’s able to clear things up, he’ll be back. You mark my words.”Larry shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re being so naïve, putting your trust in a man like that. Face it, Purdey. You have a terrible track record when it comes to judging the quality of a man. Your ex-fiancé was a terrorist. So how do you know Gambit’s any better?”“Don’t you dare compare Gambit to Larry Doomer!” Purdey spat, shaking with rage.Larry was eyeing her with interest. “The way you say that makes it sound as though you’ve been…intimate enough with both of them to make that comparison. What is your relationship to Gambit, exactly?” He stepped in close, close enough that Purdey could feel his breath on her face. “Is there something more between you than what you’re letting on?”“What I am to Gambit doesn’t matter!” Purdey shot back. “He’s my partner and I’ll defend him until the day I die, because that’s what he’d do for me, and if you were even half the man he is, you’d do the same. Because even if he doesn’t like you, he’d never let it stop him from doing the right thing by you. That’s what makes him the better man.”“Purdey—"“No!” Purdey exclaimed. “You’ve done enough to ruin my morning, Larry Carrington. If you really do want to question my family, then arrest us all and do it properly. Otherwise, shove off and leave me to have my breakfast in peace.” With that, she slammed the door behind her, leaving Larry fuming on her mother’s doorstep.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Two days later, Gambit arrived in an unsavoury establishment, a pub filled with patrons who had reached a point in their lives where drinking before noon wasn’t the sin it was in polite society. He’d made a gamble and contacted the sort of people who could get a message to Thyme, or at least get a message to someone else who could contact her. It was the most direct way he’d attempted to draw a bead on the woman, after over a week of sneaking around and trying to catch her unawares. He wasn’t convinced she was clever enough to know where he was at all times, but he was certain she knew he was looking for her, and was covering her tracks with ease. Gambit would have preferred to catch her by surprise, but he was running out of both time and patience—the longer the whole situation dragged on, the harder it would be for everyone involved, including Steed and Purdey, and Gambit was determined not to make them suffer unduly while he spun his wheels on a futile quest. So he’d put the word out that he wanted to meet Thyme, plain and simple. In a way, the straightforwardness of this strategy suited him more than sneaking around. The direct approach had always been his preferred method of doing things. He only hoped it would pay off.The person he’d selected as courier was the man behind the bar, a lowlife named Oliver who ran in unsavoury circles at a paygrade higher than one might assume from first looking at him. Gambit didn’t trust the man farther than he could throw him, but he’d given him the message and paid him for his trouble. Oliver knew there was always the chance of him getting something at the other end for completing his task, so Gambit figured there was a good chance that he’d done his job. That didn’t mean that Gambit relished dealing with the man. He sometimes wondered how Steed managed to swallow however many encounters with the most unsavoury examples of the criminal element he’d had over the years and still feel clean, still be able to rinse the feeling of grime from the inside of his soul. Then again, Gambit himself had a fair bit of experience on that front, and seemed to be coping, so he supposed it was all down to practice.Oliver grinned a greasy smile at Gambit as he approached the bar, causing the agent to tamp down the desire to punch the smarmy git full in the face. He needed Oliver, at least for the time being. There would be time to put him in his place if need be after he’d heard what he had to say.“Hello, Mr. Gambit. What’ll it be, eh?” The greeting was smug and taunting, and Gambit resisted the urge to grind his teeth violently.“Stow the pleasantries, Oliver. You know why I’m here.”Oliver raised his hands, one clutching a filthy rag that had no business being anywhere near any glass, dirty or clean, in surrender, face the picture of innocence. “Easy, Mr. Gambit. Just saying hello, wasn’t I? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”“My mother never knew the likes of you,” Gambit snapped back. “Thankfully.”Oliver smiled lasciviously. “You sure about that?”Without warning, Gambit’s right hand shot out and grabbed a handful of Oliver’s shirt, pulled the man forward so that his chest slammed bodily against the surface of the bar. The sound of the impact echoed throughout the pub, causing some of the clientele to glance up from their pints or nefarious deeds to see what the fuss was about. It was indicative of the reputation of the pub that they were not distracted for long, and soon returned to their own business. Given the sorts of events the establishment had borne witness to in the past, a bit of rough and tumble was barely worth acknowledging.Oliver was slumped over the bar gasping, lungs desperately trying to refill after being unceremoniously emptied, chest aching, hands scrabbling for purchase on the worn wood. Gambit, for his part, didn’t even bother to secure the man with his other hand, simply keeping an iron grip on his quarry. He leaned down so he could speak directly in Oliver’s ear.“I don’t have a lot of time,” he growled, “but I have even less patience, and the person I’m dealing with has none. I won’t kill you, if only because you aren’t worth the effort, but if you muck around much more, I can’t promise you won’t wind up collateral damage at her end. So you can keep trying to push my buttons, or you can cut to the chase. Understand?”Oliver, to his credit, seemed to have dropped all pretence of being in control, genuinely frightened of Gambit and what he might do if pushed. Satisfied, Gambit released Oliver’s shirt, and the barman shot up gasping, pressing a hand to his bruised chest. Gambit gave him a second to recover his wits, but only a second. It didn’t do to let men like Oliver get too comfortable. “Any messages for me?” he inquired, almost conversationally. Oliver swallowed with difficulty. “Yeah. Yeah there is. It’s in the back.” Oliver raised part of the bar, wincing as he did so, and indicated that Gambit should come through. “Follow me.”Gambit did, but with trepidation, eyes constantly scanning the room, ever-vigilant for some sort of trap. But Oliver genuinely appeared to have nothing more up his sleeve. He led Gambit into a grotty back room that was probably supposed to be some sort of office, but had long since deteriorated into a storage room borderlining on a rubbish heap and, if the cot in the corner was any indication, the adhoc digs of the pub’s employees. It occurred to Gambit that Oliver himself was probably dossing here, and he filed the information away in case he needed to pay the man another visit. People were always easier to deal with when they were half asleep.There were many stacks of paper in the office, most of which hadn’t been disturbed in some time if the layers of dust on them were any indication, but Oliver, to his credit, seemed to know his way around. He made a beeline for a set of cubbyholes on the far wall, now covered with cobwebs that housed a healthy community of spiders, but a few of the holes had been cleared out. Oliver withdrew an envelope from one of these and handed it to Gambit, who snatched it away impatiently.“Only came a couple of hours ago,” Oliver explained, as Gambit tore the envelope open and pulled out a single sheet of paper, perused it quickly. “Is it what you were looking for?”Gambit looked up grimly, but his eyes didn’t meet Oliver’s. “No,” he said simply. “And yes.” He glanced at Oliver, all anger gone. “Looks like you’re off the hook, Oliver. No more playing messenger boy for you.”“That mean no more payments, then?” Oliver seemed to have recovered sufficiently from his close encounter with the bar to actually look disappointed at the prospect of having no further dealings with the man who had just threatened him with grievous bodily harm.“Looks that way,” Gambit confirmed, returning the paper to the envelope and shoving it in his pocket. “But you’ll have to ask the lady.”Oliver shuddered involuntarily. “I’d rather deal with you than her, mate. She gives me the creeps.”“That makes two of us,” Gambit muttered.vvvLess than an hour later, Gambit was standing in a phonebox, jaw working idly as he pondered the receiver that sat, innocently, waiting for him to pick it up and make the call. The prospect of making it felt too much like giving up for his liking. He’d held out hope throughout this whole ordeal that Thyme could be reasoned with, despite every encounter he’d had with her over his three month imprisonment indicating the contrary. But he’d held onto a little sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, if he could meet with her face to face, he could work out some sort of deal that’d keep Purdey, Steed, and yes, maybe even Gambit himself safe from her and her machinations, without handing over the papers and potentially dooming most of the planet to the whims of whoever got their hands on them. He’d sat in his flat for days waiting for her to do something, but other than the threatening photos, there had been no attempt to contact him. Since he’d gone on the run, he’d spent every waking minute trying to track her down, but as he’d told Purdey, every time he thought he was on the brink of catching her, she’d slipped away, passing through his fingers like so much sand in an hourglass. He’d baited her, dropped clues on the whereabouts of the papers, set traps in the hope of luring her to a location where he could catch her and bring her in. But there was a reason Vanessa Thyme had the reputation she did, and it wasn’t earned by being stupid. She was a master of the game, knew her opponent’s every move three turns in advance. She knew Gambit was tracking her, and the fact that he’d managed to get close to her, even by proxy, was because she had let him. So, unable to catch her, track her, or bait her, Gambit had gone with the last move in his playbook: a straight request to meet, face to face, passed along through another party who he knew Vanessa would allow some sort of audience. That was Oliver, and despite being a scumbucket in his own right, he’d served his purpose. It wasn’t his fault that the response was so disappointing. But Vanessa’s message had been clear. She would meet Gambit face to face all right, but on her terms: at a location of her choosing, with Gambit alone, and only if he had the papers in hand. It was exactly the scenario Gambit had been fearing, but there it was, laid out in black and white. He’d read it enough times that every word was committed to memory. Nothing was going to change what it said.That left Gambit with one card left to play, and there was no choice but to play it, no matter how long he dallied in this phonebox. He could only do what he could, and trust that everything—and everyone—would fall into place.He snatched up the receiver, inserted the coins, and dialled the number before he could second-guess himself. vvv The call was unexpected and came early in the morning, rousing Purdey from her troubled slumber. She hadn’t slept properly since Gambit had gone on the run, and doubted she would again until he was back in the bed beside her. She scrabbled sleepily for the receiver on her bedside table, managed to get a grip on it, and pulled it under the covers with her. “Hello?” she answered groggily.“Purdey. It’s me.”It was Gambit’s voice.Purdey sat upright immediately, wide awake and worried. “Mike, what is it?” She felt panic flood into her previously-somnambulant brain as the full implications of the scenario currently unfolding dawned on her. “You shouldn’t be calling me. Someone might be listening.”“I need you to meet me,” Gambit interrupted, ignoring her warning. “This morning. In half an hour. That old building near where we caught Collins. You remember where it is?”“Yes, but why?” Purdey asked desperately. “Mike, this is mad.”Gambit’s voice lost its serious tone and softened. “Just trust me, Purdey. Please.” Then he rang off.Purdey was left gaping at the receiver, desperately trying to process what had just happened. Then her training kicked in. She slammed the receiver down and leapt from the bed, dashing to the bathroom. She was going to make Gambit’s rendezvous with time to spare. She didn’t want to risk anyone else getting to him before she did. The fact that there was a very real possibility someone would sent chills down her spine.vvvPurdey drove to the rendezvous in a state of considerable consternation. Something was definitely wrong. Gambit knew, without having to be told, that there was a good chance her phoned was bugged. The precautions he’d taken in setting up their last meeting spoke to his dedication to ensuring that no one knew they were in contact. So why on earth would he throw it all away in a phone call that not only advertised to the whole world that he was contacting her, but a time and place where he could be found? It was as if he wanted to be caught, but that didn’t make sense to Purdey, and not for the obvious reasons. If Gambit was tired of running, all he had to do was walk into the Ministry, hands held high, and give himself up. He’d be arrested, of course, but at least his chances of being shot would be minimal. Probably. Purdey bit her lip. This train of thought was proving to be less comforting than she’d originally assumed, and she hadn’t exactly been optimistic when she started out. She shook her head and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. She had to keep thinking clearly, reason it out.If Gambit knew he was setting himself up to be captured, rather than turning himself in, that meant he wanted to be caught. Why would he want that? Could it be something as vapid as ego? Male pride making him unwilling to give himself up, forcing his pursuers to take him down instead? Purdey shook her head again. No, too shallow. She’d always told Gambit he had an ego, but she knew he would never let it get in the way of self-preservation, or anyone else’s preservation for that matter. The situation was much too serious for Gambit to play trifling games. He had put his freedom in jeopardy, after going to such great lengths to preserve it. There had to be some sort of strategic advantage for him to take a calculated risk and potentially throw it all away. Purdey just wished she could work out what it was. There had to be something she was missing, some play she hadn’t anticipated, a move on the board she hadn’t considered. She started from square one. No assumptions, nothing taken for granted. What did she know? Gambit had called her. He had set a rendezvous. Other agents would be swarming to the same location. Why would he contact her this way when he had the means to do so covertly? A thought occurred to her. What if Gambit needed to contact her quickly? The letter in the mail sent her to her mother’s had worked, but it had been time-consuming, taking almost half a day to bring to fruition. She knew Gambit might not have that kind of time. If he needed her to meet him quickly, he might think the risk of being caught was worth it. He could be hoping they could meet, and he could pass on the message before the others arrived, escaping just before they closed in. Purdey chanced a glance at her watch. If that was his plan, they didn’t have much time, and Purdey would have to buy him every second she could. She put her foot down hard on the accelerator.Much to her consternation, she arrived to find that she had been beaten to the punch. There were already several cars at the warehouse, evidence that other agents were on the scene. One saving grace was that Steed had presumably heard about Gambit’s call as well, as he was in the midst of the action. Purdey leapt from her car and dashed to where Steed was standing, watching events unfold with an air of authority. A few feet away, Larry and a band of not-so-merry men were discussing strategy while keeping an eye on the derelict warehouse’s exit points. She reached Steed and skipped the preliminaries, going straight to the heart of the matter. “What’s happening?”Steed answered without taking his eyes off the scene for a moment. “As I’m sure you’ve worked out, they traced the call that Gambit made to your flat this morning. We already have an eyewitness placing Gambit inside. They’re currently trying to work out whether or not to risk going in, or if they ought to ask him to come out.”Purdey looked at him expectantly, panic in her eyes. “They’ll catch him. Can’t you do something?”“I’ve offered my services as an intermediary,” Steed replied, finally looking to her. “They were rejected, none-too-kindly I might add.”Purdey was fuming. “That doesn’t mean you have to listen! What happened to breaking all the rules?”“Nothing,” Steed said flatly. “But you’re overlooking one very important thing, and that’s whether Gambit wants to be caught.”Purdey frowned. “I’ve thought of that, but it seems ridiculous! He’s been doing everything he can to stay free. Why would he throw it all away now?”Steed regarded her knowingly. “Things change. Rules, people, stakes. There’s no reason Gambit should be here, now, somewhere he knows he might be spotted. He’s trained to evade us, and he has thus far. Now that he’s suddenly surfaced, we ought to consider that he might not want us to interfere.”Purdey shook her head. “He wouldn’t have called me if he wanted me to stay out of it. I’d be at the other end of the city otherwise. It makes no sense that he called me here just to watch him get arrested. I won’t believe it.”“Purdey, I know your first instinct is to help. I feel the same. But at the end of the day, this is Gambit’s problem, his decision to make. We can offer him help, but ultimately it’s his choice to take it, and we have to respect those choices.” He smiled encouragingly at her. “Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to do nothing.”“Maybe that’s true,” Purdey said tightly. “But until I hear it from him, I’m not going to give up on him. Definitely not now.” And with that, she darted away, long legs eating up the ground. “Purdey!” Steed called urgently after her, but she was already away, her enviable speed carrying her far out of reach. Larry had noticed her making a break for it, and tried to intercept her, but no one was a match for Purdey when she was in full gallop, and he soon gave up the chase, shoulders heaving, forced to watch her disappear through the door.“Mike!” Purdey called, the second she set foot inside, dashing across the empty ground floor, making for a small stairway. “Mike, where are you?”“Purdey?” Gambit’s voice sounded surprised, and Purdey followed it, clamouring up the stairway. She found herself in a hallway, branching off into several rooms. “Mike, where are you?” she called again, whirling around, disoriented.“In here,” came the response, and Purdey took off again, following his voice and dashing into one of the rooms. She found Gambit inside, looking out the window at the scene below, at the Ministry men assembled to bring him in. He turned as she burst into the room, nearly bowled over as she ran bodily into him, grabbing his arm and pulling with all her might.“Mike, they’re here to bring you in,” she panted urgently. “You need to leave, now. I can stall them, but not for long. They know I’m here—"“Purdey,” Gambit cut in, resting a hand on hers as it gripped his sleeve. “It’s all right. I’m not running any more. I want them to bring me in.”A line formed between Purdey’s eyes. “What are you talking about? You can’t let them catch you. They’ll lock you up and throw away the key.”Gambit smiled encouragingly. “It’ll be all right.”“All right? How can you say that?” Purdey exclaimed. “If Larry had his way, he’d probably have you shot. You can’t let them take you, not without a fight.”“Purdey, please.” Gambit was begging now, eyes beseeching. “I need to do this. I can’t find Vanessa. She’s not going to meet me unless I have the papers in my hand. But if I’m in custody, she can’t threaten me, or you, or anyone to get the papers, because I can’t get them. And she knows that if I tell the Ministry where they are, they’re more likely to keep than let them go to her, no matter how many people she threatens. This way, any exchange is going to have to be at the Ministry’s behest, with back-up.” He looked at her hard. “This is our best chance. I know what I’m doing, and I’m going to need you to keep your eyes open and pay attention to what I do and say once they’ve grabbed me.” “But we have so much evidence now! We can prove you’re not working in league with Vanessa,” Purdey said breathlessly. “Why not let me show Larry what we’ve found? Then you can be put in protective custody, not a cell.”Gambit shook his head. “I don’t want Vanessa to know we have that edge yet. Or Larry. I need everyone to think I’m well and truly stuck. Vanessa won’t leave me alone if she knows I have options, and even if Larry thinks I haven’t done anything else, he’s still going to want to know about the papers, and I don’t want to hand them over to him any more than Vanessa.” He looked pleadingly at Purdey. “I need you to trust me. Do you?”Purdey searched his face. “Of course I do. Why would you even need to ask?”“Good.” Gambit pulled his gun from his holster, pressed it into her hand. “Here. Take this.”Purdey blanched. “Mike—"“Please, Purdey,” Gambit pleaded. “Take it. Tell them you took it off me. Tell them you came here to talk me into giving myself up.”“I will not!” Purdey shot back. “I’m not going to pretend to arrest you to save my own skin. Mike, you can’t ask me to do this. I want to help you.”“And you will be helping me.” Gambit pressed a hand to her cheek. “I promise.”Purdey looked uncertain. “This isn’t you being a self-sacrificing idiot, is it? Because if it is, I’ll never forgive you.”Gambit grinned, and for a moment everything was all right. “Not this time, although I’m sure you’ll tell me otherwise later.” He sobered up suddenly. “But I need you to do this for me. If you want to help me, I need you to be free, not thrown in a cell with me . Please.”Purdey bit back tears, squared her shoulders and met his eyes. “All right. But I won’t pretend to like it.”“Thank you.” The words came out in a rush of relief, and before she knew it Gambit was kissing her quickly but passionately. Purdey closed her eyes, kissed back, and counted the seconds until the hammer fell.They’d barely had a chance to break apart when Larry and two other men barged in, guns at ready. Gambit immediately raised his hands in surrender. “Purdey has my gun,” he told them, even as they swarmed around. “I’ll come quietly. I don’t want trouble.”“Bit late for that, Gambit,” Larry shot back, eyeing him down the barrel of his gun. “They’ll lock you up and throw away the key. And that’s if they’re feeling generous.” He glanced at Purdey. “And you’re not doing yourself any favours.”“She was trying to talk me in to coming in,” Gambit said in her defence, and Larry snorted derisively. “More like trying to talk you into making a break for it and taking her with you. If you keep up like this, Purdey, you’ll get your wish and they’ll throw you in a cell with him.”“Why would I, when I have such charming company out here?” Purdey shot back. “And I do have his gun.” She waved it casually, pointedly ignoring the way the other armed men turned their sights to her. “He isn’t lying. But you’re not interested in the truth, are you? Not if it isn’t what you want to hear.”“You’ve got it all wrong. I’m looking forward to hearing what Gambit has to say for himself. But let’s start with what we’ve heard so far, eh? See if you’re really unarmed.” He grabbed Gambit roughly by the shoulder and turned him around, shoving him unceremoniously against the wall. Purdey stepped forward automatically to protest, but one of the other men blocked her path. Larry frisked Gambit, slight surprise passing over his features when he discovered the man was, in fact, telling the truth. “Take the gun,” he ordered his assistant, who liberated it from Purdey’s grasp, though not without the blonde treating him to fiery eyes and a defiantly upturned chin. Larry reached into his pocket for some cuffs and snapped them so tightly onto Gambit’s wrists that they bit into the skin. “Clever of you to tell the truth for once. It might help you a bit with McKay, but I wouldn’t count on it. If there’s any justice in the world, you’ll go away for a long time.”“You’ll have to find a new hobby then. Can’t persecute me if I’m not around,” Gambit quipped back, and Larry slammed him against the wall for effect, ignoring Purdey’s outraged cry.“Don’t flatter yourself, Gambit. No one will remember you when you’re gone. You’ll just fade into the files, another agent who went over to the other side and paid for it. And no one will spare a thought for you, especially not me. Now come on.”He dragged Gambit off, and Purdey was left trailing in their wake, fuming and hoping fervently that Gambit had more up his sleeve than he was letting on. vvvLarry Carrington eyed Gambit suspiciously in the rearview mirror of his car as he drove. Gambit was sitting impassively in the back seat, cuffed hands laced and hanging languidly between his long legs, arranged as best he could in the cramped confines of the space. “You look awfully relaxed,” he commented with affected casualness, “for a traitor who’s just been captured.”Gambit’s eyes, very blue and very hard, turned away from the window and met Larry’s in the mirror. “You look awfully tense,” he observed, “for someone who’s just captured their quarry and has him chained up in the back seat.” A flash of humour flickered across his stoic face. “Afraid I’m going to throw myself out the door when we go over the next bridge, make a daring break for it? Swim for safety?”Larry changed gear without taking his eye off the mirror. “I wouldn’t put it past you,” he said suspiciously.Gambit made a moue and considered. “Too cold this time of year for a swim,” he decided, as though that had been his plan all along. “Anyway, there isn’t a bridge along this route.”“You think you’re so slick,” Larry growled flintily. “Leading us all on a merry dance, getting the gullible to cover for you.”Gambit raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Gullible? Purdey and Steed will take exception to that. Especially Purdey.”Larry seemed to realise that he’d put his foot in it, started to backpedal. “Manipulated, then. You played on their emotions, and now they’re guilty by association.”“The only one of us that’s been manipulated is you, Larry,” Gambit said flatly. “By your own emotions, and whatever problem you have with me.”Larry bared his teeth. “I have a problem with traitors.”Gambit shook his head. “I’m not a traitor,” he said, quite calmly.Larry snorted. “Oh, come on. You did a runner, resisted arrest...” His eyes narrowed in the mirror. “Collaborated with the enemy.”Gambit’s own eyes flashed dangerously. “I am not in league with Vanessa Thyme.” He bit off each word in turn. Cold. Clipped. Unwavering.“We’ll see about that,” Larry growled, cranking the wheel with a bit too much force. “Just as we’ll see about Purdey, poor girl. I only hope they’ll go easy on her. After all, it’s not entirely her fault you got in her head.”Gambit actually chuckled. “I think Purdey’s always been much more successful at getting into my head than I’ve ever been at getting into hers.”“Maybe,” Larry countered, “but that’s not the only part of her you got into, is it?”All the humour drained out of Gambit’s face, so quickly it was frightening to behold. “I don’t care what you think I’ve done,” he said, voice low and menacing, “but whatever else has happened, whatever I’ve done, Purdey is a damn good agent, and your colleague. She deserves your respect and if you don’t stop making those kinds of comments, she’ll take care of you long before I’m out of these cuffs.”Larry looked chastened in spite of himself, but his jaw still jutted forward defiantly. “I only hope you haven’t ruined her career as well as your own,” he snapped defensively.“Purdey can look after herself,” Gambit said flatly, turning his attention back to the window. “And she’ll act on her own terms. Definitely not because you or me or anyone else told her what to do.”“Yes, she’s stubborn that way,” Larry observed, and felt his frown deepen as a knowing grin spread across Gambit’s features. “So are you, if it comes to it.”“Yes,” Gambit agreed, grinning at his reflection. “Between the two of us, it keeps things interesting.”Larry’s frown became a scowl, and remained so for the rest of the drive.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Where is he?”Purdey stormed down the corridor of the interrogation block, the part of the Ministry operation that everyone knew about but pretended they didn’t. Larry hadn’t told her where they were taking Gambit, but she didn’t need him to. She already knew.Purdey’s pass got her past the security, but that didn’t mean they wanted her there. Even now, as she strode purposefully down the stairs into the bowels of the facility, there were agents from Larry’s team trying to dissuade her from going any further, and failing miserably. It was abundantly clear that the blonde was not going to be stopped by anything less than physical force, and no one wanted to pick a fight with Purdey, mostly because they knew they’d lose.Larry was staring through a one-way mirror into an interview room when the door flung open and Purdey stormed in. Steed, who was overseeing the proceedings with a jaded eye, didn’t even bother to turn and see who it was. “Purdey, you shouldn’t be here,” Larry barked, expression sour.“Why shouldn’t I be?” Purdey snapped, stepping up to look him in the eye. “You’ve caught him. I can’t exactly be accused of hiding him any longer, can I?”“Yes, but you’re still too close to this investigation,” Larry countered. He rested a restraining hand on her shoulder, but Purdey shrugged it off.“What am I going to do? Break him out?” Purdey treated Larry to a withering look. “Besides, he can’t even see me. How on earth am I going to interfere?”Steed smiled to himself. “She does have a point, Larry,” he said benignly. Larry huffed and turned on his heel. “Neither of you should be here,” he grumbled.“Oh, I rather think we should. It’s in your interest to have some sympathetic eyes in the room. Balance things out, innocent until proven guilty and all that.” Steed looked to Purdey as she came to stand at his shoulder. “I’m surprised you didn’t arrive sooner.”Purdey crossed her arms angrily. “I went to see McKay. I tried to plead Gambit’s case so he could at least be held somewhere a bit less…institutional.”Steed nodded in understanding. “No luck, I take it?”Purdey sighed and shook her head. “Not a bit. I think McKay would sympathise, but he has too much pressure from above to contend with. He can’t be seen to be sympathetic or they’ll throw him in there with Gambit as a co-conspirator.”“He’s the only reason we’re being allowed as much access as we are, I’m sure of it,” Steed opined. “So we’ll have to take our blessings where we can find them for the moment.”Purdey looked through the window at Gambit. Someone had relieved him of his well-worn clothes and given him a greyish-green set of coveralls in return. They’d allowed him a shave and a shower as well, and as a result he looked less scruffy than he had, but the toll the past few days had taken on him was more evident. His face looked grim and tense, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His hair, without the benefit of any styling, had reverted to its natural curls, making him look both younger and more careworn. His hands were cuffed, resting in front of him on the tabletop, fingers laced. Purdey’s heart ached at the sight of him, at the slump of his shoulders and his downcast eyes. She wanted nothing more than to fling open the doors, grab his hand, and take him out of that place, but with the level of security he was subject to, it was impossible—and anyway, Gambit wanted to be here, despite how incomprehensible that choice seemed to her. She would have to wait, no matter how much it pained her to do so.“Has he said anything?” she asked Steed, in lieu of saying something that would get her in trouble. Steed shook his head. “Very little. He won’t talk to Larry, and he refused an offer to talk to me as well. I think he’s trying to keep me as far out of it as possible.”Purdey smiled slightly. “Sounds like him. What will Larry do if he refuses to talk at all?”“Oh, he’ll talk,” Steed told her, then noted her surprise. “Piece of information you don’t have. He says he’ll talk, but only to one person.”Purdey frowned in bemusement. “One person? Who?”“Sara,” Steed informed. “His cousin.”Purdey’s frown deepened. “Sara?”“Yes.” Steed cocked his head to one side in interest. “Do you know her?”“She came to Gambit’s flat right after Larry finished ransacking it,” Purdey told him. “And she was there when he came back from Africa. She took care of him.” She looked back at Gambit, trying to work out his next move by sheer force of will. “I would have thought Gambit would want to keep her out of this, too.”Steed was looking at Gambit with a strange, secretive expression on his face. “I’m sure he has his reasons. We’ll just have to trust him, as always.”Purdey smiled tightly. “As always.”A door opened, and two people entered. “Miss Lynley is here,” an agent announced.Purdey and Steed turned to see Sara standing in the doorway. She nodded at Purdey and smiled. “Nice to see you again.”Purdey nodded in return. “I hoped Gambit would be able to join us the next time we met, not locked up in the cell next door.”“Sounds like a good way for him to escape being ganged up on,” Sara quipped, but there was a worried line between her eyes that told Purdey it upset her to see Gambit chained up behind the glass. “They say he asked for me?”Steed nodded in confirmation. “You’re the only one he’ll speak to. I’ve offered to go in, but he won’t see me.”A thought occurred to Purdey. “Has he asked to speak to me?”“He’s specifically asked not to see you,” Steed told her as impassively as possible. “I suspect he’s trying to keep you clear of the whole debacle. I shouldn’t read too much into it.”Purdey was fuming nonetheless. “I’ll read something into him once he’s out of here.”“I imagine you will.” Steed’s grin was less-than-innocent. “But you must recognise that anything you said to him in there would probably be held against you. You’ll have many opportunities to sully your reputation in the years to come, but I think Gambit would rather they weren’t due to him.”Purdey opened her mouth to reply, but there was no arguing with Steed when he was being wise and wicked in equal measure. Instead, she asked Sara, “Are you going to talk to him?”“I want to help, so yes, of course,” Sara confirmed. “They’ll be listening?”Steed nodded. “You know that.”“I do. A good time to practice projecting, I suppose. My elocution instructor will be so pleased. When can I go in?” “As soon as Larry clears you,” Steed said simply, turning to Larry. “If you’ve no objection. I’m sure they’ve frisked her for all the usual jailbreak accoutrements.”Larry pulled a face. “This isn’t a joke, Steed.”Steed’s expression was deadly serious. “No. It isn’t.”Larry shifted uncomfortably under his gaze and cleared his throat, turned to Sara by way of a distraction. “Whenever you’re ready.”Sara gave him a look that said she’d been ready for quite some time, and would have got on with it much sooner if she’d been allowed. Then she squared her shoulders and moved for the door. Purdey drew in close to Steed, shoulders nearly touching as they watched her go. “Why do you think he wants to see her?”“I suspect we’ll find out in a moment,” Steed replied, eyes fixed on Sara’s back as she entered Gambit’s cell.Gambit looked up as Sara stepped inside, and Purdey detected a flash of emotion before he reverted to the impassive expression he’d been wearing up to that point. He clearly didn’t relish Sara seeing him in his current predicament, even though he’d asked to see her.“Hello, Michael,” Sara said softly, voice pumped over the speakers to Purdey and Steed’s side of the partition. She slid into the seat across from him. “I’d ask how you were, but it seems a bit redundant.”Gambit smiled ruefully. “It’s good to know you can still get straight to the point, even when everything else has gone to hell.”“I’m not going to play games when you’re sitting there in cuffs,” Sara replied tartly. “They say you asked for me. How can I help?”Gambit sighed and looked at his cuffed hands. “I’ve had some time to think—”“Not necessarily a good thing where you’re concerned,” Sara cut in. “If you’re going to think about something, think about what you’re saying, Michael. You know they’re listening.”Gambit shot a knowing look at the mirror. “Of course they’re listening. But you’re the only one who’ll understand what I have to say.”“All right.” Sara leaned in. “What is it, Michael?”“I’ve decided to give the Ministry the papers.”Sara was taken aback. “Michael!” she exclaimed, jolting back in her seat, and Purdey’s voice joined it in the observation area, adding an outraged, “Gambit!” to the disjointed chorus.Gambit waved Sara quiet, but to Purdey it felt like he was aiming the gesture at her as well. Knowing her as well as he did, and where she’d likely be, he probably was. “They’re not going to stop investigating me until I hand them over.”“They might not stop if you do!” Sara protested. “Handing them over isn’t going to undo the case they’ve built against you. In fact, it’s more likely to play right into it!”“I’ve thought of that,” Gambit said softly, fingering with the chains around his wrists. “But I can’t do this anymore. Not to the people I care about.” He looked at the mirror again, and this time Purdey knew he was looking at her, regardless of whether he could see her or not. She felt a lump form in her throat. “But they’re hidden. I can tell you where to find them.”Sara shook her head. “I don’t like this, Michael. You can’t just decide to condemn yourself for all our sakes. If you want to do that in our name, we should have a say.”“I came back home and didn’t know what to do with them,” Gambit ploughed on, ignoring Sara. “Then I thought of Gran, and the plot she bought for herself.” Sara froze. Purdey couldn’t see her face, but she could tell from her body language that the other woman had suddenly gone quite stiff. “What are you saying, Michael?” she demanded, voice low but laced with tension.“I’m saying if Gran thought that was a good enough place to keep something as precious as her safe, it ought to be a safe place for other things.” Gambit swallowed hard. “So I buried it there.” Sara was shaking now. “You’re telling me,” she said, voice barely staying steady, “that you buried the stolen papers in Gran’s plot?” Gambit clearly didn’t want to admit as much vocally, but Sara was insistent. “Did you?”Gambit cast his eyes downward. “Yes.”The slap came out of nowhere, Sara’s hand swinging round with unbelievable speed to connect with Gambit’s cheek with an ear-splitting ‘crack’. Purdey staggered backward involuntarily, shocked at the viciousness of the act. She goggled at the scene as Gambit’s head wrenched sideways with the force of the blow, but he looked less surprised than anyone at his cousin’s reaction. His head was ducked but his gaze was level. “It was the safest place I could think of at the time,” he defended, cheek already sporting a vivid red handprint.“It’s Gran!” Sara was on her feet, hands clenched so tightly into fists that Purdey could see the knuckles were snow-white. “Our gran. She loved you more than anyone. You were her favourite. She deserves better than to be someone’s glorified safety deposit box!”Gambit sat back in his chair, refraining from rubbing at his stung flesh, despite how angry it looked. “She taught us to do the right thing. She’d understand that I did it to keep people safe.”“Don’t you dare try your excuses on me, Michael, or you’ll get worse than a slap.” Sara’s accent was getting ragged with emotion, the essential cockney bleeding through much the way Gambit’s did in similar situations. She stumbled backward, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. “I can’t stand the sight of you.” “Sara!” Gambit called urgently after her, but his cousin was already storming toward the door, black curls bouncing with every determined step. She exited the cell and was immediately met by two guards, who received an ugly glare for their troubles. She locked eyes with Larry. “Call off your guard dogs, or so help me I’ll make this an interdepartmental incident for the books. Or do you fancy tangling with MI6?”Larry seemed to realise that annoying the irate woman further was not the wisest course of action, and nodded at his men to clear a path. Sara shouldered past them and made a beeline for Larry himself. “And while we’re on the topic of interdepartmental squabbles, before you get any ideas you are not—NOT, do you hear?—to so much as think about sending any of your minions to my grandmother’s grave, or you’ll wish I’d cut you down nice and quick right here, get me?”Larry was getting annoyed now, too, and squared his shoulders aggressively. “This is my investigation, and I will do whatever I have to to find those papers.”“But this is MY family,” Sara countered. “No matter what he—” She pointed an accusing finger through the glass at Gambit, who was only now nursing his wounded flesh. “—decided to do, we will not grant you any kind of exhumation order, and I’m going to make sure you don’t get within 100 feet of my Gran. And if you don’t believe me, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”Purdey, who had been watching the entire scene unfold in a state of shock, stepped forward now, rested a soothing hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Sara, I know he didn’t mean it that way. Gambit would never—”Sara shrugged her hand off, and Purdey could tell anger was being overridden by sadness. “It’s not your fault, Purdey. You don’t have to explain anything.” With that, she turned on her heel and hurried out the door. Purdey turned to Steed, who looked remarkably calm given what had just unfolded right in front of him. “Steed, we need her on our side. She can’t actually be thinking of disowning Gambit, can she? Not when he needs her?”“I confess that I don’t know Miss Lynley as well as I’d like, but it does seem unlikely she’ll bear a grudge toward Gambit indefinitely.” He sucked his teeth. “Whether she’ll allow anyone to go poking about in the resting place of her family members is another issue entirely.”Purdey turned back to Larry. “If I talk her around, will you let Gambit go? He’s told us where the papers are.”Larry’s jaw was set stubbornly. “It doesn’t undo everything else he’s done, but it could help his case if he’s seen to be cooperative.”“He hasn’t done anything except what he had to to keep those papers safe,” Purdey shot back.Larry was unmoved. “It’ll help, but I can’t promise more. I’m sorry, Purdey.”Purdey was fuming. “We’ll see about that.” She looked to Steed. “I’m going after her. Make sure no one touches that grave until I do. She’ll never forgive us if we do it surreptitiously.”Steed nodded. “Leave it with me. Go.”Purdey took off like a greyhound, darting out the door and down the corridor at full speed. She nearly bowled over several guards, fellow agents, and other Ministry staff in the process as she raced toward the lift that would take her out of the basement where the Ministry did all of its dirty work and back up to the more civilised world above. She was keenly aware of the fact that Sara had a head start and had left in a hurry, not in the mood for dawdling. If she missed her, Purdey knew she might lose her chance to talk Gambit’s cousin around before she did something that couldn’t be undone.Sara wasn’t standing by the lift when she arrived, and Purdey cursed as she lost precious seconds waiting for it to come back down. The second the doors opened, she was inside, stabbing the button for the main floor repeatedly, willing the doors to close as quickly as possible. The lights on the floor indicator panel lit up with agonising slowness, counting up past various other subterranean departments before finally, blessedly, returning her to the main floor. The doors opened and Purdey darted out, deftly avoiding a collision with a very surprised secretary, and made a beeline for the front door. She pushed it open with a mighty heave and dashed down the steps. Parked in the lot in front of the building’s entrance was a silver sports car with a telltale head of black curls visible through the driver’s side window. Purdey pelted across the lot, making straight for it, arrived just as the key turned in the ignition, and prayed that the passenger door was unlocked as she reached for the handle. It was and she threw it open, leapt inside just as the car pulled away with a squeal of tyres. Purdey’s innate sense of balance kept her from being thrown out of the still-open door, and she closed it hurriedly before the next turn sent her tumbling. Only then did she turn to look at Sara, who was driving with purpose and expertise. “I know you’re not in the mood to talk,” Purdey began, as she set about fastening her safety belt, “but at the very least you could have waited until I was actually in the car.”“I had to make it look good,” Sara replied matter-of-factly, checking her rear-view mirror. “I’d already spent too long sitting there radioing my people about Gran’s grave. I think they were starting to get suspicious.”Purdey frowned. “What do you mean, ‘look good’?” She studied Sara’s expression, noted the disappearance of the angry flush on her cheeks and the steadiness of her hands on the wheel. “You’re not going to tell me that was all an act?”“Why should I, when you’ve worked it out all on your own?” Sara flashed Purdey a cheeky smile. “Not a bad performance if I do say so myself, but I hope you’ll forgive me.”Purdey was taken aback. “I think Gambit’s the one you should be asking for forgiveness,” she said sharply, offended on Gambit’s behalf.Sara shook her head. “Michael doesn’t have much choice in the matter. It was his idea, after all. And anyway, I’ve owed him a slap for years.”Purdey cocked her head quizzically. “Gambit’s idea?”“You were wondering why he didn’t ask for you,” Sara pointed out as she turned the wheel. “You thought he was trying to keep you out of it, and maybe he was. Maybe he was trying to protect you. But the main reason he didn’t want to talk to you was because you didn’t have the information to understand what he was saying.”Realisation dawned in Purdey’s eyes. “It was a code. He told you something.”Sara nodded smartly in confirmation. “And the something is something only a family member would know. And you’re not quite there. Not yet.”Purdey blushed in spite of herself. “We haven’t really talked about…”Sara waved her off with a knowing smile. “Yes, yes, whatever you say. Anyway, the important thing is, he gave me a very important clue that very few people would spot.”Purdey’s interest was piqued. “Do tell.”“Gran. The gran we share. We both loved her dearly, but Michael adored her. She was one of the few people who really cared about him growing up. Really took an interest.” Sara paused for a moment as she considered the significance of that statement, swallowed the emotion, then carried on. “She didn’t have much money—no one in the family did—but practical woman that she was, she saved up and bought herself a very humble plot. Not the one she wanted, mind—she wanted to be buried beside her husband on the Isle of Man, but she couldn’t afford that, so instead of complaining, she settled.“That was until Michael got wind of it. And when he found out what was going on, he was determined to make it right, even though Gran kept saying it was fine and not to worry himself. But you know how stubborn he is, self-sacrificing idiot. So he scrimped and he saved and he worked for heaven knows how long doing whatever, and he bought her that plot. And that’s where she is now, keeping granddad company.” She shot Purdey a meaningful look. “But she still owned the original plot.”Purdey could see the pieces of the puzzle dropping into place before her eyes. “Gambit said that he buried the papers at the plot your grandmother bought for herself. That means—”“They’re not in the plot where she’s buried. Which is the place everyone immediately assumed he was talking about. But what he really meant was that he buried it in the plot Gran bought for herself, which, incidentally, Michael inherited when she died.”Purdey’s eyes lit up. “So while they’re fighting you for an exhumation order, we can go and dig up the papers ourselves, without disturbing your grandmother.”“And use them to our advantage,” Sara pointed out. “Or, more importantly, Michael’s advantage.” “Gambit let himself get captured so he’d have Ministry back-up if he got Vanessa to agree to an exchange. But he wants to keep the papers out of the Ministry’s hands as much as Vanessa’s. If we have them, neither Vanessa or the Ministry or even Gambit will know where they are. That gives us leverage!” Purdey was wired now, like a bloodhound waiting to go on the hunt. “Are we going there now?”“Yes, eventually.” Sara checked her rear-view mirror again. “We’re being followed, but I’ve got a contingency plan in place. I radioed a friend while I waited for you to hopefully come out to talk me around. We’re going to have to engage in a little deception, if you don’t mind.”Purdey turned her chin up defiantly. “Just try and stop me.”Sara grinned wickedly and turned sharply, pulling into a parking spot adjacent to a well-appointed restaurant. “Right,” she said to Purdey, as she applied the clutch. “We’re going to lose them here. When we get out, pretend that I’m still desperately angry and you’re trying to talk me around.”“I always liked drama in school,” Purdey said brightly, removing her safety belt. She stepped out and put on what she considered to be a suitably nuanced performance of ‘beseeching yet persuasive’ as Sara somehow managed to conjure up some more angry tears at will. They disappeared into the restaurant and Sara led the way to a private room at the back. There was a man sitting inside, alone, nursing a glass of wine as though he had all the time in the world. A set of car keys rested near his elbow on the table. Sara nodded at him in acknowledgement as they stepped inside. “Our watchers are out front just around the corner,” she told him.The man raised his glass in a one-sided toast. “I’ll keep an eye out.” He pointed his chin at the keys. “Car’s in the alley. How long will you be?”“Not more than an hour, I hope,” Sara told him, grabbing the keys. She looked to Purdey. “I’d introduce you, but I think it’s better if you both remain nameless.”“I’ve had many relationships that worked best that way,” the man quipped, giving Purdey a wink. “Good luck.”“Thanks.” Sara was already on her way out the door. “And don’t drink your way through my tab. I have a reputation to keep up.”“I thought adding to it was doing just that,” came the snappy reply, and Sara just shook her head and led the way out into the restaurant’s inner workings.“Friend of yours?” Purdey asked in amusement.“After a fashion,” Sara allowed. “Not all of the company I keep is of the same quality.” She found the back door and stepped out into the alley. The car was parked there, as promised. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”“I think I’m getting the right one,” Purdey quipped, sliding into the passenger seat. “It must be a family trait. How far is it to the plot?”Sara slid the key into the ignition and set the car purring into life. “Not far. Have you ever ventured across the Thames to Battersea?”“Oh, don’t worry. I’m quite well-travelled,” Purdey said with a smile. “Hadn’t we better be going?”After some quick manoeuvring to ensure that they didn’t cross paths with their one-time tail, Sara drove them directly to their destination, a neat but unassuming graveyard occupied by souls who had undoubtedly aspired to more, but had never achieved it. Stepping out of the car, Purdey felt vaguely mournful, knowing this was Gambit’s world, his roots. He had never been ashamed of where he came from, and it had never occurred to Purdey that he should be, but the deprivation that she knew accompanied his early years made her heart ache in a way that she couldn’t ignore. She pushed it aside in favour of the task at hand, but it continued to lurk just outside periphery of her consciousness. She vowed to ask Gambit more about his past, and his childhood, when this was all over. He’d endured more adversity than he’d let on, and she wanted, needed, to share in it.Sara swung open the low gate and started to wend her way through the gravestones, certain of where she needed to go. Purdey followed in her wake, taking care not to disturb the slightly-wilted flowers on the stones, the legacies of the bereaved who refused to forget those who had gone before them. For a moment, she had an image in her mind’s eye of her father’s own grave, and the bunches of flowers she faithfully took out to him every year on the anniversary of his death. She could hear her own words, echoing in her ears, as she told him how much she missed him, what had happened in her life since they’d last had one of their one-way conversations. She felt the tears rise unbidden, but forced them down, focussed instead on Sara. Her father was gone, but Gambit was still here, and she didn’t intend to sit by his grave for some time to come. Sara had stopped by a plot and was studying it intently. Purdey, realising she’d been lagging behind, caught up in the tangle of memories of her past, hurried over to the woman’s side. To her surprise, the plot appeared to be occupied. At the very least, it had a tombstone to call its own. Purdey read the inscription out loud: “Annie Gambit. Beloved mother, wife, and grandmother.” She looked at the dates and did the math. They looked right for the grandmother of a man Gambit’s age. She looked quizzically at Sara. “If your grandmother is on the Isle of Man, who is this?”Sara’s jaw was working the same way that Gambit’s did when he was turning a puzzle over in his mind. “That’s her first name, but Gran--our gran--was an O’Carroll. Irish. Not a Gambit. As far as I know, Michael doesn’t have an Annie on his father’s side. This person doesn’t exist.” She glanced at Purdey. “This proves my theory. This is the plot Gran bought, but it’s a decoy grave, meant to hide the papers. I’m sure of it.”Purdey dropped into a crouch, ran the backs of her fingers over her lips in thought. “If this is where Gambit hid the papers, where exactly would he put them?”Sara cursed silently. “Damn it all! I didn’t think to bring a shovel.”Purdey shook her head. “No, that would attract too much attention. It would take too long and raise too many questions to exhume the grave, and if he dug it up himself someone might see him and raise the alarm. Gambit wouldn’t risk that.” Sara put her hands on her hips in annoyance. “Well if he didn’t want to bury them, where would he put them?”Purdey tapped her knuckles against her lips and considered, eyes sweeping over the entire grave before settling on the gravestone. There was something strange about the inscription that was bothering her. She walked around to the side of the grave to get a different perspective. “Sara, look here.” She pointed at the text. “The serif on the bottom of all the letters—they look like little arrows. Do you see it?”Sara crouched down beside her, squinted at the text. “Possibly. What are you thinking?”Purdey was getting excited now. “Gambit loves hidden compartments and things. He has them in his flat to hide the mechanism for his bed, and to keep files and things safe when he brings them home. He wouldn’t bury the papers, but he might hide them behind a secret panel. What if the arrows point the way?”Sara looked uncertain but Purdey was already exploring the side the gravestone, fingers questing for any unusual grooves or indentations. After a moment of feeling around, Purdey started to wonder if her instincts had steered her wrong. But then, suddenly, there it was: a seam in the stone that shouldn’t have been there, a groove that gave way to a telltale indentation. Purdey applied a modicum of pressure, and couldn’t hold back the smile that spread across her face as the stone gave way beneath her fingers, before popping out with a hiss. Purdey slid out a container while Sara looked on in disbelief. The prize was a fairly unremarkable metal box, about the weight and size of a hardcover book. Purdey swiped away a thin layer of accumulated dust, revealing a tapestry of dents and scratches that betrayed a long, somewhat violent history. Purdey couldn’t help but draw a parallel with Gambit’s own body.Sara had been remarkably quiet throughout the reveal, and even as she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “So that’s it,” she said softly. “That’s the damn thing that got Michael locked away in his own personal hell for three months.”Purdey could hear the anger in the words, and knew she couldn’t argue with it. “Yes, and it’s doing a very good repeat performance just now. But not for much longer, if I have anything to say about it.” She straightened up. “Gambit didn’t have any allies then, no one to turn to for help. But he does now. We can use this to his advantage.”Sara took the box from her, weighed it, examined it with a certain amount of scorn. Purdey was suddenly reminded that, while they had both listened to Gambit’s account of his imprisonment, only Sara had actually sat at Gambit’s bedside and been forced to bear witness to the damage his ordeal had wrought, physical and psychological. Purdey hadn’t been there, hadn’t known he existed. But it still seemed somehow intolerable to know that he’d been in such pain, and she hadn’t been able to do a thing about it. Sara had discovered a small keyhole in the metal, traced it with a finger. “Do we open it?”Purdey considered. “Yes,” she decided. “But not to read it. I want to take out some insurance. Do you have a lockpicking kit?”Sara nodded. “In the car.”“Then let’s get it.”“Presumably Michael has a key somewhere,” Sara surmised, turning her attention back to the grave. “I wonder where he buried that.”“I imagine we’ll find out,” Purdey said unconcernedly. Sara looked back to Purdey. “What do we do after we get it open?”Purdey’s face suddenly broke into a giant grin. “Where’s the nearest post office?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
One visit to Battersea’s local Royal Mail outpost later, Purdey was back in the car with Sara, and the two women retraced their steps, returning the car to the alley from whence it came. Sara’s unnamed friend was still at his post in the back room, munching a sandwich and perusing a paperback as though whiling away a lazy Sunday afternoon without a care in the world. When they re-emerged from the restaurant, Purdey was relieved to see that their tail was still where they’d left it. All told, they’d been gone a little over an hour, hopefully a believable amount of time to have had an intense conversation as well as a bite to eat. They were followed from the moment they returned to Sara’s car, of course, but Purdey no longer cared. The important work was finished.Sara dropped her off back at the Ministry, encouraging Purdey to call her if she needed anything else. Purdey was grateful for the other woman’s help, but thought she could handle things on her own from now on. The fewer people involved as her plan unfolded, the better. Still, it was nice to know there were allies around if they were needed. She took her own car to Gambit’s flat to pick up a few things, then drove back, feeling more optimistic than she had in days.She strode back into the Ministry with an overnight bag in hand packed full of clothes and other things that Gambit could use to make himself more presentable. As she carried her precious cargo through security, into the lift that swept into the Ministry’s bowels, and down the seemingly-unending corridor, her resolve was so strong that there was no question in her mind that Gambit would get to use it.Gambit was still ensconced in the interrogation room when she returned, staring off into the middle distance, stony-faced. Larry was still in the anteroom, talking angrily into the phone mounted on the wall, with Steed looking on impassively. Purdey approached the senior agent, and asked in hushed tones, “What’s going on?”“Larry’s attempting to find someone who will grant him an exhumation order,” Steed informed, emphasising the word ‘attempting.’ “It’s not going terribly well so far. I suspect Miss Lynley’s people are stonewalling him.”Purdey smirked in satisfaction, just as Larry rang off. He caught sight of her smug expression and his already-sour mood only declined further. “I don’t know what you’re smiling about. The longer it takes us to get into that grave, the worse it is for Gambit.”Purdey squared her shoulders. “As a matter of fact, I think Gambit’s fortunes are looking up. In fact, I know. Just as I know that you’re going to quit trying for an exhumation order.”Larry’s expression turned sceptical. “Am I? And why would I do that?”“Because I have the papers,” Purdey said simply, and relished the astonished expression as it washed across Larry’s face. “Or rather, I don’t have them, but I can get them. And they’re not in Gambit’s grandmother’s grave.”Larry’s disbelief increased exponentially. “How did you…? No, never mind. I know you won’t tell me. But if you know what’s good for Gambit, you’ll hand them over.”“I have a different idea,” Purdey said calmly, setting the overnight bag on the anteroom’s table. “I want you to get Gambit out of that interrogation room, and let him change into some fresh clothes.”“And why should I do that?”“Because if you do, I’ll get him to help you catch Vanessa Thyme,” Purdey said matter-of-factly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “He knows how to contact her. She must be worth something to you.”Larry didn’t answer, but Purdey could see the calculations flickering behind his eyes that she knew would tell him that collaring Thyme would be coup. “In exchange for what?” he said finally, unwilling to signal his interest just yet.“Quit investigating Gambit,” Purdey declared, arms crossed defiantly. “Stop this ridiculous line of inquiry that we all know is nothing more than your personal vendetta. Steed and I have evidence that proves that everything you’ve got on Gambit is either false or misconstrued. The only thing we can’t explain away is the fact that he hid the papers. And I don’t want him to suffer any consequences for that.”Larry snorted in disbelief. “He’s been hiding these documents for four years. He went on the run to avoid arrest. We still haven’t independently confirmed that he wasn’t collaborating with Thyme. And you want me to let him go without so much as a slap on the wrist?”“He only went on the run because he knew you’d lock him up without giving him a chance to prove his innocence!” Purdey countered. “Look, Steed and I can provide you with conclusive proof that he was otherwise engaged during all those times he was unaccounted for. And Sara Lynley also has evidence that those tickets and bank accounts were fake. And O’Hara is the least reliable witness in the world. There isn’t a shred of evidence that indicates that Gambit was working with Thyme, and if you’d given him a chance to prove it, we could have all saved ourselves a lot of time and effort. But you didn’t, so we had to do your job and investigate him properly, and now your grand conspiracy theory against Gambit is in tatters.”“What about his most recent movements?” Larry cut in, unwilling to go down without a fight. “He’s been doing a lot of things off the radar lately that I’ll bet even Lynley couldn’t explain away.”“No, but I can,” Purdey said curtly, taking a modicum of pleasure in the surprise that flashed in Larry’s eyes. “He was with me on all those occasions. I think I’d remember if he suddenly wandered off to contact Vanessa Thyme.”Larry scowled. “You’re sure you know what you’re talking about? Because given the times we’re investigating, you’d have to be with him at all hours. That could be very compromising for you. People might draw the wrong conclusions.”“I don’t think they will,” Purdey said flatly, “since Gambit and I are…romantically involved.”“Purdey…” The warning came from Steed, but Purdey waved him quiet. She already knew the risks she was taking, but she didn’t care. Let them sack her. Her job wasn’t going to make her happy, not with Gambit dead or in a prison cell rather than at her side.“I’m only telling you this because I want you to know how serious I am about Gambit’s well-being, not because it’s any of your business. I can be more detailed if you like, but I hope you’re more of a gentleman than to ask,” she went on. She was past the point of being insulted or outraged by the idea of being asked outré questions. If they wanted her to get graphic, they’d be the ones doing the blushing, not her.Larry wasn’t blushing, but his expression was sour, and not just because Purdey had suddenly punched a large hole in the case against Gambit. She knew Larry fancied her, had always seen Gambit as a rival for her affections. Purdey had fancied Larry too, once upon a time, in a casual sort of way. She found it amusing and flattering when men flirted with her, even if she didn’t let them get as close as they would have liked. And flirting with someone else was always guaranteed to wind Gambit up, which had always been one of her favourite past-times, one she hadn’t quite given up since they got together—getting a rise out of Gambit continued to be entertaining, even if she had no intention of taking anyone else up on their offers. Larry used to be a prime candidate for winding Gambit up, but after this fiasco Purdey was finished playing games with the man. Except for this game, which was proving rather fun in and of itself, despite the circumstances. “How long has this been going on?” Larry asked finally.“Two months or so,” Purdey replied, with practised nonchalance, and knew she didn’t imagine Larry’s slight wince. “And before you ask, I was the one who initiated it, not him.”Larry shook his head in disappointment. “Purdey, I thought you were smarter than that. You jeopardised your entire career by getting involved with him, even before this whole mess. He’s probably been manipulating you for his own ends.”Purdey looked unimpressed. “I’m not sure Gambit would claim to be very good at manipulation. It did take him almost two years to persuade me to go to bed with him, after all.”That was salt in the wound for Larry, and Purdey momentarily wondered if she’d overplayed her hand. If she had, she would do Gambit no good at all. But Larry was a professional. He knew that it wouldn’t do him much good in the eyes of the department if he lost out on something as valuable as the papers because of petty jealousy. After a moment, he pulled himself together and regarded Purdey with a little more equanimity. “You want Gambit to get off scot-free in exchange for catching Vanessa Thyme, is that it?”“That is what I said,” Purdey confirmed, impatience edging into her voice.“And I suppose you’d also like to be excused for helping him conceal important documents from the proper authorities?” Larry added knowingly, fixing her with an incisive look that told Purdey whatever feelings he had for her wouldn’t help her this time.Purdey chose to keep her tone light rather than engage blow for blow. “If it’s not too much trouble.”Larry sucked air through his teeth in an expression of uncertainty. “I’m not sure that’ll fly, Purdey. The two of you getting a free pass after extreme dereliction of duty, misleading your colleagues, and fraternising on top of it all—all that brushed aside in exchange for the arrest of one dangerous free agent? I don’t think McKay’ll buy it.”“Vanessa Thyme is rather more than a troublesome freelancer,” Steed pointed out, diving into the fray after observing it silently from sidelines. “There are more than a dozen governments who want her dead or alive, if you’ll forgive the cliché. And you must admit that Purdey and Gambit have a rather long and impressive service record behind them. It would be the Ministry’s loss if they were dismissed for what, in our line of work, are some comparatively minor sins.”Purdey smiled at Steed’s endorsement, knew the senior agent was applying pressure in the way only he could manage—subtly, reasonably, with a quiet, but very real, threat behind it. “Maybe so,” Larry countered, unmoved even by Steed. Purdey knew his case against Gambit as the mastermind behind a long-running conspiracy to undermine their department had been reduced to rubble. But there was still the inescapable fact that Gambit had been in dereliction of duty for some time now, ever since he’d decided to hang onto the papers, along with the inconvenient fact that he had gone on the run just when he was about to be taken into custody. There was very little Purdey or even Steed could do to counter that if the top brass decided that Gambit should be made an example of, except execute some clever utilitarian calculus that proved Gambit to be much more useful out fighting baddies than locked away or struck off. Larry was going to make that calculation as difficult as he possibly could, especially if he added Purdey’s own, lesser crimes of aiding and abetting to the mix. “But that’s still thin porridge to compensate for treason.”Purdey’s eyes flashed in outrage. “Treason! He only hid the papers. He didn’t sell them on to the other side.”“But he held them despite a direct order,” Larry shot back. “What’s to stop him from deciding to ignore other orders if he decides he doesn’t like them? What sort of agent does that make him?”“The kind that doesn’t blindly do as he’s told whatever the consequences. You know as well as I do that in the field things aren’t always black and white.” Steed was stern now. His seniority was going to be hard to beat on the ‘accused of treason’ front. Steed had broken the rules more times than anyone could count. If the department had always taken Larry’s hard line, Steed would have been locked up dozens of times over, but no one could deny it was his willingness to break the rules that made him such a good agent, one who had saved the country more times than anyone could count, with a few undocumented occasions on the side for good measure.“That may be true, but I think you ought to add some spice to the pot.” Larry met Purdey’s eyes. “Give me Thyme and the papers and I’ll help you persuade the top brass that it’s a good deal.”So there it was. Purdey cursed internally. She’d hoped to keep the papers out of the bargain, in keeping with Gambit’s wishes. But she could feel Larry wasn’t going to budge, not on this. Still, she had to try. “Gambit will never agree to that.”“Gambit’s not making the deal. You are. Or do I have that wrong?” Larry’s face creased in a sneer. “You are still capable of making decisions without his input, aren’t you?”The words stuck in her craw, just as Purdey knew they were meant to. That didn’t make them more bearable, or less true. She’d chosen to act without talking to Gambit, partly by necessity, but partly because she wanted to ensure Gambit’s safety; he was liable to forfeit it for the greater good if given the choice himself. Now she was faced with that same choice—Gambit’s freedom, or his principles. Larry would make sure she couldn’t have both, and there was no way around that.Or was there?“I want to talk to McKay,” she declared. “We’ll see what he thinks is fair.”Larry looked annoyingly confident. “After you.”A quarter of an hour later, despite persuasive arguments from both Purdey and Steed, they had their answer, and it was in Larry’s favour. As Purdey handed over the overnight bag to be taken to Gambit, she knew the stakes that she’d put up for this deal, both personal and professional, were high. She only hoped they weren’t going to end higher than either her or Gambit could afford.vvvGambit was sitting on a decidedly unglamourous cot in an equally utilitarian cell. It was a step up from the interrogation room, but it was still hardly the Ritz. Gambit had to admit that the clean clothes—his own clothes—made a difference, as did the opportunity to have a proper shower and shave, two luxuries he’d been denied during his time on the run. Sadly, the cuffs on his wrists were a sobering reminder that he wasn’t out of the woods yet.The door opened and Purdey walked in. Gambit could tell immediately that she was on the warpath, determined and angry and all the more powerful for it. Her eyes were blazing and her chin was turned up defiantly. The click of her heels on the concrete floor bounced ominously off the walls. Gambit thought she looked magnificent. Purdey’s eyes met his and softened almost instantly, and she gifted him with one of those small, secretive smiles that were her stock and trade. It instantly made him feel better—just seeing her was a balm for his soul. Gambit got to his feet, unsure of whether or not they’d let him touch her, but determined to try. He reached out a hand, and it was at that moment that Purdey’s gaze fell to his chained wrists. The fire returned to her eyes almost instantly.“Why is he still wearing those?” she called through the small, barred window in the door to the guard posted outside, and Gambit heard some mumbled explanation in response. Purdey was clearly unimpressed by what she heard. “Well take them off. Gambit’s capable of a lot of things, but karate chopping his way out of a concrete room isn’t one of them.”There were more murmured conversations outside, but eventually the guard came in and unlocked the cuffs without making eye contact. “Thanks,” Gambit told him, barely managing to keep the amusement out of his voice. He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened since Sara left, but clearly Purdey was in charge, and that was all to the good.Purdey watched the guard depart the cell with her hands on her hips, waited until he closed the door behind him before she made her move. Then suddenly she was in his arms, hands on either side of his face, lips meeting his in a passionate kiss. Gambit kissed back, relieved, grateful, amazed, but above all happy to have this one moment with her. Heaven knew how many more they’d get. All the same, when he broke away, his expression was puzzled. “You know we’re being watched. I thought you didn’t want anyone to know about us?”Purdey’s hands dropped to his shoulders. “They know now,” she said simply. “I had to tell them. I needed them to understand how much I cared about you, and how serious I was about keeping you safe. But it works in our favour.”Gambit’s hands rested comfortably on her waist. He could feel the softness there, but also the muscles underneath, the strength. Soft but strong. That was Purdey in a nutshell. He felt better just holding her, and if they didn’t need to hide anything, he wasn’t going to deny himself. “What do you mean?”“I made a deal.”Gambit cocked his head with slight trepidation. “What kind of deal?”“I have the papers,” Purdey confided. “Not on me. But I can get them. I told them you could use them to bring Vanessa Thyme out into the open. You can contact her, can’t you? Get her to come to a rendezvous for an exchange?” Purdey knew that he could—he’d told her as much before he’d been captured. But the Ministry only had her word for it, and she knew they needed to put on a performance to convince the people that were watching them if that their plan would work.“Yes.” Gambit’s answer was reluctant, his face getting grimmer by the moment. He was following the script, though she wasn’t entirely certain if his reaction was performance or reality just yet. “But I’m not giving them to her. All I’ve been trying to do since I got out of Africa is keep them away from people like her.”“You’re not going to give them to her,” Purdey vowed, stroking his cheek to reassure him. “We’re going to use them as bait so the Ministry can bring her in. Then you never have to worry about her again.”“There’s more,” Gambit murmured, searching her face, really worried now. “I can tell.”Purdey bit her lip. This was the tricky part of the script she’d written in her head for how this needed to go, and she wasn’t entirely sure if Gambit would be able to read between the lines, or like what he saw there if he did. “They’ve agreed to not come after you if you do this. Sara and Steed and I have already explained away most of the irregularities that they’ve been using to build a case against you.” She smiled a little crookedly. “I’ve explained that a few of them are me.”Gambit grinned in spite of himself and the anxiety that was bubbling beneath the surface. “You’ve always been my favourite irregularity.”Purdey smiled back, rested a hand gently against his chest, took strength from the heart she felt beating there. “There’s no case, not anymore. And they’ve agreed not to discipline you for hiding the papers. You can stay on at the Ministry.”“What about you?”“I’ll be all right,” Purdey assured quickly. The last thing she needed was Gambit thinking that it was a choice between him and her. He’d never agree to anything if she wasn’t going to come out of the whole mess unscathed. She’d negotiated her own unimpeachability for his sake more than her own. “We both will. You just have to help them catch Vanessa.”Gambit met her eyes, saw the unspoken caveat, and suddenly looked tired. “In exchange for handing the papers over to the Ministry when this is all finished. Right?”Purdey’s eyes fell to her fashionably high heels and sighed. “I tried to persuade them that catching Vanessa was enough, but they were having none of it.” She looked back up, met his gaze levelly, spoke to him as a partner and equal. “I know it’s not what you wanted, but you must admit it’s a better alternative than them winding up with Thyme. And I won’t let you sacrifice yourself for them. I’m your partner and you were out of options, so I took matters into my own hands. This is the best chance for both of us to come out of this unscathed. But I promise that I’ve taken all your wishes into account. I haven’t broken faith with you. It’ll work out the way you need it to. You just have to trust me.” Her gaze bore into his, willing him to understand every part of the message she was trying to convey, spoken and unspoken. “Do you trust me?”Much to her relief, Gambit didn’t look angry. Not that he lost his temper with her often, but she’d wondered if she might have overplayed her hand by going over his head and making this decision on her own. “You’re right,” he said finally, slowly, carefully. His penetrating gaze told her that he was searching for and had found the reassurance he needed that she had something more up her sleeve than she was letting on, even if he couldn’t yet divine what it was. “I can’t do it on my own. Even if I did sacrifice myself, she’d still come for the papers, and probably you too. And I don’t want that, definitely not because of me.” He reached out and stroked her face, smiled encouragingly. “Let’s get this whole sorry business over with so we can get on with our lives.” She smiled back, and this time he kissed her. When they parted, he said for the benefit of the ears he knew were listening, “I’ll do whatever they want me to.” Then to Purdey, “Thank you for saving me, Purdey-girl.”“I wouldn’t be a very good partner if I didn’t,” Purdey pointed out, secretive smile back in place, and she caught the conspiratorial look in his eye just as the cell door opened.vvvPurdey didn’t know who was more relieved to be out of the cell—her or Gambit—but either way it was all to the good, even if they’d traded it for the Ministry’s underground car park, complete with Larry scowling at the pair of them. They’d given Gambit back his gun, something Larry had been decidedly against, but it was difficult to argue against the reasoning that Gambit would be of very little use to anyone if he wound up shot by Thyme because he’d had no weapon to defend himself. That didn’t mean Larry liked the idea, or that he was happy Gambit was being allowed to go off on his own.“Come on, Larry, I know you’re not the most imaginative person in the world, but I thought that even you’d be able to see that Thyme isn’t going to talk to me if I have a dozen agents on my tail. I have to meet her on my own, unless, of course, you want to blow the whole plan to hell before it even gets started.” Gambit was not only frustrated with the man, but now that he was liberated from his cell, he was even more defiant.“I’m not the one who came up with the bloody plan,” Larry shot back, eyes burning angrily. “You’d still be locked up if I had my way.”“No, Purdey came up with the plan, luckily for you. Otherwise we’d have wound up glaring at each other in a 6 x 6 room until we both died of old age.” Gambit looked plaintively at Steed and Purdey. “I’m not going to be saddled with him through this whole thing, am I? Because I think I liked the cell better.”“Now Larry,” Steed said reasonably, in his most pleasant, gentlemanly voice. “Gambit does make a rather good point, although perhaps he could have been made it a little less antagonistically.”Gambit, much to Purdey’s amusement, looked like a chastened schoolboy who’d been called to the carpet by a favourite teacher. She sometimes forgot that Gambit and Steed’s relationship pre-dated her involvement with the team, and on occasion that older acquaintance reasserted itself. Gambit’s trust in Steed was unyielding, and that included his confidence in the older man’s ability to bring him back into line when he needed it. The reaction clearly met with Steed’s satisfaction, because he continued on without comment. “If we want Gambit to arrange a meeting with Ms. Thyme without arousing unnecessary suspicion, we must allow him to do it on his own terms.”“I understand that,” Larry snapped in frustration. “What I worry about is whether those terms will give him a prime opportunity to slip the net and be halfway to South America before we’ve realised what’s happened. What’s to stop him from doing a runner the minute he leaves? We don’t have any insurance.”Gambit paused for a moment, then met Purdey’s eyes uncertainly. She could tell what he was thinking, knew he was asking for her consent. It had already occurred to her that this particular situation might arise, and she smiled reassuringly to let him know that it was all right, that she was with him all the way in this caper, whatever it might entail. She saw a little of the tension leave Gambit’s shoulders, and he nodded back at her in return, his partner in all ways. This was going to be a team effort in every sense of the word. He turned back to Larry.“You do have insurance.” Larry looked bemused. “What are you talking about? We don’t have the papers.”“No, but you have Purdey.” Gambit’s jaw was tense, and Purdey could tell the idea of using her as leverage was sticking in his craw, even if she’d okayed it. “That is, if she’ll let you have her.”“I will. In a very limited capacity.” Purdey’s smile was small and secretive and wicked, and the look she shared with Gambit practically set the air between them alight. They lingered just long enough for Larry to shift uncomfortably, before Gambit tore his eyes away with effort.“You know what’s going on between us,” he said, with a certain amount of satisfaction. “You know I won’t leave her behind to save my own skin. As long as she stays here, with you, I’ll have to come back.”Larry shook his head. “You can say that, but there’s no way to prove that you mean it. After all the lies you’ve told…”“I can kiss her again, if that helps,” Gambit said dryly. “Unless you think I’m a good enough actor to fake that kind of chemistry. Or love.” Larry was clearly unenthusiastic about the idea of watching Purdey lock lips with his nemesis again, and Gambit’s frustration started to mount. “Damn it, Larry, she’s my partner! You know as well as anyone what we’ve done to save each other’s skin. I wouldn’t have pulled half the stunts I’ve pulled to save her life over the years if I didn’t care about her.”Larry pondered this for a moment, and Purdey knew that, in spite of himself, he was mentally calling up at least half a dozen instances where Gambit had put his life on the line to save hers. He was reluctantly drawing conclusions that he didn’t like. “What’s to stop you from trying to snatch her away as soon as you’ve gone and found yourself some cavalry of your own?” he tried, still desperately trying to throw up obstacles.“You could take me somewhere secret,” Purdey suggested. “Set a rendezvous point and collect Gambit there while keeping me somewhere else entirely. You must admit he can’t whisk me away if he doesn’t know where I am.” She met Gambit’s eyes, harkening back to one of their many in-jokes. “After all, I’m the psychic one, not him.” Gambit grinned back, and Larry looked from one to the other in disgust.“All right,” he agreed sourly. “Purdey comes with me. You have until midnight to set your meeting.”“I’ll be delighted to collect Gambit when he’s finished,” Steed volunteered cheerily, and Larry acquiesced without a fight.“Fine, I’ll let you and Steed set a rendezvous,” he said tiredly. “I’m only going to waste more time fighting the three of you.”Purdey grinned triumphantly at Gambit. “I’ll see you soon,” he promised, levity fading as he braced himself for what was going to be an unpleasant errand.“I hope so. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life hidden away from the world in a cellar or something,” Purdey said lightly, attempting to cheer them all up. She was in professional mode now, and her anxiety over his well-being was papered over with nonchalance. “Think of the damage it’ll do to my complexion.”“I’ll keep your complexion in mind. Along with the rest of you,” Gambit vowed, by way of a parting shot for Larry’s benefit, and a last bit of encouragement for Purdey. And then he was gone.vvvGambit strode into the pub without bothering to check for watchers. He didn’t think he was being followed, but it didn’t matter at this point. All that mattered was delivering his message. He marched straight up to the bar, where Oliver was trying to pry some useful intel out of a rough-looking patron who was a little too worse for wear to be discreet. “Oliver!” Gambit hissed, and the man started violently, spun away from his mark to meet Gambit’s piercing gaze. He instantly went into self-defence mode, raising his hands plaintively. “I told you everything, Mr. Gambit, honest! I just passed on the messages like I was told. No funny business, I swear!”“Relax, Oliver, I’m here to ask you to pass on another message, not interrogate you about the last one.” Gambit rested his hands on the bar, then quickly regretted it when his skin stuck fast to the surface. “I need you to contact Vanessa Thyme again,” he explained, pulling his hands away with a sickening sucking sound, disgust written large across his face. “Do you think you can do that on short notice?”Somehow, Oliver’s pale face got even paler, and Gambit suddenly realised that the man’s jumpiness wasn’t due to his presence alone. “I hate to put myself out of work, Mr. Gambit, but you don’t need me to pass on a message. She’s here.”Gambit felt his blood run cold. He followed Oliver’s trembling, outstretched index finger with no small amount of trepidation, unwilling to look once more upon the visage of the woman from his nightmares, but also inexorably drawn to see what was waiting for him.It was almost anti-climactic in the end. Vanessa was sitting in a secluded booth in the corner, half in shadow, again in her casual pose—legs crossed, one hand toying idly with a glass of something. Gambit nodded in acknowledgement at Oliver, and could tell the man was instantly relieved to be well rid of the need to have anything further to do with them. He strode over to where Vanessa was waiting, keen to get the whole sorry business over with as soon as possible. He slid into the booth across from her, not bothering to check for the heavies he knew must be everywhere, situated around the pub. Gambit didn’t think they were needed. Vanessa was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but he supposed the added muscle was there for his benefit—an intimidation tactic, albeit not a very successful one. Gambit was also quite capable of handling himself if need be, and he somehow doubted Vanessa was planning on killing him then and there.“You’re ready to make a deal, Major,” Vanessa predicted, without bothering with the pleasantries.“What makes you think that?” Gambit asked blithely, determined not to make it easy for her.“Because your people let you go, after taking such pains to lock you up,” Vanessa said simply. “Don’t try to deceive me, Major. I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”“I didn’t know you cared,” Gambit said sarcastically. “But I’m not surprised. I know you led Purdey and Steed straight to me, and I know you let them rescue me. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?” Vanessa sipped her drink unconcernedly, unperturbed at being found out. “I knew you’d work it out eventually, Major. You always were astute.”Gambit’s mouth twisted in wry annoyance. “Should I even bother trying to negotiate with you, then, or can you read my mind, too?”“Just about,” Vanessa said flatly. “In all the ways that matter.” She set down her glass and leaned forward. “Let me guess. You’re here to offer me the papers in exchange for me leaving you and your friends alone, but you’ve told your people you can use them to help bring me in. Does that sound about right?”Gambit’s grin was wry. “If I told you otherwise, would you believe me?”“No,” Vanessa said sharply. “It doesn’t matter, because I’m going to set the terms. You give me the papers, no strings attached, and I’ll leave you and your precious Purdey and the rest of your so-called friends alone. I’ll set the time and place of the meeting. You’ll come alone. If you don’t, there will be consequences.” She regarded Gambit levelly. “Do you understand me, Major?”Gambit shook his head. “You know they won’t allow that. I’m not setting the terms anymore. They’re going to be there whether you like it or not.”“As long as they keep their distance, that shouldn’t pose a problem,” Vanessa said unconcernedly. “You’ll make them agree, if you know what’s good for you.”“If I give you the papers and let you escape, I’ll have nothing to give to my people,” Gambit pointed out. “No leverage. Nothing I can use to protect myself or anyone else from the mess you’ve landed me in.”“You made this mess, Major,” Thyme countered. “It’s a situation of your own devising. You could have saved yourself all this trouble if you’d only left those papers where they were. Don’t expect any sympathy from me for your foolishness.”“Still,” Gambit pressed, unwilling to let the matter lie, “there’s not much for me in it, is there?”“You and your people won’t wind up dead at my hands,” Vanessa said flatly. “And regardless of what your Ministry has accused you of, I doubt they’ll stoop to killing you or any of your co-conspirators. They might even be merciful and let them off the hook. That must be worth something to you.” Gambit’s jaw tightened angrily, but Vanessa ignored him and continued. “I don’t deny that they might lock you up and throw away the key, but you’ve always been quite happy to play the martyr.” She flashed a decidedly malicious smile and held out her hand. “So what do you say, Major? Do we have a deal?”Gambit grimaced and eyed the hand angrily. “We have a deal,” he growled, “but don’t expect me to shake your damn hand.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
John Steed sat impassively in his Jaguar XJ12, and resisted the urge to check his watch. When setting their rendezvous point, Gambit had estimated it would take about two hours to make contact, including the time required to shake off potential tails from both sides. The clock was edging perilously close to that deadline, and Steed was leaning heavily on his own experience in the field to reassure himself that a delay did not automatically equal something going catastrophically wrong. There was any number of reasons why Gambit could have been held up, from a persistent tail to difficulty in locating Thyme. Steed wouldn’t let himself panic—he was too seasoned for that—but a niggling sense of unease had settled into his consciousness in spite of himself. He hadn’t yet decided how long he’d wait before he officially declared himself worried, nor what he’d do when he did. What he did know was that letting Purdey or Gambit down wasn’t an option. He’d find Gambit one way or another, even if it meant Larry slapping the cuffs on Steed himself next.As it turned out, Steed didn’t need to answer any of those lingering questions. Gambit appeared across the street, seemingly from nowhere, just a few minutes past his self-imposed deadline. He looked left and right before quickly jaywalking to where the car was parked. Steed had left the passenger door unlocked, and Gambit slid inside smoothly, closing the door behind him. “All right?” Steed queried automatically.Gambit was looking over his shoulder, but nodded. “Okay.”Steed turned the key in the ignition and set the engine purring. He pulled smoothly away from the curb and started on the circuitous route he’d planned in advance while waiting for Gambit to appear, just in case the younger man hadn’t quite managed to shake any potential pursuers. “I assume it’s set?” he asked after a moment, when Gambit seemed sufficiently settled.Gambit nodded. “Five o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Old warehouse on the Battersea side of the Thames.”“Isn’t it always?” Steed quipped, flashing Gambit a quick smile. “You’re to come alone, I assume?”Gambit grinned faintly at the joke made at the expense of the clichés of their profession. “Of course. Although I’m not sure either of us believe it’ll happen. She’ll settle for everyone waiting outside.”“We’ll see to it that Larry keeps his distance,” Steed assured. “He won’t like it, but he’s a professional. He’ll know better than to jeopardise his own operation by spooking the quarry.”“I hope so,” Gambit murmured, gaze drifting out the window. He was silent for a moment, then he asked, “Do you think I’m doing the right thing, Steed?”“I’m inclined to say yes, but you’ll have to be more specific.”Gambit sighed. “All of this, getting you and Purdey and everyone mixed up in this thing, just because I didn’t hand over those papers in 1973. It would’ve been easier if I’d just been a good soldier and followed orders.”“Sometimes a good soldier is the one who doesn’t follow orders because he’s had a better look at the battlefield than the people giving them,” Steed pointed out. “I can’t claim to know exactly what’s in those papers, Gambit, but I’d like to think I know you. I don’t believe you’d do everything you’ve done thus far, and risk as much as you have, if there wasn’t a good reason.”Gambit snorted. “Not even sure if I have a reason at this point. Just an old instinct. A gut feeling.”“The best reason of all,” Steed contradicted. “I’ve had my share of ‘papers’ and the like over the years. It’s never a pleasant situation to find oneself in, but I can’t say that I regret acting as I did.” He arched an inquiring eyebrow at Gambit. “If you’re honest with yourself, do you think the world would be better off if you’d chosen a different path?”Gambit let out a long breath. “No,” he admitted. “I wish it didn’t mean bringing other people into it, that’s all. Especially you and Purdey.”“I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. I knew what I was taking on, and I suspect Purdey did as well.”Gambit nodded knowingly. “When you signed up for this line of work.”“When we became your friends,” Steed corrected gently, making Gambit smile a little crookedly in gratitude. “I guess so,” he said quietly.“And from the sounds of things, Purdey’s only reaffirmed that allegiance.” Steed levelled a sceptical gaze at the younger man. “Did you think she’d risk entangling herself more deeply with you without having her eyes wide open?”Gambit shook his head. “No. But she’s been through a lot. It doesn’t feel right to pile my own baggage on top of it.”“I’m sure she felt the same way. With Doomer, that business in Brazil. You’re very good at taking on other people’s burdens, Gambit. Did it ever occur to you that someone might want to return the favour?”“There hasn’t been much in the way of precedents in my life on that front,” Gambit admitted. “I’m trying to get used to it.”“I suggest you try harder. Purdey’s patience will only stretch so far.” Steed adjusted the rear-view mirror, but there was no one following them. He was sure of it.Gambit laughed in spite of himself. “Good point.”“At the risk of overburdening you with my hard-earned wisdom,” Steed continued, relaxing into his seat now that the danger had temporarily passed. “I should add that friendship comes with rather a lot of trust. If you thought those papers shouldn’t see the light of day, I’m inclined to think the same.”Gambit looked genuinely grateful, albeit a touch nervous and uncertain. “Thanks, Steed. I hope we’re both right, for all our sakes.”vvvSteed drove Gambit to a safe house that Gambit recognised as having been on the books for some time, but never really utilised. It was the perfect choice for someone like Larry, who was paranoid enough to think that even the Ministry itself wouldn’t be able to withstand an ambush by Gambit’s imaginary army of co-conspirators. Gambit only wished his resources stretched as far as the man seemed to believe, but quickly chastised himself for the thought. He had Purdey and he had Steed, which made him a damn sight luckier than he’d ever been in his life. It would be greedy to ask for more.Steed studiously avoided the front entrance of the nondescript house, and led Gambit around to the side of the building, where a door painted the same colour as the walls blended almost invisibly into the structure. Steed rapped it purposefully with the handle of his umbrella, and Gambit recognised a coded knock. Gambit’s skin suddenly prickled as he sensed eyes on him before the door eased open, and they ducked inside. The house wasn’t much better maintained inside than out, its lack of recent use causing it to go to seed. There was no furniture on the main floor, and the walls desperately needed a lick of paint. They followed the man who had let them in—whom Gambit didn’t recognise-- up a flight of stairs that Gambit hoped were less rickety than they looked, and into a corridor with a handful of doors leading into various rooms. The one at the end of the hall turned out to be their destination.Inside, Purdey was seated on a wobbly old wooden chair as though it was a plush armchair at the Ritz, legs crossed decoratively as she played cards with a bored looking member of security, while Larry stared unwaveringly over her shoulder. Gambit, taking in the scene, couldn’t resist the quip that rose to his lips. “I hope you’re not helping your friend cheat at cards, Larry. Purdey’ll never let you forget it.”Purdey’s head snapped up at his voice, and she dropped her hand immediately and rose to her feet, rushing forward to greet him. Immediately the security man leapt up and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back, earning a poisonous glare from Purdey and a cry of outrage from Gambit.“She only wants to make sure he’s all right, Larry,” Steed said calmly. “You have people watching the house, and she’s not a prisoner.” He paused, then added, pointedly. “Or rather, I hope she isn’t.”Larry’s mouth pressed into a thin line, but he nodded at the security man, who let Purdey go. Purdey jerked her arm away with a scowl, before hurrying to where Gambit, unwilling to exacerbate the situation further, was waiting. She looked like she wanted to embrace him, but didn’t know if it would cause them even more trouble, so she settled with resting her fingers on his forearm. Somehow, it still managed to revive Gambit’s spirits. Purdey made him feel like he could take on the world.“Is it set?” she wanted to know, eyes searching his face, and Gambit nodded in confirmation.“Tomorrow at five.” He gave her a quick once-over. He didn’t think Larry had done anything to her in the interim, but at this point he wasn’t assuming anything was out of bounds. “Are you okay?”“Well, the room service leaves much to be desired, and I don’t care for the concierge, but other than that I think I’m all right.”Gambit grinned in spite of himself. Nothing kept Purdey down for long. “I’ll take you somewhere with a good steak au poivre when all this is over.”“I’ll hold you to that,” Purdey vowed, returning his smile with a brilliant one of her own.“That’s enough, now,” Larry cut in, sulking spectacularly behind his veneer of professionalism. “Purdey, Steed can take you home. Gambit can be his own insurance until tomorrow.”Purdey whirled round indignantly. “Oh, Larry, he’s not going to run now. At least let him spend the night in his own bed.”“I doubt it’s his own bed he’d end up in,” Larry countered, and Purdey’s fists clenched angrily. She looked ready to take a run at Larry, but Gambit rested a restraining hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Purdey. I’ve slept rough enough these past few days that a night in a cell will feel like the Ritz in comparison.”Purdey turned back to meet his eyes. She clearly wasn’t happy about the situation, but knew there was little she could do about it. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”Gambit nodded reassuringly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”Purdey considered for a moment, then threw caution to the winds and her arms around his neck, kissed him so hard he was breathless by the time the security man pulled him bodily away. That didn’t stop Purdey smiling beatifically at her own act of rebellion. “I’ll see you all tomorrow. Come on, Steed.”Purdey’s kiss kept Gambit warm that night, but it was the look on Larry’s face after Purdey had kissed him that made him smile. vvvThe next morning, Steed paid an early visit to Gambit’s spare accommodations in the Ministry’s cell block. He nodded at the guard and waited until the man had closed the door behind them before turning to Gambit. “Ready?” Gambit was stoic as he shrugged on his jacket. “As I’ll ever be.”“You don’t have to do this,” Steed said gently, locking eyes with Mike. “We have the papers. We could just as easily send someone else in to try to trap her.” Gambit shook his head. “You know that won’t work. She’d get away, and the next time she lurked outside Purdey’s flat, she might end up doing more than just taking Purdey’s picture.”Steed nodded sagely. “Is that why you’re doing this? To protect Purdey?”“Yes,” Gambit admitted. “But not only her. The last thing I want is to get anyone mixed up in this. If it’s not Purdey that Thyme targets, it’ll be Sara. Or my aunt. Or you. No, I have to be the one to go in.”“Even if you’re frightened?” Steed asked knowingly. “Mike, I’ve an inkling of what you’ve gone through. I know you’ve already seen her several times, but are you certain you can handle this? If you break down when you’re finally there to make the exchange, you’re going to be no help to anyone.”To his surprise, Gambit smiled. “Of course I’m frightened,” he replied, with astounding frankness. “Hell, I hoped I’d never be reminded of the whole damn business again. But now that she’s back, the best thing I can do is face her and finish this business once and for all. I couldn’t live with myself knowing she still has enough of a hold over me to keep me from doing what I have to do. I’ve got to scale that wall, Steed.”Steed smiled slightly back, recalling the metaphor he’d used to explain to Purdey the importance of facing her fears. She must have passed that wisdom on to Gambit at some point. “If you think you can handle it...”“I can,” Gambit said with conviction. “I won’t enjoy it, and for all I know I’ll end up in her lair again or worse, but at least there’s a better chance of someone finding me, unlike last time.” He stared hard at Steed. “Isn’t there?”“If you’re willing to ask for help, I’m more than willing to give it,” Steed assured. “I only wanted to ensure that you’re doing this for the right reasons.” “I’m doing it to get my life back,” Gambit clarified. “Now that it’s actually worth having. Or at the very least to protect the lives of the people I care about.” He shot his cuffs with purpose. “I’m going to put an end to this whole bloody business, one way or another.”Steed nodded his approval, and the little smile told Gambit he’d passed some sort of test that he hadn’t known Steed required, but he was relieved to have passed nonetheless. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”vvvGambit was, somewhat roughly, ejected from a car on a bridge a certain distance from the warehouse that was the designated meeting point. He glared at the car as it pulled away, but quickly turned his mind to the task at hand. The cot in the cell where he had spent the night had hardly made for the most restful sleep, even setting his foreboding about what the day would bring aside, and there was a crick in his neck a mile wide. Still, he’d faced adversity in worse shape than this—Larry’s people hadn’t resorted to giving him a beating on top of everything else, though they probably wanted to—so he was at least going to face Thyme physically intact, which was more than he could say for the shape he’d been in back in 1973.Gambit turned his eyes to the warehouse, regarded the dilapidated grey monolith under an equally grey sky with a healthy dose of foreboding. No matter what Larry had told him about the people placed around the perimeter, about Thyme not being able to escape, he knew that once he went inside there was a very good chance he might never come out again. Thyme was wily—she wouldn’t have survived as long or acquired the reputation she had otherwise. She would have some sort of contingency in place, some trick that would make all the backup in the world redundant. It was going to be up to him to try to outmanoeuvre her on the fly, to ensure her capture or, at the very least, that the papers didn’t wind up in her hands. Gambit had no idea how he was going to do that, but he was damned well going to try, even it meant paying the ultimate price. He set his jaw with grim resolve and steeled himself, started running through the mental exercises his instructors had taught him over the years to help him approach situations like these with calm and clarity, to be able to act with resolve and intent, rather than blind fear and panic. Almost immediately, he felt a calm wash over him. There was something poetic about the possibility of it ending here, in Battersea, the place of his birth and his childhood, his roots. The reunion of the boy he’d been and the man he’d become.He’d drifted into an almost altered state of consciousness when another car suddenly pulled up to where he stood. Gambit swivelled round in surprise—was Larry coming back to take him away again? Had the operation been called off? But when the door swung open, it wasn’t one of Larry’s people who stepped out. Instead, a pair of shapely legs emerged, followed by the rest of a figure he knew very well indeed. Purdey alighted gracefully from the vehicle, closing the door behind her. It pulled away almost immediately, leaving the pair of them alone. Her skirt, slit for action, fluttered behind her in the breeze, exposing knee-high boots. She’d paired it with a figure-skimming ribbed shirt with three-quarter length sleeves. She was dressed for movement, should she need it for this operation, but without sacrificing her femininity. She was dressed like Purdey, plain and simple—confidently, defiantly, perfectly. If this was the last image he’d have of her, he couldn’t have picked a better one.Purdey moved to join Gambit, looked for a moment at his slim silhouette framed against the fading light as the sun dipped below the horizon, like the hero in a Western about to ride off into the sunset before the credits rolled. He had the same determined stance she had seen him use a hundred times before, whether playing a game of chicken, or facing a dangerous enemy. And now he was using it again, as he walked into his own worst nightmare. Purdey shook her head. It had never even occurred to Gambit to do anything else, not when it was his own burden to bear, and certainly not when her safety was an added incentive. She felt both angry and flattered at the sentiment, but fear was threatening to overcome both. Swallowing, she straightened her skirt for something to do.“What are you doing here?” he asked her after a long, meaningful silence during which they said more with their eyes than they ever could have verbally.Purdey put her hands on her hips. “That’s not very creative or welcoming. You could have said, ‘Fancy meeting you here’, ‘What a coincidence’, or even ‘We can’t keep meeting like this’.”Gambit felt a lump in his throat. There she was, trying to make light of it for his sake. All he wanted to do was turn and run, to take Purdey with him, far away, where no one would find them, where they could try to make the life that they wanted, that she deserved. But that wasn’t an option. Wherever he went, as long as he was with her and Thyme was still out there, she was in danger, and he couldn’t afford that. Neither of them could. But that didn’t make it any easier. “Sorry. I’m a bit on edge,” Gambit said tiredly. “Want me to try again?”“No, the moment’s passed now.” Purdey surveyed the landscape below them, including the warehouse, with the same sense of foreboding he had. They lapsed into silence for a moment, while Gambit waited for her to say something else, but no further comment was forthcoming.“Everything ready?” he asked, determined to keep the mask of professionalism in place for as long as possible. He wasn’t certain what would happen if he let it slip too early, if he’d be able to be brave enough for the both of them. Purdey nodded, raising her radio in her other hand.“I’m equipped, and as soon as everyone is in place, we should be ready for the main event.” She smiled tightly. “All this attention. You should feel flattered.”“I’d just as well skip the flattery and go home,” Gambit muttered.“I believe you,” Purdey said flatly, mouth pressed into a thin line.“I know I’m sounding like a cliché twice in quick succession,” Gambit said finally, “but you still haven’t said why you’re here. I thought you were going to be keeping an eye on things with the rest of them.”“I’m here to give you the papers, of course,” Purdey said, as though it were obvious.Gambit blinked. “I thought Larry had that in hand. Didn’t you give them to him as part of your deal?”Purdey snorted derisively. “Trust Larry with them? And lose my leverage? I’d have to be mad. I won’t say they didn’t push me, but they’ve already called too many of the shots. This is my operation after all.”Gambit looked pointedly at her empty hands. “Unless my eyesight’s going, you don’t seem to have them either. Or am I meant to frisk you for them?”“Don’t you wish.” Purdey’s eyes were dancing. “No, I’m having them delivered. I sent them to a third party for safe keeping. He should be here any moment now.”“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” Gambit shook his head in admiration at her planning. “You’re good, very good.”Purdey preened slightly. “Yes, well, I’m keeping tabs on my partner. I wouldn’t be a very good agent if I didn’t.”Gambit’s admiring smile went a little crooked. “You’ve always been good,” he said quietly. “You were good when you walked into my life that first day, almost two years ago. But now you’re even better. Strong, capable, incisive. You’re a damn fine agent, and you’re only going to keep getting better. The Ministry would be mad to let you go after—” He paused, reconsidered what he was about to say, amended the language. “After this is all over,” he finished, a bit lamely.“After you’re gone, you mean,” Purdey said knowingly, expression souring. “Negative thinking, Gambit. It doesn’t have to end that way. You’re not doing this alone.”Gambit pursed his lips and averted his gaze. “I’m just being realistic,” he said gruffly.Purdey looked back at the warehouse, eyes suddenly sad and distant. “You say I was good when you met me. But I was afraid then, too.” She looked back, met his gaze, held it as she tried to convey how important this was. “Afraid of whether I was going to be any good in the field, yes. It’s one thing to be in training, but quite another to be out there with not only your own life but other people’s in your hands. I didn’t know if I was going to be good at it. I was new and inexperienced and I had you and Steed to impress. I thought if I humiliated myself in front of you, I’d never live it down.”“But you didn’t. Like I said, you were good.”“I was,” Purdey agreed. “But I was also lucky. I had partners who helped me instead of letting me fall on my face. But I was also afraid of being vulnerable. Caring about people. Being loved. Loving.” She smiled at Gambit. “You helped me get past that. You and Steed. But especially you. Because Steed never let the waters get too deep, but you always had all your cards on the table and were just waiting for me to give you the go-ahead. And I knew the second I told you how I felt there’d be nowhere to hide. And the harder I fell for you, the harder it was. I thought it would hurt too much if something happened. If it went wrong, or if you died, I didn’t think I could bear it, and it’d be easier if I kept myself safe. But I was wrong. I could have been with you a long, long time ago, but I let fear keep me away. But you stayed and waited and never stopped loving me until I wasn’t afraid—to be vulnerable, to love, to let people in. That was because of you, Mike Gambit.” Her voice was wavering now. The banter had been their way of keeping the waters from getting too deep, but they couldn’t hide behind it forever. “And now, because of me, we’ve only had a little time together. So I’m not giving up on you, Mike Gambit. We’ve waited too long—you waited too long. We deserve more than a few months of happiness.”“That’s more than I ever could have asked for,” Gambit interjected, also blinking back tears. “When I met you, I thought you were the greatest thing I’d ever seen. That hasn’t changed. I never thought I’d have a purpose beyond the job. I never thought I’d have an anchor. I thought I’d drift for the rest of my days, if I was lucky enough to get them. To get a chance to love somebody, and have them love me back--that’s more than I could have ever asked for, Purdey-girl.” Gambit swallowed hard. “And I want you to know that having that these past few weeks, even if it’s all we get, was worth waiting for. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”Purdey was shaking her head. “This isn’t the end, Mike. I’ll make sure of it. You’re going to make it back whether you like it or not. I didn’t make this deal just so you could play noble self-sacrificing hero.” Gambit opened his mouth to reply, but just then yet another car pulled up to where they were standing. A man, dressed in a white blazer that made him look akin to a waiter on a cruise ship, leapt out of the driver’s seat and scurried to open the rear door. An older man, perhaps in his sixties, emerged, resplendent in his army uniform, carrying an attaché case in his left hand. Gambit frowned slightly in recognition. He knew him from somewhere, but he couldn’t work out where. The military man put his hat on his head and, without warning, began to berate the man in the white coat who was still holding the passenger door open. “About time, Carver. We must have driven around the entire city twice. I could’ve crossed half of India by the time you worked out which side of the Thames we were meant to be on.”“I’m sorry, Colonel Foster,” the beleaguered Carver apologised. “I’m not familiar with this part of the city.”“Never heard of a map, have you?” Foster sniffed. “And we had an appointment to keep! Imagine if we’d been late.”“Oh, Uncle Elly, I knew Carver would get you here in time,” Purdey interjected on the poor batman’s behalf, smiling slightly at Foster’s antics. As they embraced, Gambit realised where he’d seen the military man before—Elroyd Foster was Purdey’s uncle, the one who’d provided part of the cavalry after the nasty business with “Mad Jack” Miller and the 19th Special Commando a year or so earlier. Purdey always spoke of him fondly as one of her absolute favourite relations, a kindred spirit who shared her sense of the absurd and contradictory streak. Gambit had hoped to get to know the man better as Purdey and himself became more involved, but at this point he didn’t know if he’d ever have a chance.“I have your package here,” Foster said to Purdey, brandishing the attaché case. “Didn’t open it. Thought it’d be better for us all if I didn’t, even though Carver was deucy curious about it when it arrived.” He regarded Purdey with mild concern. “Are you all right, my girl? You look strained.”Purdey’s smile got a little tighter. “I’m better now that you’re here, Uncle Elly. Thank you for keeping it safe.”“My pleasure, my dear.” Foster seemed to notice Gambit for the first time, and Gambit found himself snapping to attention automatically, his army training, ironically the reason they were all there, instinctively taking over. He only just managed to avoid saluting, which would only raise questions they didn’t have time to answer at this point. “And who are you, young fellow? You look a tad familiar.”“Mike Gambit, sir,” Gambit informed, the honourific slipping out automatically. “We met briefly after that business with Colonel Miller, sir.”“Ah, yes. Nasty business, that. You were the fellow who took Miller hostage, then went and threw it all away because my niece was stuck in that minefield.” Gambit winced both at the memory and what he took to be an implied criticism. But Foster wasn’t finished. “Would have done the same myself. Pick your battles, eh? Always could have found a way out of a cell. Can’t replace something precious.” He smiled fondly at Purdey. “She tells me you take good care of her.”“We take care of each other, sir,” Gambit corrected. Foster nodded curtly, as though he approved of that answer. “Well, she’s certainly doing that for you, aren’t you my girl? I don’t claim to know what this is all about, but I know it’s for your benefit.”“I never asked her to, sir—” Gambit protested.“No, but once Purdey has her mind set on something, there isn’t much point in arguing, I’ve found. You’d do well to remember that.”Gambit grinned at Purdey. “I learned my lesson a long time ago, sir.”Purdey smiled back fondly, then averted her eyes when the waters got too deep. She checked her watch instead, for something to do, started slightly in alarm. “I’m sorry, Uncle Elly. We have work to do.”“Say no more, my dear,” Foster said, opening up the attaché case and withdrawing the metal box Purdey and Sara had retrieved from the graveyard. “I hope that’s all in order.”Purdey clutched the box like the lifeline it was. “Thank you, Uncle Elly. You have no idea how important this is.”“I suspect not, but we’ll leave it there, shall we? I’m sure you’ll tell me what it’s all about after this business is over, whatever it is.” He rested a reassuring hand on Purdey’s arm. “Carver and I will make our way back.” He nodded at Gambit. “Good to see you again, Gambit. We’ll have to meet again soon. I expect we have some war stories to exchange.”Gambit nodded smartly. “I look forward to it, sir.” He didn’t have the heart to tell the man he didn’t know if he’d live long enough to make the appointment. He knew Purdey didn’t either, because she busied herself with seeing her uncle off in the car. She waved until they were out of sight, then turned back to Gambit, holding the box to her chest. Gambit looked pointedly at it. “I’d better take that.” Purdey hesitated for a moment, clearly reluctant to hand it over. If she did, that meant Gambit could go into the warehouse and face off against a woman who had nearly killed him once, and had a chance to do so again. It wasn’t an idea she relished. But the agent in her knew that they didn’t have time to dawdle over sentimentality. She wasn’t going to help Gambit by delaying him. So, with great effort, she handed the box over.Gambit took it and inspected it, looking for any signs of tampering, but finding none. Purdey nodded at the keyhole, choosing not to mention that she’d cracked the lock herself. “We didn’t find a key with it. I suppose Vanessa Thyme will have to find her own way in if she wants it that badly.”“Who says I don’t have the key?” Gambit said mysteriously.Purdey arched an interested eyebrow. “Oh? Does your St. Christopher magically transform into a lock-picking kit?”“It’s a bit more obvious than that,” Gambit revealed, digging in his pocket as he did so. “Painfully obvious, really.”Purdey watched in surprise as he extracted his keyring, flipped through the various keys one at a time. “It can’t be that obvious,” she scoffed.Gambit settled on an unremarkable brass example, held it up for her inspection. “Want to bet?” He inserted it in the lock and turned it. The box popped open with remarkable ease, revealing a package wrapped in plastic. Gambit extracted it, then waggled his eyebrows at her. “Nothing like hiding in plain sight,” he quipped. “Everyone has keys on their ring for things that they don’t use anymore. Even Larry wouldn’t think that was strange.”Purdey shook her head in disbelief. “Mike Gambit, I don’t know if that was brilliant or foolhardy.”“Probably a bit of both,” Gambit admitted, tossing the box aside. He regarded the package with more than a modicum of ire. “Not much to look at it, given how much grief it’s caused me over the years.”“That could apply just as easily to half a dozen people we work with,” Purdey pointed out, and Gambit managed a small smile at the joke. They were coming to the crunch now, and levity was in short supply. He checked his watch, could see the time of his rendezvous was at hand.“I should be going,” he said noncommittally, not sure he could walk away at all if he lingered long enough to let emotion catch up with him.Purdey was of a similar mindset, nodded once curtly. “Right.” She stepped in closer, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. When she pulled back, she noticed that Gambit looked a bit surprised by her casualness. “Well, I’m not going to make a fuss when you’re going to be back here in less than an hour. I can’t let you exploit every crisis to your advantage.”Gambit smiled back bravely, but Purdey could tell the confidence was feigned. “Thank you.”Purdey frowned in confusion. “For what?”“For never letting me get away with anything,” Gambit said fondly. “I needed it.”“You mean you need it,” Purdey said crisply, emphasising the present tense. “And you’ll still need it when you get back. You’ll be all right Steed and I will be watching. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”“I hope that gives me as much leeway as I think it does,” Gambit quipped, and Purdey felt a surge of relief that he could still make a joke.“I’ll see you soon,” she vowed, a promise on both of their behalves that she hoped could be kept. Then she turned and started to walk away, determined not to look back lest she not be able to leave him behind. But Gambit apparently hadn’t quite said his piece. “In case I never get a chance to ask,” he said quickly, words stumbling over one another as though he didn’t quite dare say what he was saying, but genuinely thought there was no alternative. Purdey stopped in her tracks, not sure whether it was his tone or the insinuation that he might not make it back alive that affected her more. “If we had more time, and we didn’t wind up driving each other mad…” Purdey looked over her shoulder at him, and she could see there was the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. “If I ever asked you to marry me, do you think you’d say ‘yes’?”Purdey felt her heart stop, but willed her face to remain impassive. If she started crying now, she’d never stop. “That’s a very big hypothetical to drop on a girl.”Gambit’s mouth quirked up on one side. “Well, if this isn’t the time to pose ridiculous hypotheticals, when is?”Purdey turned to face him, but didn’t close the distance between them. “It is a hypothetical, then? Nothing more?”“It’s a question, Purdey.”“Only one?” Purdey shook her head. “I count two.”Gambit swallowed hard. “Yeah, but there’s only one I can properly ask right now.”“I think that you’re quite capable of asking both,” Purdey countered briskly.“Okay, in that case, which one do you want to answer?”Purdey’s eyes were dancing with mischief, circumstances be damned. “Which one are you asking?”Gambit closed his eyes, barely holding it together. “Purdey, please.”“Are you asking?”Gambit thought about it for a moment, tried to weigh the pros and cons, think about what the sane, logical thing to do in this situation was. Then he promptly threw that all away and listened to his heart instead. He opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said finally.Purdey, to her credit, didn’t even blink. In a strange sort of way, she actually looked relieved, question and circumstances and sanity be damned. “Then yes,” she pronounced, releasing two years’ of pent up yearning in as many words.Gambit opened his mouth to reply, then paused, realised he wasn’t entirely certain that Purdey knew what she was agreeing to. Hell, he wasn’t even entirely sure he’d asked what he thought he’d asked. “Wait, what…?”“You did ask,” Purdey said simply. “Well, yes,” Gambit began. “I mean, I think I did.”“And I answered,” Purdey finished, as though impromptu, ambiguous marriage proposals were made to her all the time.Gambit was still struggling. “Yes, but what did you say ‘yes’ to?”“I said ‘yes,’ Mike Gambit,” Purdey said softly, retracing her steps to meet him once more. “I think that ought to be more than enough for you.”Gambit looked at her in awe for a moment, then kissed her fiercely. Purdey kissed back, just as fiercely, closing her eyes against tears she had no intention of shedding. Gambit was vaguely aware of Ministry men milling around a short distance away, testing radios and going over any final arrangements. Some of them would surely look their way. To hell with it. He didn’t give a damn what they saw anymore. Let them gossip. Forget keeping things professional. He wasn’t walking away from her without saying goodbye properly. He had her in his arms before he even knew what he was doing, felt her free hand grasp a handful of his shirt, the other hand, clutching a radio to keep in touch with the rest of the team, draped over his shoulder as he tasted her one last time. When they broke apart, she added, “Now you definitely have to come back alive. My mother would be absolutely furious if she knew you left me in the lurch.”“A fate worse than death,” Gambit agreed, stroking her cheek. “I definitely don’t want to upset your mother.”“Then come back,” Purdey whispered. An order.“I’ll do whatever I can,” Gambit promised, “to make it back to you.”It wasn’t a promise to come back. Purdey knew that. She knew that Gambit never broke his promises. He wasn’t going to make one he wasn’t sure he could keep, and she wasn’t going to push him for it.“I’ll be waiting,” she said instead. “Go.”“I love you,” he said. And went.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The walk down to the warehouse went surprisingly fast, although Gambit’s distracted state of mind might have played some small part in warping his perception of time. It had undoubtedly been the wrong place and the wrong time to ask Purdey to marry him, but then their relationship had never quite followed the rules, so why should it start now? He still wasn’t quite sure what had pushed him to ask the question when he did, but the idea that he may never have another chance had suddenly sprung into his mind, and he couldn’t help himself. It was a question he’d wanted to ask for a long time, and his new romance with Purdey had only heightened that desire. But he hadn’t planned to pose it so soon into their relationship. It had taken Purdey nearly two years to admit she loved him, after all. Bringing up marriage when they could measure the length of their involvement in weeks rather than months was foolhardy to say the least, and the easiest way to spook a woman who had proven cautious in love. But Gambit had little to lose now, and he’d gained something with her answer. He knew very well that Purdey might have said ‘yes’ because she thought saying ‘no’ to him could result in a potentially lethal bout of fatalism that he would carry into this already-deadly rendezvous. A ‘yes’, on the other hand, provided hope, something to hang onto in this dark time. She could always take it back after the fact, when he was safe—if he ever was safe. Gambit wouldn’t hold her to her answer, and she knew it. But even if it was a sham, a mind trick they were both complicit in intended only to give him something to live for, it was worth it. Because it was working. Gambit hadn’t wanted to leave Purdey behind, even if he knew he didn’t have a choice, but Purdey accepting his spontaneous proposal, whether that answer was a sham or not, had given him a little boost, a shot in the arm, incentive to keep going. He still didn’t know if he was going to make it back to her, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to try.He was halfway through his descent to the warehouse with this thought in mind when he heard the clatter of rocks behind him. He whipped around just in time to catch sight of Purdey as she jumped the rest of the way down the incline and landed scant feet from where he stood.“What are you doing?” Gambit exclaimed, clearly alarmed, as Purdey proceeded to dust off the fine dirt that had accumulated on her skirt on the journey down the hill.“I’m coming with you,” Purdey said matter-of-factly, straightening up and squaring her shoulders as though preparing for battle. “Isn’t it obvious?”“Coming with--?” Gambit repeated, uncomprehending, all thoughts of their impromptu possible engagement banished in the face of this new, confusing state of affairs. “I thought you were staying up there with Steed and the rest?”“Well, I would have to make you believe that, wouldn’t I?” Purdey said, quite reasonably, as though her actions made all the sense in the world. “Otherwise you’d try to stop me. I needed you to think I was staying behind until it was too late for me to go back.” She pulled a face, annoyance creeping into her voice. “Rather like the way you called in your own arrest before I could talk you out of it.”“That was different!” Gambit countered, somewhat desperately. “I needed them to bring me in. I needed Vanessa to think that I wasn’t in control. That was the only way I was going to get her to agree to an exchange with this many safeguards. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to think I was out of options, too. If I could convince you, I could convince anyone.”Purdey nodded, as though that made sense. “So that was your reasoning. I did wonder.”“Now I’m wondering about yours.” Gambit was exasperated now. “It’s still not too late for you to turn around, Purdey. You know you can’t come with me.”Purdey looked at him sharply. “I can, you know. I’m quite capable of walking to that warehouse.”“You know what I mean.” Gambit was looking panicked now. He could feel the sight of Vanessa’s sniper, whom she’d told him to expect and who was undoubtedly in the vicinity, no matter how many sweeps Larry had done, prickling at the back of his skull, lining up his sight on him or, even worse, Purdey. “Vanessa told me to come alone. That was the agreement.”“Yes,” Purdey agreed unconcernedly. “But she also agreed that she’d turn over evidence that she used to set you up if I persuaded you to turn over the papers. So I’m here to make sure she keeps that part of the bargain. Then we can make sure you’re in the clear once and for all. Although I am hoping we can take them off of her without handing anything over at all.”Gambit was gaping at her again, well and truly blindsided. “Bargain?” he managed, sounding strangled. “What bargain? When did you strike a bargain with Vanessa Thyme?”“While you were on the run,” Purdey informed unconcernedly, throwing her shoulders back in that idiosyncratic way she used when she was feeling particularly confident and pleased with herself. “I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for you to make contact, so I put the word out that I’d like to have a chat with her, and she obliged.”“Put the word out?” Gambit repeated faintly, still shell-shocked. “How?”Purdey shrugged with practised casualness, triumphant smile visible a mile away, a beacon in the late afternoon sun. “Well, I thought that since our people were watching me in case you tried to make contact, she might be, too. So I rang Steed and mentioned, quite casually, that I wished I could talk to Miss Thyme myself and try to strike some sort of deal. It must have worked because she turned up at my flat.”“Turned up--?” Gambit was apoplectic. “Purdey, she could have killed you!”“Possibly. But not before she heard what I had to say. She wants those papers and doesn’t care how she gets them. And anyway, she’s had me in her sights since this whole thing began. I’ve been at risk from the start. I thought I might as well get something back in return. So I made another call to Steed this morning, and said something about how I’d make certain you turned over those papers, and that I expected her to keep her part of the bargain. I’m going to assume that she was listening, which means I get to be in on this exchange, too. If she doesn’t like it, she can trot back to whatever hole she crawled out of until she’s ready to keep her part of the deal.”Gambit cradled his head in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”“For the same reason that you didn’t tell me you were going to let yourself get caught until just before it happened, or that you were going to get Sara to retrieve the papers.” Purdey looked pleased with herself, and it wasn’t hard to work out why. It was check and mate and she knew it.Gambit sagged resignedly. “I wanted to protect you,” he said tiredly.“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Purdey exclaimed in exasperation, hands on hips. “This works two ways, Mike Gambit. I know it’s your problem, but your problems have been mine for a long time, just as mine have been yours.”Gambit smiled a little crookedly at that. “I guess I should feel flattered.”“You should,” Purdey said briskly. “Now let’s get a move on. We don’t want to be late.”“I could just go in without you,” Gambit pointed out, wagging the package at her. “I have the papers now. I can bargain for my freedom and the evidence.”“You have some of them,” Purdey corrected, pulling a thin sheaf from the waistband of her skirt, where they had been tucked beneath her shirt. “I took the liberty of keeping a few. I left them with mum. She brought them down this morning. I’ve taken sheets randomly from throughout. I’m not a scientist, but I expect none of what you have will make sense without my pages.” She flashed a slightly patronising smile at him. “Anyway, did you honestly think I was going to let you go into a room alone with that woman after what happened the last time? I couldn’t be there in 1973, but I can this time. So, no me, no papers. Okay?”Gambit threw back his head and laughed in spite of himself at the absurdity of it all. “Only you, Purdey,” he murmured between peals of slightly hysterical laughter. “Only you. But I should have known you wouldn’t let me get away that easily. And do you know something? I’m glad for it.”Purdey’s face lit up like a lantern. “So you’re not going to stop me from coming along?” “I don’t really have a choice, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have by my side.” Gambit reached out a hand to her, and she went to him quickly, took it and squeezed it so hard, he wasn’t sure she’d ever let go. “Here we go, into the breach. Does Steed know you’re pulling a fast one?”Purdey gave him a look. “Of course.”Gambit sighed in a way that said he should have known. “And Larry?”Purdey’s smile turned wicked. “No.”“Thought so. He’s in for a surprise. Let’s get going before he works out that you’re not at your post and arrests us both.”vvvThe warehouse was out of commission, but someone—either Vanessa or the previous owners—had seen fit to leave the doors gaping open at both ends, exposing the interior to the elements. Purdey stuck close to Gambit’s side as they approached the door Vanessa had instructed Gambit to use. There was nothing to say now, and nothing being said. Purdey and Gambit had long ago perfected the art of wordless communication, a skill essential for a partnership in their line of work, not only to ensure the success of their assignment, but for their very survival. Purdey kept her eyes open, scanning every inch of their surroundings as they moved, leaving the navigation to Gambit. She had returned her share of the papers to their hiding place tucked into the waist of her skirt with her shirt pulled over it, leaving her hands free for combat if she needed them, although, given her high-kicking fighting style, odds were that she wouldn’t. But this was Vanessa Thyme, not a standard-issue thug, and Purdey knew she needed every advantage she could get against this particular opponent.Their first step inside the warehouse was welcomed by a disturbingly loud echo in the cavernous space, enough to make both Purdey and Gambit start in surprise. As the sound died away, the pair exchanged rueful smiles at how tightly wound they were, but the reprieve was short-lived.“I told you to come alone, Major.” If the footsteps had been loud, the voice was deafening. Purdey and Gambit reacted and peered down the expanse of the building, where a figure was just visible, framed in the large square of daylight that was the open door at the other end of the massive space.“And I thought we had a deal,” Gambit shot back, starting to move again, Purdey hurrying to keep pace beside him. He looked angry now, rather than scared, and if Purdey hadn’t known about the seemingly unending reserves of his self-control, she would have expected him to charge at the woman. “You didn’t mention that you’d struck another one with Purdey.”The figure shrugged as it slowly grew bigger in the outline of the door with each step they took. “I thought you two would share absolutely everything.” The last word dripped with faux saccharine sweetness. “But it’s nice to know even the best partnerships have their secrets.”“Not secrets. Strategies,” Purdey cut in, wanting a piece of the action. She’d said she wasn’t going to let Gambit take this monster on alone, and she meant it. Her voice carried in warehouse, and she liked the authoritative note the acoustics added. “You made a deal with me, and I intend to see you honour it.”Vanessa cocked her head, the motion easier to see now that they were getting closer. Her stance was wide, arms loose by her sides in a way meant to convey passivity. Gambit knew better, knew that she was coiled to spring even as she stood there, motionless. He’d had a lot of experience in learning the finer nuances of her behaviour and what they meant for his well-being, his imminent survival. She could hide nothing from him now. The years had passed, but she was the same. Just as beautiful. Just as cold. Her lace-up black combat boots might have been the same ones she’d worn when she ordered his torments in 1973 for all he knew, and they looked infuriatingly stylish paired with the black culottes, leather jacket, and figure-hugging shirt she was also clad in. On some objective level, Gambit knew men would desire her, but he was immune to her charms. “Hold it,” she commanded, but Gambit kept moving. “I said stop, Major,” she reiterated. Without warning, she stamped her right boot on the floor, just the way she used to when Gambit was proving particularly stubborn, and her temper was running short. Gambit took a step backward in spite of himself, eyes squeezing shut as nightmares—real nightmares--flashed behind them. When he opened them, Vanessa was grinning. She’d rattled him and she knew it. She was also brandishing what looked suspiciously like a detonator. “If you, at any point, think you can make a ridiculous break for freedom, I’ll warn you that I have rigged this building up with enough explosives to bring a large part of it down on your head. Both of you.” She paused to let that particular fact sink in. Gambit’s jaw was working silently as he stewed, laser gaze cutting straight through Vanessa. Purdey took it upon herself to break the silence, shrugged unconcernedly. “If you do, you’ll be doing the city a favour. I’m sure they’ve been meaning to demolish this place for years now.”Vanessa’s mouth pursed in annoyance. Humour was not the reaction she had been expecting, and the fact that she’d failed to get an audible rise out of either agent clearly stuck in her craw. “I also have a sniper,” she growled, upping the ante. “Very good. Very accurate. If he senses anything untoward has gone on, that I’ve been betrayed or captured, he’ll kill your friends. If he gets word from me that I’m not happy at any time, for any reason, he’ll kill them.” She pulled a radio transmitter from her pocket, held it up for him to see. “Don’t bother trying to warn your people,” she added, nodding to the radio that Purdey had clipped to the front of her skirt’s waistband, rather than at the back where the papers were hidden. Purdey followed her eyeline, then looked to Gambit, who nodded. She unclipped it and tossed it aside with a poisonous glare. Vanessa waited until it had clattered across the concrete and come to rest a short distance away before continuing. “My man is well-hidden. They won’t find him. But he’s found them. So if you want everyone to get out of this alive, you’d better turn over those papers post-haste and let me walk free, unharmed. And you’d better do it quickly. My boy’s trigger finger gets awfully itchy if he’s kept waiting. I’m sure you’re not best mates with absolutely every one of those people out there, but are you happy to let them all die for your cause? Because my boy will pick them all off, every one, until all that’s left is you and me. Is that what you want, Major? How many lives are those papers worth to prevent whatever disaster you’re convinced they’ll cause?” She nodded at the door behind him. “I know Mr. Steed is out there. A legend in his own time, a fine agent. Should have been dead ages ago, but he’s ever so lucky, ever so skilled. I understand you’re quite good friends. Had a bit of a rough start when you first started working together, but given how stubborn you are that’s hardly surprising. I’m willing to bet you value his life almost as much as Miss Bryde’s.”Purdey could tell that Gambit was trying not to betray any emotion, but she was close enough to see that all of the blood had drained out of his face; that, in spite of his best efforts, Vanessa’s threats were getting to him. That, as much as he was frightened of what might happen if he turned over the papers, he was equally frightened of what she might do if he didn’t.Vanessa went on, casually counting lives off on her fingers as if they were worth nothing at all. “Then we’ll just move down the ranks. There are other agents out there. You must be friendly with some of them. I know you take the deaths of colleagues hard, especially when you might have done something to save them. Even that Larry fellow you’ve been having so much trouble with. I’m sure you don’t hate him enough to actually want him dead.” She paused and considered. “Perhaps you do. If you’re going to lose them all, there might as well be some upside.” She narrowed her eyes at Gambit. “How long, Major? How long could you hold out? Do you honestly think you’ll be able to stand by while all your people are slaughtered, that you won’t give in and beg me to take the papers just to make it all end?” Her lips twisted in a sneer. “How brave are you really, Major Gambit? Because I’ve been in a room with you at your lowest, and I don’t think you can take that without going mad.”“If you kill anyone,” Gambit growled, “not only won’t I give you the papers, but I’ll finish you myself, damn the consequences.”Vanessa smirked. “Would you really, Major?” she taunted. “Kill me, just like that? In cold blood?”“In hot blood,” Purdey chipped in. “Gambit has Irish on his granny’s side.”“How terribly interesting,” Vanessa drawled, gaze shifting from Purdey to Gambit. “And what about you, Miss Bryde? I’ve seen your file. You’re not a seasoned operative. If I kill the Major, will you kill me in hot blood?”“If you’d read my file as well as you claim,” Purdey said unconcernedly, “and if you’d paid more attention to my surname, which you seem to be so fond of bandying about in an attempt to rattle me—though it’s rather more annoying than anything else--you might have discovered that I’m Scots on my father’s side. It was McBride several generations ago, then Bride, and then became ‘Bryde’ during a detour through Wales. I think my great grandfather rather liked their liberal use of the letter ‘y’.”Gambit was regarding her with genuine interest. “Really? I didn’t know that.”“We’ve been a bit too busy to go through all the branches of my family tree,” Purdey pointed out, patting his arm reassuringly. “I promise I’ll explain it all one of these days.”Gambit winked. “I’m looking forward to it.”Purdey wrinkled her nose playfully at him, then turned back to Vanessa. “The point is, as a hereditary Scot, I don’t need hot blood to kill you. I’m programmed to not only be forever ready for a scrap, but to rather look forward to it. So you’re welcome to try your luck.”vvvSteed sat outside the warehouse, radio in hand, eyes ever vigilant for anything out of the ordinary. He’d purposefully ignored the alarmed squawking from the radio when Larry had caught sight of Purdey accompanying Gambit into the warehouse, and his pointed inquiries as to whether he’d known about her intention in advance. Fortunately, as Steed had predicted, Larry had not wanted to risk botching the rendezvous by forcibly dragging Purdey out of the building. No one knew what Vanessa was doing or how exactly she was going to play the exchange. A sudden invasion of agents--at least two drag to Purdey off, more if Gambit protested--would violate the terms of the agreement more than Purdey herself getting too close would, and Larry was not going to risk spooking their prize before time. Only Steed knew that Purdey had initiated contact with Vanessa, and that she had made a separate deal with the woman to get evidence to clear Gambit’s name, in addition to the one she’d made with Larry to let Gambit go in exchange for the papers and Vanessa Thyme. Purdey didn’t care which one came through, as long as Gambit could walk away at the end of the day a free man, alive and unharmed, with his reputation intact. She’d told Steed that she was going into the warehouse today to ensure one of her deals was honoured, but from Gambit’s body language, he suspected she hadn’t given Gambit similar advance warning. Steed smiled to himself. Like her, he knew Gambit well enough to know that he wouldn’t want to let anyone else jeopardise themselves, as content as he was to walk into the lion’s den himself. And like Gambit, Steed knew that Purdey was not easily dissuaded from a course of action once she’d set her mind to it. Whatever inaudible protestations Gambit had undoubtedly made when he discovered Purdey was following him, they’d been quickly brushed aside, and the pair had entered as a unified front.They’d only been inside a few minutes when Steed had felt the telltale prickle at the back of his neck that told him his sixth sense was not only functioning but had picked up some data. Steed remained stock still, knowing better than to start obviously looking around for an interloper. With practised unconcern, Steed raised the radio to his lips and keyed in. “Larry, who do you have with eyes on what’s behind me?”There was a pause and then the radio crackled to life. “I have Merton and McBain directly across from you. What’s going on?”“Just a feeling,” Steed replied noncommittally. “Have a look for any suspicious shapes in the area behind me. Subtly, of course.”“You heard the man,” came Larry’s reply. “What do you reckon? One of Thyme’s people?”“Possibly,” Steed allowed. “I’d be very surprised if she didn’t have eyes somewhere.”“Can’t be too many. We swept the area when we came in. No one could get into the perimeter without us noticing.”“Sometimes it doesn’t take very many,” Steed pointed out. “Sometimes it only takes one.”“Steed!” It was McBain, sounding urgent. “I think you’re right. There’s a copse of trees behind you, quite dark, but I think I see a man up top. We swept that area, but he might have slipped through the net by moving between treetops.”“Sniper,” Steed identified, more to himself that anyone else, but he was keyed in, so the message was relayed to all and sundry. He tapped his fingers idly on the handle of his brolly as he considered his next move. Finally, he raised the radio to his lips and said, “Larry, I rather think it’s in our best interests to remove our friend, but we have to do it intelligently.”“I’m all ears,” came the reply. Steed smiled.vvv From his vantage point, the sniper could see the agents spread out in their various positions. It had been difficult to evade them as they swept the area, but it had been worth it to get the best vantage point in the whole area, save for the roof of the warehouse itself. And the sniper knew that could become a very unsafe place to be at any minute.The agents weren’t doing much, but Vanessa had told him they probably wouldn’t, at least for awhile. Gambit hadn’t been inside that long, after all, and apparently the girl who’d come with him had been granted entry because everything hadn’t kicked off when she’d gone in. All the agents outside did was talk on their radios a lot, but their signal was scrambled and he hadn’t been able to crack it. It didn’t matter, though. Regardless of how inactive they remained, he’d been told to start picking them off after a set amount of time, regardless of whether Vanessa called in to tell him to attack. It was the next stage to turn up the pressure on Gambit and get him to turn over the papers without a fuss. She’d been particularly clear that he ought to keep an eye on Steed, and to possibly take him out, but not right away. If Steed went first, a lot of the leverage apparently went with him, though the sniper couldn’t personally work out why a man with a bowler and umbrella was particularly valuable. Still, those had been his orders, and there were plenty of other targets on offer. Gambit wouldn’t know who had been killed from inside the warehouse—the possibility that it was Steed was enough to turn the screws. If Gambit insisted on being difficult, then there would be time to take Steed out as well.As the sniper watched, the agents chatted on the radio, and then started to move. The sniper snapped to attention, observing their movements with suspicion. He’d been instructed to relay any suspicious activity to Vanessa, but not to contact her unduly—if the news was bad, she didn’t want to risk giving Gambit hope, which would undoubtedly make things more difficult from a bargaining standpoint. So the sniper watched and waited, holding off until he could get a sense of what the agents were doing.After a few moments, he concluded that he’d been right to hold off. The most important thing was that no one approached the warehouse, but the agents were keeping to the perimeter, wending their way carefully around the circle they’d created, each shifting a few posts over from where they’d been. Inferring that this was just a surveillance technique, a way of getting ‘fresh eyes’ on the situation lest anyone fall prey to the monotony of staring at the same view, the sniper relaxed. He’d just witnessed a round of “ring around the rosie” performed by the intelligence services, but nothing more. They were all still accounted for, all still chatting on their radios and looking expectantly at the warehouse and their surroundings. All of them. Except…Except one.The sniper looked down his scope and swept his gaze all the way around the ring of agents. Some had temporarily dropped out of view as they moved, but they’d all eventually reappeared.All except Steed.The bowler-hatted silhouette that had set Steed apart from the rank and file was no longer present in the circle. The sniper looked around frantically, trying to locate Steed somewhere else in the vicinity—by the cars, on the road, by the warehouse. Nothing. The man had vanished.This definitely counted as something suspicious. The sniper reached down and grabbed his radio, determined to call Vanessa regardless of whether she was busy or not. But before he could press the transmit button, something hooked over his wrist and tugged hard, forcing him to drop the radio. It clattered through the branches and landed with a soft ‘thump’ on the grass below. The sniper looked down uncomprehendingly at his wrist, which seemed to have been hooked by a piece of bamboo that was attached to an umbrella. He followed the shaft of the umbrella, and discovered that it connected to an arm, and the arm was attached to a torso, which was attached to a head, which was wreathed by a smiling face.“Hello,” Steed greeted, perched on the branch below the sniper, beaming brightly. “I thought you might want to drop in and join us.” Before the sniper could comprehend what had happened, Steed tugged hard and pulled the unfortunate man from the tree. He tumbled to the ground below, gun going off as he went, and hit the ground with a thunk. Steed regarded the unconscious man for a moment. “Oh, dear,” he said unconcernedly. “Was it something I said?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What about our deal?” Purdey wanted to know, as Gambit shook his head to clear it, trying to ward off the headache that had threatened to overwhelm him the second Vanessa had stomped her boot against the floor. “Do you have the evidence to clear Gambit?”“Yes,” Vanessa confirmed, “but why should I hand it over when the Major has agreed to turn over the papers in exchange for me leaving him in peace?”“Because Gambit doesn’t have all the papers,” Purdey retorted, pulling the slim folio from her waistband. “I have some of them, and I won’t hand them over for any less than what I was promised.”Vanessa looked sharply at Gambit. “Major, this was not what we agreed.”“No,” Gambit confirmed, letting a small smile play over his lips. “It’s what you agreed. With Purdey. You’ll have to conduct two transactions instead of one. And don’t ask me to try to talk her around. Purdey does what she likes.” He cast a fond look at his partner. “It’s one of her best features,” he murmured, a private aside just for her, which Purdey reciprocated with a smile in kind.There was silence as Vanessa stewed, clearly unhappy with this turn of events. She aimed her laser gaze at the pair, but they were a united front, unwavering, showing no trace of fear. “All right,” she said finally, brandishing the detonator. “But we do this my way or not at all. Either of you try to do something clever, and I’ll start picking off your friends outside. If I don’t bring the roof tumbling down on your head first.” Thyme held the detonator up, side-by-side with the radio in her other hand. “So let’s recap, shall we, Major? If you try to kill me, Miss Bryde and your friends die. If you let your people capture me, Miss Bryde and your friends die. If you refuse to hand over the papers, Miss Bryde and your friends die. If you make a run for it, the building comes down on you, and both you and Miss Bryde die.” She pretended to consider the scenarios she had just laid out for a moment, as though a difficult decision was in the offing. “I’m sensing a trend.”“Yes, you’ve made the stakes quite clear,” Purdey said blithely. “Since we’re restating the blindingly obvious, I’ll remind you that if you don’t keep your half of the bargain, we’ll come after you. And as we won’t have a lot to lose if Gambit winds up being declared a traitor, I wouldn’t take that threat lightly.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Personally, I don’t need a reason to take you down, but if I made an attempt, Gambit might worry, and I’m not interested in causing him any more distress. Not unless you give me a very a good reason.” Vanessa, unexpectedly, responded with a broad smile. “The pair of you really are devoted to one another, aren’t you? I’d read the files, but to witness it firsthand…” She shook her head in mild disbelief. “It’s very touching. And very useful, for my purposes.” Purdey chanced a look at Gambit, and saw that his jaw had tightened. She knew something ominous was afoot. Vanessa was considering them with an appraising eye that made Purdey feel uncomfortably like the turkey served up for Christmas dinner.Gambit held his package up, waved it back and forth in front of her, by way of diversion. “Come on, then,” he barked impudently. “Come and get it.”Vanessa could hear the taunt in his voice, and her eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m not about to fetch and carry for you, Major,” she shot back. Gambit resisted the urge to smile. He’d been hoping she’d rise to the bait. He knew from experience the last thing Vanessa liked was to be told what to do by anyone who wasn’t paying her. He wanted her to let him get close to her, against her better judgment. There were so many more ways to deal with her if he eliminated the length of the vast warehouse that was currently separating them. Perhaps he’d find a way out of this after all.“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Vanessa said finally, and Purdey felt a frisson of adrenaline course through her body in anticipation. “Miss Bryde is going to give you her share of the papers, Major. Then she’s going to stand over there.” She indicated a patch of floor below a package of explosives that Gambit could see lodged amongst the beams in the ceiling. Gambit whipped his head back around in alarm as he realised where this was leading. “Now just a minute—”“Once she’s in position,” Vanessa cut in fiercely, “you, Major, will walk the papers over to a third of the way between us. You’ll set them on the floor, very carefully. I’ll do the same with your lady’s—” She broke off as Purdey snorted derisively at the moniker. “—precious evidence. Then we’ll trade places by walking in a circle anticlockwise until we are able to collect our respective packages. Assuming we’ve both been true to our word, we can happily go our separate ways and never see each other again.”“Do you promise?” Purdey said sweetly, earning a grin from Gambit in spite of himself.“This will only work if you don’t try anything,” Vanessa went on testily, annoyed and vaguely unnerved by the pair’s easy humour in the face of bald threats. Gambit had an extra edge of jocularity when Purdey was around, and it shored him up in way he could tell Vanessa found off-putting. “There will be consequences if you try to attack me, Major. I will not hesitate to bring the house down on your lady’s head. And you, Miss Bryde. Don’t try anything smart. Stay put, or my sniper will start picking off your colleagues. Do you understand?”Purdey crossed her arms, looking unimpressed. “Why shouldn’t I? It’s not a very difficult plan, is it?”“Get on with it, then,” Gambit said gruffly, tucking the package under his arm and reaching out to take the thin sheaf of papers from Purdey. “Purdey and I have better things to do than hang about with you all day.”Vanessa scowled. “You were always facetious, Major, but you appear to have gotten worse with age.”“That’s your opinion,” Gambit said coyly, aiming a saucy wink at Purdey. “You should hear me on a good day.”“Oh, I don’t know.” Purdey’s eyes were sparkling as she reached him and handed over her papers. “You’ve had your moments today.” She rested a hand, ever-so-briefly, against his lapel, close to his heart, before she drifted over to the part of the warehouse floor Vanessa had directed her to. Gambit watched her go, eyes drawn to her as if by a magnetic force. Purdey took up her position, put her hands on her hips, and looked up at the package of explosives, as though watching a plane soar through the sky above her head. “Whenever you’re ready. The humidity in here is wilting the fabric of my skirt.” She rolled back her shoulders in that particular way of hers that told Gambit she meant business.Gambit tore his eyes away from Purdey with difficulty, settled them reluctantly on Vanessa Thyme. “You heard the lady.” He brandished both packages of papers. “Shall we?”Vanessa still looked sour, and Gambit knew it wasn’t just the jauntiness of their tones. Purdey had not only forced Vanessa into handing over the proof that could clear Gambit’s name, but she’d also made the mercenary split her attention between the pair of them. Even with her explosive insurance policy, there was the distinct possibility that one of them would be able to pull some sort of stunt, edge a little closer to her, or generally do something that would lead to her downfall. That was all to the good, as far as Gambit was concerned. The only downside was that Gambit himself had to fight to not split his attention between Vanessa and Purdey, a task that was proving difficult with Purdey currently standing under a large package of explosives. But Purdey could look after herself. He knew that, had relied on it more times than he could count. He was going to have to do it again, and hope Purdey followed his lead. They knew Vanessa’s plan now, and Gambit was improvising, possibly for the last time. Vanessa started walking toward him, and Gambit switched into professional mode, shutting out his fears about Purdey, Vanessa, Steed, Larry’s people, Larry himself. He matched Vanessa stride for stride, measuring the distance between them to try to gauge where, exactly, they’d wind up stopping. Vanessa was moving quicker than he was, but Gambit wasn’t going to let her rush him, not now, when there was so much on the line. Vanessa reached a spot that Gambit conceded appeared to be about a third of the original distance between them. She pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of her jacket, and set it, quite deliberately, on the floor, eyes never leaving him, other hand brandishing the detonator. Gambit mirrored her, putting both his package of the papers and Purdey’s in a neat stack at his feet. They eyed one another, straightened up, tension ratcheted up as far as it could go. Behind him, Gambit could sense Purdey, thrumming with anticipation, waiting for the first opportunity to strike. Any opening. All Gambit had to do was give it to her.“What now?” Gambit asked flatly, even though he knew very well what the plan was. But he wasn’t going to give Vanessa the opportunity to call foul just because his nose had twitched in a way she found suspicious.“Now we swap places,” came the frigid reply.“With you? All the money in the world couldn’t make me take that deal.” Gambit grinned, but there was no humour in it. “But if you’re sick of life, I can help you with that.”“Just move, Major.” Gambit had always been flippant, but Vanessa seemed to be finding him more so, partly due to circumstances—the odds were a little more even now that he wasn’t in a cell—and partly because of Purdey, who was buoying his spirit no end. Regardless of the reason, getting under Vanessa’s skin was always good.By mutual assent, Gambit and Vanessa both stalked around one another, anti-clockwise in a semi-circle, their targets one another’s precious cargo, lying exposed and vulnerable on the concrete floor. The change in position brought Gambit into a position where he could see Purdey once more, which was a blessed relief, as well as keep an eye on Vanessa. Purdey was watching the proceedings with hawklike vigilance, eyes bright and alert. Her hands were at her sides, but Gambit could tell by the placement of her feet that she’d subtly shifted to first position, ready for action. Briefly, her gaze flicked to him, and she met his eyes. Gambit’s own orbs flickered slightly to the left, toward Vanessa, then down to the papers on the floor. Purdey nodded almost imperceptibly. Message received. Be ready.Vanessa dropped into a crouch, and Gambit followed suit, gathering up the papers and flipping through them as he straightened up, though he was hardly looking at them, or knew what to look for. Unlike Purdey, he hadn’t seen the report that accused him of high treason. A quick glance revealed the paper trail used to set up the fake bank accounts that were part of his so-called payoffs from Vanessa. But it didn’t matter what was in there or how legitimate it was. Not now. Gambit had other plans for it.“What is this?” he demanded, tone angry, eyes flashing with hostility. They weren’t hard emotions to summon when he was facing Vanessa, even if the reason for his ire was manufactured.Vanessa’s head snapped up, expression genuinely confused. “What are you talking about, Major?”“As if you don’t know.” Gambit held the papers aloft, striding purposefully toward Vanessa as fast as he could. He needed to close the distance between them as quickly as possible, as much as possible, before Vanessa recovered her composure. “You didn’t keep your end of the bargain.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Purdey dart forward.Vanessa was clearly confused, but always quick on the uptake. She swung the hand grasping the detonator up and around in front of her, the other hand still clutching the papers with an iron grip. “Back off, Major! Or I’ll bring the house down on your lady’s head.”“Guess again,” Gambit shot back, nodding behind her, to where Purdey was closing the distance between them rapidly. He could tell Vanessa was reluctant to follow his gaze, too much of an old hand to fall for a trick as old as, “Look! Behind you!” But she had an equally well-honed sixth sense, and something must have prickled at the back of her neck that told her that Gambit’s act wasn’t all bluff. She twisted around just in time to catch Purdey’s foot under her chin. She stumbled backward, dropping the papers, but maintaining an iron grip on the detonator. Gambit shoved the evidence into his breast pocket and took his cue, kicked the two packages off to the side, where they slid to the left, drifting apart as they went. Vanessa’s cry of outrage was all the distraction he needed. Without warning, Gambit’s hand snapped out with lightning speed, capturing Thyme’s hand, the one holding the detonator, in a vicelike grip, other hand coming up in a deadly karate blow. Thyme reacted equally quickly, deflecting his blow, then clamping her other hand on top of Gambit’s, restraining him from making any further attempt to wrest the device from her fingers. They stood there, locked together in a struggle that was notable for its near-absence of movement, their arms folded between another at the elbow, faces inches apart, expressions all grimace and gritted teeth, feet planted firmly on the concrete floor, unyielding and unwilling to give their opponent even an inch of ground. Gambit knew there was no way he could wrest the detonator away from Vanessa, not using brute force alone. She may not have been as strong as him, but she knew how to twist force to her advantage, knew how to manipulate it to keep him from gaining the upper hand. In the intimacy of close quarters, he could see the vein throbbing on her forehead from the effort, the sweat trickling down her temple beneath her hair, the blood vessels in the whites of her eyes. He used to look at her like this, in similarly close proximity, back when she held all the cards, but it was always when he was in pain or being threatened, him the vulnerable one, her in charge. No more. They were equals here, finally, several years and thousands of miles later, locked in the same defiant struggle but with the odds evened out. He wondered, as his hands began to go numb from the extreme pressure he was placing on them, if Thyme was thinking of how much their positions mirrored their past, if she was experiencing déjà vu. But it hardly mattered now. He was going to end this, one way or another. Now.“Purdey, the papers,” Gambit managed through gritted teeth, sweat beading on his forehead. He could sense Purdey’s hesitation out of the corner of his eye, her desire to regain control over the documents rubbing up against the impulse to help him. But Vanessa wasn’t going anywhere, her feet firmly planted to maintain her balance, staving off the prospect of landing a kick somewhere unpleasant on Gambit’s body. Gambit was also caught in a stalemate, but that was all right. He’d resigned himself to the possibility that he might not be going anywhere at all.Without warning, a shot rang out, somewhere outside the warehouse. Only Purdey and Gambit reacted, Gambit maintaining his grip out of sheer force of will. Vanessa’s lips, drawn back from her teeth in a snarl, turned up at the ends in a smile. “I told you my man had your people in his sights,” she hissed. “That’ll be your Mr. Steed he’s disposed of. I asked him to look for him first.”“Steed!” Purdey’s alarm was evidenced from her voice alone, which was just as well because Gambit couldn’t afford to look at her.“Steed’s been in the game too long to be taken out by one of your hired goons,” Gambit spat, meaning to reassure Purdey as much as undermine Vanessa. He prayed his confidence wasn’t misplaced. He’d never forgive himself if Steed had paid the price for this whole ordeal. “For all we know, he’s already found your man and just finished him off.”“You’ll see,” Vanessa snarled. “If you live to get out of here.”“Purdey, get the papers!” Gambit repeated hoarsely. The longer this took, the more the potential casualties stacked up, and he didn’t know how long he could keep Vanessa at bay. Mercifully, her rapid, echoing steps told him Purdey had obeyed this time. He gave her a moment to tuck them away in the waist of her skirt before issuing his next ultimatum. “Now get out of here. We need someone to warn them about the sniper and the explosives. And to get those papers out of here.”“And leave you?” Purdey sounded more outraged than afraid, which was all to the good. “Don’t be ridiculous.”“You should listen to her, Major,” Vanessa growled. “She might be the only one who can still save you from yourself.” Without warning, she let go of Gambit’s arm. Gambit reacted, meaning to finish the blow he’d intended to strike in the first place. But suddenly there was a glint of metal in Vanessa’s hand, and then a sharp pain in his side.“Gambit!” Purdey screamed, and Gambit looked dazedly down at his shirt and the rapidly blossoming patch of red appearing against the vivid white. He looked back up at Vanessa as if in slow motion, saw the bloodied knife in her hand, her smile of triumph. She’d done him in. Finally. She’d won their endless stalemate.Or so she thought.“Maybe I should have listened to her,” he managed between lips that were suddenly dry and clumsy. “But so should you.” The hand Gambit had wrapped around Vanessa’s own, the one holding the detonator, shifted ever so slightly, and pushed the button.“Are you mad?” Vanessa screamed, her words lost over the rumble of the explosion. “You’ve just killed your lady and yourself!”Gambit released Vanessa’s detonator hand, the device useless now. “She can run,” he said icily, knocking the knife from Vanessa’s hand with the last of his strength, then wrapping his arms around her in a tight bear hug. “You can’t.”Vanessa opened and closed her mouth uncomprehendingly. “You bastard,” she cried impotently, as pieces of the roof and walls started to rain down around them. Gambit proceeded to squeeze, hard enough to keep her from getting away. It didn’t matter if she killed him now. All that mattered was Purdey getting away, with the papers, before the roof caved in. He braced himself for a struggle to the death.Vanessa’s eyes suddenly rolled back in her head.Gambit frowned uncomprehendingly as Vanessa sagged backward in his arms. Vanessa had never struck him as the fainting kind, regardless of her other faults. And he didn’t think he’d squeezed her that hard. But when he looked up, he was face-to-face with Purdey, who was just tossing aside a very large piece of rock.“For once,” she said curtly, brushing ceiling dust-coated blonde hair from her eyes, “I agree with that Thyme woman.”Gambit released Vanessa’s dead weight, watched her tumble to the ground. “Is she--?”“Oh, she’s just unconscious, I expect,” Purdey said unconcernedly, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pressing a hand to his wounded side. “Now be quiet. We need to get out of here.”Gambit could feel his strength fading. “I’ll slow you down. Go on without me.”“Oh, do shut it,” Purdey exclaimed in exasperation, dragging him along. “I don’t have the time or the patience to argue with you, and I’m not leaving you behind. So hurry up. I’ll shout at you later.”“I’m looking forward to it,” Gambit rasped automatically, half-dazed, feet stumbling gracelessly alongside Purdey as the building came crashing down around them. Gambit put his legs to work to try to follow her as best he could and powered ahead, but his speed was hampered by the need to zigzag to avoid the chunks of concrete and wood raining down from above. The warehouse was suddenly an obstacle course, with the obstacles appearing without warning. Gambit found himself attempting the impossible task of trying to keep one eye on the ceiling and the other on the floor ahead of him, trying to save himself from tripping or being crushed. Purdey was steering them through the melee, a task that was becoming increasingly difficult as the floor was becoming littered with more and more debris, the structural integrity of the warehouse rapidly deteriorating. Gambit knew the chances of them both making it out alive were fading fast, stab wound aside. He was painfully aware that their luck would only last so long. Maybe, maybe, if Purdey didn’t have to drag him along, handicapping her usual dancer’s agility, or if he’d been up to full strength, not rapidly leaking his life force onto the warehouse floor, they’d have had a chance. But Gambit’s dexterity had dissolved into the slow and clumsy movements of an injured man. He wondered idly, and without fear, how serious the stab wound as, if it had hit anything vital. It was bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig, but he knew from long experience that blood loss didn’t necessarily equate with major damage. The trick was getting help before one lost too much blood, at which point it didn’t matter how many vital organs had been spared. He didn’t want to die by any means, but he definitely didn’t want Purdey to die because of him, because she’d lost her own chance to escape by trying to save him. But Purdey would brook no argument, he knew, which was why he wasn’t bothering to waste his waning strength on persisting on making one. He blinked hard and tried to focus on the warehouse door in the distance—salvation. It seemed to stay stubbornly far away no matter how far their legs carried them, but the zigging and zagging to avoid the falling detritus was slowing them down a lot, more than they could afford.Without warning, a second and third explosion erupted simultaneously to his right and left. Gambit’s head snapped to his left just in time to see the wall of the warehouse explode outwards in a rush of broken pieces sailing toward them at an alarming rate. Despite his dulled reflexes, Gambit reacted to a large chunk of rock descending from the heavens out of the corner of his eye. “Look out!” he cried hoarsely in warning, even as he threw himself to the side, yanking Purdey with him. They hit the ground hard, Gambit’s injured side protesting loudly as they made impact. Gambit lay there, panting, sore, exhausted by the whole ordeal. Purdey was above him in a flash, pulling urgently on his shoulders, trying to get him to sit up. “I’m slowing you down,” Gambit wheezed again, lungs full of plaster dust, even as Purdey pulled him upright. “I won’t make it the rest of the way. You can.”“Negative thinking, Gambit,” Purdey grunted, hand pressed to his side, even as she hefted him into a sitting position. “All we have to do is make it a little farther.”“A little farther?” Gambit muttered sceptically, as Purdey rearranged him onto his hands and knees. “You make it sound so easy.”“It is easy,” Purdey hissed with exertion, throwing his arm across her shoulders and straining with her powerful legs to heave him upright. “If you have the right attitude.”Gambit laughed as Purdey eased him to his feet. “I’ve never noticed that that does much good with blood loss.”“That’s because you’ve always been a negative thinker.”Gambit swayed unsteadily to his feet, eyed Purdey seriously. “Purdey, this stab wound, it might be bad.”Purdey shook her head, turning his toward the door. “First things first. Anyway, it’s not as if you’ve never sprung a leak before.” She smiled tightly. “Come on.” She started urging them forward once more, the warehouse door beckoning them.For a moment, Gambit thought they might make it, in spite of the dark thoughts swirling through his mind. The worst of the explosions seemed to be over, the building resettling itself on its damaged frame. He was actually starting to think his stab wound would have a chance to be first priority after all.He should have known that Purdey’s positive thinking could only work so many miracles. They were picking their way through the chaos by hugging the wall, where less debris impeded their progress. Their closeness to the structure warned him via the sudden, ominous groan above their heads. Purdey heard it too, and they threw themselves sideways as a large piece of concrete dislodged itself and landed just where they’d been a moment before. Sprawled on the ground, they rolled over just in time to see a large, heavy beam detach itself from the ceiling and begin a slow-motion tumble toward them. There was no way either of them, not even the relatively unscathed Purdey, could get out of the way in time. Gambit acted on instinct, using the last of his strength to roll himself over and onto Purdey, shielding her body with his own. Purdey realised what he was doing a fraction of a second too late. “Mike Gambit!” she exclaimed, wrapping her hands around to protect the back of his skull, for all the good it might do. Then there was a crash, and everything went black.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
John Steed looked up from securing the sniper’s wrists behind his back and watched the warehouse fold in on itself with no small amount of dismay. Pressing a restraining knee to the stirring sniper’s back, he picked up his radio from where it was lying on the ground nearby and keyed in. “Larry, do you have eyes on Gambit and Purdey?”“Afraid not.” Larry sounded tense and on edge. “No one’s come out of there, but I’m not sending anyone in so the roof can fall on them.”“That’s quite all right. I’ll volunteer.” Steed was already climbing to his feet and starting down the incline. “There’s a package waiting for you just outside the treeline. Be a good chap and collect it.”“On our way, but Steed, you can’t possibly intend on going in there?”“I can,” Steed corrected, “and I do.” He was on the flat at the foot of the hill now, which made his progress faster and easier. He made a beeline for the warehouse, weaving around the agents watching the building shudder worryingly with a certain amount of trepidation. Larry had abandoned the radio now, in favour of intercepting Steed in person.“At least wait until it’s settled a bit,” he protested, walking backwards to keep his eyes on Steed as he strode forward.Steed glared sternly at him. “Purdey and Gambit can’t afford to wait. As it stands, it may already be too late.”Larry darted in front of Steed, arm outstretched as a barrier to halt his progress. “I can’t let you go in there, Steed.”“‘Let’ isn’t in it,” Steed warned congenially. “But I understand your position. I’ll be happy for you to tell McKay in your report that I went rogue and refused to obey orders.” He nodded at Larry’s outstretched limb. “I could break your arm, if that would make your story more believable.”Larry laughed a little at that, then quickly sobered up when it became clear that Steed’s smile was meant to reinforce the threat rather than undercut it. He pulled his arm away quickly, as though he’d been stung. “It’s your funeral,” he said sharply, backing away.“Send lilies,” Steed suggested, before diving into the breach.The aftershocks of the explosion were just starting when Steed reached the door. He peered into the dust cloud and coughed automatically, wafting his hand in front of his face as he peered into the fog of plaster dust. There was no sign of Purdey and Gambit.Steed frowned as he skirted neatly around some falling debris, narrowly missing becoming collateral damage in the process. It distracted him to the extent that he didn’t fully comprehend the difficult journey ahead of him until he was forced to slow down and pick his way over a large beam on the warehouse’s debris-strewn floor. From deeper into the building’s depths, he could see the entire space was covered with pieces of what had been the building’s roof and surrounding walls. It was easy to spot where the explosives had been placed. There was a large hole in the ceiling through which the pale afternoon sunlight was making itself known, framed by jagged beams and the odd idly flapping cable. The walls on either side of him had also accrued damage, large apertures that had sent an avalanche of bricks spewing forth onto the concrete slab below, some shattering on impact, others intact. Steed knew what they could do to a human being if they fell on one from a great height, and tried not to think about the possibility of finding Gambit and Purdey with their heads caved in. He had to admit Thyme knew her business—the meeting would have taken place in the middle of the space, neutral territory, with neither party closer to an escape route. The explosions had been perfectly placed to stop anyone who might be trying to flee by sending destruction raining down upon them.Despite the warehouse having gained a new skylight and a pair of unorthodox windows, it was still difficult to clearly see the scene. The room was thick with dust hanging in the air, obscuring Steed’s vision and clogging his lungs, and the jagged holes did nothing to illuminate the spots on the floor that weren’t directly below them. The warehouse clearly hadn’t been emptied out before it fell into disuse, and the floor was still crowded with crates that had toppled over and split open, spilling their contents and packaging out onto the floor, adding to the general mess of the place. Gambit, Purdey, and Thyme presumably, could be anywhere in the disarray, but Steed couldn’t see them. Walking amongst the wreckage and searching it inch by inch was going to be time-consuming and difficult, but there was no other way, and Steed wasn’t about to turn around and leave Gambit and Purdey to their fates simply because he found the task daunting. The deeper he ventured into the warehouse, the more perilous Steed’s journey became. The damaged roof of the building creaked ominously over his head as he approached the epicentre of the explosion. There were no longer bare patches of floor in-between pieces of wreckage for him to step on, and his footing became increasingly precarious as he was forced to scrabble over chunks of debris that shifted worryingly beneath his feet. Matters were made worse by the need to move large lumps of rock and wood in search of Gambit and Purdey, who Steed knew could easily have been covered by the avalanche. Steed was painfully aware that doing so slowed his progress and increased the risk of something falling on him from above, but he couldn’t bear the idea of walking right past them if they were buried just beneath the surface of the rubble. It was a losing game either way, and Steed prayed he hadn’t bet Gambit’s and Purdey’s lives on the wrong strategy. The whole situation reminded him, rather horribly, of his wartime experience, searching for bodies amid debris. He shook the memories off like clouds of plaster dust.Without warning, a beam detached itself from the twisted mass above and hurtled down to where he was prodding through the wreckage with his umbrella. Steed caught sight of its shadow as it grew ominously in the puddle of sunlight at his feet, and flung himself sideways just in time, narrowly avoiding skewering himself on a piece of rebar in the process. The beam hit the ground with a deafening clang, sending up another cloud of dust that stung Steed’s eyes as he lay coughing in the rubble. He pushed his bowler further back on his forehead and gave himself half a second to recover before he climbed to his feet and resumed his search.Progress continued to be slow, and Steed spared half a thought in rebuke of Larry for keeping his people back. This was not a one-man job, but as he was all he had, Steed was determined to do the best he could. A thorough sweep took more time, but Steed knew there were virtues in being methodical.All the same, as precious minutes ticked by, and Steed did the mental math about how long his oxygen had lasted on the odd occasion he’d found himself buried alive, he started to doubt his methods. His anxiety had reached its peak when his eyes alit upon something small and black that stood out against the general pallor of the rubble.Steed made a beeline for it, skipping over stone and wood alike to crouch next to his target. Brushing some dust away revealed what was, unquestionably, the heel of a boot, sticking up from a foot pointed downwards. Steed knew Gambit’s fashion sense well enough to identify it as one of the younger man’s. Steed cast around in the vicinity for other appendages. If this was Gambit’s foot, where was his head? Steed followed a straight-line trajectory, roughly measuring where the other end of Gambit’s 6’ stature would end up, taking into account a possibly strangely contorted pose. There was a rather large beam lying above where Steed estimated the rest of Gambit was, which he forced himself not to worry about for the moment. He peered down the length of the wood, sight eaglelike in the dusty gloom. There! A hand. Too small to be Gambit’s, but then he wasn’t only looking for Gambit. And knowing his colleagues as he did, he suspected they would stick together—he couldn’t imagine either Purdey or Gambit abandoning their partner to save their own skin. Find one and one could easily find the other.Steed circled around and lifted the hand carefully, immediately recognising Purdey’s ring on the little finger. He searched for a pulse and sighed in relief when he found one. Carefully, he felt his way down the arm, using it as a guide to locate the rest of Purdey. It disappeared under the beam, and now Steed could just make out the outline of her profile in the gloom. Steed felt blindly for an armpit to get a grip, used his other hand to support her head, mindful of the possibility of spinal damage. She shifted, but something heavy was weighing her down. Steed reached into the gloom and groped around, found another head--covered with curly hair no less. Gambit. Steed quickly amended his plan, gripping a handful of Gambit’s jacket and tugging, minding his head as he had Purdey’s, so he could pull him forward. Thus began a long, slow process of sliding each individual out a bit at a time, trying not to shift either partner too violently lest he exacerbate an already serious injury. Eventually he got them free of the beam—which, luckily for his colleagues, had landed propped against a large chunk of concrete to form a pocket of protection. Purdey and Gambit emerged from beneath it tangled up like the lovers they were, arms still loosely wound around one another for protection. Steed didn’t need to be told to guess that Gambit had been attempting to shield Purdey from the avalanche. “I understand the impetus for gallantry,” he murmured, as he gently tipped Gambit sideways, cupping the back of his head to keep it from smacking on the rock, and starting to peel him, quite literally, off of Purdey, “but Purdey will never forgive you if you die for it. Or me for letting it happen.”Purdey and Gambit came apart with a sickening sucking sound that Steed knew only too well, and as Gambit flopped onto his back, Steed’s worst fears were realised. The agents had been sealed together by a large measure of already-drying blood. Each bore a large matching red blotch on their torsos, like a grisly ink blot. Steed could see traces of it on their hands, too, where they weren’t coated in dust. Steed sucked his teeth and cleared Purdey and Gambit’s noses and mouths out while he tried to work out whose blood it was and where it was coming from. Using past events as a guide, he checked Gambit over first, quickly located the stab wound with a grim smile. “Without wishing to cause offence, I’m not entirely surprised,” Steed told the unconscious man, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it hard to the wound. “You do make rather a habit of this sort of thing.”Gambit gurgled a little as Steed pressed down hard on the wound, then transitioned into a cough without regaining consciousness. Steed checked his pulse and frowned when he found it weak. He liked the clamminess of Gambit’s skin even less. Gambit coughed again as Steed unbuttoned his collar. From Steed’s elbow, Purdey also started coughing, as if in sympathy, and Steed turned just in time to see her start to sit up. “Easy, my dear.” Steed reached out a hand to help pull her upright while keeping the other hand pressed to Gambit’s wound. He was painfully aware that he was too shorthanded, literally, to deal with any more serious injuries, if Purdey had any that needed treating. Where the devil was Larry?Purdey sat up gingerly, still coughing to clear her lungs of dust. Steed kept a reassuring hand on her shoulder, trying to keep one eye on her and one on Gambit. “How’s your head?” he asked with concern, assessing her pupils for any signs of concussion.Purdey slid her fingers into her hair, sending up a fine cloud of dust. “Fine, I think,” she said uncertainly. “It doesn’t hurt, anyway. I don’t think I hit it on anything.” She was blinking like she was disoriented, but Steed knew that could just as easily be her eyes trying to clear themselves of dust as a sign of head trauma.“You passed out,” he pointed out mildly. “Are you certain you didn’t strike it on something?”Purdey shook her head, as if to prove her point. “No, I don’t think so. I think it was a combination of shock and having all the air left in my lungs pushed out when Mike tried to protect me—Mike!”Purdey had reached up to wipe some dust from her eyes so she could see Gambit better, and been temporarily distracted as she realised her knuckles had been scraped raw from protecting Gambit’s head from the worst of the fallout, a bloody mess that had been lost in the midst of the rest of Gambit’s gore. She didn’t have time to linger on it the second she saw the man lying there, leaking like a sieve, so she wiped her eyes again and went into action, taking care not to check whether Steed was looking at her, or give her injury further attention, lest he start looking at it, too. She didn’t need fuss. She needed help for Gambit.At the very least, Purdey’s alarm cleared away any lingering bleariness, and she moved to Gambit’s side with a speediness and ease that half-convinced Steed that she didn’t have any broken bones, at least. She’d still need a full check-up, and Steed meant to have Kendrick have a look at her just as soon as Gambit was in better hands. All the same, as Purdey pushed Steed’s hand aside to pull Gambit’s shirt from his trousers, he vocalised his concern. “Purdey, are you sure you’re all right?”“Bit bruised, that’s all,” Purdey rattled off automatically, assessing Gambit’s wound firsthand before snatching Steed’s handkerchief away and pressing down hard. “And I’ve swallowed a lot of dust. But nothing’s broken.” She reached out a demanding hand. “Give me your tie.”Steed acquiesced but wasn’t about to let the matter lie. “And the blood?”Purdey frowned in incomprehension, then glanced down at the large red stain on her dress for what was presumably the first time. “Gambit’s,” she said shortly, taking the tie from Steed and wrapping it tightly around his waist to hold the handkerchief in place. “Vanessa Thyme stabbed him.” She frowned at the wound before she pressed down on his side once more. “I thought it would be deeper.”“Perhaps this ran interference.” Steed slid a blood-soaked envelope out of Gambit’s inside breast pocket and held it up to the light. There was a narrow slash through the middle.“That’s the evidence that Gambit was set up by Thyme,” Purdey identified, momentarily transfixed by the narrow gash in the centre, outlined, almost decoratively, by Gambit’s blood. “Do you think it’s ruined?”“Not irretrievably,” Steed pronounced, laying the envelope carefully on a nearby chunk of rock. “I’ve rather a lot of experience in getting blood out of things.” He smiled grimly. “If this is what you say it is, it might have saved Gambit twice over.”“I hope so.” Purdey pressed the back of her hand to Gambit’s cheek, frown deepening when she felt how clammy it was. “Where’s Larry? Gambit needs medical attention.”“My thoughts exactly,” Steed murmured, eyes flicking toward the doors at either end of the space. “But he’ll also want to know where the papers are. You’ll have to be prepared to give him an answer.”Purdey scowled and pulled two envelopes from the waist of her skirt, where they had remained hidden under her shirt. They, too, were stained with Gambit’s blood. “Here they are,” Purdey spat, tossing them angrily beside the evidence. “Bloody things—literally. Gambit’s suffered too much for them. I don’t think either of us will be able to stand the sight of them after this.” She paused, then looked levelly at Steed. “But Gambit wouldn’t want Larry to have them, either.”Steed smiled conspiratorially. “Leave them with me,” he told her, gathering them up along with the evidence. He tucked the lot into his breast pocket just as a chorus of voices announced the belated arrival of the cavalry. Purdey chanced looking away from Gambit long enough to establish that Kendrick and some paramedics were with them. “Hold on, Mike,” she said softly, using her free hand to brush his dust-coated hair back from his forehead. “Help is on the way.”Gambit’s head lolled loosely at the news, and he succumbed to another coughing fit. Purdey frowned worriedly as she tried to hold him still. “Allow me.” Steed stepped in, taking a firm grip on Gambit’s shoulders to allow Purdey to keep the pressure up on his wound. Purdey flashed Steed a tight, grateful smile, but Gambit’s coughing continued unabated. Purdey did a quick self-check of the state of her own lungs, which still felt scratchy, but the urge to cough wasn’t as strong as it had been, and anyway, Gambit had shielded her from the worst of the dust with his body, so her lungs were obviously clearer than his. She made a snap decision and bent to cover his mouth with hers, a kiss of life in every sense of the word, inflating his lungs with fresher air while also telling him that she was there. Purdey couldn’t be sure, but she thought he kissed back in spite of his lack of consciousness, and when she broke away, she thought his cheeks had a little more colour in them as well. “You’re going to be all right,” Purdey said softly near his ear, and for the first time it felt like a pronouncement rather than an optimistic prediction. Then Kendrick was beside her, shouldering between her and Steed to assess the damage. “He’s been stabbed,” Purdey informed the doctor, pulling her hands away to let Kendrick peek at the wound. “I don’t think it’s deep, but he’s lost a lot of blood and breathed in a lot of dust.” She bit her lip as she recalled Gambit’s snap decision to protect her from the beam. “I’m not sure, but he might have hit his head as well.”Kendrick nodded once, curtly, already busy taking Gambit’s vitals. “He’ll need a transfusion at least. We need to move him now.” He beckoned to the paramedics, and Purdey was forced to shuffle aside as they set about loading Gambit onto the stretcher. Kendrick tore his attention away from his patient long enough to assess Purdey. “How are you feeling?”Purdey shook her head. “I’m fine. Cuts and bruises and a lungful of dust, that’s all.”Kendrick, far too used to agents downplaying the state of their well-being to take Purdey’s self-diagnoses at face value, looked sceptical. “You should be checked over as well, just to be safe,” he pronounced, then fished a plaster out of his bag and put it on Purdey’s raw knuckles, as if to seal the deal.“She will be,” Steed cut in, before Purdey could protest. “I’ll bring her in personally. But she has unfinished business to attend to here first.”“See that she does,” Kendrick said sternly, splitting the command between Steed and Purdey. “I spend enough time chasing after him—” He indicated Gambit. “—without adding you to the list. Although I’m surprised you don’t want to ride along with him to the hospital.”“I do,” Purdey confirmed softly, biting her lip as she looked at the unconscious man on the stretcher. Between the blood loss and the plaster, his whitewashed skin resembled a pale ghost more than Gambit. “But I need to do something first.”“We’re ready to go, miss,” one of the paramedics informed her, and Purdey realised that they were waiting for her to let go of Gambit’s hand, still clutched in hers with a vicelike grip.“I’ll see you soon,” she told Gambit, kissing his hand before giving it a squeeze and letting it go. She watched them sweep Gambit away toward the warehouse door, passing Larry and several other agents as they went. Larry scrutinised Gambit as the grim parade passed, with Kendrick bringing up the rear, then set off toward Purdey, who was still kneeling on the debris stained with Gambit’s blood.Purdey saw him coming and rose gracefully to her feet, fire in her eyes. She was dimly aware that the agents who had accompanied Larry into the building were looking at her with a mixture of trepidation and horror. What she didn’t realise, without the benefit of a mirror, was that she cut a figure straight out of a horror film: face, hair, and limbs painted white and grey with plaster dust, throwing the large crimson stain on her middle and the blood on her hands into sharp relief. Purdey glared at them as they gaped at her and they shrank back, much to her satisfaction. She looked back at Steed with a grim smile on her face just as Larry reached them.“I’m going to look for Miss Thyme,” she declared loudly, in a voice that brooked no argument. She looked hard at Larry, eyes narrowed. “Did you see her leave?”“No.” Larry was riveted by the blood-soaked spectre before him. “No one came out, not that we saw.”“I was going to ask you what happened to Miss Thyme,” Steed prodded gently, drawing Purdey’s laser gaze away from the unfortunate Larry.“I told you. She stabbed Gambit.” Purdey’s tone was accusatory and aimed at Larry, as though he had slipped the blade into Gambit himself. “I knocked her out just before the building came down.” She executed a flawless spin and turned her penetrating gaze on the debris-littered floor. “I’m going to find her.”From Larry’s expression, Steed thought he wasn’t convinced that Purdey was sane—or real. “Shouldn’t you get someone to check you out?” he asked carefully, clearly afraid of the response he might receive. “My men can conduct the search.”“No,” Purdey said flatly, clearing some grit from her cheek only to leave a smear of Gambit’s blood in its stead, more paint for the horror film tableau. “I’m going to find her.” She set off without another word, leaving Steed and Larry trailing in her wake.“You don’t happen to know where the papers are, do you?” Despite how imposing Purdey’s appearance was, and the fact that Gambit had been taken to hospital, Larry’s concerns were clearly elsewhere.“I’ve had more important things to worry about,” Purdey pointed out tartly, which wasn’t a lie and therefore was much easier to sell than an outright denial. She kept walking, hoping Larry would let the subject drop if she put enough distance between them.As she moved out of the epicentre of the explosion, the rubble began to taper off, and Purdey began to wonder if Thyme had escaped. It was then that she caught sight of an unusually dark spot beneath a rather large piece of stonework. Purdey hurried over, dancing lightly over the rock that threatened to slide out from beneath her feet. The dark spot, she realised as she got closer, was a sleeve encasing an arm. A woman’s arm. Purdey slowed as that particular realisation hit her. From what Gambit had told her about Vanessa Thyme, the woman was very dangerous indeed. Even pinned beneath the stone, it was entirely possible she was playing possum, just waiting for some unwary agent to get close enough to be taken hostage or worse.Purdey circled the arm, giving it a wide berth. Now that she knew there was a body there, she could make out the outline of her body in the rubble—torso, legs, head—where the stone wasn’t lying on her. All the same, Purdey knew she would need to clear away the debris to determine whether the woman was alive, and after a few evaluative circuits, she went in from behind, kicking at the woman’s foot. It wiggled, shaking off the dust in the process, but in response to Purdey’s kick, not any impetus of its own. Satisfied that her quarry was at least unconscious, Purdey made straight for the head, sweeping the rubble away with the flat of her hand to reveal dusty, dishevelled hair. As Purdey turned the head her way, she immediately knew the woman was dead from the looseness of the neck, even without taking into account the coolness of her skin and the placing of the stone which, on further inspection, she could see had crushed the woman’s torso catastrophically. All the same, Purdey pressed her fingers to the pulse point on the woman’s neck, just to prove to herself that the woman who had caused Gambit so much pain and nearly cost him his life had well and truly forfeited hers. When no pulse was forthcoming, Purdey withdrew and regarded the corpse with a certain amount of numbness. All in all, there was a sense of an anticlimax. “You thought you had him,” she told the corpse. “But he had me.”Larry suddenly appeared at her side, stared down at the body. “Is she…?”Purdey nodded, rising gracefully to her feet. “I don’t think she’ll be causing any more problems in the future.”Larry looked disappointed. “Would have been nice to get her alive, see what she knew.”“From what Gambit said about her, I suspect she’d be about as talkative as she is now,” Purdey murmured, letting out a long breath. She suddenly felt faint.Steed joined them, regarded the corpse matter-of-factly. “Well, that puts the matter to bed quite neatly, at least in terms of the report.”Purdey nodded dazedly. “So that’s it,” she said dully, feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over her. “It’s over. She’s dead.”“It does look that way,” Steed murmured, resting a hand on her shoulder for support, both physical and emotional. “Now that you’ve found her, I think we ought to listen to Kendrick and get you checked over.” He glanced at Larry. “You can debrief her once she’s been cleared of injury and had a chance to clean up?” It was framed as a question, but there was no doubt that Steed meant it as an order, not a suggestion.Larry took the hint, almost glad to have the bloody spectre that was Purdey removed from his sight. “We’ll handle it from here.”Steed beamed a classic Steed smile. “Excellent. Come along, my dear.” He took Purdey’s elbow and began to gently steer her toward the warehouse door.They were halfway to the Big Cat when Steed leant toward Purdey’s ear and said, “Turn left, and if anyone asks, we ducked in here because you thought you were about to have a fit of hysterics.”Purdey frowned in confusion but did as she was told, following Steed down a narrow alley between the warehouse and a wall of abandoned stock that was lined with bits of scrap and old barrels. Steed made for one of the latter, checked inside to ensure it was empty. Purdey drifted behind him, clearly confused. “Steed, what are you doing?”“Honouring Gambit’s wishes.” He patted the barrel proprietarily. “This one will do nicely.”“Do nicely for what?” Purdey approached the barrel and peered inside, but saw nothing but a dark chasm ending in a rust-pocked floor. “Steed, what are you talking about?”“We’re going to solve the problem of these papers once and for all.” Steed retrieved the three envelopes from inside his jacket and took care to return the one with Gambit’s evidence to the safety of his breast pocket. “I’m going to let you in on a secret,” he went on, pulling a lighter from his pocket.“I’ve had my fill of secrets for the time being,” Purdey said sharply, watching Steed with trepidation.“One more won’t hurt, particularly when it’s this one. Something I haven’t told you or Gambit thus far.”Purdey cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”“You know that Gambit told me about what happened to him in Africa. What you don’t know is that I was also aware that the Ministry was interested in these papers back in 1973, when they discovered that Gambit was being sent in to steal them, and was extremely annoyed when he didn’t come through. Now, no one at the time would tell me exactly who had been caught in the act of trying to take them, but when Gambit told me his story, I checked the dates in the files and it added up. The Ministry knew they didn’t re-emerge in someone else’s hands, and when I finally got to know Gambit, I didn’t believe that he would sell them or use them for his own ends. So I knew he’d either hidden or destroyed them. I never bothered to ask which to spare him having to lie.” He smiled broadly at Purdey. “You see, I know what these papers are for in broad strokes, and I quite agreed with Gambit back then, as I do now, that no one ought to have them. Which is why, after Gambit having been responsible for their fate for so long, I’m going to save him from having to take responsibility for this particular act.” He flicked the lighter open. “Of course, if you want to be complicit as well, I won’t stop you.”Purdey looked at the envelope in his hand and grinned. “And let you have all the fun? Never.” Steed presented her with the lighter and Purdey flicked it to life with no small amount of glee. She took one of the packets of the pages that Steed handed to her and held the lighter to the corner of the blood-spattered paper, the liquid dry now in the late afternoon light, a fitting touch considering how much of Gambit’s blood had been spilt for the sake of protecting the much sought-after sheets. She watching the pages burn with satisfaction, held them vindictively until the flames threatened to singe her fingers, before dropping them into the barrel. She handed the lighter to Steed and watched him set his own packet alight, watched the flames hungrily consume the paper. Steed dropped the pages into the barrel with their companions and repocketed the lighter. Together, they watched the wretched things burn away into ash. To Purdey, it felt strangely like standing in a crematorium, as though this was a funeral for Gambit’s past, and all the pain that had gone come it.“We’ll wait until they’re completely destroyed,” Steed told her, eyes reflecting the dancing flames. “All too often, people leave things burning before the job is finished. We can’t afford to leave any trace behind, not even the smallest corner. Just ash.”Purdey nodded in agreement, arms crossed over her chest, feeling Gambit’s blood, still damp on her dress, against her skin. “And then we’ll check on him.”Steed shook his head ever-so-slightly. “First we’ll get you cleaned up and have Kendrick look you over.”Purdey’s hands clenched into fists where they were tucked next to her elbows. “I thought that was something you said to get Larry to leave us alone!”“Yes, but I also meant it.” Steed’s tone was firm and resolute. “We can’t be entirely certain you didn’t hit your head or sustain some other injury. And Kendrick won’t let you anywhere near his patient trailing dust and debris.” He smiled to take some of the sting away. “It’s for your own well-being as well as Gambit’s. He wouldn’t want you to fall afoul of something that was preventable, certainly not on his account.”Purdey let her hands fall to her sides resignedly. “All right,” she mumbled in annoyance. “But I want to see him as soon as possible. He needs someone to be there for him when he wakes up.”“We’ll be like lightning,” Steed promised, reaching out a hand to guide Purdey away. “The fire’s done its work. Let’s go.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Before you venture outside,” Steed cautioned, when Purdey unbuckled her safety belt the second he pulled the car to a stop, intent on exiting the vehicle as quickly as possible, “I think you ought to cover yourself with this.” He reached into the back seat and rummaged around, came up with a tartan blanket. “I don’t know how permissive your neighbours are, but in my experience people usually become rather alarmed when one of their number turns up covered in blood.”“Oh.” Purdey looked down at her bloody clothes and remembered how her fellow agents had reacted to her back at the warehouse. She could only imagine how a group of civilians would respond to her appearance. She swirled the blanket around her shoulders like a cape, nodded gratefully at her colleague. “Thank you, Steed. How do I look?”Steed nodded encouragingly. “Very fetching. Shall we?”Even with her makeshift covering, Purdey felt conspicuous as she stepped out of Steed’s car, as though every eye on her street was upon her. She clattered down her 21 steps as quickly as her legs would allow, found her keys and unlocked the door with unseemly haste. She disappeared inside the second it was open, with Steed close on her heels, and slammed it behind her, pressing her back to it as though holding back a league of attackers.“I’ll ring for an update on Gambit’s condition,” Steed volunteered, when Purdey had caught her breath and doffed the blanket. “You clean up.”“I could wait,” Purdey suggested, positively thrumming with anticipation at the prospect of news about Gambit. She desperately wanted to know how he was faring, and how serious his injuries were.“No, I’ll manage quite nicely on my own.” Steed took her by the shoulders and steered her in the direction of the bedroom. “The sooner you clean yourself up, the sooner you can check on Gambit personally.”“Yes, yes, all right,” Purdey exclaimed crossly, shaking off Steed’s hands. “I’m quite capable of going on my own.” She stalked over to the beaded curtain and thrust it aside with feeling, then immediately regretted her harsh words. “Sorry, Steed,” she apologised over her shoulder. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”Steed smiled in understanding. “Not at all. Now run along.”Purdey smiled gratefully at her friend’s understanding, and disappeared beyond the curtain.vvvIn the bathroom, Purdey had her first proper look at herself in the mirror, and was taken aback by her own dust-induced paleness, the blood on her rendered all the more ghoulish as a result. She looked like a Hammer horror movie bride, freshly risen from the grave and having just feasted on her first victim.Her own visage was making her feel sick, so she turned away from her reflection and started to strip off her soiled clothes. Everything was probably going to have to be thrown away, she realised morosely as she peeled off her dust-covered boots. Her skirt was similarly covered in ground-in dust where it wasn’t splattered with blood, and almost the entire front of her blouse was painted red. Even if she could get the bloodstains out, she wasn’t sure she could ever wear it again, knowing what had transpired the last time she’d had it on. She dropped the skirt and unbuttoned her blouse hurriedly, anxious to be rid of the awful tableau. When she shrugged the garment off, she discovered the blood had soaked straight through to her underthings, both bra and panties mottled with bright red spots, vivid against the white silk. Purdey made an executive decision that they were going to have to go as well. She promised herself that if Gambit was all right, she would make him pay for some new entries to her wardrobe to replace the ones she’d lost. Knowing Gambit, he wouldn’t mind, especially if she took him along for the lingerie shopping.Clothes now in an untidy heap on the floor, Purdey stepped into the shower and cranked it to hot. Clean, cleansing water washed over her immediately, instantly making her feel more human. Purdey looked down at her blood-stained hands as if in a dream, saw the water gradually wash Gambit’s life force away, sending red-dyed liquid swirling down the drain. She rubbed her palms together relentlessly, keen for the whole ordeal to be over with, washed away, forgotten. She waited until her hands were clean before tending to her hair, combing out grit and bits of concrete that had tangled their way in among the strands.As she stood there, beneath the stream, the magnitude of the events of the day suddenly hit her, and Purdey found herself sobbing without even realising it, her shoulders heaving mightily, bent at the waist with one hand splayed against the tiles for support. She was an experienced professional agent, too seasoned from her time in the field, too solid and steadfast, for it to be hysterics. No, it was more of a purge, an unloading of all the emotions she’d been carrying since the whole ordeal began. Her newfound knowledge of Gambit’s historical trauma. Her fear that he would be recaptured, or arrested, or killed, or tortured. The idea of never seeing him again. The pressure of always having to be on her guard against everyone, even her fellow agents, lest she let some crucial piece of intelligence slip. The cloud of suspicion hanging over her head. The surveillance. Her family learning about her relationship with Gambit when he was on the run. Meeting Sara, the first member of Gambit’s family she’d been privileged to acquaint herself with, in such horrific circumstances. Being in the same room as Vanessa Thyme. Watching her stab Gambit. Feeling his blood slick beneath her fingers. Fleeing through the collapsing warehouse. Nearly being buried alive. The catharsis of burning the papers. It all crashed over her, as though a bulwark in her brain that had been preventing her from thinking about any of these events to any extent had suddenly collapsed, and Purdey had woken up to a mound of revelations that would have been a lot to process on a good day, but were absolutely shattering on a bad one. Exhaustion. That was it. She was overwrought, overstimulated, overworked, overwhelmed, and overexcited. She just wanted to go to Gambit and bring him back to the flat and cocoon herself, with him, for the foreseeable future. Somewhere safe—no demands, no threats, just them. Other people had been far too much of the problem of late. She needed to hibernate without any worries or cares for a little while, until she regained her equilibrium. But she couldn’t, not yet. There was a knock on the bathroom door. “Purdey?” It was Steed’s voice, sounding concerned. Purdey opened her eyes and found herself on her knees, directly under the spray, vision blurred by the water. She had no memory of dropping to the floor, or of being in the shower for so long, but she supposed her perception of time had become rather warped along with everything else.“I’m all right,” she called, voice scratchy, to allay Steed’s fears. The man was a gentleman, but Purdey knew he wouldn’t stand on decorum if he thought she was drowning in the shower, and Purdey didn’t need the embarrassment of Steed bursting in on her naked on top of everything else. “I’ll be out in a moment.”She didn’t really feel equal to seeing anyone after a good cry, but she hoped Steed would attribute her puffy, red eyes to the shower. She dried herself with hands that were almost too steady, and wrapped herself in a silk robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door before slipping outside, hoping Steed wouldn’t ask any awkward questions.Steed, as it happened, was on the phone when she stepped through the beaded curtains. She approached him warily, not knowing what sort of news to expect, and desperately trying to read his facial expression for context. Steed anticipated her hissed inquiries and held up an index finger to give her pause until he finished his conversation. “Yes. Yes, thank you. I’ll bring her in soon.” He returned the phone to its cradle on Purdey’s occasional table, then straightened up.“How’s Gambit?” Purdey blurted out, before Steed had a chance to say a word. “Was that Kendrick? Or McKay? What’s happening?”Steed held up a hand to stop the flow of questions. “Gambit’s stable,” he told her gently, then paused when Purdey sat down heavily in an armchair, faint with relief. “They’ve given him a transfusion, and Kendrick is clearing his lungs. They do think he took a knock to the head, but it doesn’t seem to be serious. They haven’t found any injuries other than the stab wound, and Kendrick doesn’t believe it hit anything vital.”“Oh, thank goodness,” Purdey gasped in a prayer of thanks. “Has he woken up yet?”“Not yet,” Steed revealed. “Kendrick put him under mild sedation while he worked on the stab wound. He went probing about inside to make sure nothing vital was hit.” He eyed Purdey meaningfully. “He’s ready to see you now, and he’s made it quite clear you’re not to see Gambit until he’s given you the all-clear.”Purdey scowled. “He doesn’t have a right—”“As the Ministry’s top medical man, he has every right,” Steed countered, “and given how many rules we’ve broken as of late, it wouldn’t hurt your cause to comply with one or two of the less-arduous ones.”“Oh, all right,” Purdey huffed, feeling some of her old spirit re-emerge after that cleansing cry. She flung herself out of the chair and stalked toward the bedroom. “I’ll get ready. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can see Gambit.”“That’s the spirit,” Steed praised, and then decamped to the kitchen so Purdey could change in private.vvvPurdey didn’t dress for Gambit, per se. Or at least, not in the usual sense of the term. But as she started sorting through her softer, more feminine dresses, she knew that what she wore could put Gambit at ease. If his first glimpse of her found her looking like herself, not even herself braced for action, but the way she looked when she was relaxed, off-duty, then he would know she had nothing to fear, meaning he didn’t either.In the end, it was a task that she set for herself as much for him. Going through the contents of her closet, laying dress after dress out on her bed, she was perfectly aware that she was using it as a distraction, a device to preoccupy her overfull mind as it continued to process the enormity of what had gone on in the past few weeks. But as she got stuck into it, what had started as a simple act of preoccupation turned into an in-depth endeavour that served as a means by which to sort through her own emotions along with the clothes. It quickly became clear to her that any rationale for wearing—or not wearing—something that she might attribute to Gambit applied to her as well. Should she wear red? No. She thrust anything in a crimson shade aside as though it might burn her. She’d worn enough red today, courtesy of Gambit’s blood. Even something coloured with dye was too similar to have her contemplate donning it again. Black was definitely out, too—what would Gambit think if he woke up and she looked as though she were dressed for his funeral? Green seemed too virulent, reminded her too much of illness in her reduced state, and given Gambit’s aversion to hospitals, she didn’t want to give him more reasons to dwell on sickness and infirmity. Yellow and orange were too overpowering for how fragile Purdey herself felt, and she doubt Gambit would appreciate the jolt to his retinas, either. Anything in the grey, tan, or neutrals family had military connotations which, given that Gambit had acquired the papers in the course of a military mission gone wrong, didn’t feel appropriate, and purple reminded her uncomfortably of a hospital room she’d briefly occupied as a child after she’d broken her leg. And then there was white. Purdey froze, clutching an ivory summer dress with a tulle skirt. White. Bridal white. Instantly, her mind flashed back to the scene outside the warehouse, and Gambit, trying so hard to be brave, asking her a question with monumental implications and the same clear-eyed, heart in hand, honesty he’d always treated her with. A question that she’d answered in the affirmative, and meant it. She still meant it, she realised, staring transfixed at the dress. Meant it with an almost visceral ache in her heart. But not at the price of Gambit’s health. If he woke up and thought she was giving him a fantastically unsubtle hint…well, she didn’t want Gambit to feel pressured to make good on his offer right away, even if she wasn’t in any doubt as to his sincerity in posing the question.Not white, then.That left her with pink and blue, both perfectly suitable, but Purdey opted for blue. It seemed optimistic without being overpowering, and Gambit has always said that it brought out her eyes. She put on a plain, short-sleeved, sky-blue example and regarded herself in the mirror, willing herself not to see the blood-soaked spectre from before. Her eye caught the lengthening shadows through the window reflected in the corner of the glass, and reminded her that it was getting late. Fashion therapy session over, she hurried out to meet Steed. A little while later, at the Ministry’s medical wing, she mused that, while she hadn’t yet had a chance to test the therapeutic effects of her wardrobe on Gambit, it certainly wasn’t having a tranquilizing effect on Dr. James Kendrick.“If you’d asked me before today to name my most recalcitrant patient,” the good doctor grumbled, stripping off his gloves, “I would have said Gambit, but today you’re making him look about as difficult to handle as a lump of putty.”“Well, he is unconscious at the moment,” Purdey pointed out, squirming impatiently on the crinkly paper laid out on the examination table. “Which is why I’m so eager to get this over with. I want to see him.”“Yes, I’d gathered that,” Kendrick said dryly, shining a light in each of Purdey’s eyes in turn. “But Gambit will be all right, barring any surprises, and so, it seems, will you.” He clicked off the light and nodded, just once, in satisfaction. “Cuts and bruises, mostly. There is rather a lot of dust in the lungs, but your body is already clearing it out on its own. Still, I’ll give you something to help it along. Gambit’s already been treated, but we’ll keep it up for a period once he’s up and about.”“At this rate, he’ll be out of here before me,” Purdey sighed impatiently. “I’ve been here so long, I half expect him to come looking for me, rather than the other way around.”“I’m sorry that my usual method of making sure my patients aren’t about to die on me isn’t speedy enough to meet with your approval,” Kendrick grumbled, taking a bottle out of medication out of a cabinet and handing it to Purdey.Purdey took the bottle with a touch of humility. “I’m sorry, Kendrick. It’s been a very long day, that’s all.”“Never mind.” Kendrick waved her off. “It’s a doctor’s lot that no one is ever happy to see him. I’ll be content with the fact that you didn’t swear at me.”“That’s a depressingly low bar,” Purdey opined, sliding off the paper with a crinkle and pocketing the bottle. She fidgeted for a moment, then added, hesitantly, “Is Gambit really going to be all right?”“Barring any unforeseen circumstances,” Kendrick confirmed distractedly, filling in some information on a clipboard. “I’m not in the habit of giving false hope, not in this business. But toddle off and see him for yourself. I know you’re not here for my delightful company.”“You shouldn’t do yourself down,” Purdey said brightly, gifting the doctor with a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Thank you for looking after us. Especially Gambit.”“It’s my job,” Kendrick said gruffly, but with a touch of a smile. “Since you lot seem incapable of looking after yourselves.”Purdey threw back her head and laughed for what felt like the first time in a very long time. “I’ll pass that along to Gambit.”“Please do.”vvvSteed was waiting outside the examination room when Purdey exited. By mutual assent, they started walking toward Gambit’s room, located at the other end of the Ministry’s medical wing. “What’s the verdict?” he inquired gently.“I’m fine,” Purdey informed, somewhat impatiently. “As I could have told you without going through all of that fuss.”“Better safe than sorry,” Steed stated unrepentantly. “I’m sure Gambit will appreciate knowing at least one of you has a clean bill of health when he wakes up.”“Kendrick says he’ll be all right,” Purdey cut in, feeling worry creep into her consciousness. “Did you hear something different?”“Nothing at all.” Steed patted her arm soothingly. “But he was still sleeping when I checked on him a few moments ago.”Purdey took a deep breath in relief and quickened her pace. She was tired of talking about Gambit. She needed to see him for herself and draw her own conclusions. And, more than anything, to touch him.Purdey wasn’t entirely certain what to expect when she entered the hospital room, but she’d lived this particular scenario often enough that the image of Gambit in a hospital bed wasn’t an unfamiliar one. And yet, on this particular occasion, the breath left her body when she walked in and saw him, almost as white as the sheet he was lying under. She’d thought Gambit had looked as ashen as she’d ever seen him when he’d recounted his harrowing ordeal at the hands of Vanessa Thyme, but he was even paler now, the blood loss robbing his cheeks and lips of all colour, his hair and eyelashes shockingly dark in contrast. As Purdey stood frozen, stunned by his ghostly pallor, she sensed rather than saw Steed at her shoulder. “He looked much the same when he came back from Berlin,” he murmured, clearly noticing that Purdey’s face had lost almost as much colour as Gambit’s. “He was shot three times, after all. Even with a transfusion, it took weeks before he had colour in his cheeks and his eyes brightened up. I expect he’ll bounce back rather more quickly this time.”“He’d better,” Purdey asserted, snapping out her trance and moving to his bedside to take his hand. “He owes me a night out after everything that’s happened.” Her brave words were undercut by the way she squeezed that hand, then pressed it to her lips before sitting down. Gambit didn’t stir, and Purdey looked worriedly at the bladder dangling on a stand beside the bed, which contained the last of the blood trickling through the IV and into him. “He’ll be all right,” she said softly, more to herself than Steed.Steed watched her conduct her vigil for a moment, then decided it was high time to give her some privacy. He cleared his throat delicately. “Have you eaten anything today?”“Not very much,” Purdey admitted, never tearing her gaze away from Gambit. “I haven’t had the appetite to force anything down.” Steed frowned. Purdey’s appetite was remarkably resilient, and her refusal to accept food was a better indicator than any as to her state of mind. “I could bring you something,” he offered.“I don’t want anything,” Purdey demurred softly. “Thank you, Steed.”Steed decided to change tack. “Well, then, you won’t mind if I get something for myself?”Purdey glanced distractedly over her shoulder at him. “Of course not. I’ll be here.”“I’ll see you later then.” Steed slipped out quietly, already planning to bring Purdey something. The instant Gambit awoke, her stomach was going to remind her just how hungry she was. With Steed gone, Purdey sat still as a statue, eyes unwavering from the monitor that showed her the steady, reassuring blip of Gambit’s vitals. “You’ll be all right,” she repeated to Gambit’s silent form. A cough sounded behind her. “Back already, Steed?” she said automatically, not bothering to identify the visitor.“No, miss.” It was a woman’s voice, and Purdey twisted around to find a nurse standing there with a cart and regarding her with interest. “I’m here to check for and clean up any dust that might still be on Mr. Gambit. Dr. Kendrick and his team had to work very quickly when he was admitted, and he wants to be certain that nothing was missed.” She swept a hand toward the door. “If you’d care to wait outside, I won’t be a moment.”“I’ll do it,” Purdey cut in, already rising to her feet, hand outstretched.The nurse frowned disapprovingly. “That’s not really proper procedure.”“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Purdey cut in, letting the woman draw her own conclusions. “You can ask Dr. Kendrick if it’s all right. I’ve only just been to see him.The nurse looked uncertain, but recognised that Purdey was unrelenting, and gave in. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she temporised. “If you’ll just wait…”Purdey waited until she left before she completely disregarded the woman’s instructions, took the sponge, and dipped it in the water. After the day she’d had, she wasn’t about to wait for permission from the nurse of all people to care for Gambit. Her desire to do the job herself wasn’t solely to keep another woman from running her hands all over Gambit’s body, although she wasn’t terribly keen on that idea, either. But, more importantly, it gave her something to do, something that would help Gambit, and for a woman who had never been content to sit on the sidelines, it was a godsend. Purdey started with Gambit’s face and went to work, hoping she wouldn’t wake him, and hoping she would at the same time. She wiped some dust away from his cheek, the sponge coming away with a smudge of white, but the flesh she’d revealed looked hardly less pale than it had with the coating. Purdey swallowed hard and kept working. She’d told Gambit, once upon a time, that she wasn’t the fainting kind. She didn’t mean to start now.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit regained consciousness through a fog that was periodically broken up by fuzzy, blurred light--bright and penetrating, beating down on him from above, too close for comfort. He scrunched up his eyes and tried to turn away, but his side protested violently when he put his weight on it. He sucked air in sharply through his teeth and rolled onto his back. Everything ached, including his arms when he moved them to nurse the stiches on his side. His eyes were about the only part of him that didn’t hurt when he moved them, at least when he wasn’t being blinded. If only someone would switch that damn light off... It took time, and much swearing internally, but eventually, Gambit’s eyes adjusted to the point that he could open them and keep them open. Things weren’t too clear at first, a wash of blurred shapes akin to an impressionist painting, but the longer he kept them open, the more the view began to improve. After much blinking and squinting, the fog cleared and the lights resolved themselves into a bank of highly-uninspiring, standard-issue fluorescent tubes. It was then that his sinuses picked up the unmistakable, and sadly all-too-familiar, scent of antiseptics mixed with the haze of unwellness. He knew without having to investigate further that he was in a hospital, which did nothing for his mood. He hated hospitals, hated being confined to a sickbed, hated their association with terrible happenings and the fact that being in one resulted in automatic entry into an unpopular club of human misery. But despite his unhappiness with the situation, the fact that he was in hospital wasn’t terribly surprising, even if he couldn’t quite remember exactly what might have happened to bring him there.He tried sitting up, and the familiar sound of an alarm going off immediately reached his ears, followed by an equally familiar voice. “I shouldn’t do that if I were you.”Gambit turned his head slightly to his left, and immediately regretted it as pain flashed behind his eyes, but not before he caught sight of John Steed sitting at his bedside, perusing a copy of the Times. “You earned more than your share of bruises when half that building fell on you,” Steed went on, and Gambit heard the rustle of newsprint as Steed folded his paper for the time being.Gambit eased himself back onto the bed and the pain mercifully ceased. “Feels like it was the whole building,” he mumbled thickly. “It very nearly was,” Steed confided, deadly serious. “I found you under a rather conveniently-placed fallen beam that that protected you from the worst of it. You may feel as though you inhaled rather a large quantity of plaster dust.”Gambit’s eyes squeezed shut as the last few moments before everything went black suddenly came rushing back. At the same time, as if his body had only just noticed the irritation in his chest area upon Steed’s mentioning it, Gambit began to cough violently, doubling up in spite of the sharp stab of pain from the stitches in his side and the renewed protest of the alarms on his various monitors. He hacked for a full half a minute, though to his lungs it seemed longer, and collapsed back onto the pillows exhausted and breathless, with blackness from the prolonged lack of air dancing at the edges of his vision. When his eyes cleared, he found Steed standing at his bedside, holding a glass of water with a straw in it. “Here you are,” he said, with the gentle authority of a parent suggesting a course of action for a belligerent child’s own good. “It’ll rinse your throat out,” he added, as Gambit took the glass and manipulated the straw to allow him to drink without spilling or sitting up. “You’ve had oxygen and might feel some discomfort for a little while, but Kendrick is confident that once you’re up and around your body will expel whatever might be left in there on its own, especially with a course of expectorant to help things along.”“Thanks,” Gambit croaked, both for the explanation and the water. He took a few soothing, refreshing sips and then settled back, exhausted, against the pillows. “I knew there was a reason I never became a smoker,” he added wryly, eyes fluttering closed wearily.Steed released a bark of laughter as he relieved him of the glass and returned it to the nightstand. “I won’t argue with you on that front. As I’ve said several times, I only carry cigarettes for my friends who foolishly partake.”“But you keep the cigars for yourself.” Gambit had one eye open, and it was dancing merrily with triumphant good humour at having Steed dead to rights, a state of affairs that was relatively rare and therefore to be savoured. “I only smoke them in very select company,” Steed refuted mildly, secretly glad that Gambit was up to giving him a hard time. It meant he was going to be all right. Even Gambit wouldn’t make quips on his death bed.“Which doesn’t include me,” Gambit parried, breaking off briefly to cough again, but his lungs already sounded clearer than they had during the first round of coughing, Steed noted optimistically.“I can assure you there was no offence intended,” he declared, settling onto the edge of Gambit’s hospital bed. “I didn’t want to invite you for fear of putting you in the difficult position of having to refuse my hospitality.”“Or to keep me from being a witness,” Gambit said knowingly. “You old hypocrite. You used to smoke all the time in the sixties. I’ve read the case reports.”“Only for undercover purposes, I assure you,” Steed defended, but the small smile playing over his lips unquestionably revealed his guilt.“I’ll have to remember that excuse the next time Purdey catches me doing something she doesn’t like,” Gambit chuckled, then paled noticeably as the woman’s name reminded his still-addled brain that she’d shared the perilous situation that had landed him in the hospital bed in the first place. “Purdey!” he exclaimed, eyes wide with panic. He looked desperately at Steed. “Is Purdey okay?” he asked in alarm, urgently attempting to sit up once more and earning more alarms from the machines and coughs from deep in his chest for his troubles.“Purdey’s fine,” Steed soothed, leaning forward to grasp Gambit’s shoulder and gently press him back against the pillows. “Her most pressing concern is worrying after you.”“She wasn’t injured?” Gambit pressed, eyeing Steed suspiciously. “If something has happened to her, Steed, don’t hold back. It won’t stop me from worrying.”“Purdey is fine,” Steed repeated, lightly thumping the mattress for emphasis. “Cuts and bruises and a lungful of plaster dust, but nothing more. Even your gallant attempt to shield her from being crushed, while admirable, turned out to be unnecessary. The beam landed to protect you both rather than crush you, so the most she needed saving from were a few bits and pieces of rubble.”“And me crushing the life out of her by lying on top of her like a dead weight,” Gambit added bitterly in self-recrimination, passing a weary, disconsolate hand over his forehead. “What was I thinking?”“In the split-second you had at your disposal before the whole roof came down on you, I expect you were thinking very little,” Steed opined, and then at Gambit’s wince at admonishment for his own thoughtlessness, added, “except about Purdey’s safety.” Gambit peered out at Steed from between his fingers, and earned a good-humoured chuckle from the man at his trepidation. “You’d been stabbed—” He tapped lightly on Gambit’s stitches, earning another wince for an entirely different reason. “--and were losing rather a lot of blood. No one could have blamed you for not being able to think of anything at all, aside from perhaps your own survival. The fact that you were looking out for Purdey’s well-being instead is admirable, if rather hard on yourself, in every sense of the word.” He titled his head to one side and regarded Gambit inquisitively. “I’m not entirely certain where you developed this masochistic streak, but if it was under my watch, then I do apologise.”Gambit allowed himself a crooked grin, which told Steed that is reassurances were working. “Purdey’s hypothesis is that I was born with it, and I know better than to argue with her, so that’s one sin you can exculpate yourself from.”“Phew.” Steed executed a pantomime brow wipe. “I thought I might be in trouble.”“With Purdey in the equation, you still might be,” Gambit quipped mischievously.Steed arched an alarmed eyebrow. “What on earth for?”Gambit shrugged as best he could from his reclined position. “With Purdey, who knows? You’ll have to ask her when she gets here.”Steed was still chuckling about that when the furrow between Gambit’s eyebrows returned. “If Purdey’s okay, where is she?” he wanted to know, expression turning suspicious once more. “Have you seen her?”“Several times in the last two years, but most recently less than an hour ago,” Steed said jauntily, fixing Gambit with an inquisitive expression. “Did you expect her to be tending your bedside?”Gambit flushed self-consciously. “Not expect,” he mumbled, “but I thought, maybe, she might have dropped by…”“And you would have been right, even more right if you’d stayed with that original thought,” Steed revealed. “She sat with you all night, dozing in that very chair—” Steed pointed at the one that he, until very recently, had himself occupied. “—and would not be persuaded to leave for more than a minute or two, until I finally managed to get her to stretch her legs with a promise that I would man her post in her stead.” Steed’s own brow creased, suddenly perturbed, as a thought occurred to him. “She’s going to be very annoyed that she missed your waking up on my account.”“I told you you might be in trouble,” Gambit reminded, and the two men shared a chuckle at the affectionate joke, until Gambit started to cough again. “So Purdey’s okay,” Gambit said to himself when he could breathe easier, eyes fluttering closed with fatigue as he concentrated hard on that fact, as though trying to convince himself of its truth. “What happened to the papers?”Steed smiled enigmatically. “I’ll let Purdey explain that to you. What I can tell you, however, is that Vanessa Thyme is currently laid out in the Ministry morgue.”Gambit turned his head so quickly that the pain nearly made him cry out, but he was determined to see Steed’s face to make sure the comment wasn’t the cruelest of cruel jokes. “She’s dead?” he exclaimed, not bothering to hide his disbelief. “You’re sure?”Steed’s nod was undeniably affirmative. “We’ve retrieved the body. You can confirm it for yourself once you’re up and about, but I can assure you that it is her, and she is most definitely not alive.”Gambit released a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. “So that’s it,” he murmured dazedly, too stunned to come up with anything more eloquent. “It’s over. Finally. After all these years.” Steed smiled in agreement. “It would seem that way, particularly since Purdey and Sara’s legwork was able to explain away your unusual movements over the past few years. There may be some lingering questions, but leaving that aside, I think you can safely close the book on that chapter of your life.”Gambit felt the tension leave his shoulders, the pillows swallowing him up as he went blessedly limp. “I can’t believe it. It’s been hanging over me for so long.”Steed patted him reassuringly on the arm. “In my experience, it takes some time for these things to sink in, but it’s always worth it when it does. I know that chapter of your life took its toll on you. This ordeal might have been unpleasant, but it might have been worth it. I think it’ll do you a world of good moving forward.”“Yeah.” Gambit was still virtually speechless, almost hypnotised by the glow of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. “Thanks, Steed. For everything, including listening to me back in 1975, when we were locked up in the dark.”“My pleasure,” Steed replied sincerely. “I’m quite pleased it’s all worked out as it has. It’s very difficult to find good friends and partners, and I don’t relish having to replace them. Speaking of which, Purdey will be very annoyed that not only wasn’t she here when you woke up, but that I was the one who gave you the news. I think she was rather looking forward to telling you herself. Perhaps that was why she was very reluctant to abandon her post, but I thought she ought to take a walk. Even though I promised to stand guard, I had to steer her out the door myself.”“I’m surprised your back is still intact,” Gambit observed wryly. Steed chuckled. “I suspect I’m not out of the woods yet. My timing in talking her into a reprieve has left much to be desired.”“I thought two gentlemen would know better than to talk about a lady behind her back.” Both Gambit and Steed looked around in surprise to find Purdey leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “It’s not our fault you mislabelled us,” Gambit managed, willing his voice not to tremble with shock at the news about Vanessa as Purdey sauntered over to join them. “It’s very encouraging to hear that your incisiveness has survived this ordeal intact,” Steed observed, smiling at each of his colleagues in turn before rising to his feet. “And now that you’ve returned, my dear, I think I’ll take this opportunity to stretch my legs.” He looked at Gambit and added, “I’ll see you later.”Purdey and Gambit exchanged a look as Steed subtly excused himself, giving them the space they needed without being asked or even acknowledging that was what he was doing. It was classic Steed, and somehow more reassuring for it. Once the door had closed behind him, Purdey finally settled onto the edge of Gambit’s bed, reached up to stroke his hair back from his forehead. Gambit sighed and leaned into her touch. He was tired and sore, but he’d felt worse. At least he knew he was alive, and everything in his body was still working, more or less.And Purdey was there. That was the best part.“Back in the Ministry’s medical wing again,” he observed, attempting to inject some, admittedly shaky, humour into the proceedings.“Well, you are a regular customer. It wouldn’t be right to take you anywhere else, since you seem so attached to the place,” Purdey quipped, taking her cue and keeping up the banter to defuse the intensity of the emotions crackling between them.“I wish I wasn’t,” Gambit said unenthusiastically, then eyed Purdey, who was running a finger along his chin, remarkably smooth after more than a day without shaving. “How long have I been asleep?”“About fifteen hours,” Purdey informed. “Although some of that’s probably due to the sedative Kendrick gave you when he checked you over. The rest he put down to exhaustion.”“Was he on shaving duty, too?” Gambit queried, feeling Purdey’s fingertip travel over his skin.“That was me,” Purdey supplied with a grin. “I wasn’t going to let any of those pretty young nurses you’re so fond of anywhere near that chin. And I managed to be gentle around the bruises.”“I’d rather have you do it any day,” Gambit murmured appreciatively, reaching out to curl a hand around her waist and pull her closer, partly to check her for injuries. Even with Steed’s assurances, he wanted to make sure she was all right for himself. He was relieved to find that, while she looked tired under the unforgiving lights, the parts of her he could see looked otherwise unharmed, and his touch failed to cause any flickers of discomfort or pain across her lovely features. “Have you slept at all since you found me?”“Not at first,” Purdey admitted, “but when Steed put his oar in, they gave me a blanket and a pillow so I could doze in the chair.”“Could’ve gone home,” Gambit offered, hazarding a look at the chair. It didn’t look particularly comfortable, even with a pillow and blanket, and he instantly felt guilty for Purdey having to spend the night in it on his account.Purdey shook her head forcefully. “No, if I was going to sleep alone, I was going to do it in the same vicinity as you, at least. I’m not going anywhere, Mike Gambit, not without you.” One side of her mouth quirked up in a crooked smile. “How are you feeling?”“Like a building fell on me,” Gambit said truthfully. “Not that I remember the impact. Just struggling with Vanessa for the detonator, then running through the warehouse and trying to protect you while it fell down around our ears.”“Yes, I remember your self-sacrificing idiocy as well,” Purdey said tartly. “I also remember you giving me the fright of my life when you got stabbed, and then when we woke up, Steed was trying to keep you alive. I thought I’d lost you more than once!”“I thought I was going to lose you, too,” Gambit reminded, looking up at her with slightly-bleary eyes that Purdey belatedly realised were full of tears. “I set off the bomb to take away her leverage, and thought you’d get away in all the confusion. You should have just left me and made a run for it. If you’d died staying behind trying to save me, I could never have forgiven myself.”“Be that as it may, you should have known better than to try to force anyone’s hand with a damnfool stunt, especially mine.” A ghost of a smile appeared on Purdey’s pale features. Gambit chuckled and immediately regretted it as every bruise and stitch protested. “All right, all right, maybe I should have known you weren’t going to leave until you wanted to, even if the whole building was falling down on your head. It was a tight spot and I was improvising. Can we say we both scared each other senseless and call it a draw?”“A draw?” Purdey countered, outraged. “After I staggered out of that warehouse soaked in your blood?”“All right, you win.” Gambit took the hand that was now stroking his face and kissed it. “I’ll make it up to you as soon as I can stand up without the room spinning.”“I expect dinner at the very least,” Purdey said primly, as Gambit kissed her hand over and over. “But until you regain your balance, I see I’m going to have to come to you.” She leaned down until her lips could meet his, closed her eyes as she kissed him so her tears of relief wouldn’t drip onto his cheeks. Gambit, despite his headache, kissed back with fervour, raising one weary arm to bury his fingers in her hair. When they parted, he added, “Steed said you had something to tell me about the papers?”Purdey bit her lip and glanced over her shoulder at the door, checking to see if anyone might be able to overhear their conversation. Satisfied they were alone, she took Gambit’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “We took care of them.”Gambit arched an interested eyebrow. “What does that mean?”Purdey shrugged nonchalantly. “Steed took them, and once we were a safe distance from Larry, we burned them.”Gambit blinked in surprise. “Burned them?”“Yes,” Purdey said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.“Right there on the spot?” Gambit wasn’t sure what he’d thought Purdey and Steed might do with the papers, but it definitely hadn’t been that.“Don’t be ridiculous. You must have hit your head harder than they thought.” Purdey looked annoyed at the assumption that she’d do anything as daft as destroy the evidence in front of witnesses. “We went outside, away from everyone else, and burnt them in a barrel.” She smiled a little uncertainly. “I hope you don’t mind.”“Mind?” Gambit breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve been responsible for those papers for so long, it’s nice to have the decision taken out of my hands. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them after taking them out of circulation in the first place. I think I needed someone else to take the lead.” He looked a little worried. “You’re sure there were no witnesses?”“Just Steed,” Purdey said truthfully. “But as he was complicit in it, I don’t think he’ll talk.”Gambit let his eyes slide gently closed. “It really is over, then. Both Thyme and the papers are gone.”“That is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Purdey still looked uncertain. “When I told you I was trading the papers for you back in that cell, well, I thought we were practicing our telepathy. I thought you were reading between the lines, and that you knew I’d never let anyone have them if I could help it, not really. Not Vanessa Thyme. Not the Ministry.” Uncertainty turned to outrage. “You didn’t think I’d actually turn them over, did you?”“Easy, Purdey-girl,” Gambit soothed, stroking her cheek. “Your signal came through loud and clear. But I thought I might have to, in spite of your best efforts. I’m just relieved it all went over without a hitch in the end.”Purdey snorted. “Only you’d say something like that while lying in a hospital bed. I do wonder about you sometimes, Mike Gambit.”“You know what I mean,” Gambit grunted, shifting uncomfortably in his hospital bed. “Anyway, this is par for the course for me. If we wrote off every assignment that ends with me being laid up, we’d never have any kind of record to speak of.”“I don’t need to be reminded,” Purdey tsked, running her fingers through the mussed curls on the top of his head. “But I am glad it’s finished. For your sake.”“And I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” Gambit assured. “Or at least, not without probably killing myself in the process.”“Don’t even say that,” Purdey said fiercely, blinking back tears. “That was never going to happen. I wouldn’t let it.”“Not everything goes to plan,” Gambit reminded gently, giving her hand a squeeze. “You know that as well as I do. But I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you.”“I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Purdey said brightly. “You can start as soon as you’re out of that bed.”“Speaking of that, there’s one more favour you can do for me,” Gambit said tiredly, and Purdey could tell his strength was ebbing.Purdey cocked her head quizzically. “Oh yes? What?”“I want you to take me home.”“Nothing surprising about that,” Purdey quipped.“I didn’t mean that,” Gambit corrected with a small smile. “Or at least, not only that. But you know I hate being in hospital. Think you could work your charms on the doctor and get me discharged?”“I know you’ve had a blow to the head when you start asking me to flirt with other men,” Purdey joked, pushing his hair back from his forehead. “Only I don’t know if you should be discharged. You’ve been through an awful lot. I don’t want to wake up and find you’ve perished during the night because you let an irrational fear of disinfectant get the better of you.”Gambit pulled a face. “It’s not that.” Purdey looked at him incredulously. “Well, it’s not only that. Come on, Purdey-girl. Have mercy.”“I’ll talk to the doctor,” Purdey said eventually. “Against my better judgment. But I’m not promising anything. And I’m leaving you unattended under protest. After all this, I don’t know that I’ll ever let you out of my sight again.”“Suits me,” Gambit said flatly. “Thanks.”Purdey gave him a quick kiss. “I’ll be back soon.” vvvAs it transpired, even Purdey’s charms weren’t equal to the stubbornness of the hospital staff, who insisted that Gambit be kept under observation for another 24 hours to ensure the blow to his head hadn’t been more serious than they thought, or that some other injury didn’t make itself known. Purdey took the response with rather more grace than Gambit himself, but proved more stubborn when it came to the question of her staying on overnight. Despite Gambit’s assurances that he’d be fine and she could see him in the morning, Purdey refused to budge, opting to curl up next to him on the hospital bed. This led to more clashes with the nursing staff, before a détente was ultimately reached by allowing Purdey to have a cot in his room. That was why Gambit was now lying with his neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle, just so he could look at Purdey, curled up on the cot as if it were the most comfortable thing in the world, as she slept. Gambit himself was tired, but couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes. Purdey had been through hell and back the past few weeks, all because of him, and she’d been with him every step of the way, fighting at his side, for him. Gambit had always been in love with Purdey, but their latest experience had only deepened his feelings, and reaffirmed Purdey’s own for him. He smiled as he took in her beautiful, serene features, the gentle rise and fall of her chest, her slightly parted lips and tousled blonde hair. He was enraptured once more by her strength, her beauty, her perseverance, her intelligence, and pondered, not for the first time since they got together, just how lucky he was. With this comforting thought in mind, he eventually drifted into sleep.vvv“Are you ready to go?” Purdey asked briskly, striding into Gambit’s hospital room with a certain jauntiness.Gambit picked up his jacket from where it was draped across his hospital bed and started shrugging it on. “Just about. Are you sure I’m allowed to leave? Or is Kendrick bound and gagged in a cupboard somewhere, mumbling about needing more tests?”“Don’t be ridiculous,” Purdey tsked. “If I was going to waylay Kendrick, I wouldn’t put him anywhere as obvious as a cupboard.”“No?” Gambit arched an eyebrow as he straightened his jacket on his shoulders. “Where, then? Under his desk? Our special padded room?”“I’m not going to answer that,” Purdey said coyly. “It wouldn’t do to give away all my secrets.” She paused, bit her lip, and looked Gambit up and down. He still looked too pale and tired for her liking. “Are you sure you’re all right? I want you home as much as you do, but I don’t want you to leave too early and wind up back here with something worse.”“I’ll be all right,” Gambit vowed, which wasn’t a ‘yes’, Purdey couldn’t help but notice. “A few days in my own bed with you nursing me are just what I need.”“You do sound like you’re feeling better,” Purdey said wryly, admitting to herself that this was one battle she wasn’t going to win. “Should I get the car?”“Yeah.” Gambit’s face was grim, and his jaw was set as if for battle. “But we need to stop off somewhere first. There’s someone I need to see.”vvv“You’re sure about this?” Purdey murmured, regarding the white-shrouded figure laid out on the slab with more than a hint of trepidation. Even dead and obscured, Vanessa Thyme still made her uneasy. She could almost feel the woman’s malice radiating off her body, even in death.Gambit looked nearly as sick with anticipation as she did, but he nodded nonetheless. “I need to see for myself,” he said firmly, but his voice was hoarse. “Not that I don’t take you and Steed at your word. But even if she is dead, she won’t be dead in my head until I clap my eyes on her.”Purdey swallowed hard, but nodded. “I understand. You need closure. Do you want me to wait outside?” she offered. “No, I’d rather you stayed,” Gambit said quietly, voice shaking a little, then flashed her a quick smile to allay the alarm that flashed across her face at his tone. “If you don’t mind.”“Of course I don’t,” Purdey assured, taking his hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Whenever you’re ready.”Gambit squeezed back, took a deep breath, then nodded at the morgue attendant to draw back the sheet. Gambit wasn’t entirely certain what he expected to see when the cloth was pulled away. Part of him still wasn’t sure he’d believe Vanessa was dead even once he’d laid eyes on the body. Part of him expected that Vanessa would rise from the slab like a zombie, held together by grotesque stitches, body irreparably broken, but still capable of crawling toward him, dragging herself forward, fuelled by sheer rage and bloody-mindedness. He could feel his stomach recoil at the thought, a lurid image of rotting flesh and unearthly, jerking movements flashing through his mind. He blindly squeezed Purdey’s hand harder than he intended. He realised, distractedly, in the one part of his brain that was still capable of logical thought, that Purdey’s appendage was probably having the life crushed out of it, but if he was hurting her, she didn’t complain. Not for the first time, Gambit said a silent prayer of thanks for the fact that Purdey understood what he was going through, but he made a conscious effort to try to reduce the pressure on her hand.In the end, the reveal was anti-climactic, almost laughably so. What the morgue attendant revealed was neither horrific nor tinged with the supernatural. The figure lying on the slab was undoubtedly, irrefutably, mortal. Human. A shadow of what it had been in life. Gambit could still see, or imagined he could, the cruelty and malice etched across the features now in repose. But the intent behind them—the intelligence, the plotting, the capacity to cause pain—had vanished, evaporated into the ether. What now lay before him was a pale, broken shell, with features that had once been coldly beautiful, now rendered cold and stiff. She looked pitiful, pathetic, a wretch with so little connection to humanity that the only human being who could properly identify her body, at least in the immediate vicinity, was Gambit, a man she had tortured without mercy. It was a strange brainwave to have, that he was the closest the woman had to family, had probably spent more time with her in those hellish three months than she had any other human being. It was a sad conclusion to draw, but not so much so that Gambit pitied the woman. She’d made her own decisions, her own choices, had chosen her path without anyone forcing it on her. There was no way of knowing what kind of background she’d had, of course, since her name was undoubtedly a pseudonym. But Gambit hadn’t exactly had a rosy childhood himself, and he’d still chosen not to become a criminal, or a sadist. There was always an opportunity to choose, no matter what cards a person was dealt. Vanessa had chosen a path that led her to where she was now lying. And Gambit had chosen one that had led him to Purdey. And at that moment, Gambit chose to close the book on Vanessa, the cell, and the whole sorry chapter of his existence that had caused him and those he loved so much pain. He would always be affected by his experiences, but he would no longer be affected by her. Finally, finally, she could no longer reach him. He felt no more fear.“Okay,” Gambit said finally, releasing Purdey’s hand as he felt a certain peace wash over him. “Let’s go.”“Are you sure?” Purdey wanted to know, surreptitiously shaking the feeling back into her hand. “I thought you might need more time.”“So did I,” Gambit confessed, already turning his back on Vanessa, on the past. “But it’s over now. It’s time to move on to better things.” He eyed her meaningfully.Purdey’s face split into a brilliant grin. “That, Mike Gambit,” she declared, “is one of the most sensible things you’ve said.” She wrapped an arm around his waist and started helping him out the door.“Yeah,” Gambit agreed, feeling his spirit lift as he left the room. “I know.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They arrived at Gambit’s building, and despite his protestations, Purdey insisted on supporting him by placing his arm over her shoulders as they walked. Though he was loath to admit it, whether due to the fading of the adrenaline that had kicked in in anticipation of viewing Vanessa’s body, or the lingering effects of his injuries, Gambit found himself in need of the support.They stumbled none-too-gracefully into his flat, and Purdey walked them over to the couch, reached down momentarily to touch the button that retracted the bed. “Do you know,” she began, as the bed slid out silently, “I used to think this bed was terribly corny, but it does have its advantages.”“Yeah, but I chose it for fun, not recuperation,” Gambit grumbled, as Purdey helped him settle down onto the edge of the mattress. “Yes, I’m well-aware of its storied history, as much as I try to forget about it,” Purdey groused, unable to stop a small grunt from escaping her lips as the weight of Gambit’s body transferred from her own frame to the mattress. “I didn’t hear you complaining the first time you used it,” Gambit reminded, with a bit of his usual playful spark dancing in his eyes. “In fact, I don’t remember you complaining about anything at all. You seemed ecstatically happy.” His grin broadened. “Although most of your praise was reserved for me, though I’m sure you would have had something nice to say about the bed, too, if you hadn’t had other things on your mind.”Purdey could feel her own eyes dancing. “Bigger things?” she chimed in knowingly, but not without humour.Gambit snickered. “You said it, not me, though I’m having trouble believing it.”“I suppose it was only a matter of time before your corniness rubbed off on me,” Purdey sighed with affected weariness. “Sleeping with you must have only accelerated the process.”Gambit was grinning so broadly now that she thought his face might split. “You can rub off on me as much as you like,” he said smoothly, one warm hand curling around her hip. “But that offer was on the table the second you met me, not just since we got involved.”“Mike Gambit.” Purdey smiled and shook her head at his cheekiness, her usual instinct to knock his ego down a peg or two noticeably absent. It was hard to be annoyed with him, even slightly, when she was looking down at features that were still pale and drawn, in spite of the light in his eyes and the grin on his lips. She stroked his dark curls back from his forehead and tried not to think about how much darker they looked when his complexion was so alarmingly white. Kendrick had assured her more times than she could count that Gambit had had all the transfusions he needed and there wasn’t anything else seriously wrong with him, but the physical strain of the injuries he’d sustained in the warehouse, coupled with the mental wounds that had been reopened by having to interact with Vanessa, had left their mark, and she found herself interpreting his appearance in terms of illness, as though he’d been stricken and wounded to his very core. That, coupled with the fears she had been nursing about his safety over the past few weeks, meant that she was reluctant to let him out of her sight, even for a second. Right at that moment, even the kitchen, scant steps from where she was standing and where she had meant to go to get him some water as soon as he was settled, seemed like miles away. What if she turned her back and he slipped away, in body or spirit, never to be seen again? It was an irrational fear, to be certain, but one Purdey’s hyperactive imagination and sense of peril could not shake, no matter how much reason she applied to it.Those imaginings must have been writ large across her own face, because Gambit’s grin faded, making him look even more peaked. “You okay, Purdey-girl?” he asked, with obvious concern, thumb rubbing tenderly over her hip.Purdey laughed in spite of herself—and her anxiety. “Mike Gambit,” she marvelled, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’re the one who could have bled out after having a warehouse fall on you. And yet you’re asking me if I’m all right?”“Nothing I haven’t had to deal with before,” Gambit dismissed. Then, at Purdey’s sceptical expression, added, “Well, the stabbing, not the building falling on me, but I survived. I know I’ll be okay. It’s you that I’m worried about, especially when you still haven’t answered my question.”Purdey smiled wanly, still stroking his hair back from his forehead. “I’ll be all right,” she temporised, and knew the assurance hadn’t worked the second Gambit pressed his lips into a thin line. “When I’ve finally convinced myself that you are.”“Purdey…” Gambit looked weary and slightly sad as he released her hip to pat the spot next to him on the mattress. Purdey hesitated for a moment, but the beseeching look on his face coupled with the anxious way his jaw was working made her acquiesce before he wasted any more of his precious strength, though she could anticipate what was coming. She settled down beside him, couldn’t resist a wince of sympathy as he readjusted his position on the bed and pain flickered across his face as his stitches cried out in protest, even if the man himself didn’t. As per usual, he took his suffering in silence, which was what she was worried he was doing in the first place. “Purdey,” he repeated, composing himself and taking her hands in his, regarding her very seriously. “I know you’re worried about me, but you have to take my word for it when I say I’m going to be okay. What I’m worried about is you running yourself ragged looking after me.”Purdey tried to smile in a carefree manner to put him off the scent. “So you’re saying you’re worried about me being worried about you?” she said glibly, but for once, Gambit wasn’t smiling.“Partly, yes. But I’m also worried that you’re not worried about yourself. I know that Vanessa was after me, but you went through hell and back helping me fight her.” He leaned in, gaze so powerfully intense, so earnest, so deadly serious that she couldn’t look away. “A lot of what happened to me happened to you, Purdey, and even when we were on different paths, you went through things that were just as terrible as what happened to me. Hell, Purdey, the damn building fell on you, too!” Purdey bit her lip at that, willing herself not to fall apart right in front of him. “You’re one of the toughest, strongest people I know, but after what you’ve been through, you need time to recover. Let me take care of you, or at least spend less time looking after me and more time looking after you.”Purdey’s mouth twitched self-consciously. “I want to keep you safe, that’s all,” she defended.“You have saved me,” Gambit assured. “In more ways than you know. But I don’t feel safe if you’re not okay. If you won’t relax and take care of yourself for your own sake, then do it to stop me worrying.”Purdey grinned wryly in spite of the anxiety that seemed to have her heart in a death grip. “Now you’re saying that if I look after myself it’ll stop you worrying, which will stop me from worrying.”“I thought you might be more likely to listen if I used your own logic against you,” Gambit quipped, grunting a little as he bent to lift her legs up onto the bed and his stitches screamed in protest. “But it would put my mind at ease if you laid back and rested, maybe had a few winks.” He got to his feet and pressed gently on her shoulder to encourage her to recline. “I know you can’t have slept very well in the hospital. Those cots aren’t very comfortable. And that doesn’t count all the sleepless nights I’ve given you over the past few weeks.”“Someone has a high opinion of himself,” Purdey tried, but she couldn’t disguise the weariness in her voice or the lack of resistance from her body as she let herself flop back onto the pillows. “All right, I’ll rest if it’ll put your mind at ease. What are you going to do with yourself while I’m doing my best Sleeping Beauty impersonation?”“Have a bath and try to wash the hospital smell off of me without getting my stitches wet,” Gambit informed wryly as he got to his feet.Purdey frowned up at him. “And how do you manage that?”Gambit’s grin broadened a little. “Usually it involves sitting in a few inches of water with a bit of cut-out bin bag cellotaped over wherever the wound is, and me doing the best I can with a washcloth on my top half. If I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I might use a bowl and pour water over my head to rinse my hair.” Purdey’s face was screwed up in a way that suggested that she was less-than-impressed with this arrangement. “Don’t worry, Purdey-girl. I’ve got it in hand. I’ve had lots of practice over the years. Mind you, reaching parts of my back is still a bit tricky.”“I could help you,” Purdey offered, already sitting up despite Gambit’s hand on her shoulder.“Easy, Purdey-girl. You’re meant to be looking after yourself, remember?”“Oh, honestly, it’s a bath, not scaling Everest,” Purdey chided, shrugging off his hand and sliding off the bed. Gambit couldn’t help but be encouraged by seeing some of her usual fire. “Anyway, I quite fancy a relaxing soak in the bath after you’ve finished, so by letting me help, you’ll be ensuring that I’m able to do that sooner rather than later.”Gambit looked at her broad, brilliant, triumphant smile, and shook his head in resigned disbelief. “I should have known that you’d turn my argument back on me, even if I used your logic.”“It’s because you used my own logic against me that you failed,” Purdey said brightly, standing on tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “Come along, then. Now that I’ve thought of it, that bath is sounding lovelier all the time.” Her grin turned wicked. “Besides, I’ve been looking forward to soaking your head for years.”vvv “When I imagined you giving me a sponge bath,” Gambit grumbled irritably, cradling his side as he shifted his 6’ frame within the narrow confines of the bathtub, “I pictured it being, well, sexier.”“I’m terribly sorry,” Purdey mock-apologised, wringing out the cloth before applying it to Gambit’s well-bruised back. The beam may have saved their lives, but it hadn’t protected him from every piece of debris that had rained down upon them during their aborted escape attempt from the warehouse. Purdey had more than a few bruises herself, but they weren’t as numerous or deep as his. It made it harder to tease him for his comment, but Purdey prided herself on always being up for a challenge. “Should I have dressed more seductively for the occasion?”“You wouldn’t need to be dressed at all,” Gambit purred, treating her to a smouldering look, “if you joined me.”“It’s a nice thought for another time,” Purdey opined, though she couldn’t deny the frisson that passed through her as she met his eyes. “But there’ll be none of that as long as you have those.” She pointed her chin at his side which was, as Gambit had described, covered with a perfect square of bin bag that Purdey had clipped out herself. “If you pop your stitches, it isn’t going to be much fun for either of us.”“Definitely not.” Gambit shuddered involuntarily, and Purdey could see the muscles ripple all-too-well through his skin. He was still thinner than she would have liked, as though he’d been imprisoned somewhere that hadn’t fed him properly. She closed her eyes against the images of him in a cell, both imagined ones from his time in Africa and real memories of when he’d been shut up at the Ministry. She hoped that with a little time to recover, his body would be able to heal and regain its strength, and the ghosts would be banished in the process.“Anyway,” Purdey went on, determined to keep her dark thoughts to herself, “this isn’t a sponge bath. This isn’t a sponge.” She dangled the limp, sodden cloth in front of his nose. “A sponge is what I used to wash you when you were in hospital, so I have given you a sponge bath. You just happened to sleep through it.”“It would’ve been hard to enjoy it in hospital, anyway,” Gambit sighed, eyes fluttering closed, and Purdey could almost feel the weariness exuding from his battered form. “Now you know what you can look forward to when we’re old and gray. Years of helping me look after whatever’s left of my shattered body.”“Mike Gambit,” Purdey whispered, leaning forward to kiss his temple, “if it’s your body I’m looking after, I can’t think of anything I’d like more.”They both pretended they hadn’t heard Gambit’s sob for the rest of the bath.vvvGambit reached for the roll of tape in his first aid kit, the contents of which were currently spread out on the smoked glass of his dining room table, and managed, single-handed, to find and lift the end of the roll with his thumbnail, all while holding the lint to his stitches in place with the other. He pressed the end of the roll to the lint and rolled out enough to tape it on one side, tore it—still single-handed—then, with the lint held somewhat in place, finished taping it up with both hands, tearing strips of tape with his teeth with the ease and expertise of someone who had had a lot of experience with this particular ritual. Gambit had lost count of how many injuries he’d cleaned, dressed, set, sterilised, or otherwise treated over the years, both on his own body and on the bodies of others. He’d done everything from stitches to minor surgery in locales that ranged from tropical jungles to his own flat. He’d had training, of course—the navy, the army, and the Ministry all made their recruits take first aid training. The Ministry made its people refresh said training once a year, a class that Gambit diligently completed on-time and with flying colours, a fact that never failed to earn a wry comment from the course’s instructor, a certain Dr. James Kendrick, who couldn’t resist musing on the correlation between the man with the longest list of injuries also being the one who was first in line and top of the class when it came to refresher time. Kendrick had also mused, on occasion, that he ought to run the mandated regular physicals in tandem with said training, in the hopes that Gambit’s outstanding attendance record for the latter would improve his dismal one in regard to the former. Gambit didn’t entirely think he was joking, but thus far Kendrick had held off on making the threat a reality. It didn’t matter, anyway—Gambit’s proficiency for first aid had stemmed from a desire to avoid hospitals as much as possible, and given that he was still alive and relatively intact, his skills appeared to be fit for purpose. As with his karate, his training had been augmented by putting theory into practice, and, by engaging in a great deal of improvisation, he had done some procedures on the fly that never turned up in even the more advanced parts of the course. It was a point of pride on Gambit’s part—hard-won, but all the more sweet for it, even if some of the memories of the occasions on which he’d learned his ad hoc medical skills were ones he would have just as soon forgotten.Stitches cleaned, sterilised, and freshly rebandaged, Gambit cast the roll of tape aside and sat back heavily in his chair, turned to face the window to take advantage of the last bit of natural light filtering into the flat. The stitches, he’d been relieved to discover when he pulled the old dressing away, didn’t look too bad. He’d had worse wounds, and definitely uglier ones, in his time. This one wasn’t anything to write home about, at least to look at, the actual breaking of the skin belying how much it had bled. It definitely looked better than the body it was on, Gambit mused morosely, as he looked at his reflection in the window. Even with the limited, imperfect image on offer in the glass, he could see how tired and haggard he looked, hollowed-out eyes rimmed with dark circles and lines bracketing his mouth that accompanied the grimace seemingly fixed on his face. He didn’t need to see his reflection to know that he’d lost weight, or how pale he was. He’d tried to explain it away to himself as much as anyone else as a side-effect of the blood loss, but here, in the privacy of his own thoughts, with Purdey safely in the bath hopefully soaking her cares away, he could admit to himself that it was the stress and the shock of it all that was responsible for his ghostly pallor. There was only so much a body could take, even a well-trained, physically fit one. Being on the run hadn’t done Gambit much harm on the sheer physical fitness front, his usual workouts replaced by activity that had been just as—or more—testing than usual, but it had taken its toll in other ways that left him feeling mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. Despite the, not inconsiderable, musculature visible beneath the skin of his lighter frame, he felt as though he hadn’t an ounce of strength left anywhere in his body, as if someone had taken all of the stuffing out of him and left behind nothing but a painfully thin skin.He did have to be strong, though, if not for himself than for Purdey, to stop her worrying herself into a nervous breakdown on his account more than she already was. This was the one disadvantage of their relationship, as far as Gambit could tell. He’d felt physically shattered after assignments before—maybe not quite like this, but still completely empty—but he’d been able to put on a brave front and smile just for long enough to convince Steed or another agent, and especially Purdey, that he was all right until it was time to go home. Then he could retreat and admit to himself how awful he felt in the privacy of his own bed, with no one to notice that the mask had slipped and the pain was there, for all to see, written across his features in big, loud letters. Gambit could read them now, in every facet, line, and angle of his face, in the slump of his shoulders and the cloudiness of his eyes. There was no one to hide it from now. But soon Purdey would be out, watching him with those big blue eyes and practically vibrating with concern at every expression of discomfort he might make. For her, he would have to muster his strength and try not to worry her as much as possible. He hated it when Purdey was worried, and he hated it even more when he was the one who made her worry. He’d already caused her so much grief that it physically pained him more to cause her another second of it than to hide whatever he was feeling. Still, noble intentions aside, Gambit couldn’t deny, as he passed a hand over his eyes, that what he really needed was a holiday. A nice long one, with nothing to trouble him except making sure both he and Purdey were all right. Sadly, he didn’t think that, after all the antics they had pulled over the past few weeks, McKay would be too receptive to granting him and Purdey a few weeks of joint leave, except, perhaps, of a more permanent variety…That line of thought was interrupted before it could go any further by Purdey, who had reappeared from the bathroom swathed in his little-used robe and looking slightly pink. Gambit took a deep breath and pulled himself together, grateful that seeing Purdey alone was enough to coax a smile onto his face without having to work at it. “Feeling better?” he asked, as levelly as he could, hoping his voice wouldn’t give out or that the hand he extended to her wouldn’t shake. “A little,” Purdey allowed, reaching for his hand automatically, and there was something about the warmth of her skin against his that made him feel a little bit better in spite of his current misery. She pulled out the chair beside his and turned it to face him, settled into it, and wrapped her other hand around the first. “You?”“The stitches look okay,” Gambit told her, careful not to lie because Purdey would spot it in an instant. “And I don’t smell like a hospital anymore, so that’s a bonus.” He passed his thumb, as best he could with it trapped between her hands, over her curled fingers. “And you’re here. What more could I ask for?”It wasn’t quite the answer that Purdey had been looking for, and they both knew it, but, much to his relief, she chose to let it go. Maybe he wasn’t as good at hiding how felt as he thought. “You must be hungry,” she said instead. “I could make us some soup or something else that’s easy to digest.”“I don’t have much appetite,” Gambit demurred, squeezing her hand to take some of the sting away. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account.”“My account?” Purdey repeated, incredulous, before treating him to one of her signature toothy grins. “I’m absolutely famished. I was planning on cooking it for myself and offering you my leftovers.”Gambit threw back his head and laughed, and it was worth the ache of his stitches. “Purdey-girl, I’ll be happy with your leftovers anytime.”vvvPurdey startled awake with a jolt, breathing and heartrate elevated. Her eyes snapped open and searched the dark for the cause of her disturbance, finely-honed agent’s instincts reaching out into the depths of the flat and searching for anything and everything that might be unusual or a threat. Every sense bent to her will as Purdey engaged in the supreme concentration of a professional, focussed on registering every iota of data that she received, weighing it and sifting it for anything suspicious, and discarding it immediately if it turned up nothing of interest. She followed this process meticulously for several minutes, but, frustratingly, failed to turn up anything notable. No matter how hard she strained her eyes, no unusually-shaped shadows materialised in the dark. There were no ominous sounds, save for the usual white noise courtesy of London’s never-sleeping late-night traffic, and no strange smells that suggested drugging, gas, or any other of the tell-tale signs of sabotage or underhanded doings. All in all, the flat was singularly lacking anything unusual. There was quite simply no one there. Not a soul. Not even Gambit.Not even Gambit.Purdey turned over and frantically patted the other half of the mattress, found it achingly empty. She bolted upright, heart in her throat. “Mike?!” she called frantically, switching on the bedside lamp and casting around in desperation for her partner in all things. He was nowhere to be seen. “Mike?!” she screamed, not even thinking about how the soundproofing Gambit had installed in his flat to keep the neighbours from complaining about his musical tasted would save her from waking the whole building. Just now, if it meant Gambit appearing, she didn’t care if she woke the dead. The dead. Purdey felt her breath catch in her throat and her chest tighten. What if Gambit had never been there? What if she had dreamt the whole thing—Thyme’s death, burning the papers, the warehouse, the lot? What if Gambit was still on the run, and she was just here, sleeping in his flat as she sometimes had to reassure herself with the memories of his presence? Or worse, what if he was still dead? What if she really had witnessed his death a few months ago on assignment? What if she hadn’t been drugged to hallucinate the fatal shot to his head? What if the shock and strain of it all had simply driven her mad, and she had dreamt up a wild story in her own head to convince herself that he was still alive, sleeping in his flat while he slept in the cold, cold ground…It was too much. She couldn’t bear thinking about it, let alone accept it. She’d scream the whole building down first. Anything to fill the hole in her heart. “Mike!”“Purdey!” She almost dislocated her neck swivelling her head in the direction of his voice, but it was worth it to see him emerge from the corridor at the back of his flat and pelt flat-out toward her, eyes alive and alert for danger. She could see him scoping out the flat with a professional’s brisk efficiency, reassuring himself that there was no external threat. Only once he was satisfied that there was no immediate danger did he tend to her. “Purdey, what happened? What’s wrong?”She didn’t answer him right away, too intent on getting her hands on him in any way, shape, or form; on touching him in any way so that she could confirm for herself that he was real, not something she had dreamed up in her head. As he climbed onto the bed, her fingers dug into his shoulders hard enough that she thought she might leave bruises, but she needed to feel the muscles and tendons beneath the skin, the rush of blood in his veins from the fright he’d had hearing her scream and the adrenaline that had shocked him into readiness. He wrapped her in his arms in response, cradling her against his chest with a tenderness that would have made her weep if the tears weren’t already flowing freely down her cheeks from sheer relief as the scent of his sweat reached her nose and convinced her, along with all of the other sensations she was drowning in, that he was undeniably real.“I woke up and you weren’t here,” she sobbed, so far gone and so relieved that she didn’t even care that she was going to pieces right in front of him. Gambit’s words about letting him look after her must have sunk in, she realised, because her defences, shored up after her cry in the shower, had well and truly fallen for good now, and the pent-up emotions were gushing forth. She didn’t care about being strong; she just wanted to cry and be held by him. “Where were you?” she demanded, angry with him in spite of her relief.“I was in the loo checking my stitches,” Gambit explained, stroking her hair tenderly, and Purdey adjusted her angle ever-so-slightly to look at his side. She found the lint taped over it, just as she remembered, and breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t imagined it after all, any of it. “I had the water running toward the end and couldn’t hear you calling me at first.” He looked worriedly down at her. “How long were you up before I got here?”“Long enough to think that I might have gone mad and imagined that you were here at all,” Purdey confessed between gasps for air, struggling to get her crying under control enough to talk properly. “By the time you arrived, I’d convinced myself that you’d actually been killed back in September.”Gambit winced visibly. “Sorry,” he apologised, holding her closer. “I should have thought about how it would look if you woke up and I was gone, but you looked so peaceful.”“No, you were right,” Purdey sniffled, wiping her eyes with the edge of the sheet. “You should be able to leave for a few minutes without me falling to pieces. I…I don’t know what happened to me.”“You had a hell of a fright,” Gambit said flatly. “Several frights, really, throughout this whole year. Starting with when you got lost in Brazil.” Without looking, his fingers found the scar on her thigh where the tarantula had bitten her, a million years ago. “It’s been a hell of a year. Anyone would feel a bit wobbly.”“It hasn’t been all bad, though,” Purdey qualified, looking up into his eyes, her hand pressed to his cheek. “Has it?”“No,” Gambit agreed, leaning into her touch with a grateful sigh. “It hasn’t.” They sat there for a moment, silently basking in how lucky they were to have one another.“Please don’t go anywhere, Mike Gambit,” Purdey said eventually. “Now or forever.”“Purdey,” Gambit murmured, pulling her closer with a contented sigh, “you couldn’t keep me away.”vvvGambit watched the crack of light between his curtains make its journey across the ceiling and down the wall, at one point neatly cutting his bar—very different from Purdey’s barre, in function as well as spelling--in half at one point. He’d been awake nearly an hour, as far as he could discern from the speed of the movement of said light and the calculations he’d done in his head to account for the time of year. He did this often, utilising his excellent recall for written and visual information to pull up the charts in his head that he’d used as a young sailor in the navy to calculate everything from tides to latitude to time until sunrise. Said recall was a skill he’d possessed as long as he could remember, even from early childhood, when books were pictures accompanied by a jumble of mostly-incomprehensible words. He still regularly did calculations about what time it was or what latitude it was, partly to keep his math skills sharp or to pass the time, but also just for the satisfaction of checking to see if he was right, and finding that he usually was, give or take a reasonable margin of error. That ability to recall had served him well in the espionage business, allowing him to call up everything from contents of files to airport arrival times, to whole reams of text from the Ministry’s rulebook. That last one proved to be less-than-encouraging on this particular morning—he was vividly aware of just how many rules he and Purdey had broken between them, and the possible repercussions it might have for their careers. Purdey had faith that Steed would sort everything out, but Gambit wasn’t so sure. He had every confidence in the agent’s abilities, but even the legend that was John Steed couldn’t force Thomas McKay and every man above him to let his colleagues off the hook without even the smallest slap on the wrist, solely on his say so. There were going to be consequences for this escapade, Gambit knew, and he was fully prepared to accept them. He only wished that Purdey’s career wasn’t on the line as well. He knew that she’d done everything that she’d done for him on her own volition—a fact that she’d emphasised to him more times than he could count—but all the same, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for any discipline that she might incur. After all, if it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have been put in such a difficult position, one that required her to actively act against the interests and orders of the department, in the first place.From the way she was acting, however, any worries that Purdey might have had about what might happen to her professionally were more than overcome by her worries about him. Part of the reason that Gambit had been forced to calculate the time in his head was because he was unable to check his watch. The wrist and the arm it were attached to were currently wrapped around the sleeping Purdey, who was curled up in the fetal position and tucked as close as possible against his chest. Gambit had curled himself around her as best he could, despite the protesting of the stitches in his side, which had faded into a bearable, dull ache after several readjustments to his position. They had tried sleeping with him on his back and her head on his chest, but she had still jerked awake several times in a panic, terrified that he wasn’t there. It was only when they had switched to their current position, her surrounded by him, that she had settled down, rousing only once or twice more before lapsing into the deep sleep of the completely exhausted. Gambit couldn’t help but wonder how many fitful nights she had had since they were separated by his fleeing arrest, how many times she had woken up looking for him, only to remember that he was gone. It was at times like these that he was vividly reminded that Purdey had already lost one man she loved—her father—to the espionage business, and that her fear of losing another one had kept her from taking the plunge with him. She’d since realised that not loving him and losing him would be no easier—even more difficult—than loving him and losing him, but that didn’t mean that the idea of losing him didn’t terrify her. And this particular ordeal had been much more harrowing than one of their usual assignments. No wonder Purdey was struggling to regain her equilibrium and desperate to protect him and keep him safe.“Mike…?” Purdey mumbled drowsily, rousing as if on cue. Despite still being half-asleep and having her eyes closed, she stretched a hand up to cup the back of his head, fingers burying themselves in the dark curls to reassure herself that he was there.“I’m here,” Gambit reassured, rubbing her back with the hand curled around her, hoping that his touch would stave off another panicked awakening with her nightmares taking the place of reality.Something must have reassured her, whether it was the sound of his voice or his touch, because Purdey didn’t thrash awake in a panic. Instead, she snuggled closer, burying her nose in the spot where his neck met his shoulder, and breathed deeply of his scent, sighing contentedly as she exhaled. “What time is it?” she murmured thickly, still somewhat somnolent.“About eight,” Gambit replied, going off his earlier estimation rather than pull his hand away to check the time. Purdey seemed to be all right, but Gambit wasn’t going to risk withdrawing his support too soon and frightening her as a result. “Are you going to work?”Purdey’s snort of derision told him that she was more awake than she’d previously let on. “Even if Kendrick hadn’t told me to take a day or two off to recover, I’m not entirely certain that they’d want me there.”“Everyone always seems happy to see you as far as I can tell,” Gambit pointed out, grinning even though Purdey couldn’t see him with her eyes closed. “The male half of the population, at least.”Purdey blew a raspberry. “I suspect that interest will wane now that they know that you’re in the picture.”“It’s never seemed to make much difference before,” Gambit pointed out wryly. “If anything, they’ll want to see if they can tempt you away from me. Nothing makes the male ego more determined than a challenge and the opportunity to get one up on the other bloke.”“You’re not painting a terribly flattering portrait of your sex,” Purdey observed, pulling back slightly from the warmth of Gambit’s embrace so she could wrinkle her nose up at him.“Nothing you haven’t already worked out for yourself,” Gambit predicted, grinning down at her visage. It did his soul good to see her looking unimpressed—or expressing any other emotion that wasn’t panic or terror. “Don’t worry, Purdey-girl. I’ll be happy to fight for you—or let you fight for yourself.”Purdey’s scrunched-up features instantly blossomed into a beaming smile. “And that, Mike Gambit,” she said happily, leaning up to give him a quick kiss, “is one of the many reasons that I love you.”“One of many,” Gambit mused, as Purdey snuggled back into his arms. “What else is on the list?”“I’m not about to tell you, especially given what you’ve just told me about the male ego,” Purdey tsked. “But after everything that’s happened, I’m not letting you out of my sight. And since Kendrick’s left strict instructions that you be allowed to recuperate, why would I want to go to the Ministry without you?”Gambit smiled sadly. “That’ll keep us safe for a few days,” he allowed, stroking Purdey’s hair. “But even Kendrick can’t keep McKay and Larry at bay forever. Eventually, they’re going to make us come in for a debriefing, and there are going to be questions that they’re not going to like the answers to.”“I know,” Purdey sighed, tracing idle patterns on his chest with her index finger. “But we don’t have to answer them today, do we?”Gambit pulled her a little bit closer. “No,” he agreed softly. “We don’t.”“And that means, for today at least, we can just lie here, together, for as long as we like,” Purdey went on, also snuggling closer.“Definitely,” Gambit agreed, letting his eyes slide closed. In spite of everything he knew they’d have to face in the coming days, Purdey’s words made sense. Giving themselves permission to rest and recover and not worry about what happened next was just what they needed. The idea was so appealing, so calming, that Gambit thought he might even be able to go back to sleep. They lay in silence for a moment. And then…“At least, until we get hungry for breakfast,” Purdey added coyly. “I mean, if we are going to have to answer for our actions, we’ll need to keep our strength up.” She untucked her head from beneath his chin and smiled guilelessly up at him. “Won’t we?”Gambit shook his head fondly. “All right, Purdey-girl, what do you want for breakfast?”“Omelettes,” came the response. “Then we’d better get started,” Gambit observed, disentangling himself from Purdey as gingerly as possible to spare his stitches. “Let’s hope I have enough eggs.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Steed!” Purdey exclaimed in surprise when she answered Gambit’s door and found the senior agent on the other side.“Hello, Purdey. I thought I’d check on the patient.” He craned his neck so that he could look around Purdey and peer into the flat. “How is he?”“Complaining about being forced to sit in bed and recuperate, as usual,” Purdey informed wryly, but the smile on her lips told Steed that she was more than happy to endure Gambit’s grumbling, given the alternative.“Is that Steed?” came Gambit’s voice from behind her. “What does he want?”“To bring you dinner.” Steed lifted a hamper into view, and knew he didn’t imagine the way Purdey’s eyes lit up at the sight of it. “I thought you might save Purdey the trouble of spending the evening in the kitchen.” He aimed his dancing eyes at Purdey. “How does that sound?”“Heavenly. Come in.” Purdey couldn’t stand aside fast enough, and Steed was barely inside before the door was closed behind him and she was dashing to the kitchen for plates.Gambit was lying on the retracted couch-cum-bed, a book lying open on his lap. He was still quite pale, but Steed thought there was a touch more colour in his cheeks than there had been in the hospital, and as he observed Gambit watching Purdey rifling through the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen with a serene expression on his face, Steed had no doubts as to its cause. “A visitor from the outside world,” Gambit greeted Steed, tearing his eyes away from Purdey with difficulty as that worthy settled onto the edge of the bed, hamper in tow. He winked conspiratorially at Steed. “Do we have flying cars yet?”“You’ve only been in here for two days,” Purdey chided, trundling over laden with a small stack of plates and a fistful of cutlery. “You act as thought you’ve been given a life sentence at Borstal.”“Bet they let you get your own water at Borstal,” Gambit muttered, putting the book aside and taking the stack of plates Purdey handed to him.“I don’t want you to overexert yourself and pop your stitches,” Purdey defended, climbing onto the bed beside him and watching Steed unbuckle the straps on the hamper with a greedy light in her eyes. “It’s for your own good, unless you want to pay a return visit to Kendrick, and we both know how much you’d enjoy that.” She wrinkled her nose at Gambit as he handed over a plate upon which he had apportioned the requisite cutlery, then turned beseechingly to the older man. “Steed, tell him!”“Given all the excitement we’ve been having lately,” Steed began, lifting the lid on the wicker basket, “I think Purdey’s entitled to ask you to look after yourself, for her own nerves as much as your well-being.” He took a packet out of the recesses within the hamper and handed it to Gambit, trading it for his own cutlery and plate. “Those are the sandwiches.”“I know,” Gambit sighed resignedly, unwrapping the package dutifully. “I’m sorry everyone had to go through all that on my account. I just hate being stuck here, feeling helpless.”“Well, then, here’s your chance to do something proactive.” Steed handed off a container to Purdey. “That’s the curried chicken. This isn’t only a social call. We need to get our ducks in a row.” He looked sternly from one of his colleagues to the other. “Have you started your reports?”“I keep trying,” Gambit said with a sigh, arranging the sandwiches on the plate. “But I can’t work out where to start. I’ve been tangled up in the whole thing for so long. It goes well beyond what’s happened the past few weeks. But the farther back I go, the greater the risk that I’ll wind up saying something that contradicts what I said in the report I wrote for the military. And I definitely don’t want to say something that’ll get you two in trouble.” “Perhaps it’ll help to talk it through then,” Steed offered, balancing a small basket of strawberries on top of Gambit’s closed book. “There is going to be rather a lot of questions and we need to answer as many of them satisfactorily as possible. I suggest a council of war.”“Against our own side?” Purdey exclaimed around a mouthful of sandwich, then swallowed before continuing. “I thought we were past all that by now. I’m sick to my back teeth of looking over my shoulder because Larry or someone else might be plotting our downfall.” She stared down morosely at the cucumber sandwich in her hands. “It doesn’t do much for the ego. Or morale.”“But it is necessary. One’s own side is often the most dangerous opponent of all.” Steed pulled a bottle of champagne out of the hamper and examined the label with unadulterated pleasure. “Vanessa Thyme may be dead, but she caused an awful lot of trouble for Gambit before she went, and for us by proxy for assisting him. We need to ensure our stories line up, or even McKay will have no choice but to level some rather alarming charges at us.”“Oh.” Purdey slumped glumly, completely losing interest in the sandwich in her hand. “I’d sort of forgotten about the fallout. I’m just so happy Gambit made it out alive.”Gambit managed to detach one of her hands from the sandwich long enough to give it an appreciative squeeze. “Cheer up, Purdey-girl. Steed wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have a plan.”Purdey perked up instantly, big blue eyes lighting up. “Do you?”Steed chuckled at her eagerness as he held out the strawberries for her, urging her to take one with the smallest of gestures. “I ought to. I haven’t spent the past two days packing this hamper.” He assessed the spread in his hamper with a modicum of dismay. “If I had, I would have brought some more plates.”“I’ll get some,” Gambit volunteered, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed with Purdey’s cautioning yelp for accompaniment. “I’m just going to the kitchen,” Gambit soothed, one hand resting protectively against his wounded side as he stood. “I think I can make it there and back again without keeling over.”“I wouldn’t lay any money on it,” Purdey said tartly, watching his progress with a jaded eye to disguise the worried one.“It’s a damn sight better bet than those horses you keep foisting on me,” Gambit teased, opening the cupboard and taking out some more of his signature black plates. “What’s the first item on the agenda?” he asked Steed as he returned to their bed-picnic and settled himself gingerly back onto the mattress.“Well, as Purdey and your cousin have done an admirable job of clearing your name regarding your unusual movements and those highly suspect bank accounts and the like,” Steed began, taking the plates from Gambit with a gracious nod, “our job is made infinitely easier.”Despite Steed’s presence, and Purdey’s usual reticence regarding public displays of affection, Gambit leaned over and gave Purdey a quick kiss on the cheek, as her mouth was currently diverted by her previously abandoned sandwich. “Thanks for that, Purdey-girl.”“I hope you thank Sara as well,” Purdey reminded, trying not to blush upon seeing the small smirk that twitched Steed’s lips at the gesture. “She worked as hard to save your neck as I did, only she did it from behind the scenes. I don’t think I could have done it without her.”“Sara’ll call in a favour and get her own back one of these days,” Gambit said knowingly. “How do you think I would up doing all that ‘unofficial’ work for MI6 in the first place?”“While we’re on that particular topic,” Steed cut in, gently but firmly steering the conversation back to the subject at hand, “given that so many of Gambit’s, shall we say, ‘forays’ were sanctioned by other individuals with connections to the intelligences services, I suspect the recriminations for those particular extracurriculars will be minimal, particularly since they were on Gambit’s own time, rather than the Ministry’.”“Lucky boy,” Purdey observed pertly, voice slightly muffled due to her head being submerged as she dug around in Steed’s box of delights. She surfaced, looking infinitely more cheerful, clutching preserves, clotted cream, and a bag of scones.“Lucky girl,” Gambit returned, as Purdey laid her treasures out on the mattress with relish, before rummaging in the hamper and coming up with a small, delicate knife suited for the art of scone slicing. “So, if my hobbies aren’t the problem, what is?”“Several things, not least of which is the fate of the papers,” Steed explained, with a gravity that caused Purdey to slice her scone rather unevenly as she winced at the mere mention of the source of all their troubles. “Namely, how we disposed of them, how they were handled by ourselves and our various allies, and especially the fact that Gambit didn’t turn them over after he was rescued, despite express orders to do so.”Purdey laid the two halves of the scone carefully on her plate. “There’s very little we can do about that,” she observed sourly, dipping the knife in the cream and spreading it on the scone with exaggerated precision, which only served to emphasise how worried she was. “Even if Gambit wanted to turn them in, which he didn’t, the papers are gone, and there’s no coming back from that. Not unless he made copies.” She turned to look inquisitively at Gambit. “You didn’t make copies?” she asked, rather sharply, alarm creeping into her voice.Gambit held up his hands defensively. “No, thanks. One copy of those damn things was more than enough.”Purdey relaxed visibly, tense lines smoothing away from her countenance like a sandcastle being swept away by the sea. “Good,” she said succinctly, reaching for one of the egg sandwiches and pressing it forcefully into his hands. “You should eat something.”Gambit flashed her one of his lightning quick smiles, the sort that he used when he wasn’t actually happy with whatever was going on, but social niceties dictated it was the right thing to do. “That still leaves us back where we started,” he reasoned, hurriedly relocating the sandwich to a plate before it could drip its contents all over the sofa covering and his trousers. “From what you told me, the papers are just ash now. There really isn’t a way to put them back together again, not that I particularly want there to be.”“There isn’t,” Steed agreed, dipping his finger in the clotted cream despite Purdey’s hiss of disapproval. “Unless, of course, they never existed to begin with.” He reached into the hamper as he licked the cream from his finger, held out a jar of preserves. “I suggest the strawberry rather than the raspberry.”“Never existed!” Purdey exclaimed, food temporarily forgotten as she waved her knife about excitedly, but somehow her hand still managed to clamp around Steed’s offering. “But Steed, we held them. We saw them!”“Yes, we did,” Steed agreed, helping himself to a strawberry and dipping it in the cream. “But did anyone else look at them? Really look?” He was focussing intently on Purdey now, holding her gaze. “Miss Lynley, your uncle, anyone else who might have handled them--did any of them actually read the contents?”“Of course not!” Purdey bellowed, bristling while also doing a stunningly good impersonation of her Uncle Elly. “If they were as dangerous as Gambit made out, and from the little bit I gathered when I skimmed them before sending that package off to Uncle Elly—” She broke off as Gambit choked violently on the bite of egg sandwich he’d risked taking while Purdey was talking.“You read the papers?” he croaked, incredulous and horrified in equal measure.“Of course I read them,” Purdey said matter-of-factly. “I’d already heard so much about them from you, and I was the one keeping them safe. I thought that I had a right. You can’t fault a girl for being curious.”“So you’ve seen what’s in them?” Gambit went on, discarding the sandwich and gratefully taking the cup of tea that Steed offered, poured from a thermos that had miraculously appeared from the depths of the hamper. He took a drink to clear out his windpipe before continuing. “Purdey, what if Larry finds out that out saw them, that you read them?”“I didn’t read the whole thing,” Purdey countered impatiently. “Amongst other things, I didn’t have enough time. But I did read enough to come to the same conclusion as you, that they shouldn’t be spread far and wide. I only unwrapped them to take some pages out for insurance. The rest of the time they were wrapped up. I would have known if someone had gone through them. Anyway, if even you didn’t know that I’d read them, then how on earth would Larry find out that I had?”“Which rather proves my point, or the point I was about to make.” Steed held the basket out to her with one hand, refilling Gambit’s tea with the other. “Excellent work, Purdey. Have another strawberry.” “Then what,” Gambit asked patiently, still looking rather stressed about Purdey’s peek at the papers, and Steed recognised, much to his dismay, that the younger man’s strength for this particular conversation was limited and dwindling fast, egg sandwich aside, “is the point?”“It’s quite simple,” Steed said, with fitting simplicity, cutting to the chase for the sake of the flagging man. “If no one actually saw the papers—or, at the very least, they can’t prove that anyone did--then how can they prove that Gambit had them in the first place?”The light dawned in Gambit’s eyes. “I only told you and Purdey that I had them. For all anyone knows, I went back to Africa to try to find where I’d buried them, and failed. They were lost.”“But Vanessa Thyme would never have believed that,” Purdey chimed in, picking up the thread. “She might have killed you, or me, or Steed, or anyone to try to force Gambit’s hand, until he did turn them over. So Gambit pretended to have them so he’d have something to bargain with until he could work out how to stop her.”“And if she was going to believe they existed, everyone else had to as well,” Steed finished. “Larry, McKay, even Miss Lynley. Otherwise it wouldn’t be believable.”“A perfect ring of Gyges,” Gambit marvelled at Steed. “I can’t be punished for holding onto something I never had, anymore than you and Purdey can be punished for destroying it.”“Do you think they’ll believe it?” Purdey wanted to know, almost slopping her preserves onto her dress in excitement.Steed shrugged. “They have no evidence to prove Gambit ever had the papers. They can search for them all they like, but they’ll never find them. All we have to do is make sure that anyone who might have had occasion to handle the papers confirms our story that they never actually bothered to check that they were the genuine article, and make certain that our reports are quite clear on the fact that the three of us were aware that they didn’t exist, but feigned their existence for leverage purposes. That way, no one can be accused of holding back classified information from the proper authorities.”“Steed, that is brilliant!” Purdey crawled across the bed and threw her arms around Steed’s neck in a tight embrace, narrowly avoiding sloshing the thermos of hot tea onto Gambit’s thigh in the process.Steed patted Purdey’s back fondly. “Oh, I don’t know. Just rather a lot of experience at work.”“And modesty.” Purdey pulled back, smiling brilliantly, climbing back across the bed to her now-celebratory scone. “That’s that taken care of. What’s next?”“Well, returning to Gambit—” Steed began.“It all seems to be all about Gambit of late,” Purdey observed wryly, rescrewing the lid for the jar of preserves Steed had handed her and sucking a bit of strawberry jam from her finger. “Though with his ego, I don’t imagine he minds.”“Not the kind of attention I enjoy,” Gambit demurred tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Sorting out the business with papers had already drained more of his strength than he liked to admit. “I was happy being anonymous before all this kicked off.”“I don’t think you were ever anonymous,” Purdey quipped, raising her scone to her lip before fluttering her eyelashes at him coquettishly. “Not to me, anyway.”“I’ll take that,” Gambit said with a secretive smile, then sobered up when Steed cleared his throat, much to Purdey’s amusement. “What else do we need to work out, Steed?”“Explaining away the papers was the easy part.” Steed looked pointedly at Purdey to make sure she was paying attention. “Now for the bad news. Gambit evading arrest can’t be helped, I’m afraid, although we can frame it as a necessary evil to ensure the eventual downfall of Miss Thyme, which is also, rather helpfully, the truth. But I suggest we leave out that Purdey was the person responsible for alerting Gambit to his imminent capture. And I certainly hope, Mike, that you don’t plan to mention Purdey’s rendezvous with you while you were on the run?”“I think it’s safe to say I’d already struck that part out of the report,” Gambit said wryly, picking distractedly at his sandwich.Steed turned his attention to Purdey. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to be discreet in that regard as well, Purdey. You’re not to give them any indication that you warned Gambit or had any contact with him while he was on the run.” He paused thoughtfully and then added, “I should leave out that you’ve been making a habit of intentionally giving our security team the slip as well.”Purdey smiled unrepentantly. “It’s not my fault if they were occasionally distracted.”“Or deceived,” Steed corrected, and Purdey shrugged unconcernedly in response and went back to her scone. “As for myself, I’ll be similarly oblique regarding the part I played in ensuring that Gambit had advanced warning of his arrest, but I’ll be up-front about passing along Larry’s report. McKay should never have bowed to Larry’s request to keep it under wraps in the first place.” He shook his head in unspoken dismay at what he perceived to be an unfortunate decision on their superior’s part. “Purdey, I’d encourage you to be similarly honest about trying to clear Gambit’s name. McKay can’t punish you overly for attempting to bring some balance to the whole affair. Heaven knows Larry was no more objective than you.”Purdey seemed unfazed by the prospect, though her grip on her scone tightened to such an extent that a few pieces crumbled onto her plate. “If McKay or Larry have anything to say on that front, I’ll have a few things to say in return.”Gambit snorted. “I’m sure you will.”Purdey shot Gambit a look, but didn’t comment. “That’s everything, isn’t it? We should come out of this all right.”“Not quite,” Steed cautioned, even more deadly serious than before. “Even if we deny everything that can plausibly denied, there is no denying that Gambit did go on the run to evade arrest, and frustrated the proper channels of investigation. Just as there’s no denying that you, Purdey, were biased in Gambit’s favour and actively worked at cross-purposes with Larry’s investigation. And even if they can’t specifically prove all of the ways that you worked against your own side, Larry will certainly be able to make very convincing counter-arguments that you were, in fact, in contact with Gambit long before he turned himself in.”“There’s no evidence of that!” Purdey exclaimed, outraged, scone suddenly forgotten, held halfway to her lips.“But there’s no evidence that you didn’t do it, either,” Gambit pointed out grimly, paling noticeably before Purdey’s eyes, much to her distress. “And given everything they can prove we did do, it might be more of a case of guilty until proven innocent instead of the other way around.”“And all of that excitement aside,” Steed added, coughing delicately, “there’s still the rather pressing matter of your recent, ah, involvement.”Purdey frown deepened, concern heaping on concern. “Do you think McKay’s going to be difficult about it?”“I’m afraid that, coupled with your other misdemeanours, it may be enough to tip the scales in an unfavourable direction,” Steed said truthfully, in a tone that Purdey knew from experience meant he was very serious indeed. “I know he’s requested that the pair of you turn in your reports to him personally, together, and I’ve a shrewd feeling it isn’t for a debriefing.”Gambit was working his jaw the way he did when he was really worried. “Do you think I should resign and save him the trouble?”“Gambit!” Purdey whirled on him in alarm. “What on earth would possess you to say something like that?”“Realism.” Gambit looked meaningfully at Purdey. “We knew this was a risk, Purdey. That’s part of the reason we kept it quiet in the first place.”“Yes, but McKay wouldn’t sack us over it,” Purdey protested, looking imploringly at Steed. “Would he?”Steed sighed. “I can’t claim to foresee every move Tommy makes. But you must understand his position. His job is to have the best interests of the department at heart. If he feels the pair of you are a threat to its workings, he’s dutybound to act.”“Yes, but we’re not a risk,” Purdey protested. “I—”“Just broke all the rules to get me out of trouble,” Gambit finished tiredly, pushing his sandwich plate aside and pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes to stave off a burgeoning headache. “After I broke all the rules to get into it in the first place, including allegedly keeping classified documents out of Ministry custody, which he might believe I did no matter how well our stories stand up.” He turned to Steed, who worked hard not to react to how dark the circles under Gambit’s eyes looked against the shocking paleness of his skin. “I’ll say it again--should I resign now, or does McKay want the satisfaction of dressing me down first?”Purdey looked incredulously from Gambit, who reburied himself in his hands, to Steed. “I still can’t believe McKay would ask us to resign just because we’re involved,” she railed, but there was a sense that she was trying to convince herself more than them.“It’s entirely possible that he may not ask,” Steed warned, and Purdey looked triumphantly to Gambit as he surfaced from his hands. “He may make the decision for you by having you dismissed.” “That’s ridiculous!” Purdey exclaimed shrilly. Gambit’s reaction was infinitely quieter, but if it were possible, he actually got paler.“It may very well be, but that doesn’t make it impossible,” Steed said levelly, not wanting Purdey to take the prospect lightly. “I don’t think he has enough evidence to warrant charges, which is very lucky indeed. But it’s entirely possible he may see fit to take action of some kind. Reassignment is also a very real possibility. If not to another department, then to new partners.”“New partners?” Purdey looked even horrified at the prospect than she had at the idea of being sacked. “He can’t possibly think it’s a good idea to have us work with someone else, not after all the success we’ve had.” She crossed her arms indignantly, looked from one partner to the other. “We’re a team. I couldn’t possibly work as well with anyone but you two, even if I imagine your egos will inflate to ridiculous proportions now that I’ve said that.” She turned to Gambit, gripped his shoulder in a desperate attempt to make him see. “Gambit, you wouldn’t want to work with anyone else, would you?”“No,” Gambit acknowledged wearily, “but I might not have a choice. Anyway, McKay wouldn’t have to split us all up. He only has to take you or me out of the equation. One of us could stick with Steed.” He looked meaningfully at Steed. “That’s how it would work, isn’t it? He’d have to take us right out of your stable to keep us from being paired off by you behind his back.”“I rather expect he would anticipate that, yes,” Steed confirmed with a poignant smile.“It’s a bit like a professional divorce, Purdey-girl,” Gambit quipped sadly. “We have to decide who gets to keep Steed.”“This entire scenario is ridiculous!” Purdey cried, sulking spectacularly. “I am not going to let us be dismantled like some sort of Scalextric set.” She picked up the knife she’d used to spread cream over her scone, wiped a little of it off with her finger and sucked it thoughtfully. “We’re going to fight this,” she declared, jabbing the knife at Gambit for emphasis, causing him to cringe away as his stitches reminded him of his encounter with another, much sharper blade. “We are not going to be sacked and we are not going to be split up. You and I, Mike Gambit, are going to fight our corner.”“Are you sure you’re not just worried about finding out who Steed would pick if he had to choose?” Gambit teased as best he could with the little remaining strength he had, carefully pushing Purdey’s knife so that it was pointing away from him.“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Purdey scoffed. “Steed’s too much of a gentleman to play favourites.”“Are you sure about that?” Gambit turned a knowing grin on Steed. “Steed, ever given any thought to who you’d pick for your team if you had to choose?’“I’d always planned on leaving the pair of you to carry on as a unit in my stead,” Steed confessed. “That was my intention when I brought Purdey on as a permanent addition to the team. I confess this does rather throw a spanner in the works.”“Then tell McKay that,” Purdey suggested sourly. “And anyway, it’s always first in, first out. You and Gambit have been working together far longer than I have. I still don’t know when you’re practising your telepathy half the time. I can’t compete with that.”“That’s funny. I was about to say the same about your brain,” Gambit put in, then added cheekily, “And your legs.” “You also have nice legs,” Purdey said brightly.Steed held up calming hands. “I have no desire to choose between the pair of you. I put you together because your skills complimented one another, and I’ll make that abundantly clear to McKay. But the pair of you will, as Purdey said, have to fight your corner, because I can guarantee you will be called to the carpet and asked to explain yourselves and why you ought to be allowed to carry on, both as a team and in the department.”“Carry on carrying on, you mean,” Gambit corrected, earning a tsk from Purdey. “Really, Mike Gambit.” Purdey shook her head derisively and turned back to Steed. “We’ll think on it, Steed. Thank you for warning us.”“My pleasure,” Steed replied warmly, with a slight incline of the head. “And I’d like you both to know that, no matter what might transpire, you will always have my friendship.” Purdey and Gambit both bestowed him with appreciative smiles, but Steed extended his hand with another prize in mind. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d rather like a turn with the cream.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey walked into Gambit’s flat the following afternoon and nearly dropped the bag of groceries she was carrying. “Mike Gambit, what are you doing?”Gambit was in the middle of the flat’s living area, all furniture pushed back to clear an open space. He was dressed only in a pair of loose-fitting drawstring cotton trousers, midway through what was obviously a workout. He froze guiltily mid-kata, and turned to flash an uneasy smile at the fuming Purdey. “Hello, Purdey,” he greeted, in that overly cheery way he used when he knew he was in trouble with her for some reason or another, and was hoping against all hope that he might just be able to head her ire off at the pass. “I was, uh, feeling a bit restless and thought I’d get the blood flowing again,” he explained, sheepishly, sweat-soaked dark curly head already ducking as if in anticipation of having something thrown at it.“Flowing from where? The large hole in your side?” Purdey replied sharply, stalking across the flat to set the groceries on the bar before rounding on him once more. “I thought I told you to rest.”“I have been resting,” Gambit justified. “But I was going mad lying around all day.” Purdey snorted. “You’re definitely mad,” she muttered.“It was just moving about a bit,” Gambit grumbled irritably. “I also made myself a sandwich, but I don’t think I overtaxed myself.”“I’m surprised you haven’t popped your stitches yet,” Purdey continued tartly, unwilling to let the matter drop quite that easily. Her eyes fell to the lint standing out starkly against the glistening flesh of his sweat-covered torso. “What if you had and you’d started bleeding out, all alone? No one would have found you for ages.”Gambit sighed and flicked some sweat from his forehead. “Purdey…” he said tiredly.“Not to mention the fact that we have our meeting with McKay tomorrow,” Purdey ploughed on, anxiety written across her features. “You should be saving your strength, not wasting it.”Gambit started moving toward her. “Purdey…”“We’re going to have a hard enough time making our case without you wearing yourself out. What if you’d gotten weak and collapsed and hit your head? What then?”“Purdey!” Gambit didn’t shout, but raised his voice enough to get her attention, just as he stepped in close to take her hand. He held her gaze, eyes gentle, smile reassuring. “Kendrick checked me over an hour ago and said it was all right for me to take a little exercise. In fact, he more or less ordered me to move about a bit to help the healing process, and to coax anything up that’s still in my lungs.” Purdey’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “An hour ago? I was here an hour ago.”“You were here just over an hour ago,” Gambit corrected. “This was shortly after you left.”Purdey looked him up and down, taking in the slightly sweat-soaked cotton trousers, bare feet, attractively mussed dark curly hair, and naked chest. Her gaze lingered just a touch too long on the latter, eyes travelling a path that traced every curve and contour of his musculature, which, Purdey noted with approval, looked a little more robust than it had a few days ago when she had helped him wash. The fact that the bruises were starting to fade, especially the particularly deep ones that had been painted in livid shades of purple and blue that, in poor light, had reminded Purdey viscerally of open wounds, added to her more positive assessment of his well-being. Overall, he looked stronger, exuding health and vigour where a scant few days ago he had been brought to his knees, sometimes literally, by weakness, pain, and fatigue. There was even a light in his eyes that she hadn’t realised had been missing until that moment, a glint of mischief that, in the right situation, could be turned into defiance. She wondered if the workout might have done him some good, in spite of her worries, whether it might have reconnected him to a body that he had been almost in the process of losing, or at the very least divorced from, in an effort to detach himself from the pain it had endured, and was still enduring. She also thought, with a touch of internal preening, that her tireless efforts to foist food on the man, despite his protestations about a lack of appetite, were paying dividends, and were playing no small part in his newfound physicality. While still thinner than his not-particularly-heavy normal weight, the muscles beneath his skin were not alarmingly visible the way they had been just a few short days ago, and his ribs, which had stood out rather frighteningly when he moved in certain ways, were also better concealed. He wasn’t up to full strength, not by any stretch of the imagination, a state of affairs painfully reinforced by a single glimpse at the lint still taped to his side, now a fresh bright white that reinforced his assertion that it had been recently treated and redressed. But he did look as though he had some fight in him, after having so much of his life force drained away by the ordeal they’d endured. Given what Steed had told them only the day before, he was going to need all the fight he could muster. Purdey couldn’t help but wonder if that had been his impetus for going behind her back and getting Kendrick’s blessing to start working out. Maybe feeling physically fit would prime him for the battle of wits and words to come.That was one mystery solved. There was still one in the offing.“Mike Gambit,” Purdey began, crossing her arms expectantly. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that you managed to get washed and dressed, go to the Ministry, get checked out, return to your flat, get changed, and workout in the time I was out?”“No,” Gambit explained, with a small glint in his eye that told Purdey he was rather enjoying her incredulity. “Because I didn’t have to get ready to go out.”Purdey eyed Gambit’s trousers with less lasciviousness and more practicality. “That’s rather casual attire to wear to the Ministry, even for someone on leave.”“I didn’t go to the Ministry,” Gambit explained patiently. “I rang and asked Kendrick to make a house call.”Purdey’s eyebrow arched at that, intrigued and amused in spite of her pique. “I didn’t know Kendrick made house calls.” “Neither did I, but I couldn’t very well go to him. It’s too far to walk, you took all my car keys to keep me from driving, the Ministry won’t let cabs into the car park, and I wasn’t desperate enough to take a bus. So I called and he came. I think he was glad to get out for a bit, to be honest. I know how he feels.” He paused for a moment, and Purdey could tell he was debating whether or not to say the next words that came out of his mouth. “He, uh, also said that he knew I must have an ulterior motive for voluntarily getting a check-up, because I never have before. He’s always had to chase me down, even for serious injuries. I knew better than to lie to him.”Purdey twisted her lips unhappily. “Because you wanted him to approve of your ridiculous notion that you needed to risk popping your stitches to prove to yourself that you were strong enough to confront McKay.”Gambit smiled crookedly at her. “Am I that transparent?”“You are to me,” Purdey said bluntly, arms crossed.“And Kendrick, apparently,” Gambit supplemented wryly, with a small shake of his head. “He must have approved, though, because he wouldn’t have told me to exercise otherwise. After all the years we’ve known each other, I know better than to expect Kendrick to tell me what he wants to hear.”“And he knows better than to expect you to follow his advice, no matter how sensible,” Purdey cut in.Gambit actually laughed at that, bandaged side moving up and down with mirth. “True. We’re both too damned stubborn for our own good. We’ll probably hold out until one of us retires.”“Or gets dismissed,” Purdey remarked sharply, then instantly regretted it when dismay flashed across Gambit’s face. She opened her mouth to take it back, but his shoulders had already slumped a little, as though some of the air had been taken out, and she knew the damage had been done.“Yeah,” Gambit confirmed grimly, pressing a hand to his injured side in a way that suggested it was suddenly hurting him in a way that it previously hadn’t. Purdey, despite her concerns and a valiant attempt to convince herself otherwise, had to admit to herself that it probably wasn’t due to the workout. “There must be a hell of a lot of chatter going through the Ministry grapevine, because even Kendrick seemed to know we were facing long odds. He wouldn’t give me his blessing to work out if it wasn’t accurate, but I think he knew I needed the go-ahead. Hell, that’s probably why he broke with protocol and made a house call.” Gambit passed a weary hand over his still-sweat-beaded forehead. “He made some half-joke about this being the last time he’d see me for this injury, if past precedent was anything to go by, but I got the sense that he thought he might not see me again ever. Full stop. I know I dodge my medical, but I still see him in the hallway once in awhile, when there isn’t a convenient door to duck into and hide.” He laughed a little, but it was a sad laugh this time around. “I never thought I’d miss being chased down by Kendrick, but who’d have guessed he’d get sentimental about the idea of never patching me up again? We must both be going soft.”“In the head,” Purdey cracked, but she couldn’t ignore the awful knot that was forming in her stomach. As Gambit had said, Dr. James Kendrick was nothing if not a straight shooter. He wasn’t unkind, but he didn’t lie to his patients about the condition they were in. He was a believer in giving people the facts as he knew them, and the majority of the time, they were dead on the money. If his prognosis for Gambit’s career was anything like the ones he regularly doled out for his patients, then Gambit’s job, and by association, her own, was in a very precarious state.Gambit must have sensed her unease, or at the very least read her glum expression, because he brightened up, albeit with difficulty. “I’m okay,” he reassured, in a tone intended to buoy both of their spirits. “Really.”Purdey was eyeing him uncertainly, eyes flicking to the lint taped to his side, as though she expected it to blossom with crimson at any moment. “Are you sure?” she said finally, voice softer and more vulnerable than she would have liked.Gambit stepped in close. “I’m sure,” he said, just as softly, hands resting themselves lightly on the curve of her waist. “And I can prove it.”“Prove it?” Purdey repeated faintly. In such close proximity to Gambit, her gaze had suddenly become riveted by his mouth, and just how soft and pouty his lips looked. How kissable.“If you insist,” Gambit quipped, ducking his head to kiss her deeply.Purdey breathed in deeply, inhaling Gambit’s scent as her eyes flew closed, focussing on that ne wonderful sense as her hands reached up to automatically tangle in his untidy, curly hair. Oh, she loved the scent of Gambit’s sweat, musky and masculine and not the least bit unpleasant. Raw and unrefined, it soaked through even when he was wearing a suit, a wildness beneath the pinstripes that stirred something almost primal in her soul. Gambit always seemed to be moving, whether it was from fighting or running or working out, things she associated with him in the field. She’d added sex to that list recently, and it had only reinforced how much it turned her on, how much she loved Gambit when he was at his most relaxed and natural, when he let his hair curl the way it was meant to and trundled around in a casual shirt and trousers. Not that she was particularly averse to his body in a well-tailored suit and cleaned up to his professional best. But she’d seen disproportionately less of this Gambit in her time with him, and to her it was still a particular treat to have the more casual version at her convenience, an indulgence that she had yet to grow sick of.Gambit’s hands slid down her waist, over her bottom, to the backs of her thighs, even as she sucked the sweat from his lips, savouring his salty tang on her tongue. Without opening her eyes, she felt him press her against the counter, as if in anticipation of lifting her up, and Purdey sent her hands flying instinctively to stay his own before he got any ideas, saving him from the potential stitch-popping strain of picking her up. Gambit chuckled into her mouth. “Don’t think I’m up to it?” he murmured, mock-offended.“Yes. No. I mean—” She broke away from him with difficulty, tearing her mouth from his despite wanting to carry on kissing him with every fibre of her being. She was almost drunk with lust, she realised, when she settled her unfocussed gaze on him, watched his handsome visage dance before her crossed eyes while her blood pounded in her ears and her body fizzled with excitement. She wanted him desperately, not only because they’d been denied that particularly intimate connection for a prolonged period due to events, but also because she wanted to do something purely for her own selfish happiness, without having to worry about repercussions of any kind, without having to be so bloody responsible. And at that moment, immersing herself in Gambit and everything he had to offer felt like the perfect way to do that. She craved the comfort and reassurance of his touch, the sensations she knew he could elicit with it. But, at the same time, there was a little voice at the back of her mind that would not, despite her body’s selfish efforts to silence it, let her forget about his side or his only partially recovered, still-fragile strength. “I don’t think this is what Kendrick meant by ‘light exercise’,” she blurted out, words tumbling over one another in her hurry to get them out before her lips could betray her and seal themselves to his once more.Gambit responded with a throaty chuckle, which rumbled through Purdey’s body in turn, rattling her already shaky bones to the point that she felt ready to collapse in an undignified heap. “Knowing me as well as he does, that might be exactly what he meant.”“Be that as it may,” Purdey managed unsteadily, using trembling hands to grasp Gambit’s hips and move them that all-important, sanity-inducing fraction of an inch away from her own, “I don’t think it’s worth the risk of you popping a stitch, do you?”The cloud of desire hadn’t quite left Gambit’s eyes, but it was joined by another, much more melancholy look. “Purdey, where I’m concerned, you’re worth a thousand popped stitches and a hell of a lot more,” he professed, voice hoarse and deep from passion and emotion, but his hips stayed exactly where she had left them. Despite all of the other emotions churning through her mind in a delirious stew, Purdey managed a moment of admiration for his ability to regain his equilibrium after being wound up and then wound down again in quick succession, be it in a professional or personal context. More often than not it was Purdey herself who was doing the winding and unwinding, but not once in all the time she’d known him, pre- and post-romance, had Gambit ever forced the issue once she’d had her say in the matter. It was one of the many reasons she loved him.“I know,” she whispered softly, stroking his cheek with affection that she wasn’t going to be expressing in other, more extroverted ways. “But when on earth will you get it through your thick skull that I don’t want you to pop any, on my or anyone else’s account?”Gambit grinned unrepentantly. “I think we both know at this stage that I’m a lost cause on that front.”“Speaking of lost causes,” Purdey continued, taking the cue and running with it, “I think we ought to talk about Kendrick’s other prognosis.”Gambit took a deep, fortifying breath in through his nose. “Do we have to?”“We do,” Purdey declared, firmly but softly. She tugged at his hands. “Will you lie down with me? I’m feeling rather faint.”A flicker of a wicked grin cross Gambit’s features at her admission that she’d been affected by him, and she could tell the burnishing of his ego went some way toward compensating for the lowering of spirits he’d experienced the second she’d asserted that they had to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room. “If I say no, you can commit me now.”“Don’t tempt me,” Purdey countered as she led him across the living room to the couch. She kept a tight grip on his hand while the mechanism rumbled to retract the bed, and even as she started to climb onto the mattress, pulling him after her, intent on maintaining contact. Even though it was broad daylight, the prospect of having the conversation they were about to have was calling up her old fears about him dematerialising before her eyes. She rolled onto her side as soon as she hit the mattress so she could look at him, reassure herself that he was there. In profile he was just as gorgeous, stretched out on his back, enviably long eyelashes outlined in the daylight, contrasted with the attractively imperfect broken nose. Purdey could see the curls near his ear had tightened up under the moisture dripping down his forehead, jet black and perfectly formed. He had an arm tucked under his head to prop himself up, and Purdey could see the curve of the muscles above his elbow, the lean, lithe strength visible even in repose. Purdey looked at him in a sort of awe, amazed that she’d found him and still had him, that she could be granted the chance to fall in love, properly, with a man who deserved it, a man who’d known how to be a friend and a confidante to her long before he became her lover. She loved him so much it made her heart ache, and the idea of being forced to quit working with him, after all they’d been through together, after all their shared intimacies, seemed unbearable. She’d never known the job without Gambit at her side, at least in spirit, and she didn’t want to. He was her partner in every sense of the word.“Gambit, what are we gonna do?” she said softly, inching a little bit closer to his prone form, seeking the comfort only he could provide.“I have one or two ideas,” Gambit quipped, grinning wickedly up at the ceiling. “If you’re up for it.”“No, I meant about McKay,” Purdey said impatiently, idly running her finger around the perimeter of Gambit’s sweat-soaked lint. She’d need to change it later, she reminded herself--when she could bear to be away from him for long enough to raid the medicine cabinet. “Do you think he’ll really split us up?”Gambit turned his head to look at her, his stitch making it impossible for him to roll onto his side. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully, jaw working automatically. “Depends on what he wants to accomplish. Whether he wants to make an example with us or not.”Purdey frowned. “For not following orders?”“Fraternising.” Gambit rolled the ‘r’ to make it sound even more lascivious.“But people fraternise all the time at the Ministry,” Purdey pointed out in mild annoyance. “It’s never been a problem before.”“But we’re both agents,” Gambit qualified. “Not an agent and someone on staff.”“It shouldn’t matter,” Purdey sulked. “Other agents have been trying to fraternise with me from the second I joined the Ministry, not only you.”“All right, so it’s not only fraternising,” Gambit conceded, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly, and Purdey could tell he was flagging again. She’d wanted him horizontal after the workout for his sake as much as hers, but she hadn’t thought talking would say his energy quite so quickly. “That’s the problem. If we’d stuck with having a bit of fun, it would have been okay. But we had to push it that little bit further. We had to fall in love.”“Love, fraternising, it doesn’t make a jot of difference,” Purdey grumbled childishly. “Whatever they’re cross with us about, it’s still not fair.”“Who said anything about fair?” Gambit rejoindered wryly, earning a sour look from Purdey. “Anyway, we’ve been through all of this. We know where we stand. We just have to hope McKay sides with us.”“And if he doesn’t?” Purdey was looking at him intently, eyes burning into his soul.“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Gambit said with a sigh, lacing his fingers with hers. “But if it comes to one of us having to leave, I want to be the one to go.” Purdey looked at him sharply. “Why do you get to decide? Anyway, why can’t I be the one to leave?”Gambit laughed at the absurdity of the situation. “You can leave if you want, love. But you mean too much to me to sacrifice you for the Ministry. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything. Definitely more than this job.”“And you don’t think I love you more than the job?” Purdey looked mildly offended by the idea.Gambit shook his head. “No. But I think you’d miss it more.”Purdey cocked her head inquisitively. “And you wouldn’t miss it? The man who gave up motor racing and the army for more exciting work?”“I didn’t say I wouldn’t miss it,” Gambit corrected, taking Purdey’s scepticism in stride. “I said I wouldn’t miss it as much. Of course I enjoy what we do. But I’ve been on my own, on the road, pulling stunts, doing damn fool things that I probably shouldn’t have lived to talk about, for years. I’ve taken enough risks to last the lifetime. Being with you, staying put, that’s more exciting than all the adventure in the world.”Purdey smiled fondly at him. “You really are a hopeless romantic, aren’t you, Mike Gambit?” she said without malice.Gambit grinned unrepentantly. “I hope so. Life wouldn’t be nearly as exciting otherwise.”Purdey looked down at their laced fingers. “Supposing that you did leave. What would you do with yourself? Take up racing driving again?”Gambit winced involuntary. “Too expensive. And too much collateral damage. If you don’t like it when I’ve been stabbed, wait until you’ve seen me pried out of a car.”“I’ve seen you stagger out of enough wrecked vehicles for a lifetime, thank you,” Purdey said archly. “So, not motor racing. There must be something else you could do.”“Your confidence in me is touching.”“You know what I mean.” Purdey nudged Gambit’s shoulder gently. “I suppose I could help you put together your CV in the evenings, scour the want ads with you on the weekends.”“You’re already planning how I’m going to spend my imminent unemployment,” Gambit said wryly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were enjoying the idea.”“Don’t be ridiculous,” Purdey scoffed. “I want you out in the field, with me, where you belong.” She covered his hand with the other one of hers and squeezed. “I’ll make McKay understand that if it’s the last thing I do.”“I ought to be in for a good show, then,” Gambit murmured, stroking her cheek tenderly. “I want to stay in the field with you, too, if I can. But if I have to choose, I’d rather stay with you for the rest of your life.”“Well, the feeling’s mutual,” Purdey declared, leaning in to give him a quick kiss, which he returned in kind. “But I hope it won’t come to that.”“That makes two of us,” Gambit agreed, watching her fingers stroke the back of his hand as though mesmerised.“Although, it would be rather amusing keeping you company in the dole queue,” Purdey considered, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling with a wicked little smile playing over her lips.“For someone so worried about me staying at the Ministry, you’re very interested in the prospect of me being unemployed,” Gambit pointed out ironically, watching Purdey’s grin widen as, undoubtedly humiliating, employment prospects occurred to her.“I’m just trying to imagine how we’d start your cover letter,” Purdey murmured, repositioning her head on the pillow.“Oh, yes?” Gambit was regarding her with glittering, interested eyes. “What would it say?”“Oh, I don’t know,” Purdey replied vaguely, but with a mischievous edge in her voice that told him she knew exactly how it would go, and was quite looking forward to telling him. “Mike Gambit: sailor, solider, driver extraordinaire, late of the intelligence services…” She left off stroking his hand as she chose her next words carefully. “Overall man of action.”“Not too much action happening right now,” Gambit grumbled without heat. “Not the right kind, in any case.”Purdey grin expanded, but she carried on as if he hadn’t said anything. “Always aims to give satisfaction,” she continued, freeing one of her hands to trail along his stomach, her featherlight touch somewhat less than innocent.“Goes that extra mile to get the job done,” Gambit chimed in, picking up on Purdey’s only coyly-acknowledged double entendres.“Works well with others,” Purdey went on, smile revealing that she was pleased that Gambit was entering into the spirit of the thing.“Takes pride in his work.”“Excellent stamina.” Purdey was looking at him coquettishly now from under her eyelashes. “Provides that added personal touch,” Gambit parried.“Good with his hands,” Purdey added, a seductive note slipping into her voice.“Finishes what he starts,” Gambit managed, voice sounding ever so slightly strangled as Purdey’s hand roamed low enough to just brush his hipbone.Purdey laughed out loud at what was dangerously close to dipping from double to single entendre. “I can confirm that one from personal experience,” she sniggered. “With a pitch like that, I’d hire you.”Gambit chuckled. “I think the job you’re thinking of is illegal.”Purdey snickered, and moved her head so she could rest her chin on his chest. “We’re going to be all right, aren’t we?” she said, eyes bright with hope. “No matter what happens.”Gambit brushed a little of her hair from her big blue orbs. “We’re going to be just fine, Purdey-girl,” he promised. “So long as we’re together, we’ll make it through somehow.” He yawned expansively. “Why don’t we try to sleep a little? We’ll need all the kip we can get if we’re going to take on McKay.”“Mmm, sounds lovely.” Purdey was already half-asleep, but she managed to roll dozily off of him before her body weight settled onto his punctured side. They were both asleep in minutes.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gambit lay wide awake in the dark, motionless, debating whether he dared to move. After the sort of protracted back-and-forth he might engage in with Purdey on a day when they were feeling particularly energetic, he decided to risk it. He carefully lifted his arms so he could find the watch face on the inside of his wrist, touched the small button that illuminated it. It was 5:23 am, and Gambit knew very well that the meeting with McKay wasn’t until 8:30. With three hours to go, Gambit knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, not with the strictest of deadlines hanging over his head. He turned his head slightly to look at Purdey, but she was lying on her side and turned away from him, so he couldn’t make out whether she was awake or not. He didn’t really want to wake her, but if he wasn’t going to go back to sleep, he was going to need to move sometime in the next three hours. He worked his jaw slightly, gauging whether he could get to the guest bedroom without rousing her, but Purdey had one of her legs bent and draped on top of his, and he’d have to shift it to get up. He sighed, immediately regretted making a noise, then decided, just as quickly, to throw caution to the winds and try asking her if she was awake. If she didn’t respond, then she was in such a deep sleep that he could do just about anything without disturbing her, including go to the loo, which was steadily becoming the item on his itinerary in need of the most urgent attention. “Purdey,” he whispered, as softly as possible while still being audible. “Are you awake?”“Yes,” came the very alert reply, too clear to be made by someone who’d only just been roused from sleep. “Are you?”“How could I ask you if you were asleep if I was asleep?” Gambit pointed out, with just a touch of exasperation.“I don’t know,” Purdey admitted, rolling over so she could face him. “Perhaps you were sleep-talking.”“Sleep-talking?” Gambit repeated sceptically. “To the point of carrying on a whole conversation?”Purdey shrugged and he could see she was smiling her bright, guileless smile in the dim light. “Perhaps you have heretofore unknown talents,” she suggested.“I do not sleep-talk,” Gambit declared.“If you say so,” Purdey said blithely. “But you do snore.”Gambit knew better than to contradict her on that front. “Sometimes,” he qualified.“Only sometimes?” Gambit pulled a face, suddenly regretting his decision to ask if she was awake. “Are you going back to sleep?” he queried hopefully, for reasons that went beyond Purdey’s need for her beauty sleep.Purdey squeezed her eyes shut as though dreading the answer before she’d even vocalised her question. “What time is it?”“About half past five.”“Then I don’t think so,” Purdey admitted with a sigh, eyes popping open and looking much more haunted than they had a moment before. “Are you?”“Probably not.”Purdey sat up and switched on the lamp on the bedside table, then laid back down beside him. “Well, as we’re both here, and awake, we may as well talk about what happened at the warehouse.”Gambit frowned a little in confusion. Even after lying away for the better part of half an hour, he still wasn’t at his best early in the morning. “A lot happened at the warehouse. You’ll have to be more specific.”“Mike Gambit!” Purdey exclaimed, obviously exasperated, and this time with good reason. “Did you honestly think that I’d forget all about the small fact that you asked me to marry you?”Gambit winced visibly as his earlier impetuousness came crashing back. “Right. That.”“Yes. That.” Purdey was incredulous, and mildly offended. “You did think I was going to forget about it! Kendrick was wrong for once. You must have hit your head. No even you could be so blindingly stupid as to forget something that significant.”“I didn’t forget,” Gambit protested, scrubbing his face with his hands. “There was so much going on, I thought it got lost in the shuffle.”“And the impression you were trying to achieve was one of utter forgetability?” Purdey said, tone a mixture of disgust and disbelief. “Most men plan out a proposal,” she went on, as though this would be news to Gambit. “Dinner, candlelight, romantic atmosphere. They get down on one knee and offer up a ring. All the clichés. But you and your timing, Mike Gambit, leave something to be desired. Or was it always your intention to ask me to marry you before you went to potentially meet your doom?” Purdey spoke without malice, but with a certain amount of well-earned frustration. “It was an awful lot to drop on a girl under the circumstances.”“I know, I know,” Gambit sighed, self-chastisement written all over his face. “I didn’t plan it,” he added, running a hand through his hair self-consciously. “It just sort of came out.”Purdey snorted. “That much was obvious.”“I didn’t know what was going to happen when I went in, or if I was going to come out again,” he confessed, trying to ignore the way Purdey’s face crumpled slightly at the admission. “And if worst came to worst, and I didn’t make it out again, I wanted to know if there was a chance--if we could have had a life together, even if we never got to live it.”“And what did you expect me to say?” Purdey wanted to know, fists clenching instinctively. “Did you honestly expect me to turn you down right before you went in to face off against Vanessa Thyme? And risk giving you a reason to give in and let her kill you?”“I know it wasn’t fair,” Gambit admitted, expression the picture of self-recrimination. “But I just needed something to hold onto. It didn’t really matter if you meant it or not. It was just…hope, for something that could be, just to see me through to the other end, or make it…easier if it all went pear-shaped.” He gifted her with a shaky smile. “If it helps, I was never going to hold you to it. You can’t make a decision about something like that on the spot. Not an informed one, anyway. It was a moment of madness, and I thought you’d realise that.” He looked worried suddenly. “You know I wouldn’t try to force you into keeping a promise like that? I might have been desperate, but I’d never be desperate enough to stoop to emotional blackmail.”Despite her frustration, Purdey took his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “I know you wouldn’t do that,” she said softly, putting his mind at ease. “And anyway, I was the one who asked if you were really asking, not posing a hypothetical, so I suppose I share some of the blame. But as you haven’t mentioned it since…” She looked down at his hand in hers. “I know you’re not going to hold me to it, but does that mean you didn’t mean it?”Gambit opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to freeze. “I…” he began. “I never got that far. I thought, I mean, given the circumstances and how your last engagement turned out, I thought you’d be happy to forget about it as soon as things settled down.”“Yes, well, let’s say I wasn’t,” Purdey conjectured, eyeing him curiously. “Did you mean it when you proposed, regardless of whether you thought my answer was cast in stone?”Gambit grinned slightly. “I have to be careful,” he said with a little laugh. “Otherwise you’ll catch me up. But let’s put it this way. I’ve always wanted to ask you. To be honest, I think I could’ve asked you the day Steed introduced us and I saw you walk in the door, if I knew you wouldn’t run screaming in the opposite direction. I knew you were the only girl for me. It’s just been a matter of whether I ever got the chance. So yes, I want to marry you. But the question is, do you want to marry me?”Purdey looked away for a moment, and Gambit wondered if he’d well and truly scared her off this time. He wished fervently that he’d kept his mouth shut back at the warehouse, no matter how frightened he’d been. His desperate need for a reason to cling to life didn’t matter a jot if he lost her in the end, especially since he really hadn’t meant to pressure her.But when Purdey turned back to him, she was smiling a strange little smile. Strange, but good strange. “Do you know something? After my last engagement ended so badly, I couldn’t imagine ever getting engaged again, let alone married. I don’t think I quite realised what I wanted from marriage, or understood what it could be, or rather should be.” She tilted her head and looked at him, really looked. “And then I met you, and for the first time I knew what it was like to have a partner. A real partner, in every sense of the word. And I realised that that’s what marriage is meant to be. A partnership.” She shifted closer to him on the mattress. “And you, Mike Gambit, are my partner, in every single way. The only one I’ve ever had, and ever want. And I want everything that goes with it. So yes, Mike Gambit. I want to marry you. I want to be your partner in every way I possibly can, including as your wife.”Gambit blinked, pleasantly poleaxed, regarding her with a mixture of joy and astonishment. Purdey watched, with no small amusement, as he fumbled for the words that would communicate the vast wealth of emotions her statement had stirred inside him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he managed to choke out, “I’m not trying to be slow on the uptake, but to be clear, you’re saying you want to marry me now, not at some undetermined point, eventually, in the future?”Purdey burst out laughing, the ludicrousness of the conversation finally getting to her. “Yes, Mike Gambit, I’m saying I’d like to marry you sooner rather than later. I really have made you afraid to assume anything, haven’t I?”“You should never assume where a girl is concerned, and definitely not in a situation like this, with a girl like you.” He dipped his head shrink the gap between his mouth and hers, noses almost touching. “And you’re a very special kind of girl, Purdey.”“The kind you might ask to marry you?” she quipped.“The kind who says yes,” Gambit murmured back, then raised an eyebrow. “Have you said yes? I’ve lost track.”Purdey laughed uproariously at the absurdity of it all, in spite of the tears pricking in her eyes. “Why don’t you ask me properly, Mike Gambit, and find out?”Gambit looked down at his sheet draped body. “I’m not exactly dressed for getting down on one knee.”Purdey’s gaze lingered on his bare chest. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, eyes twinkling. “But I’m not fussy. You don’t have to observe the formalities.”Gambit swallowed hard, took her hand in both of his own, which were shaking with emotion. “Purdey,” he said levelly, with a voice that he managed to keep from trembling as much as his hands by sheer force of will. He considered briefly whether to preface his query with a long speech about what she meant to him, but then realised that they were past mere words. Their actions over the past two years had spoken volumes, certainly more than could ever be collapsed into one short speech. So Gambit settled instead for looking into the eyes of the woman he loved more than anything in the world, and spoke the four words that circumstances had ensured he hadn’t been able to say in quite the right way that day in front of the warehouse. “Will you marry me?”Purdey’s blue eyes were full of unshed tears, but they were smiling. She leaned in close, very close, lips brushing his, keeping him in suspense. “Mike Gambit,” she murmured, “the only thing I have to say to you is ‘yes’.”Gambit felt his own tears of joy break the carefully constructed barrier that had been keeping them at bay, and he let them flow as he lent in to kiss her, with all the pent-up love and devotion that he vowed to lavish on her for the rest of their days. “Are you satisfied with that answer?” Purdey asked when she broke away briefly, stroking his cheek. “Do you believe me this time?”“I’m not sure,” Gambit teased, eyes glittering. “I might have to confirm.”Purdey laughed softly. “Well, get on with it, Mike Gambit. We have a meeting to prepare for.”Gambit wasted no time, giddy now, punch-drunk with love. “Will you marry me?” he repeated, punctuating the question with kisses.“Yes.” Kiss.“Will you marry me?” Kiss.“Yes.” Kiss.“Will you marry me?”“Yes.” Purdey was really laughing now at the absurdity of it all, shaking in his arms. “Would you like me to put it in writing?”Gambit shrugged and treated her to an endearingly boyish grin. “It might help.”Purdey threw back her head and laughed even harder. “Mike Gambit, one of these days...”“Is today, apparently,” Gambit finished, almost dreamily, as he tenderly traced the line of her jaw. “Oh, Purdey, Purdey, you have no idea how happy I am.”“I have some idea,” Purdey said crisply, tapping the bump of his broken nose with affection. “Assuming it’s about as happy you’ve made me.”“I think we’re on the same page,” Gambit murmured, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Whatever happens today, they can’t take this away from us.”“No, they can’t,” Purdey agreed wistfully, indulging herself by running her thumb appreciatively over his full bottom lip. “But before we face the music, I’d like you to do something.”Gambit kissed her hands. “Anything.”“Would you hold me?” Purdey requested quietly, softening as reality set in, pulling her off of her euphoric cloud. “Until we have to get ready?”“Purdey.” Gambit wrapped his arms around her and settled back onto the bed. “That’s something you never have to ask twice.”vvvPurdey emerged from the bathroom, hair and makeup done, figure draped in the yellow silk kimono she often wore when she was in the midst of getting ready. She floated over to the closet, the click of her heels muted by Gambit’s plush carpet. Gambit looked up from buttoning his shirt as Purdey flung open the doors and started flicking through the clothes on offer. “I never thought to ask whether you had anything to wear here at my flat that was suitable for being put on trial,” he observed worriedly, as Purdey rummaged through the contents.“I brought something from mine two days ago,” Purdey informed, retrieving a dress from inside the closet. “And don’t be overdramatic. We’re not on trial.”“Not officially,” Gambit opined, tucking his shirt into his black pinstriped trousers. “But just because McKay doesn’t have a wig and a robe doesn’t mean we’re not being sentenced. Or court martialled.”“Really, Gambit,” Purdey tsked, carrying her dress into the living area where she could spread it out on the still-retracted bed. “With all that negative thinking, I’m amazed you’ve survived this long.”“It’s because I think this way that I’ve survived this long,” Gambit pointed out mildly, drifting in her wake, fastening his cuffs as he went. He peered over her shoulder for a better look at Purdey’s dress. “I don’t remember you bringing that in.”“If you hadn’t been so engrossed in typing your report, you might have put those observational skills you’re so proud of to good use,” Purdey chastised, undoing the sash around her waist and smoothly slipping the kimono from her shoulders.Gambit’s gaze transferred instantly from the dress to her at the rustle of silk, and his eyebrows climbed in surprise. “Must have been distracted. I can’t imagine why.”“You seem to be focussing perfectly well now,” Purdey observed, tongue-in-cheek, bending to take her dress off the hanger with the sinuous grace of the dancer she was, though Gambit could tell that there was something about the way she was moving that was not entirely innocent. There might not have been a stage available, but she was most definitely putting on a performance for a very appreciative audience of one.“It helps if I’m motivated,” Gambit murmured, eyes roving appreciatively over Purdey’s figure as she unzipped the garment. “You shouldn’t do things like that without warning. You could kill a man.”“Then at least you’d die happy,” Purdey quipped, stepping into the dress and starting to pull it on. “How do you feel about your report?”Bubble burst, Gambit’s face collapsed in a frown, and he moved wearily to retrieve the tie draped over one of his bar stools. “It’s as good as it’ll ever be. Or at least it ought to be. I rewrote it five times.” He looped the cloth around his neck and started to tie it automatically. “But I think we have all our ducks in a row.” He sighed and smoothed the tie down. “I’m more worried about this meeting.”“So you keep saying.” Purdey slid her arms through the sleeves of her dress and engaged in some mild contortionism to zip up the back. “If you keep going on like this, you’ll make me more nervous than I already am.” “Sorry,” Gambit apologised, smiling sheepishly at her as she turned to face him. The dress was knee-length and black, with three-quarter length tight-fitting sleeves, and an off the shoulder neckline achieved by folding the hem of the collar over itself. The bodice nipped in at the waist before flaring out to create a full skirt, evoking the ideal combination of femininity and businesslike professionalism. Purdey smoothed her skirt before throwing her arms open and twirling dramatically, as though she were a model presenting herself at the end of a catwalk.“How do I look?” she inquired.Gambit’s lips curled upwards in an admiring smile. “Beautiful. As always.”Purdey’s mouth twitched into a pleased expression of her own. “Flatterer. But I hope you don’t plan on making those sorts of comments in front of McKay.”“Give me a little credit,” Gambit defended. “But you did ask.”“I did.” Purdey’s eyes were twinkling in a way that told him she knew she was being difficult. Then she cleared her throat. “Right,” she said briskly.“Right,” Gambit echoed, snagging his suit jacket from a nearby statue, and shrugging it on. Moving in perfect synchronicity, Gambit shot his cuffs while Purdey smoothed her sleeves of wrinkles, a sublimated girding of the loins to prepare them both for battle. Purdey finished first and closed the distance between them just in time to catch both halves of Gambit’s suit jacket and draw them together, doing up the button as she went. Task complete, she slid her hands up to Gambit’s lapels, smoothing them to perfection, before straightening his tie and tugging ever-so-slightly on the shoulders of his jacket to make sure the garment was hanging perfectly on his frame. “There,” she pronounced, looking him over with approval. “You look ready for anything. Unimpeachably professional.”Gambit arched an eyebrow. “Unimpeachable?”“Unimpeachable,” Purdey repeated, grinning madly.“Does that let out a kiss for luck?” Gambit was looking at her with shining eyes, and Purdey felt herself melt inside.“Under the circumstances, I’m not sure how lucky a kiss would be,” she pointed out, voice wavering slightly.“Then we’ll keep it chaste.” Gambit leaned down and pressed his lips gently to her forehead through her fringe. Purdey closed her eyes as she felt the warmth of him against her skin, fought back the tears that would reduce her recently-applied make-up to smudges, but couldn’t resist the urge to wrap her arms tightly around him. “Whatever happens,” Gambit murmured into her hair, one hand gently cupping the back of her head, “I’ll still love you, and we’ll get through it.’“Mike Gambit,” Purdey managed, taking a shaky breath. “Sometimes you really can read my mind. Let’s go.”vvvThey each took their own car to the Ministry, for optics if nothing else. There was little they could do about the other realities of their relationship, but they could at least avoid the appearance of commuting like a married couple who happened to work in the same office building.Gambit saw the turn signal on Purdey’s TR7 wink ahead of him, and grunted a little as he cranked the XJS’ wheel to follow her, his side protesting at being made to stretch and twist in the confines of the car’s cab. He hadn’t driven since he’d been stabbed, but he was quickly reminded of just how inconvenient side injuries were when it came to everyday tasks like driving. He was healing up nicely as per usual, but that didn’t mean things weren’t still tender. No matter how many injuries he incurred, and how often he told himself and everyone else that he was fine, reality always liked to step in and make itself known. Then again, if Purdey hadn’t been sensible and made him halt his amorous advances the night before, he would’ve wound up a lot sorer. Gambit left off babying his wound and grinned ruefully. Somehow he thought it would have been worth it, never mind the physical cost.Purdey stopped at a light, and Gambit pulled up behind her. He could just catch a glimpse of Purdey’s big blue eyes looking at him in the rear-view mirror, and he executed a cheeky salute. Despite not being able to see her mouth, he could tell from the crinkle of her eyes that she was smiling. As he watched, she tilted the mirror to reveal her lips and blew him a kiss, before returning it to its original position. Gambit’s heart beat a little faster at the gesture, but he had no qualms about feeling like a lovesick teenager. He was lovesick, had fallen hard for Purdey, and still couldn’t quite believe that they’d made the transition to lovers. No, she was his fiancée, he reminded himself. That would take awhile to sink in, the reality that Purdey, despite that original spur-of-the-moment first proposal, followed by another, more sane, still not completely orthodox one (or more than one) wanted to be his wife. It was all he could have asked for, all he wanted. It somehow made the prospect of meeting McKay less daunting. No matter what happened, he had someone to love, and someone who loved him, and that was more than he could have ever asked for in this or any life. The job paled in comparison. Gambit had always managed to find employment one way or another, and, Purdey’s gentle teasing to the contrary, his resume was far more impressive now than it had been when he’d come out of the navy at 21 with an unfinished education and only his service record to speak in his favour. He’d found something to do then and he would again. But in all his travels around the globe, all his exploits and many and varied career changes, he’d never found anyone like Purdey.Purdey was pulling up to the security gate, and he saw her hand stick out of the driver’s side door, clutching her pass. There was a brief interlude while the guard checked her credentials, and Gambit knew Purdey would be chatting cheerfully with the man as he did so. Purdey could charm most people if she put her mind to it. It was one of her many invaluable qualities as an agent, and an equally valuable tool in everyday life. It was hard to hate Purdey if she didn’t want you to.The guard let Purdey through, and it was Gambit’s turn to say hello and exchange pleasantries. The guard nodded in greeting and reviewed Gambit’s credentials with studied indifference, but Gambit could sense the underlying current of wariness, if not suspicion, in the man’s demeanour. Gambit got the definite sense that the man had one eye on him and the other on his ID, gauging Gambit’s expression and body language. Even the security staff would have been told about Gambit’s fugitive status and connections to Vanessa Thyme, part of the general alert sent out to all operatives to keep a lookout lest he try to access the building. Gambit gave the man one of his lightning quick smiles in thanks when he handed the card back, and pulled through the gate with what he hoped wasn’t unseemly haste. Gambit knew he was in for a lot of stares the second he set foot in the Ministry building, but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit around and be gawked at before he even got out of his car.Purdey was waiting for him when he pulled into the car park, perched on the bonnet of her TR7 with one leg bent and her thumbnail pressed to her lips, looking for all the world like she was doing nothing more than taking the early morning air. Gambit pulled into an empty spot beside her, alighted from his XJS and rounded the gleaming red bonnet to join her. Her hair was tousled slightly by the breeze, and for a moment Gambit wished that they weren’t at the Ministry, but in a field, full of flowers, in the middle of nowhere. They could while away the day in the sun, maybe have a picnic. But there was no time for any of that. No field. No picnic. Just the asphalt beneath his boots and the sombre black of their business attire, the ID clipped to the neckline of Purdey’s dress a sober reminder of institutionalism and bureaucracy, of dreaded meetings and whispered rumours. He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you ready?” he asked of Purdey, knowing that it hardly mattered. McKay wouldn’t permit them to be late.Purdey treated him to a small shrug of one elegant shoulder, smiling winningly. “Like the man said, ‘as I’ll ever be.’”Gambit smiled a little, Purdey’s natural buoyancy in the face of all comers offsetting his deep-set pessimism. “Let’s go, then. Shouldn’t keep the gawkers waiting.”Purdey picked up the file sitting next to her on the bonnet and slid off with her usual balletic grace. “You flatter yourself, Mike Gambit. Not everyone in the Ministry is waiting for you with bated breath.”It was an optimistic pronouncement, and also wrong. The instant they stepped inside to check in with security, they could feel the eyes on them. They queued up behind others filing in for their daily shift who were all feigning indifference, but Gambit could sense the tension in every person in the vicinity. He chanced a quick glance at Purdey, standing in front of him, head held defiantly high, and felt for her. She didn’t care about what anyone thought, Gambit knew, but he was still sorry she’d had to reveal they were sleeping together during the whole grim ordeal, a secret that she’d wanted to keep as long as possible for the sake of her own privacy. Gambit didn’t care a jot what they thought of him, but his instinct to protect Purdey was always strong, and he bit down hard on the urge to tell the people in the immediate vicinity to leave her the hell alone and keep their eyes to themselves. But that would only make things worse, and anyway, Purdey could fight her own battles. He just wished she didn’t have to fight them because of him.They cleared security, and then began the long walk down the corridor to the lift, shoulder to shoulder, dressed in matching black, reports under their arms, staring straight ahead, determined not to giving the people watching them anything to talk about. Gambit had mastered impassiveness long ago, could draw on his martial arts training to keep his emotions at bay and his expression impassive, but he couldn’t deny the wash of relief he felt when they entered the lift and the doors closed, sealing them in their own private antechamber for a few precious seconds. He let out a long breath through his nose that he didn’t realise he’d been holding. Beside him, he sensed Purdey giving him the side-eye.“We still have another corridor to go,” she said softly, telling him to brace himself. Gambit knew they weren’t out of the woods yet, but all the same, Purdey giving him marching orders snapped him back into line. He had to do this right. For her.The lift doors slid open, and they stepped out into another corridor, another seemingly-endless walk with them on display for all to see and gossip about. Gambit kept his eyes dead ahead, felt more than saw Purdey moving effortlessly at his side, still defiant, still holding her head high. The rumour mill was definitely going to go into overdrive, seeing them together, knowing what he’d done and she’d done and they’d done. Gambit knew he was going to be brushing off countless veiled questions about his loyalty, and even more about Purdey. Gambit only hoped they’d keep them decent and not descend into vulgarity. If he started getting lewd questions about Purdey, it wouldn’t matter if McKay kept him on or not—he’d be booted out for breaking the nose of one of his fellow agents, and that was if he was in a good mood.Seconds later—centuries—they arrived at McKay’s door. They exchanged glances, neither keen to push aside the wood and glass barrier, even if it would protect them from the prying eyes in the corridor. “After you,” Purdey offered, giving up a lady’s prerogative for reasons that had nothing to do with equality between the sexes.“Oh, no, after you,” Gambit returned, small smile tugging at his lips in spite of himself. Purdey’s own mouth stretched toward a smile. “All right, Mike Gambit. We’ll go together.”“If we’re lucky,” Gambit murmured, not bothering to hide the affection for her shining through his eyes. She didn’t say a word, only nodded, and turned to the door, shoulders squared, ready for battle.As one, they reached up and knocked on the door, tapping a neat tattoo between them. “Yes, come in,” came the muffled summons, and Purdey and Gambit each opened one of the double doors and stepped into the breach.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
McKay was reading a file when they entered, although Gambit imagined the gesture was more an act to convey authority than a true desire to finish up some paperwork. He glanced up briefly as they approached his desk, then let his eyes drift back to the contents of the file, the picture of unconcern. “You can leave your reports here,” he said by way of greeting, patting an empty corner of his desk. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”Purdey and Gambit exchanged looks, uncertain as to how to interpret the man’s demeanour and its possible implications for their fate, but did as they were told, Gambit placing his file on the desk and Purdey slapping hers on top in a cheeky display of one-upmanship that lifted Gambit’s spirits in spite of the situation. In spite of her cheekiness, she didn’t sit down, which told Gambit she was nervous as well as defiant, and he followed suit, letting her take the lead. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter what happened to him. There was nothing the Ministry could take away that he couldn’t replace. Supporting Purdey through whatever was to befall them was his main concern. He flashed a reassuring smile at her while he still had the chance, before the weight of McKay’s gaze swung onto them, and she returned it with a tight one of her own. Together, they waited tensely for McKay to finish perusing his file—or to finish pretending to peruse it.They couldn’t have stood there for more than a minute or two, but it seemed like an eternity. Gambit’s karate training meant that he was adept at staying calm in stressful situations, and Purdey had automatically reverted to first position, as though preparing herself to step onstage for the performance of her life, but he could feel the tension radiating off her, and somehow that indirect stress was harder for Gambit to quell than his own. As a result, it was almost a relief when McKay flipped the folder shut and looked up at them, signalling that things were finally going to get in gear. Gambit had to remind himself to quit the deep breathing exercises he’d been using to keep the tendon in his jaw from jumping as he regarded McKay levelly, drawing on his reserves, certain he could face whatever came his way. It was just like being in the field—eye on the enemy, and Purdey at his side. Their chances were better than the pessimistic streak in him wanted to believe.“Thank you for these.” McKay took their reports and transferred them to a tray at his left elbow. “I look forward to reading them with great interest, although from what Steed has told me—” He indicated the file that he’d been perusing, and Gambit realised for the first time that it was a case report. “—I expect them to slot together perfectly with his relatively-innocuous telling of events.”“We did our best to account for everything,” Gambit said noncommittally.McKay actually smiled at that. “Yes, I’m sure you did,” he said wryly. “But, as I expect you’re aware, this little adventure of yours, if you can call it that, is not the only reason I asked to see you today.”“I was hoping it might be to award medals for bravery,” Purdey said breezily, in the way only she could.“No,” McKay said dryly. “I’m afraid not.” He laced his fingers on the desk in front of him and regarded them with a measure of weariness. “I’ve never been particularly interested in discussing the issue of fraternisation. To be brutally honest, the whole thing seemed rather…juvenile. Regulating the private lives of adults is not my idea of fun, particularly when there are more serious matters vying for my attention. But in our line of work, it can quickly become a serious matter.”“McKay—” Gambit interjected, hoping to staunch some of the bleeding before McKay cut deeply into the issue, but the man waved him quiet.“Let me finish, Gambit. You and Purdey will both have an opportunity to say your piece.” He rose to his feet, picking up his cane from where it was leaning against the desk and pacing thoughtfully back and forth behind the imposing piece of furniture. “I don’t necessarily condone fraternising in the department, but there’s no explicit regulation against it.” He stopped in front of a picture of the Queen hanging on the wall, assessing it with a critical eye. “The rumour mill is very efficient, and while I’m not actively seeking out the latest gossip on office dalliances, I can’t help but stumble across news of affairs between agents and other staff—clerks, radio operators, records people, and the like.” He turned and regarded Gambit with a jaded eye. “I believe I’m not mistaken when I say that your off-duty socialising has been much-discussed, Gambit.” Gambit ducked his head sheepishly, and Purdey’s eyes rolled heavenward in response. McKay arched an interested eyebrow at her reaction. “Forgive me, Purdey, if this is the first time this has been brought to your attention.”“I’m quite well-versed in the Ministry’s rumour mill,” Purdey said coolly. “I knew of Gambit long before I knew him, if you take my meaning.”“I think,” Gambit cut in, before Purdey got it into her head to say anything more incriminating, “I should point out that not everything that makes its way through the grapevine is strictly true. There are lots of exaggerations and outright falsehoods floating around.”“Some started by yourself, no doubt,” McKay said knowingly, earning a smile from Purdey in the process. “But I have no desire to trot out the details of your conquests, real or imagined, Gambit. Your relationships, just as those undertaken by your colleagues, were confined to dalliances between agents and non-field staff. Not to be encouraged, but generally harmless. Agents are unlikely to be compromised in the field when their paramours are safely tucked away behind a desk in a secure building. The risk of distraction is low.” He returned to his seat, lowered himself into it with no hint of the pain his injury caused him. “But when both individuals are involved in field work, things become rather more difficult, particularly when those individuals work together. It’s an issue that we’ve been mercifully spared from having to address because there simply haven’t been many female agents in the service. But as with all rules, there’s an exception, and in this case, it’s you, Purdey.”Purdey preened slightly. “Naturally.”“And so we come to the nub of the matter,” McKay said with a sigh, looking weary as Purdey’s misplaced pride. “It would help if the pair of you were assigned to different teams, but the fact that you’re partners complicates things. Having two agents working side by side in the field and, pardon my indelicacy, sleeping together, is less than ideal. It breeds distraction and a certain amount of carelessness. Agents are supposed to be focussed on their mission and their survival, as much for their own sake as the department’s. When your lover is being shot at, this adds a layer of unpredictability to the situation. How can I be certain that you’ll do what needs to be done and not sacrifice your assigned objectives to save your partner’s life?” He fixed them both with a penetrating gaze. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that it’s purely physical and you haven’t become emotionally evolved.”“I’m afraid so,” Purdey said pertly, and McKay nodded as though that was what he’d been expecting.“Then you’ve put me in a very difficult position,” McKay pronounced, sinking back into his chair with a certain amount of weariness. “If I decide to let you carry on as you have been, in every sense of the word—” He paused to scowl meaningfully at them, a look to which Purdey and Gambit responded with studied neutrality, though Gambit could sense Purdey quivering ever-so-slightly with pent-up ire that she was biting down hard on the urge to release. “—without even the slightest punishment for your many transgressions, both proven and unproven, Larry Carrington, and others who share his mindset, will argue that I’m guilty of favouritism, or giving in to undue influence from John Steed, whom many people already believe is running this department by proxy.” Gambit smirked a little at that, but refrained from making the smart remark that seemed intent on forcing its way through his lips lest it get both him and Purdey in deeper trouble than they were already in. It was a wise move, as exemplified by the sharp, stern look that McKay flashed in his direction, head twisting around with the speed of a hawk zeroing in on a rodent that had picked an inopportune moment to twitch a whisker. “On the other hand, if I dismiss you, I’ll attract criticism from another set of detractors entirely. I don’t know if you’d be surprised to discover how many supporters you have in this department, in everything from records to armoury. Even some of the bloody bureaucrats seem to like you, and I haven’t known them to like anyone since wartime. How you managed to charm them I’ll never understand.” He eyed Gambit again, this time with a grudging glimmer of humour. “Your popularity amongst the secretary pool is rather easier to understand, I must say, though how you continue to engender it despite now being very publicly ‘taken’ is beyond me.” Gambit did allow himself to grin at that, albeit not for very long, as Purdey’s pursed lips were singularly unforgiving and unamused. “In their eyes, my sacking you would be nothing more than a case of rules over results, cutting off my nose to spite my face. Why break up a successful partnership just because you broke a few rules and managed to get yourselves romantically entangled? Disciplining you would be the act of an inhuman monster so up himself that he can’t forgive two valuable employees for making a few human errors and displaying some very mortal frailties.” He paused and looked from one agent to the other, allowing his words to sink in. “I know that at this stage of the game you’ll have your own views on what kind of a man I am, and those can only have been lowered by what has transpired since this whole debacle got underway. Without expecting or hoping to elevate myself in your estimation, I would like you to know that I am not unsympathetic to your plight, or what the pair of you have gone through, together and separately. I fully recognise that I’m a crusty bastard, but I’m not quite as heartless as some might make out.” Purdey and Gambit, though still braced to defend themselves, gifted the older man with small nods in acknowledgement of his candidness. McKay looked to be on the cusp of smiling back when he cleared his throat and returned to his former, stern exterior. “Be that as it may, that still leaves me in a difficult position. Any decision I make will be bound to divide the Ministry. The pair of you have been so notorious in your doings that everyone has an opinion about what ought to be done to you, or not done.” It was Purdey’s turn to smile a little, but McKay was as quick to slap her down as he had been Gambit. “I wouldn’t let your fame go to your head, Purdey. It’s done you, and the Ministry, much more harm than good.” He leaned forward, lacing his fingers on the desktop. “It’s with that fact in mind that I’ve made my decision.” Purdey and Gambit braced themselves, knowing that they’d come to the crunch. Gambit resisted the almost visceral urge to wrap his arms protectively around Purdey to shield her from any awful ramifications that might come whizzing their way, but he suspected that, under the circumstances, she wouldn’t appreciate him shielding her in front of the man who was about to sentence them for being much too intimate. “I’ve decided not to make one.”“Eh?” Anxiety aside, Gambit was nonplussed. He looked to Purdey, the expert in extreme conversational right turns that left the other people in the conversation, not to mention any unfortunate bystanders who might have unwisely chosen to eavesdrop, scrabbling to regain some sort of logical equilibrium. If anyone should have been able to follow what was going on, it was her, but from the puzzled way her eyebrows were knitted, he had a feeling that even she’d been thrown by this development.“You’re not going to make a decision?” Purdey repeated, annoyance speaking for them both but, rather mercifully, saving Gambit from the need to say something that might vex McKay further. “You mean you’re not going to do anything at all?” That last part sounded a bit more hopeful, and Gambit’s eyes lit up. Did McKay mean to just ignore the whole thing?But the flinty look in McKay’s eye didn’t suggest that complete mercy was on his mind. “I suppose that was a rather misleading way to put it,” he allowed. “I should have said that I am making a decision, but not one about your fate. At least, not directly.”At the word “fate”, Gambit felt all of the hope drain out through his shoes. This wasn’t going to be a reprieve. Whatever was going to happen to them was just going to happen in a way that they hadn’t anticipated. “You’re going to send it upstairs,” he predicted, in a sudden burst of prescience, as Purdey’s head whipped around, blonde hair flying, to gape at him.McKay nodded slightly, less surprised than Purdey but with a touch of admiration glinting in the otherwise stolid gaze. “They’re going to strike a committee to reconsider our policy, or lack thereof, on ‘relations’ within the department. You’ll be something of a test case, and whatever they decide will determine what your future with the department will look like, should they decide that you’ll have one.”“You’re going to put us on trial?” Purdey was aghast.“Don’t be overdramatic” McKay scoffed. “It’s not a trial. More of an arbitration. And you will have an opportunity to say your piece, either in person or through written submissions.”“It sounds awfully like a trial,” Purdey seethed, crossing her arms angrily.“More like evasive maneuvers,” Gambit muttered darkly, eyes narrowed, jaw tight, exuding quiet menace. He’d be prepared to swallow whatever decision McKay made, but this delegation of authority smacked of passing the parcel. He hadn’t always agreed with McKay’s decisions, but he’d respected the man’s willingness to take responsibility for them head-on. Until now, it seemed. “Pass it on to someone else to keep your hands clean.”“I passed it on to ensure the unity and functioning of the department,” McKay snapped, rising from his seat in ire, leg be damned. “That is always my primary concern and a damn difficult job, one that the pair of you have made even more maddeningly complicated in recent weeks. Given the current climate of the department in the aftermath of your actions, the last thing the Ministry needs is another reason to be divided. It needs leadership, and I cannot provide that if half of the people I’m meant to lead believe that I got an important decision badly wrong. So yes, I’ve passed it on to a third party to retain my impartiality for the good of the department. Otherwise I’d have been happy to make the decision myself. I’ve never shied away from making difficult calls before.” He looked meaningfully at Gambit. “As you know all too well, Gambit. I sent you to arrest Steed, after all. If that isn’t a sign that I’m not afraid to make tough choices, I don’t know what is.”“But Steed hadn’t done anything wrong!” Purdey protested, slapping her hands on McKay’s desk and leaning forward intently, matching the man’s icy glare with one of her own, while Gambit stood back and wondered if he was going to have to bodily hold her back from attacking their superior before the meeting was out. That would definitely scupper their careers, although the mental images would last Gambit a lifetime, particularly on dark days when he could use a laugh. “Not really. I mean, he did break into the safe that held the Allied Attack Plans, but that’s not so different than us lying about the papers. And he attacked Gambit to avoid arrest.” Behind her, Gambit winced visibly as he relived the unpleasant sensation of Steed’s knee connecting with a certain, sensitive part of his anatomy. Purdey’s point was a valid one, but he wasn’t sure their careers were worth revisiting a memory that was less than a year old and still tender around the edges. “That’s no different than Gambit going on the run. And Steed didn’t get so much as a slap on the wrist. In both cases a threat to the Ministry was removed because of what was done, even if it went against the rulebook. It’s the same situation. We deserve the same treatment.” She straightened up, recrossing her arms, look of triumph on her features and chin turned up defiantly. Gambit thought she looked magnificent. Purdey was never one to back down from an argument. In fact, she rather enjoyed it, even when—especially when—the stakes were high. Gambit knew, in the depths of his realist soul, that she might not win. The vagaries of bureaucracy often seemed to be immune—indeed the antithesis of—logic, and no matter how well-reasoned her points might be, the rulebook had a habit of cutting it all down with a simple, “Because I say so.” But no one could say that, odds against her or not, she wouldn’t go down swinging. “You let Steed off without tearing the Ministry apart, and that was in spite of Spelman rattling everyone’s confidence.”Much to the surprise of both, McKay simply sighed. He suddenly looked very old and tired as he sank into his chair, all the anger draining out of him. “No one was making noise about disciplining Steed,” he said tiredly. “Everyone was relieved that normality had been restored, that they could back to assuming that Steed was incorruptible. He didn’t have Larry and his followers making trouble for him, demanding, with equally good reasons to the ones you just put forward, Purdey, that he be thrown out.”Gambit felt his jaw tense so hard that it might crack. “It’s all down to Larry, then,” he echoed darkly, in a much less flippant tone than the one he’d used when mocking Larry during the business with Juventor. He should have known better than to feel sorry for the man after he’d been brain-drained.“Yes,” McKay confirmed sadly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And no.” “That’s very helpful,” Purdey huffed.“You might have been able to avoid undue scrutiny if not for Carrington,” McKay said sharply, surfacing from the shelter of his hand to glare at Purdey with hawklike intensity. “But no one would have paid Carrington a jot of attention if he didn’t have a case with some merit. You can lay some blame at his feet, but not all. You also have to take your responsibility for your actions.”“But that doesn’t matter, as long as none of that blame is attributed to you,” Purdey said sweetly.“Do you think I’ve come out of this unscathed?” McKay grated. “The actions of this department do not disappear into a black void once you’ve filed your paperwork. Someone has to explain to the Minister why what was done had to be done, and why the people who did it ought to be lauded rather than sent down for their actions. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being present for a ministerial briefing, then you’ve only the slightest notion of how uncomfortable his questions can become. He’s even more candid one-on-one, I assure you.” He fixed the pair of them with a penetrating glare, tapping the desktop with his index finger with each point made. “I’ve defended dozens of people in this department in the face of ministerial ire, the pair of you included. If you think I’ve never advocated on your behalves, or Steed’s, then you’re sorely mistaken. This just so happens to be a situation in which advocacy alone is not going to be enough. Something needs to be seen to be done. I’m just trying to do it in such a way that prevents the whole department from being torn apart in the process.” He leaned back in his chair, weary once more. “I’m not asking you to like it, or even accept it, but I hope that you understand it, at least from my point of view.”Purdey took a deep breath in preparation for launching into another tirade, but the tiniest shake of Gambit’s head out of the corner of her eye stopped her in her tracks. “We understand,” Gambit confirmed instead, quite calmly. “But we definitely don’t like it. I don’t know about Purdey, but I learned to take my medicine like a good soldier a long time ago. What I don’t appreciate is being kept in limbo while I wait for the axe to fall.”McKay nodded once, curtly. “I respect that,” he said briskly, shifting in his chair as though his leg were bothering him. “That said, you’re going to dislike what comes next even more.” He held a hand out, palm up, arm stretched across the table. “Until the committee reaches a decision, you are suspended from active duty, effective immediately. You will be permitted to collect any personal effects and then escorted from the premises, and will not be allowed to return until further notice. You will also refrain from contacting any of your colleagues in this department or allowing employees of any other department to believe that you are active operatives. You will be kept apprised of the status of the committee’s review and will be notified of your opportunity to make submissions at the appropriate time.”Gambit was stoic, expression stony-faced but impassive. Purdey’s jaw, in contrast, was hanging open, agog. “You’re not serious?”“I’m very serious,” McKay said simply. “You didn’t think you’d be allowed to carry on as normal until the committee finished its work, did you?” The fingers of the outstretched hand curled, beckoning. “I’ll take your ID cards now.” He eyed Gambit’s shoulder holster, just visible inside his unbuttoned jacket, meaningfully. “Anything else can be dropped at the armoury. They’re expecting you.”Purdey whirled on Gambit for more fuel for her morally outraged bonfire, but instead found him opening his wallet and extracting the ID from within. “You’re going along with this?”“There’s not much of a choice,” Gambit countered calmly, placing the card in McKay’s hand, then unclipping his pass from his lapel and adding it to the small pile. “They’re making their decisions. We’ll make ours. But this isn’t the time or the place to protest.” His gaze softened, turned beseeching. “Trust me, Purdey. It’ll do us more harm than good at this point.”“I think it’s exactly the right time,” Purdey retorted tartly, giving McKay the evil eye, intent on making her displeasure known, even though there was no question she was going to acquiesce to Gambit’s pleas. People assumed that Purdey always got the better of Gambit in an argument, even when he seemed to have the facts on his side. They were right, for the most part. But what they failed to notice was that Gambit was often at his most persuasive when he was calm, and quiet, and made his points as much with the sincerity in his eyes and the conviction in his voice as he did with the words he spoke. Those few words could have as significant an effect as Purdey’s legendary verbiage, on everyone from enemy agents to Purdey herself. Before McKay’s inscrutably neutral gaze, he watched her stand down, body language reverting from hostile to accepting on the strength of Gambit’s promise that they would live to fight another day. If McKay’s position hadn’t required him to remain impassive at this final, all-important stage of the encounter, lest Purdey and Gambit sense his weakness more than he’d already let on throughout the thoroughly unpleasant meeting, then he would have stared in open admiration at two of the best agents to grace the Ministry as they demonstrated the depth of the connection between them, the deep, unshakeable trust, that had made them so exceptional in the field, while also jeopardising everything they had worked so hard to achieve. It was the ultimate irony—or double-edged sword—and it made McKay do something that he rarely did: doubt himself. Should he have risked the ire of countless people both above and below him by letting them off the hook and saying hang the consequences? For a moment, he was tempted to hand back the ID cards and tell them that he’d changed his mind, let them off with a warning. As soon as the idea materialised in his mind, he dismissed it. That decision could oh-so-easily be undone by those above him, and then he’d be called to the carpet himself, perhaps replaced, and heaven knew who they’d choose to succeed him. A leadership change wouldn’t do the Ministry anymore good than being polarised. There was no way out of this that left everything and everyone intact, at least in the immediate future. In life, as in chess, McKay played the long game, and whether Purdey or Gambit realised it at that moment, his decision was giving them their best chance of having a career in some form or other when they reached the other side.“And the right place,” Purdey added pointedly, but more for the sake of completion than anything else, bringing McKay back to reality with a jolt. The heat was out of her aborted battle cry, as evidenced by her choosing to add her own IDs to the little pile in McKay’s hand, joining Gambit in exile as in everything else.“Thank you.” McKay set the cards on his desk, on top of their reports. “That’s all, unless you’ve anything else to say? Any questions?”Purdey’s hands were balled into fists beneath her crossed arms. “I don’t think you want to hear what I have to say,” she said darkly.“What Purdey means is, we’ll be on our way,” Gambit said, with remarkable equanimity. “We know you’re doing what you have to do. But I promise you this, McKay. We’re going to do the same.”McKay nodded once, curtly. “Good.” He picked up one of the pieces of paper on his desk, already moving on to tackle other, far more serious problems that threatened not only the integrity of the department, but the security of the nation, and perhaps other nations as well. Despite Purdey’s ire and Gambit’s cynicism in response to their treatment, it did rather put their situation in perspective. There were far more grievous atrocities being perpetrated around the world against individuals of all stripes, and it was McKay’s job to ensure that there was someone, somewhere, in the Ministry’s confines capable of dealing with whatever it was should it drift into their jurisdiction, however tangentially. Gambit knew that he and Purdey and Steed had averted some particularly nasty situations by keeping the papers out of the hands of governments and radicals alike. That was the most important thing in the end, but that didn’t mean it didn’t stick in one’s craw to be punished after having just averted several potential catastrophes.If McKay was still struggling with the potential ramifications of his decision, he didn’t show it. After a moment, he glanced up at the pair of now-suspended agents, and said, “I should get down to the armoury if I were you. They get very twitchy when people don’t surface to surrender weaponry in a timely fashion. They have rather vivid imaginations about what might go on, and how they might be blamed.”Purdey was still seething, but apparently also capable of further offence. “Is that all?” she demanded.McKay regarded her from beneath hooded eyes. “I think there’s very little else to be said at this juncture, don’t you? Other than that I look forward to the resolution of this whole affair.” He arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “I can wish you luck, if it’ll make you feel better, but I don’t imagine it’ll make much difference.”“You’re right. It wouldn’t,” Purdey snapped, turning on her heel and flouncing out with a potent combination of indignation and dancer’s grace. Gambit, watching her retreat, temporarily forgot himself, lost in the way she moved. He was only brought back to earth by McKay’s pointed throat-clearing, and blinked as if coming out of a daze to find the older man peering over the paper in his hands with a small smile twitching his lips.“Something tells me, Gambit,” he murmured, “that no matter what the upshot of all of this happens to be, you and Purdey will come out of it better than ever.”Gambit, in spite of everything, actually grinned, possibly the broadest grin that McKay had ever seen on a human being who wasn’t trying to imitate the Cheshire cat. “I’m glad there’s something we can agree on, sir,” he said jauntily, before executing a cheeky salute and making his exit.McKay waited until he was certain that the office door was firmly shut behind Gambit before he burst out laughing.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Purdey came barreling out of McKay’s office, so blinded by her ire that she nearly bowled over Steed, who was approaching from the opposite direction, in the process. It took a moment for both parties to right themselves and register the identity of their respective co-collisionees, but when they had, Purdey, as usual, was the first off the mark. “Where on earth have you been?” she demanded, in uncharacteristic and unfettered hostility toward her friend and colleague. “McKay’s just suspended us from active duty until we can be put on trial.”“More like arbitration,” Gambit corrected belatedly, emerging from McKay’s office and earning a glare from Purdey for his tardiness, as though spending even an extra second in McKay’s company constituted an unforgiveable betrayal of loyalty. “He’s going to put our fates in the hands of a committee of higher ups.” He slid his hands casually into his pockets, and Steed couldn’t help but notice that he was much more sanguine about their situation than Purdey, a state of affairs that, knowing them as Steed did, failed to elicit much surprise, but did make his chest swell in an unexpected burst of paternal pride. Steed wondered if the whole ordeal had affected him more than even he realised, and hoped that Purdey would construe any trace of surprise on his features as a reaction to McKay’s verdict. He doubted she’d feel kindly about him suddenly developing fatherly, borderline-sentimental feelings toward Gambit in a moment of crisis that clearly demanded, at least in her view, a healthy dose of bloodlust. “Until then, we’re on the naughty list,” Gambit carried on, oblivious to Steed’s paternal leanings. “Do not pass go.”“Do not collect 200 pounds,” Purdey finished darkly, big blue eyes churning with the rage of a thousand storms.“No ID, no gun,” Gambit rhymed off, “and no hanging about the place, with or without supervision.”“He even told us that we can’t have contact with anyone who works here,” Purdey said sourly. “That means we can’t even talk to you.”“I somehow suspect that Tommy has better things to do with his time than regulate every minute of my social calendar,” Steed asserted mildly. “But of all the possible courses of action I thought he might take, I hadn’t quite anticipated this one in particular.”“The fact that he outwitted even you isn’t very helpful--or reassuring,” Purdey huffed, her usual admiring and favourable opinion of Steed most definitely in absentia. “Anyway, where were you? We could have used some reinforcements while we were being court-martialled—”“Suspended,” Gambit put in quietly.“It felt like a court-martialling,” Purdey shot back, positively quivering with pent-up rage. “Where were you, Steed? I know that McKay might not have listened to you, or even let you come into his office while we were being humiliated, but at least we would have had some back-up, even if it was only by proxy.”“You did have my support by proxy, as it happens,” Steed pointed out reasonably. “Given that I wasn’t present at the meeting due to being unavoidably detained, it was the only way that I could be supportive, though I assure you that wherever I am, you always have my unwavering backing.”“Unavoidably detained?” Gambit tilted his head inquisitively, not annoyed at Steed’s absence, as Purdey was, but intrigued. “Where were you, exactly?”“Seeing to another, rather important matter that required my attention,” Steed replied vaguely, but with just a hint of mischief twinkling in his grey eyes.“More important than us?” Purdey pressed, incredulous, clearly unable to comprehend how such a thing could be true.“Not more important than. Rather, equivalent to,” Steed qualified. “I’ve a feeling that Tommy arranged things just so, to ensure that I would be occupied during your disciplinary proceedings. He was quite adamant that the pair of you face the music on your own, but he might have felt the need to take, ah, precautions, lest I develop the urge to put my oar in and try to assist you.” He smiled ironically at Gambit. “He knows me rather well, does old Tommy.”“He’s not the only one,” Gambit murmured, grinning back. “But you still haven’t told us where you were.”“It doesn’t matter where he was!” Purdey cried, looking from one man to the other in barely contained exasperation. “Not anymore. All that matters is that he wasn’t there. And why on earth are you two grinning? This isn’t funny!”“No,” Steed agreed, touching her elbow while Gambit slipped his hand into the crook of her other arm. “But it’s also not the end of the world, though I concede it may feel that way at the moment.” Purdey opened her mouth to interject, but Steed raised a hand. “I understand the desire to fight, especially when one feels that one has been treated wrongly. But sometimes the wiser course of action is to retreat, regroup, and plan one’s next move, even though it might feel rather too much like admitting defeat for one’s liking.” Purdey looked pleadingly at Gambit, but he only nodded in affirmation of Steed’s words.“He’s right, Purdey-girl. If we yell and scream and stamp our feet now, it’ll just give them more reason to dub us the irresponsible, selfish, reckless, and whatever the hell else Larry and all of his friends are calling us in their reports. And the last thing we want to give them just now is more ammunition. Right?”Purdey looked plaintively up at him, and for a moment seemed about to argue. But just as in McKay’s office, she saw the gentle persuasive look in his eyes, and felt the ire drain out of her. Between them, Gambit and Steed felt her almost sag with acceptance. “Oh, all right,” she muttered, shaking blonde hair out of her eyes. “But we’re not giving up. Right?”“Right,” Steed echoed, with all the warm, robust surety that only he could evoke.“Definitely not,” Gambit confirmed, treating her to a reassuring smile, and a little of the light returned to Purdey’s eyes.“Right,” she said crisply. “Let’s get this over with.”“Where to next?” Steed inquired, as Purdey squared her shoulders and recalibrated her mindset from battle-ready to cool detachment.“Armoury,” Gambit answered distractedly, eyes on Purdey, relishing the glorious sight of her pulling herself together and return to her usual magnificence.“And then, once all of the paperwork is over with, lunch,” Steed pronounced, blowing an invisible piece of lint from the top of his bowler. “Even suspended agents must keep their strength up.”“Especially suspended agents,” Purdey said briskly. “We’d better get on with it then. If you’re paying, then I expect a number of courses, rather than the paltry few provided by mean, mean, mean Gambit.”“I don’t think I can be accused of being cheap where your appetite is concerned,” Gambit drawled sceptically. “Broke, on the other hand…”“Mike Gambit!” Purdey exclaimed, which set Steed laughing, and then Gambit, and finally Purdey herself. They made their way down the gossip-strewn Ministry corridors shoulder to shoulder and wreathed in smiles, leaving those in their wake, friend and foe alike, struggling to work out how three people who had just received such terrible, potentially life-altering news could be grinning like fools. Somehow, it was more effective than aloofness at encouraging everyone to just leave them the hell alone, and the world was all the better for it.As the unreasonably happy trio rounded the corner of the corridor and drifted out of sight, off on their quest to unnerve the armoury, the accompanying low-level, near-constant murmuring died away, the objects of the murmurers’ speculation no longer available to inspire comment. Resigned to having to return to their ordinary duties for the moment, the small groups of two or three dispersed, heading in different directions as they went about their business. The peace was temporary, however, and suddenly and unexpectedly shattered by the appearance of a new figure at the end of the corridor, striding confidently toward McKay’s office doors. The occupants of the corridor were momentarily stunned into silence, but the moment the door closed behind the newcomer, the hall exploded in a hubbub of shocked voices, all gabbling some variation of, “Was that--?” “But it couldn’t be.” “Why is she--?” or “Do you think--?” All those questions were to remain unanswered for the time being, but several souls lurked indiscreetly outside McKay’s office, pretending to peruse files that surely couldn’t have been that interesting. McKay looked up from squaring away Purdey and Gambit’s reports as the figure inciting so much interest in the corridor appeared in his office. “Ah, very good of you to come,” he greeted, indicating the chairs that Purdey and Gambit had refused earlier. “Please, have a seat.”The figure opted for the seat to McKay’s left, and settled in with the confidence of someone who was comfortable virtually anywhere. “Did you have any problems signing in?” McKay asked conversationally.“Only if you classify the security man gaping at me like a fish out of water as a problem,” Emma Knight qualified, crossing her legs unconcernedly, skirt draping elegantly over them in the process.McKay chuckled a little in understanding. “I imagine you did cause something of a stir on the way up. Purdey and Gambit will be glad to have someone else to act as fodder for the rumour mill for a change.”Emma laughed her enchanting laugh. “I’m sure they will.”“That’s why I’ve asked you here, as it happens,” McKay went on. “Because of this business with Purdey and Gambit. Or Gambit, really.”“I had worked that much out on my own,” Emma admitted, lopsided smile in evidence. “Am I in trouble?” She didn’t seem particularly alarmed at the prospect. “If you’ve any concerns, I am still covered by the Official Secrets Act.”“No, no, not in trouble,” McKay said hurriedly, keen for her not to get the wrong idea. “But we did read your accounts of your exploits with Gambit with great interest.”Emma propped her chin in her hand. “I’m not surprised.”McKay regarded her infuriatingly enigmatic smile with a mixture of annoyance and mild unease, before averting his gaze in favour of picking up a letter opener on his desk. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain how you became acquainted with Gambit in the first place?”“A lady is allowed some secrets,” Emma said lightly. “And a social life. But he’s a very fine agent. And man.”“Yes.” McKay was eyeing her uncertainly, unsure of what to make of her last comment. “You are aware that he’s also involved, shall we say, with his partner, Purdey?”Emma’s smile broadened. “I think Gambit has always been involved with Purdey,” she suggested knowingly. “Yes, well, be that as it may,” McKay said with slight discomfort, coughing delicately. “I’m not here to ask you about your relationship with Gambit, but rather your propensity for carrying on the sort of work that you did for us so many years ago.”Emma tilted her head inquisitively. “Really?”“Well, you left the espionage business a decade ago, seemingly for good,” McKay went on, pressing the point of the letter opener into the tip of his index finger and twirling it contemplatively. “So to discover that you’ve been conducting your own operations comes as a something of a surprise, albeit a pleasant one.”“Aha,” Emma said knowingly, catlike eyes full of dawning realisation. “Mr. McKay, are you asking me to return to the fold?”“Is it something you’d consider?” McKay inquired, carefully sidestepping any commitment on his organization’s behalf, but the way his eyes flicked up to meet hers betrayed his eagerness.Emma tipped her head back in thought. “It’s an interesting proposition.”“Only interesting?”Emma’s head levelled out, and her gaze with it. “I couldn’t possibly return at my previous level of involvement. I can’t abandon Knight Industries, not now, nor do I wish to. It’s taken some time to integrate myself back into the company to the point that I’m able to play an active role. I let it run itself during my time with Steed, but I now find I’m enjoying it more than I ever have.”“That’s understandable,” McKay conceded with a nod, leaning back in his chair, tapping the letter opener against the palm of his hand. “But what if your involvement were to be scaled back in comparison to your previous role. A special consultant, perhaps? Brought in when your particular brand of expertise was required.”“And who,” Emma elucidated, “would be responsible for bringing me in?”McKay pretended to consider the question, but it was clear that that it had been anticipated—and answered—well in advance, with all of the appropriate approvals in place. “Well, given your history with Steed, he seems the obvious choice to act as your point of contact. He is the handler of a whole portfolio of agents, you know. You could be added to that list.”Emma’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. “Do you think it’s wise for me to be handled by Steed?” she inquired cheekily.McKay’s face reddened uncharacteristically, much to Emma’s amusement. “You always worked well together,” he defended, a little too strenuously, not meeting her eye. “I thought it would be ideal. Unless, of course, you and Steed are no longer on good terms.”“Oh, no, we’ve kept things friendly,” Emma assured with a dazzling smile, conveniently omitting that she had worked with Steed during her involvement in the search for Purdey in the Brazilian jungle earlier that year. Officially, Gambit and Steed hadn’t been in the Amazon, either, and just because she’d revealed rather a lot of her secret endeavours in her affidavit written on Gambit’s behalf, she wasn’t about to volunteer more than she needed to. She and Steed hadn’t been in contact before that particular escapade, but their relationship had warmed considerably since then. There was no reason McKay had to know that, though.McKay clearly recognised that there was something else lurking behind her words and smile, but knew it was futile to attempt to pursue it. “Does that mean you’d have no objection to being put ‘on call’, so to speak?”“I suppose not,” Emma allowed, although secretly the prospect of being back in the field thrilled her. She had longed for the excitement and danger of the game for years, but her own pride and stubborn nature had made her unable to ask to return after being the one to decisively sever her relationship with the Ministry—and Steed. Now that she was being pursued, she could accept without seeming overeager. “Would I be working with Steed, or just handled by him?”McKay was blushing again, and cleared his throat gruffly. “I suspect if Steed thought you were needed, he would already have taken a personal interest in the case, so you would be working together in some capacity. Does that suit you?”“Eminently.” Emma sat back in her chair, satisfied. “I imagine if I’m working with Steed, I’ll be working with Purdey and Gambit as well. But as I’ve worked with Gambit before, and Purdey and I have recently come to something of an understanding, I don’t foresee any problems in our collaborating.”“Ah.” McKay let the letter opener drop, point down, onto the desktop with an ominous ‘clunk’. “Recent developments have dictated that that won’t be possible.”Emma arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”“Yes. An internal matter,” McKay replied vaguely, setting the letter opener aside and treating her to a tight smile. “Nothing to concern yourself about, but it might mean that Steed will need to call on you more than anticipated. He may be…rather short-handed in the coming weeks.”“I see.” Emma’s frown was small but betrayed her concern. She looked down and to the side, digesting this intelligence.“Still, nothing to concern you, as I said,” McKay asserted, moving swiftly on. “This is cause for celebration, that is, if you’ve still no qualms about rejoining us.”Emma hesitated, and it was clear that the comment about Purdey and Gambit had shaken her somewhat, despite McKay’s evasiveness and attempts to put on a brave face. In the end, however, she seemed to decide that discretion was the better part of valour. “Not at the moment.”“Excellent,” McKay enthused, reaching across the desk to shake her hand. “We’ll get started on the paperwork.”Emma took the hand and shook it, warm and firm. “I hope I’m able to be of assistance.”“Oh, I think we’ll have no trouble putting your talents to good use,” McKay said mysteriously, releasing her hand. “Should I inform Steed, or will you?”“I think Steed has had enough excitement in recent weeks,” Emma pronounced, brow still creased in spite of her smile. “I’ll break the news somewhere a little less…conspicuous, if you don’t mind.”“Not at all.” McKay looked so pleased that she’d accepted that Emma suspected she could have asked to move into Windsor Castle and received his enthusiastic agreement. “Welcome back to the Ministry, Ms. Knight.”“Thank you.” Emma sighed wistfully. “One always likes to feel wanted. Or needed.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It wound up taking longer than Purdey and Gambit expected to put their affairs in order at the Ministry. Not because their trip to the armoury proved particularly onerous or difficult, at least in terms of the actual tasks that they were required to complete. There was paperwork to be filled out, of course. There was always paperwork when it came to the Ministry, and Gambit mused ironically that it seemed as though they were required to fill out more forms to confirm that they wouldn't be working in the foreseeable future than they did when they actually were working. Purdey lost track of the different varieties, all of which had to be completed and filed in triplicate under the watchful eye of the clerks who doled said forms out. There was no question that the paperwork was daunting and somewhat demoralising, documenting as it did their exile in coldly officious black and white, with the odd splash of red that stuck out alarmingly from the rest of the word jumble, and making clear, in no uncertain terms, that by signing they were agreeing to not engage in anything remotely espionage-related unless and until their status and privileges had been returned. Somehow, Gambit found signing the forms more daunting than facing up to McKay, even though that encounter was more personal—because it was more personal. Even if one didn't agree with a person, or strenuously disagreed with him, there was at least someone to push back against, a face to read, some means of determining what was really going on behind the threats and the attacks. More often than not, there was something else at work, some little sliver of ill-concealed drive just visible in a person's eyes that hinted at an unspoken motivation, a hidden assumption, or a simple misapprehension of the facts. Even the rulebook wasn't as cut and dried as people made out. There was always room for creative "interpretation", for arguing that an action, while not strictly within the confines of what had been set out as sacred text, was still in the "spirit of the rules". Much of Purdey's argument to McKay had fallen into that category, and even if that argument hadn't been successful, she had at least been able to make it. There was no arguing with a form, no subtleties or nuances to tease out, no grey areas. Just black and white, yes or no, a formal, officious barrier that gave nothing away, just demanded that you choose from the options available, swear that they were completely accurate, never mind that any particular choice only half-fit your circumstances as you knew them, and then swept it all away to be filed as the gospel truth for all eternity.And yet, in the end, it wasn't the forms that held Purdey and Gambit up, despite the fact that they proliferated seemingly every stop they made on their way out of the Ministry. It was the people, and not only the gawkers who clogged the corridors in an attempt to surreptitiously catch a glimpse of the pair in what some perceived to be their careers' death throes. Far more of their delay was caused by stopping to talk to people who braved the potential embarrassment inherent in violating their privacy at a difficult time to let them know that they supported them, that they were on their side no matter what everyone else said, though a considerable number of other people were saying the same thing. It was as surprising as it was heartening, and when the earlier laughter that they'd shared with Steed had faded under the sheer weight of the soulless mass of paperwork, Purdey and Gambit had left their place of employment, possibly for the last time, without the feeling of total and utter defeat that they'd expected. They were further cheered by the surprisingly-late lunch that Steed treated them to after the fact, during which they'd reminisced about all their assignments, capers, and outrageous stunts, and Gambit and Steed, in a stunning moment of unguardedness, had actually seen fit to let Purdey in on one or two particularly colourful stories about their time working together before Purdey had joined the mix, much to her delight and Gambit and Steed's rueful acknowledgement that they had just set themselves up for many, many future instances of blackmail.As it was, Purdey and Gambit almost tumbled into the latter's flat in the late afternoon feeling exhausted, but strangely, deliriously content with their lot."You've been sacked often enough," Purdey began, the first to vocalise their strange melange of feelings. "Are you meant to feel quite so…relaxed about it?""Usually only after a long night at the pub with your mates," Gambit replied honestly, too strangely punch-drunk himself to register, let alone respond to, Purdey's sideways dig. "Definitely not when you're still sober.""As sober as you ever are," Purdey countered, making her way, a little unsteadily, to the kitchen."I'm definitely more sober than I thought I'd ever be after lunch with Steed," Gambit confessed, passing a hand over his brow. "Shouldn't you know what it's like to be let go, anyway? You were thrown out of the Royal Ballet, after all.""I wasn't sacked," Purdey differentiated patiently, taking a glass from Gambit's kitchen cabinet and filling it with water. "I was let go for being too tall, not because I did anything wrong. There is a difference.""And you think I did something wrong," Gambit hypothesised wryly. "How do you know that I wasn't let go because of circumstances beyond my control, too?""Because I know you, Mike Gambit," Purdey said simply, turning around to meet him dancing eye for dancing eye. "And I suspect that, back then, with youthful male impetuousness and idiocy in full flight, you pulled even more damnfool stunts than you do now." She took a long, refreshing drink of water, as if that was the last word on the matter.Gambit, far from being offended, instead emitted a bark of laughter. "All right, so maybe I have a bit more experience in being sacked—properly sacked," he admitted, sauntering over to lean against the kitchen counter on the other side of which Purdey was still coolly sipping her water. "But my experience tells me that we won't be feeling this punch-drunk, or sanguine, about what's happened when we get up tomorrow morning and reality sobers us up."Purdey pursed her lips and regarded him sourly from over the rim of her glass. "Your negative thinking, Mike Gambit, is very unwelcome at the best of times. But today it rather smacks of hypocrisy, given that you were so intent on telling me to back down and live to fight another day in McKay's office.""We'll fight," Gambit soothed. "But that's what it'll be—a fight. They're not going to decide in our favour on the strength of us having some very vocal friends, or even our service record. They're going to put us under a microscope. They're potentially rewriting departmental policy and protocol, and we're the test case. Whatever they decide to do goes beyond us, so we're going to have to fight our corner if we're not going to get swallowed up by bureaucracy." He paused for a moment, clearly debating whether or not to vocalise what he was going to say next. "And if they find out about recent developments, it'll make everything even more complicated."Purdey's previously serene face contorted in distress. "Don't tell me you're having second thoughts?""About you?" Gambit shook his head vehemently, grinning broadly. "Never. I'd marry you tomorrow if I could. But I want you to be prepared for what's coming, and how ugly it could get, especially if they know what we're planning to do. Even if we do fight, there's no guarantee that it's a fight we'll win.""I'm quite aware of the odds that we face," Purdey replied indignantly, scowling at him over her glass, but her annoyance was short-lived, dissolving in the. "Do you think we have a chance?""Of course we have a chance," Gambit assured robustly, rounding the counter to eliminate the barrier between them. "More than a chance, with you in the mix. Anyone who thinks they can out-debate or out-maneuver you has a nasty surprise coming.""My argument today wasn't exactly a rousing success," Purdey replied bitterly, lips pressing together in self-recrimination as her fingernails tapped nervily against her water glass. "Do you think we ought to have told Steed?" she murmured uncertainly, eyes drifting to her ringless but suddenly significant ring finger where it was curled around the glass."Would that have helped?" Gambit asked flatly. "It'd just be another secret for him to carry around, and he's done enough of that for us lately.""I suppose." Purdey bit her lip. "It'd just start all over again, then, wouldn't it?" A light dawned in her eyes as she registered what she'd just said. "All over again," she repeated. Without warning, she seized Gambit's arm with such force that the water in her glass sloshed violently, slopping over the rim and onto her fingers, but she paid it no heed. "Mike, did you mean it when you said you'd marry me tomorrow?""Yes," Gambit replied, and it was his turn to sound uncertain, as well as a little alarmed, as Purdey's nails dug painfully into his skin. "But it's not a matter of wanting to. There are some things that we'd need to do first…""Yes, but we could get started now." Purdey's eyes were shining, and Gambit could feel that she was palpably vibrating with excitement. "It wouldn't take that long to arrange. We're suspended. We have more time than we've ever had." She squeezed his forearm a little harder in her enthusiasm, and Gambit tried not to wince as he imagined the bruises her fingers would leave behind on his still somewhat-tender, battered body. "We could be married in no time at all.""We could," Gambit allowed, covering her hand with his and gently prising her fingers loose before the pins and needles in his own arm got any worse. "But I don't think it'd do much for our case at committee.""I don't give a damn about the committee!" Purdey said fiercely, slamming down her water glass with feeling. "What more can they do? They've already suspended us.""Suspended," Gambit echoed, holding up a warning index finger. "We haven't actually lost our jobs yet. There's a chance we'll be allowed back. But if we run off and get married, now, first thing after having the book thrown at us, it'll make that chance that much smaller.""And if we don't get married now, when?" Purdey wanted to know, gaze locked with his. "If we choose the safe option to stay in their good graces, and we do get reinstated, what then? We're never going to feel as though we can do it without putting what we've managed to claw back at risk. But if we're going to be damned no matter what we do, we may as well do what we want. And I don't want to wait to marry you.""I don't either," Gambit soothed, laying a hand aside her face. "But you were pretty upset about being suspended in McKay's office. I don't want you to do something you'll regret.""Mike Gambit," Purdey tsked in exasperation, as though he were a particularly thick child. "I may be outraged at how we've been treated for making the choices we made, but that doesn't mean that I regret the choices themselves." She leaned in intently, eyes boring into his very soul, willing him to believe her. "Can't you get it through your thick skull that I chose you over the job to help you fight Vanessa and I'm choosing you now?" She seemed to realise that her intensity might be rather overwhelming, because she flashed him one of her big, bright, brilliant smiles. "I will always choose you, Mike Gambit. Now and forever."Gambit had to work hard to swallow the lump in his throat that seemed to have formed of its own accord, a task made more difficult by the tears he also found himself desperately trying to hold back, lest he choke and drown himself simultaneously. "I should have used that line when I proposed," he croaked, when he was capable of forming words.Purdey laughed in delight. "You can't keep all the best lines for yourself," she teased, standing on tiptoe to kiss his brow, crinkled endearingly with emotion. "Anyway, I'm not asking for quotability, just an answer.""Skip town to elope," Gambit mused, composing himself and making a moue as he turned the thought around in his mind.Purdey watched him with hawklike vigilance, searching for any flicker that might tell her what he was thinking, what his answer might be. "Well?" she pressed, after Gambit made a show of considering the issue, purposefully keeping Purdey in suspense."It's definitely unconventional…" Gambit began, still looking heavenward in thought, as though busy divining the mysteries of the universe."A fact that my mother will remind us of the moment she hears about it," Purdey interjected, twitching irritably. "It's not what's done, especially when one has a bishop for a step-father, not that I care a jot.""But it is exactly the kind of thing we would do," Gambit countered, eyes dropping to meet hers as a slow, secretive smile crossed his features. "Our relationship's always been unconventional, right from the start."Purdey was almost hopping, she was jittering so much, but her eyes were brighter than they'd ever been, which was saying something given the way they'd been illuminated since the conversation had begun. "Does that mean you'll do it?"Gambit took one of Purdey's hands in both of his, squeezed it warmly. "Purdey, nothing would make me happier than to unconventionally vow to be unconventional with you for the rest of my life.""Mike Gambit, you brilliant man!" Purdey leapt up and threw her arms around his neck, feet lifting off the floor as Gambit wrapped his own arms around her for the kiss that followed. For once, Purdey was so overjoyed that she didn't remember to worry about how holding her might affect his side, too busy enjoying the warmth of his embrace and his kiss, two joys that she had yet to find a way to surpass in any other part of her life. "You'll do it, then?" she gasped when she came up for air, intent on making sure that this wasn't a dream, feet still floating above the floor, both figuratively and literally."This is dangerously close to being as confusing my proposal," Gambit chuckled, adjusting his grip to keep Purdey in his arms. He wasn't up to full strength yet, but he was damned if he wasn't going to hold her for as long as he could in that moment. "So to save you from asking again, yes, Purdey, I want to elope.""Mike!" She was so delighted she had to kiss him again."Come on, then," Gambit urged, somewhat muffled, still kissing Purdey even as he set her down as his side began to protest, telling him that he'd pushed his luck as far as he could. "We've got a lot to do." He treated her elatedly grinning visage to a saucy wink. "Partner."End