‘My face is in your hands, Mr Turner. You do fillers and eyebrow tattooing too?’

Unsmiling, Ash clearly took his task too seriously for jokes. He’d made her wash her wounds first, scrubbing his own hands at the sink alongside her, field hospital coming to Cotswold cottage. Then he’d carefully cleaned the remaining clotted blood away from her forehead and lip, deliberately exposing the deepest cuts and abrasions, which stung like hell. He treated each with antiseptic, deft and precise. Finally, working quickly, he neatly swabbed and glued, barking at her to stay still.

‘It gloody hurts!’ she complained, mouth wedged open by his thumb which, despite the supreme pain and expediency of the situation, still felt regrettably erotic. ‘Ouch!’

‘Don’t be a wimp,’ he gave her a stern sideways look.

‘Ig goo say arly is omming ere?’ She sounded like a dentist’s patient having a filling, but he was obviously practised at interpreting bashed mouths.

‘She’s working up at the Gunns’ place. She’ll call you later.’

‘Eaning iv Ganine?’

‘And helping with the neds.’

‘At’s goog.’

Bridge focussed hard on the thought of Carly. Carly was kind. Carly was her friend. Carly had somehow figured out that her need for Skully’s services were greater than turfing and had sent her husband in as medic. Her hands must be hot. She needed Carly. She’d be gentler than Ash for a start.

‘Ucking ouch!’

‘Chin up, beautiful. I’ve taken worse myself enough times.’ His accent, pure Comptons, all Cotswold marl and folklore, did nothing to dispel the squirming shame of pain combined with lusty crush.

They were in the bathroom, which had the best light, still steamed up from her shower. In common with most of the old cottages on Back Lane, it was downstairs in a lean-to extension built off the kitchen. Perching on the bath rim, Bridge was uncomfortably aware that she and Aleš had enjoyed sex in it late last night, lube and intimate toy just out of sight behind the shower curtain.

‘You ight a lot then?’ She remembered Mo’s dark talk of high-grade gypsy bouts. ‘Are-uckle?’

He didn’t answer, eyes close to her skin, focussing on his task. He smelled of menthol shampoo and gum, undercut with the sort of testosterone that was lethal around married women.

‘Uz arly ot ind that you ight?’

‘You’re not to talk to Carly about fighting.’ The silver eyes fixing hers were gun barrels. Then they moved back to their task, and she could relax, studying his brows at close range, perfectly shaped in a way no man-salon could emulate. There was a bell-bar piercing in one, a thin scar through another. Aleš, who had brawled throughout his teens and twenties, had eyebrows scarred like tyre tracks. Maybe Ash landed more punches than he took.

‘Is are-uckle ighting hard?’ she persisted, captivated by the alien world of gypsies slugging it out in secret.

‘I don’t fight.’ Ash didn’t blink. ‘I train.’

She pulled her chin back so he was forced to let go. ‘And mule drugs.’